COFFEE -- AND THE DAY -- DOWN!

 Coffee and I do not get along.

It took me years of trial and error to discover that I like my hot coffee much like I like my hot tea: Black with a shot of sugar. I always thought I would like coffee with milk or cream, like a coffee shake. (Apologies to those of you outside of New England who have zero idea what a coffee shake might be.) Mostly, though, I stay far, far away from hot coffee. 

On the flipside, when I see people add milk to hot tea, it turns my stomach. Why in the name of Lady Gray would you ever ruin a decent cup of tea with dairy products? What in the wide, wide world of tea leaves would possess anyone to commit such a treasonous, heathen act? Tea should be served neat with a dollop of local honey stirred into it. If honey is unavailable, then the first thing you do is look down your nose at your hosts. The second thing you do is demand to see the sugar jar. Iced tea is for Southerners and large front porches, both of which I sorely lack, therefore I don't drink the stuff unless my hot tea goes cold.

Iced coffee is a year-round staple. Again, apologies to anyone outside of New England who doesn't understand that when it is 10 degrees below zero with a wind chill of -60 degrees and the snot is frozen in your scarf-covered nose and you haven't had feeling in your fingers or toes since October, the only sane drink is a tall iced coffee with a shot of extra ice. Iced coffee is the sole time anything remotely dairy should be added, and I lean toward caramel cream.

That being said, I really am a hot tea drinker. Every once in a while, though, I get to jonesing for an iced coffee. And by "jonesing," I mean that if I don't have it instantly, heads are going to roll and the entire day will end in ruins. This is when coffee teases me most. 

A Monday or two ago, I made myself an iced coffee. Just a wee one, though, because I knew I'd be having tea later at my desk. I mixed it up just the way I like it -- 2/3 coffee, 1/3 creamer, and a decent spoonful of sugar. Top that with more ice than a frozen margarita, and life is perfect. Perfect, until I dump the entire contents of the cup all over my desk, laptop, and onto the floor. 

Coffee down!

I try the same on Friday of this week. I mix the coffee exactly the way I like it, drive to work, walk in with a colleague, shuffle through the long hallways to my classroom, and . . . 

Where's my iced coffee?

Luckily for all people involved in my day - meetings and classes alike - the coffee is in my car and not on my kitchen counter. I trudge back outside, backpack still on, ignoring people who wonder where I am going. 

Is everything all right? Are you leaving? What happened?

Coffee happened. 

One of these good, fine days I might learn my lesson. I should stick to my cup of hot tea and stop trying to pose as a crossover drinker. If I know me, and I do know me, this strategy will work for a couple of weeks. Then, without warning, I'll be jonesing for iced coffee again because, hey, when it comes right down to it, I am a born-and-bred New Englander.

A MOST AWKWARD SHAMROCK

Well, it's that time of year again. Time for green beer, strong whiskey, bagpipes, and corned beef. Time for boisterous choruses of "What do you do with a drunken sailor..." and errant hand-clapping to the no-nay-never denials. It's time for someone who thinks he can sing to belt out Danny Boy.

I

t's time for anyone with a smidgen of Irish heritage to wear green -- or orange, if you're so inclined - although white should probably be the unifying color, but where's the Irish history in that?

Every retail store around is trying to make a buck off Irish-wannabes. Even the craft stores. I have nothing against a decent Irish-themed decoration, and some of the stuff is tolerable and even kind of adorable in a purely Irish way.

Until we get to the giant shamrock. What the serious fuc-saus is going on here?

This thing looks like it's supposed to be made of peat moss. Unfortunately, it is more like a skin graft from the Jolly Green Giant. It's brittle and disturbing and has a faint odor of road apples, and it's green only in the clinical sense.

This item was probably made in China, and I'm not making a political statement when I say this. It's more an indictment on the level of familiarity the factory workers have with Irish heritage (zero, obviously).  It's equally creepy from the front as it is from the back, and we're not even sure which side is supposed to be which.

But, hey, on St. Patrick's Day, everyone can be Irish, not just Celts, Gaels, and Saxons. If an imitation-peat-moss over-sized shamrock is your thing, then let me know. I'll tell you where to find one. Until then, you'll find me singing, clapping my hands, and attempting to tell you where that dang boy named Danny has taken himself.

Happy St. Paddy's Day!

WICKED BIG THINGS ON RATHER SMALL SHELVES

 In my continuing saga of retail shopping, I just want to say that while I am pleased stores are stocking inventory, it would be nice if they stocked inventory people actually needed, like toilet paper, oatmeal, cat food. Instead, in addition to last week's pot-head plant containers, I am mystified this week by:

Wicked big things on rather small shelves!

