kmkat and her kneedles

Meme. As in, me me me me me.

Dale-Harriet* tagged me, and what's not to like about blathering on about oneself?

What's the last book you read that you thought was really super, inspiring, you'd recommend it to most anyone?

How about if I tell you of my favorite book of all time? That would be Winterdance : The Fine Magic of Running the Iditarod by Gary Paulsen. It is non-fiction, written by the author of dozens of young adult novels like Hatchet and a handful of adult novels. (No, not ADULT novels, just novels that you would find in the fiction section at the library.) Paulsen lived in northern MN and decided to get some sled dogs and run the Iditarod, the 1,500-mile Anchorage to Nome dog sled race. The book recounts his adventures and misadventures -- the latter outnumber the former by a considerable margin -- along the way. The book is both spiritual and hilarious; the first time I read it I kept chasing down members of my family: "Sit down and listen. You have to hear this!"

My favorite anecdote from the book is this one. At one point during his first running of the Iditarod, Paulsen and his team were following the track across a wide flat valley when they came upon an empty sled with team just sitting in the track. Thinking that the driver might be in trouble, Paulsen stopped and looked for the driver, eventually spotting him (or it might have been a her, I don't remember) lying on a very slight rise about a quarter mile away. He hiked over to see if s/he was okay, and the other driver motioned him to lie down and be quiet, too.

On the other side of the rise was a small frozen lake, blown clear of snow by the ever-present wind. There were two buffalo at the shore. They would take turns running onto the lake, then stopping, stiff-legged, and sliding across the ice, all the while bellowing at the top of their lungs. They were playing! iirc, it was at that point in his life that Paulsen became a vegetarian.

Tattoos: yes or no? Do you have any? Tell us! Do you think they're gross? TELL US!

No tats on me, thankyouverymuch. I'm not a big fan, although I find the artistic and colorful ones intriguing as body art.

Where have you lived?

On a farm in southern MN until age 14, rural northern MN for the 3 years of high school, Minneapolis -- mostly south Mpls -- for the next 32 years, on a lake in n.w. WI for the past 9. Yah, I'm a Midwesterner, fer sure.

But I have traveled a bit. I have hit 48 of the 50 states -- somehow  missed Delaware and Louisiana (so far) -- and 8 countries on 4 of the 7 continents: Canada, US, Mexico, Japan, the Philippines, South Africa, Spain, England/Scotland.

Do you listen to the radio? What are your favorite programs, & on what station?

Radio only in the car and only when I don't have my iPod. Then it is Minnesota Public Radio, either The Current or classical, occasionally the news channel. The only programs that I try to catch are A Prairie Home Companion and Car Talk, although I also like This American Life and Whaddya Know? and especially Science Friday. Very occasionally KQ (KQRS, 92.5, classic rock), The Cities 97 (KTCZ, 97.1), or Cool 108 (KQQL 107.9, oldies). Oh, and in my cube during tax season I generally have on JackFM, a station which for some inexplicable reason feels that we all need to hear Smoking in the Boys' Room at least once a week. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Is there a movie that makes you cry no matter how many times you see it?

Nope, sorry, don't generally cry at movies.

What snacks do you enjoy?

Ah, that is the question I have been waiting for. Let's talk food.

Bleu cheese, whole wheat saltines, and merlot, occasionally supplemented by pecans and/or grapes; that is my favorite bedtime snack ever. White tortilla chips with grated cojack cheese melted over them, topped with lots of Chi-Chi's mild salsa and accompanied by a beer, preferably Dos Equis or Leinie's Creamy Dark. Jarlsberg and pecans and hard cider. Funny how all my favorite snacks involve alcohol of some kind. I guess I only snack in the evening...

* You must follow that link and read her post for today, June 5. Eloquent and wonderful.

Posting, with a time limit.

I have much to tell y'all, but I only have three hours and nineteen, er, eighteen minutes before the intertubes close up again. Ready, set, go!

Since Andrew got home from Chiapas and set up his new computer he has been BitTorrent-ing like crazy -- all the episodes of Battlestar Galactica he missed and every album released during his absence. Or so it seems. My poor little Mac Mini cannot compete in the War For Our Bandwidth; it times out at least 80% of the time that I click on a link. I finally insisted that Andrew release our DSL to me from 8:30 to noon every day. Which is why I have a deadline to finish this post. Three hours and, um, fourteen minutes left.

What to tell you about first? How about what we had for dinner yesterday? Æbleskiver!

What are æbleskiver? You may very well ask. I could not possibly comment.*

[frustration] Even though I am writing this during the time when Andrew's downloads are limited to 10K/sec, my MM continues to time out over half the time. Go to Plan B: do the blog post using my Work Laptop (which continutes to reside with me so I can take every available CPE credit available free through my employer). For some reason the WL doesn't seem to have nearly as much trouble sharing the DSL connection. But in order to do that I have to copy the photos I have taken since the last blog post to my thumb drive, then copy them to the laptop. Argh, my 64MB thumb drive only has 3MB free, and even though I delete every frickin' file that is on it, Mac Finder still tells me there is not enough room to copy anything. Go to Plan B1: run downstairs and ask Andrew he has a thumb drive and can I borrow it, please. He's not in his room (must have gone for his morning run), but his laptop is downloading on his desk; I pause all his downloads to see if that will help. Run back upstairs, try the MM; nope, no better. Play solitaire while allowing blood pressure to drop to normal levels. Idea: maybe Andrew isn't out running, maybe he is in the bathroom. Check, discover this is the case. Ask about thumb drives; yes, he has two, a 512MB and a 128MB. He fetches them for me upon emerging from bathroom. Bigger thumb drive turns out to have <100MB free; smaller one locks up my MM. Return both to Andrew, ask if he can delete anything on the larger one and free up some space. He does, returns it to me. I copy photos from MM to thumb drive to work laptop. Whew. [/frustration]

Where was I? Oh, yeah, what are æbelskiver? Let's let the experts tell us:

 

I love that they compare the size to a very large hailstone.

ETA: Upon rereading this post I find I have done what Andrew calls "burying the lead." Æbleskiver, as it says in the newpaper ad above, are Danish pancakes. Onward.

So Andrew and I hustle on over to West Denmark at 5 pm (me thinking that this is a good time, the early rush will be over and the chronic late-comers won't have arrived yet) and discover there are roughly a gazillion cars parked along the country road in front of the hall. We go in, buy our tickets, and find we are numbers 240 and 241; a few moments later they call numbers 150 to 160 to come downstairs and eat. So we have some time to wait. What a time to have forgotten my knitting.

But there is entertainment. I encounter another county board member whom I have been meaning to call about a resolution which he is bringing before the board at the next meeting. We chat for awhile, and he explains his thinking to me.

More time to wait. I think I'll show you a bit of the hall where we waiting.

The Danes were a sea-going people:

 

I always thought Leif Ericsen's name was spelled Erikson and that he was from Norway. That is probably because there were far more people of Norwegian than Danish heritage where I grew up in southern Minnesota.

There was music:

 

But best of all, there was æbleskiver-making.

 

Let's take a closer look, shall we?

 

Yep, very large hailstones, all right.

There were two stoves and two crews making the hailst--, er, æbleskiver. Crew One, above; Crew Two, below:

 

That's Mike, Andrew's friend and mentor and hero in the green "Got Luck?" t-shirt. Mike is a long-time peace activist. He's an organic farmer and a substitute teacher and coach and speaker. He was arrested in his younger days for throwing blood on the White House; he has traveled to the Mideast multiple times, once meeting with Yassar Arafat. More recently he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives on the Green Party ticket, opposing Rep. Dave Obey -- one of the more liberal Democrats in the House -- from the left. (He got 27,00o+ votes: Dave, take note.) He is also the person most likely to help out with any kind of local volunteer/fund-raising effort; his wife Barb was working in the downstairs kitchen. They are dear, dear, very idealistic people.

The æbleskiver batter was mixed in the downstairs kitchen and rushed upstairs in handy buckets carried by the kids of Crew Two:

 

Cooking/baking æbleskiver is a labor-intensive business. Each person on the cooking crew tended one 7-æbleskiver iron, except for the real experts, who tended two. First, a squirt of oil into each large-hailstone-sized indentation in the pan, then a ladleful of batter. As soon as the bottom of the æbleskiver cooked, the crewperson turned it a quarter-turn using a special skewer:

 

The cooking and turning would continue until the outside of the æbleskiver was the perfect shade of brown. Sometimes the crewperson wasn't paying close enough attention and an æbleskiver would get too brown, even black. The rejects were tossed into the bowl in the center of the stove; you can just see the edge of it in the above photo. After I took these pictures the crew let me steal a couple of the rejects for Andrew and I to sample. Mmmmm, even the rejects were good!