My sister and I are on one of our usual shopping adventures. This one involves a craft store. To be honest, neither one of us needs any more crafty type materials or supplies. The difference between my sister and me is that she can actually knit and sew and do crafty stuff. I can knit rectangles, sew a semi-straight line, and hot glue my fingers together.

I am not totally sure what crafts these might be for, but we encounter ceramic trays. Okay, I suppose someone talented could paint them or do that cri-cri thing to them, but I am not quite sure what to do with a glass plate that says "Nice buns." Ummmm, thanks . . . I guess. 

I am equally mystified by the giant cheetah heads. No, folks, these are not planters. They're heads. Just heads, like something you'd come across in a furniture store as decoration in a living room display. Random giamundo cheetah heads just waiting patiently to come home with me. Unfortunately, those sort-of grinning animals will be sheltering at the store for a while longer.

There are also humongous wine and martini glasses. Okay, I totally understand these. These could be centerpieces at a really tacky wedding or incredibly inappropriate baby shower. Or they could use them as candy holders at meetings for people with the DT's. Or I could just buy one and say, "Here's my one-a-day glass of wine. Bully for me!"

I think, however, my favorite giant find of the day has to be the incredibly large buttons. I don't mean big buttons like Tweedle-Dee wears on his suspenders to keep his checkered pants up. I mean buttons the size of Duane Johnson's head. These things are bigger than dinner plates (plates that don't say "Nice Buns"). What on this great and ridiculous Earth could warrant a button that large? And how would I sew it on (if I could sew)? Would I use a hawser? I can see it now. I run up to the nearest tugboat (assuming that I might be near to one), and yell, "'Excuse me, may I steal your tow rope? I need to sew on a button for Goliath."

Maybe it's me, but I really want to see things like food or batteries or meat returning to shelves. I'd like to see clothing and writing utensils and glue return to shelves. But, I guess in the meantime, while I'm stuck sitting on the potty waiting for the toilet paper aisle to be restocked yet again, I can stare longingly at my cheetah head while toasting with a super-sized martini using the button as a coaster and think, "Wow, it's a great day to have nice buns!"

DOING THE POT-HEAD FACE-PLANT

 

I never understood the whole chia thing. You know what I'm talking about; those old "Cha-cha-cha-chia!" commercials. People would take some clay-fired shaped statue, wet it, roll it around in chia seeds, and then supposedly chia sprouts would act like hair on the statue.

They never worked right, though.

So, someone invented potting containers that looked like human heads. Yup, you put your plant into the pot and . . . voila . . . your "pot-head" becomes a "face-plant."

I've seen these containers with all kinds of plants in them. However, I've never come, well, face-to-face with one until I am shopping in Maine with my sister. We are searching for small pots to put herbs in for her kitchen windowsill. Regular old planters with irrigation holes in the bottom. Clay pots, perhaps.

Instead, we find faces. Lots of them. All sizes of them from teeny to massive. Just like real faces but glass.

There would be something creepy and disturbing about pots gazing back at us as we sit at the kitchen island and play cards. There would be something abnormal about ceramic eyes following us from one end of the kitchen to the other. Oh, sure, the faces could be spun around, but passing by the window to see glass eyeballs staring at us doesn't seem right, either, nor does it seem comforting to have the planters watch us sledding.

In the end, we cannot pull the trigger. If anyone likes the pots, you can find them in stores like Target or Michael's. Hurry, though. I'm sure everyone but my sister will be clamoring to buy pot-head face-plants this summer. 

EGG-CELLENT MORNING

 Apparently, I am becoming a food blog. 

Last week I focused on the homemade sweet potato fries that I concocted based on some random recipe that I found on the Internet. I rarely follow a recipe to its letter if I'm cooking (baking is a bit more precise, though) because, like my school chemistry experiments, nothing ever works quite right. More often than not, disaster looms.

This morning is no different.

I decide that I want an omelet. Easy enough, right? I know how to make omelets. I even have a microwave omelet pan for those times when I am too lazy to take out a fry pan. 

I'm not much of an egg eater, but there are times that I get on a roll. For a while last summer, I had to have a soft-boiled egg with bread cubes mixed in every morning. I am known to make scrambled eggs with enough spices to grow hair on your toenails. When I fry an egg, it's always over-hard because runny eggs are ONLY for soft-boiled eggs. Anything else is just disgusting. Okay, I'll also admit that I won't eat anyone else's egg salad except my own (Paprika? Anyone?).