Eventually our numbers were called and we trouped downstairs to the eating area. Because I was very hungry and not as good a blogger as I could have been, I have exactly zero pictures of the actual dinner. Instead, I will use my words: we were each given a plate with 3 æbleskiver and a 4" link of medisterpolse (Danish sausage, mild, about 1" in diameter, and tasting distinctly of cloves). There was a pitcher of water, a thermal carafe of coffee, a small pitcher of warm syrup, and a bowl of sodsuppe (fruit soup) on every table. I had had fruit soup once about thirty years ago and remembered it as being kinda yucky, but I found it quite tasty yesterday. It's made with dried fruit stewed in (sweetened?) water, probably with some spices, and served cold. I'd never had the sausage before, but I'd like to have it again. Soon.

Happily this was an all-you-can-eat kind of dinner because three æbleskiver and a hunk of sausage is not nearly enough to fill one up. Æbleskiver taste pretty much like regular pancakes, only lighter. Three of them equal about one medium-sized ordinary pancake. We -- Andrew and I and the three other people at our table -- kept asking for and getting additional bowls of æbleskiver. We didn't push our luck by asking for more sausage, darn.

Oh, yes, there was dessert, too. Our choice of apple crisp or a lemon chiffon thingie. We Scandinavians really like our sweets.

This is purportedly a knitting blog, and if I were any kind of decent knitblogger I would have photos to show you of the lovely Norwegian sweaters that I saw. You will just have to make do with this instead.

 

* Anyone know where that quote is from?  I don't think googling will help you; it didn't give me any results, but I know where I remember it from so that's okay.

But I'm not much of a drinker. Really.

89%DRUNKARD

Thanks to Miss T for the link.

C is for...

 

There is no excuse to be sleepy at work.

If I am feeling extravagant in the morning, or a colleague and I are in need of a mid-afternoon break, we have our choice of nearby caffeinated establishments.

 

 

 

Those are just the places within 90 seconds of my desk. I swear there is a coffee shop in every building downtown.

At home in Wisconsin I have a little Krups espresso maker with which I brew myself a grande latte every morning. My version is roughly equivalent to a Starbuck's nonfat quad grande latte (quad = two extra shots). But I am such a plebian; my milk gets hotted up in the microwave, not frothed.

The Kat™ after her morning coffee: 8-)

This coffee shop is popular with the folks in my office.

 

After I took that photo, I turned 180 degrees and took this one:

 

For some unknown reason most of the folks in my office walk right past this Starbucks to go to the Caribou that is 20 feet farther away and down four steps. Maybe these accountants are rebelling against megacorporations? Maybe because Caribou is a local franchise? Just one of those unexplained phenomena that bedevil us at 2 a.m. when we can't sleep..

All those coffee palaces are after I get to work. On my way to the freeway every morning I pass this one (recognize it, Dale-Harriet?)

 

I also pass a Starbucks that is even closer to my house, but I didn't think to get a photo. You'll just have to imagine a corner Starbuck's in the Lynnhurst neighborhood of south Minneapolis.

And now it is time to get busy.

 

He's gone.

Andrew flew out 6 am Sunday morning. He was here for three weeks, a week longer than originally planned because he caught a cold and wanted to recover and he was enjoying himself here and he didn't need to get back right away; so he gave up a week of sightseeing in Mexico to spend the time with us instead. Say it with me now: awwwww.

I've told you about our visit to Chicago to visit his aunt and uncle. He also spoke at the local library about the Zapatistas and Chiapas and what he is doing there. The total of nearly 20 people was a very good turnout for our little library.

He will be in Chiapas until mid-April, then home -- or possibly traveling to see friends around the US and the world -- until June, when he goes back to New York to start med [summer] school.

When Andrew was in Chiapas, eating beans and tortillas and on special days rice, he lost a pound every 64 hours for 2-1/2 months. As part of our parental obligation we fed him well while he was home.

Vegetarians, look away. This photo even grosses me out.

From the left, that's three New York strip steaks, four T-bones, and six Porterhouses. Smokey hit a sale on steak at the grocery store, this was all <$6/pound.

Here's how a couple of the Porterhouses looked when grilled.

He said that one of the steaks was at least the equivalent of the amount of meat in the average Chiapan's diet in an entire year. Yeah, we totally used his being home as an excuse to eat huge steaks.

Part of the fun of having steak is that Andrew always makes a huge production out of feeding the fatty scraps to the dogs. They have to work for their treats. First, they must wait politely.

Sometimes he teases the dogs by offering the treat to a cat. Cats, being the cautious types they are, sniff it all over just to be sure we haven't nurtured them and raised them and housed them and paid the vet bills and snuggled them and cleaned their litter boxes all these years just to use this opportunity to poison them.

Bear is an old, old dog. All she has to do to get her treat is to say please. Lucy, however, is required to dance on her hind legs for 10+ seconds and s-t-r-e-t-c-h to get her morsel.

* * * * *

I'll leave you with some of the funny things people said to Andrew in Chiapas.

Do you wear your hair like that because of your religion?

(On seeing a jet plane way up high in the sky) Where is that plane going? Is it going to Mexico [City]?

How fast do planes walk?

(He asked one of his students if he knew what snow was.) Sure, you buy it at the stand in Ocosiningo. It comes in strawberry and orange and mango.

One of the books in the school referred to ice. The students asked what ice was, and Andrew was at a loss to explain it in terms they could understand. Subtropical climate, no electricity, no freezers.

So he is bringing back these pictures -- ice, frozen lake, snow, pontoon boat*, dock.

 

* I told him to tell them that this is the simplest, cheapest, most bare-bones pontoon boat one can find in the US, to which he added, It still cost $2000. That will blow their minds.

B is for... bleu.

I am addicted to bleu cheese, the tangier the better.

I generally buy a semicircular hunk whenever I am at Sam's Club. It weighs about a pound and costs less than $10. That's a lot of yumminess for not a lot of money.

When there is a chunk of bleu cheese in the fridge, it calls to me when I am reading in bed. Kaaaaaathy! Eat meeeeee! I'm taaasty! With craaackers and wiiine!

With such a strong-tasting cheese, my palate wants a plain cracker. Whole-wheat saltines are my favorite, but Stoned Wheat Thins are also good (and cost about 3x as much). Either red or white wine will do, but red is better, imho.

There have been bloggy indications in the past of my addiction: this post and picture

and this one.

I don't care for bleu cheese dressing, and I seldom use bleu cheese in a recipe, but the other night I made this salad for Andrew and I to eat with our steaks. Romaine, pears, pecans, and bleu cheese with a sweet-ish vinaigrette. Mmmmmm.

After all this arranging and slicing and photoing and thinking of bleu cheese, I had to have a little snack. And tell myself sternly that 2 pm is too early to have a little glass of wine to go with it...

...not a creature was stirring...

It was a quiet Christmas. Matthew and I joined my friend Colleen and her friend Alan for a Christmas dinner put on by a local community club. No charge, goodwill offering only. It was held at a lovely, northwood-sy supper club in the next little town south from us. The lady in the Santa hat was in charge. She said they served 140 people.

Ham, stuffing with gravy, steamed mixed veggies, dinner rolls, and homemade cookies and bars(s) for dessert. Just like grandma used to make 'cuz it was Grandma in the kitchen.

See the TV in the bar in the background? Tuned to Channel 45, The Official Fireplace Station Of The Holidays -- all flickering flames, all the time. What was even more amazing was that [I think] the Packers game was being televised. "No, Lenny, we will NOT change the station to The Game. We're having a fireplace on the teevee today."

I saw Mr. S, who was Andrew's history teacher in high school and who commented that he has been reading The Boy's The Young Man's dispatches from Chiapas with interest. Mr. S looked very festive indeed.

After that we came home. Matthew bullied me into letting him open one present. Pink Skullcandy earbuds.

Then he listened to his music and surfed the net, and I listened to an audio book and knitted on his sock.

Hannibal helped. Mmmm, yarn...