Back to today's egg adventure. I don't have any bacon, so I'm leaning toward a simple cheese omelet. That is, until I open the fridge to get the eggs. Oh, look!  Ham! And here is some chopped red onion and half a tomato. Spinach! I can make a spinach omelet.

Before I know what's happening, I have the world's most over-stuffed two-egg omelet oozing all over my plate with cheese and veggies and some ham struggling to stay inside the actual omelet itself. It isn't pretty, and my omelet will not win any awards for its presentation, but it is utterly delicious despite its ugly demeanor.

I'm not ready to take on the world, and I doubt very much that any professional chefs are in danger of losing their television shows to my amazing culinary skills. I won't be winning any blue ribbons, that's for damn certain, but I won't end up in food jail, either. The best part of all of this experimenting means that if I accidentally burn down the complex with a misstep in my kitchen, at least I'll be well-fed while running from the fire.

SO SWEEEEEET!

I love sweet potato fries. And not just a little. I mean, I loooooooove them. I love them so much that I ordered haddock at a restaurant recently because the fish came covered in sweet potato crumbs.  After all, the restaurant did not have sweet potato fries, and I had to have a fix.

Before you start telling me that they sell sweet potato fries as take-out orders in many places or even as frozen food at many stores, understand three things:  #1 = I am too lazy to get take-out most of the time; #2 = I despise grocery shopping almost as much as I despise having surgery without anesthesia; #3 = I am a mediocre (at best) cook. Okay, actually, I can and do cook -- I'm just lazy about that, too.

So imagine my great delight when I decide that the sweet potato I have in the wooden bowl might be better served as fries rather than microwaved with butter and salt. Yes, I decide to . . . (gasp) . . . COOK.

First things first, I find a recipe. Then, I completely ignore the recipe. That's right. I ignore the damn thing. Folks, THIS is why people always wanted to be my partner when I took chemistry in both high school and college: I sort of follow directions, and then I blow things up or set them on fire.

I cut the potatoes sort of the way they are supposed to be cut. Then, I toss them in olive oil. (That is the one part of the recipe that I actually follow.) Then, the recipe calls for a few seasonings, like salt and pepper and maybe a pinch of sugar to caramelize the edges a bit. Instead, I grab a lot of random spices: Onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, and seasonings mixes of sweet basil, dried onions, and more. Then, I coat everything loosely with a touch of parmesan and some sugar.

Okay, I won't lie: It sounds like a sickly combination, but, to be honest, the dang things turn out great! They are addicting, and they're better than the restaurant fries. Yes, I am pleasantly surprised. 

However, much as I'd like to tout my success, I am disappointed that I neither blow anything up nor set anything on fire. As far as recipes go, I suppose this can be considered a good thing. 

As far as I am concerned, I am a little disappointed that I didn't need the fire extinguisher. I think my neighbors are, too, and I think the local firemen feel a little left out.  Either way, the sweet potato fries are a success, and I might even attempt to make them again soon. If you see flames shooting from my general neighborhood or hear sirens, you'll know it has been a success!

MISSING COVID ALREADY . . . NOT REALLY

 The pandemic is over. Over and done. Want to know how I know?

The government is giving the stuff away. That's right. GIVING it away. FREEBIES.  Stuck with millions of counterfeit masks? Give them away. About to lose millions of dollars on test kits no one will need? Give them away. Can't get rid of test kits through the free mail giveaway? Encourage people to partake in FREE pool testing. 

Good gawd. It's like we're stupid.

You know the real kicker? Insurance companies will now cover the cost of Covid tests. That's right. Now it's FREE. Why? Because no one has to do it anymore. Insurance companies will pay for it now that no one will be doing it.

Oh, you naysayers. You think I'm wrong. I called it two weeks ago, though. This week, contact tracing at my school district has stopped for both staff and students. That's right. Two weeks ago, the virus was deadly and we had to stay home. But now, magically two weeks later, everything is FINE. We're all FINE. You don't even have to stay home if you're sick nor if you test positive.

Anyway, I just want to know what I am supposed to do with all these masks now. Do I burn them? Wear them as hats? Make little paper bras out of them? Turn them into disposable g-strings? Create origami creatures with ear straps? Use them as toilet paper (which still somehow makes random disappearances from store shelves for no good reason)? Wear them as some kind of retro decoration? Make party hats out of them?

You want to know the part that truly aggravates me? Now I have to actually look between my teeth after eating lunch. No more surprise leftovers stuck in my jaw. Now I'll have to make sure my lipstick is fresh, my teeth are sparkling, my breath is minty, and I won't be able to mumble to myself without people knowing it's really me talking.

Damnit. I miss Covid already.