Eye candy Friday. Literally.

When I visited my friend Kathy last weekend she was still in the process of emptying their store*, open only during the summer, of perishable merchandise. She told me to take as much candy as I wanted because otherwise it would be thrown away. Mmmmmm, candy...

* * * * *
Some more eye candy from my visit with her. She and her husband live in the woods on a lake. They have a tame deer which they have named Lucy and who has come to their house daily for 2-1/2 years, although only in the winter.

Yes, Lucy comes for the treats.

Notice the Calorimetry and Noro striped scarf Kathy is wearing, above :-)

* Their store is slightly larger than this one:

Anybody wanna buy a flea?

Editor's note: I wrote this in September. Why didn't I post it then? No idea. Here it is, a slice of rural life on a beautiful fall day. My thermometer reads today the same as it did t'other day -- cold. Icy cold. This post is a breath of warmer air. Since I am packing for a weekend trip to visit a couple of old friends, it was serendipitous to find this post ready to go.

* * * * *

The weather is cool and I wanted to make vegetable soup, so a few weeks ago I headed to the flea market on Saturday morning. There are always some produce vendors there so I figured I could get some fall veggies, no problem.

Unfortunately, the season is nearing a close. Lots of empty tables.

In July there would have been tables of stuff all the way back to the trees. I once bought a couple bakery-quality sheet pans at a stand back by the trees for practically nothing. Ah, good times.

\

Even in the few stands that were open, I found some interesting sights.

Tires, cheap:

Coca Cola, although somewhat less than fresh:

Decorative buttons for your Crocs:

Spinners! Only $1! Wanna go fishing for walleye?

Flea markets and estate sales are excellent places to acquire yard and garden tools on the cheap. You know your brand-new shiny $25 rake will look like these in a couple months anyway:

I have no idea what these are for. They are about four feet tall and have some kind of hinge or mounting thingies on the back:

Need a generator or some luggage?

How about some not-so-gently-used bowling pins?

I have no idea what this flag is saying:

nor even what country it is. It resembles the flag of Egypt but is not exactly the same. Anybody know?

Finally I found the produce stand, but it was strangely lacking in anything resembling local produce.

Pineapples and Red Delicious apples? Nope.

We already have about 20 pounds of tomatoes. Kiwi, no thanks, not in vegetable soup.

Bananas? I repeat, not in vegetable soup, thanks.

This looks like it might be local:

Well, the honey and maybe the jams, but not the cinnamon. And it still isn't what I'm looking for.

This stand  had the only local produce I found:

The proprietor didn't speak English so he could only wave his hands over the many varieties of peppers (more than in the photo) and say, Hot! Hot! which I already had guessed.

The woman in the photo was from the stand next door but was determined to get into a picture. So I obliged her:

I left the flea market tragically veggie-less. Supermarket to the rescue.

But it was a lovely day and even with imported veggies the soup was delicious.

Souper Sunday.

On Sunday I decided to try out a new soup recipe. I had no more than gotten started than I decided to make a second soup that Smokey had been asking for. And while paging through my 3-ring binder of recipes, I came upon another one for which I happened to have all the ingredients. Mmmmmm, soup...

As the butter dish looks on,

I throw three medium potatoes into the oven to bake, and cook some bacon for two of the soups.

Two others require carrots and onion. (See the new iPod clock radio? My Mini has a new purpose in life, replacing the big-ass stereo that is taking up space on the counter.)

Sauté the carrots and onion with the crumbled bacon:

Dice some potatoes. The cutting board gets…crowded:

Cook some wild rice in chicken broth:

Measure out two cups of cooked wild rice. The kitchen gets…messier:

Smokey and Matthew were outside working on cars and such. Matthew stopped by to show me his hammer.

Throw the sautéed carrots and onions and bacon into a big pot with lentils, tomato paste, the diced potatoes, and some seasonings.

Add ~10 cups variously flavored broths. Oops, need a bigger [crock]pot.

Peel and slice the baked potatoes. Grate 1/2 cup carrots. The counter becomes…problematic.

Peel and slice the baked potatoes and add to the stuff that has been simmering that I haven't shown you. Simmer some more. This is potato soup.

Later I'll stir in some sour cream and the rest of the crumbled bacon. Mmmmmm.

Dice some of the ham left over from our Thanksgiving dinner. Voila! Creamy wild rice soup:

Later I'll stir in some sherry, and some evaporated milk to thin it if necessary. Mmmmmm.

The best one, though, is the one that needs to cook the longest. Happily, this is the recipe that makes the biggest batch, too.

This is Al Quie's Lentil Soup, the recipe found in his campaign literature from the late 1970s when he ran for governor. In the second photo I have diced a package of smoky links and thrown those in with a couple tablespoons of balsamic vinegar. I chanced to meet Al Quie in the early 1990s; I introduced myself and thanked him for the soup recipe. Mmmmmm.

Recipes are here:

• Potato soup
• Creamy wild rice soup
• Al Quie's lentil soup

Bricks and squash and pie, oh my.

Friday night Smokey and I went to a fund-raising dinner (For the love of all that is food, kat, is that all you ever do? Yes. Shut up.) This one was to help the Natural Alternatives food coop in Luck raise enough money to restore the brickwork on their building, which is apparently disintegrating.

Anyway.

No photos of the dinner -- I was too busy eating. The menu was almost all organic and/or free range: squash, barbecued chicken, herbed chicken, skin-on potatoes, coleslaw, mixed greens, and, once again, a panoply of homemade desserts that would put Nigella/Martha/Wolfgang Puck to shame. Although all the food was excellent, it was the squash that took the prize. I took a bite and gasped! it was so good. Smokey, who doesn't much like squash and who wouldn't have taken any if he had been allowed to serve himself, said, upon tasting it: Wow, this is good. We tried to decipher the flavors -- I thought I detected some bacon; Smokey thought lard; another person wondered if there was some coconut in it. It was savory and vaguely sweet and totally yummy. Several of us said we could make an entire meal of it. By happy chance I turned out to be sitting next to the woman who had made it, and she happily shared the recipe (as she remembered it). Not exactly health food but oh! so good.

Baked squash

2 cups squash, mashed
1/2 mayonnaise (NOT Miracle Whip!)
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup bread crumbs
1/4 - 1/2 cup grated cheese

Topping =  more bread crumbs and butter.

I didn't bother to get the assembly/baking instructions so we are all on our own there.

There was also a silent auction and bake sale. Look what came home with us:

That pie, when entire, weighed something over four pounds. And it was still warm. Mmmm. Ten bucks well spent.

As we were leaving Smokey commented that he quite liked this kind of fund raiser. All you have to do to support their cause is eat.

The candy hierarchy.

Re-defining the Candy Hierarchy (Halloween Experiment Debriefing #3)

Category: Knoxville '82: Where Miscellany Thrive
Posted on: October 29, 2007  8:00 AM, by Benjamin Cohen

The data presented below were first published after Halloween in 2006, here at The World's Fair. We were fortunate after that publication to receive further (non-anonymous) peer review and thus we re-present below the hierarchy with amendments and adjustments, but no retractions, this time just ahead of Halloween and Ghost season.

For example, one reviewer, Prof. Turcano, rightly observed that Smarties "are clearly an index candy for the Middle Crunchy Tart Layer," and that addition was made. Another reviewer, Dr. Maywa, noted that "anonymous brown globs that come in black and orange wrappers" were most definitely indicative of the "how dare they call this a candy" layer. I think some of Charles Lyell's earlier work indicated much the same, but then the Royal Society got all up in the mix and it fell out again. (There's a uniformitarian for you, right?)

To repeat our earlier claims to the report: Although there were some intra-family disputes about what belongs where, we did derive a basic candy hierarchy, and I do think it is more or less sound. This taxonomy is based on years of research and debate, on thorough testing and re-testing, on statistical comparison and quality measurement, on focus group testing, and on a series of FTIR scans that reveal various hydrocarbon peaks and whatnot.

It's sound science.

And so to you the 2007 Candy Hierarchy, with uncertainties acknowledged:

TOP TIER (not surprisingly, exclusively chocolate-based) Milky Way --- Snickers --- Hershey's Kissables --- Peanut M&M's --- Regular M&Ms --- Junior Mints --- Reese's Peanut Butter Cups --- Three Musketeers --- regular old Hershey Bars* --- Twix SECOND TIER (also exclusively chocolate, after fending off a few intruders) Kit-Kat* --- Nestle Crunch --- Mounds --- Tootsie Rolls* --- Whoppers**** --- Dark Chocolate Hershey Bars --- Fair Trade Chocolate --- Butterfinger --- Pay Day THIRD TIER (also referred to as the chewy range or, in some circles, the Upper Chewy or Upper Devonian) Milk Duds --- Benzedrine -- Jolly Ranchers (if a good flavor)** --- 100 Grand Bar --- Almond Joy --- Candy Corn --- Starburst BOTTOM TIER (the Lower Chewy and Gummy-Based, also the Middle Crunchy Tart Layer) Dots --- Lollipops --- Nerds --- Runts --- Trail Mix ---Swedish Fish --- Mary Janes --- Gummy Bears straight up --- White Bread --- Licorice -- Anything from Brach's --- Hard Candy --- Bubble Gum --- Including the Chiclets (but not the erasers) --- Black Jacks --- LemonHeads --- LaffyTaffy --- Good N' Plenty --- Jolly Ranchers (if a bad flavor) --- Bottle Caps --- Smarties --- "those odd marshmallow circus peanut things"*** Tier so low it does not register on our equipment Healthy Fruit --- Pencils --- Lapel Pins --- Extra Strength Tylenol --- "anonymous brown globs that come in black and orange wrappers" --- Now'n'Laters --- Hugs (actual physical hugs) --- Whole Wheat anything

*These indicate the intra-family disputes. For example, I would keep Kit-Kat where it is, while other unnamed members of the family demand that it be given Top Tier Classification. That same other unnamed member of the family would not put Tootsie Rolls as a top-tier get, though I would've. Shockingly, there was no unanimous decision on the placement of Candy Corn, which as of 2006 remained unclassified, but as of 2007 has been tentatively placed in the Upper Chewy/Upper Devonian.

**Remains an outlier, since it is in no way "chewy."  Further studies have not resolved this inconsistency. 

***The literature shows that these are perhaps "an abomination too evil to distribute to the young nowadays."

**** Prior studies show that "the whoppers that never properly whopped and are chewy, however, should always be a top tier item."

Eye candy Friday III.*

For Deb. I am home alone**, reading blogs, and knitting on another Noro scarf. That's sourdough bread and blue cheese on the plate (already eaten by the time I type this), and Fisheye chardonnay*** (already drun--, er, consumed). Say it with me now: Mmmmmmm!

* I find a particular delight in confounding the rules and being an outlier. Everyone else posts a lovely Eye Candy Friday photo with some text to go with it. I post three ECFs in one day. Sorry, I can't help it; give me a precedent and I'll find a reason not to follow it. It's called creativity. Deal with it.

** Yeah. Who in their right mind has Happy Hour alone? But Smokey is working and Matthew is at a bonfire, and today is the deadline for Deb's contest. So whatareyagonnado? I sucked it up and dealt myself a Happy Hour.

*** A winery with one of the more annoying websites ever devised. How does one get beyond the third page, the one with four bottle of wine/text/2 more bottles/music? Maybe that is all there is? But why does my cursor turn into a little hand -- the universal sign of a link to be followed -- when it floats over the image? Huh? Why?

Eye candy Friday.

Smokey's snack for work. Mmmm, grapes...

Restaurant capital of the world.

While attending my class reunion we stayed with my friend Kathy. She and I were best friends in high school and have stayed in touch through the years. I moved to Minneapolis and eventually Wisconsin, while she returned to Park Rapids after college. I have always been a wage earner; she has always been an entrepreneur. I admire her greatly.

Her current venture is a small store and restaurant in Dorset, Minnesota, the self-proclaimed Restaurant Capital of the World. Population 22, six (6!) restaurants.

If you are ever in the area, check out La Pasta -- the food is wonderful. (Seriously. I'm salivating as I type this.)

Notice how it says "No substitutions" on the menu? She means it. Really, it is more than your life is worth to ask to change something. She may be my best friend, but even I know better than to ask to substitute. You will eat what is put in front of you and like it.

If you arrive during a busy time, which is pretty much anytime they are open, you may have to wait for a table. No problem, walk across the street to one of my favorite bookstores. Small, but good. All trade paperbacks; no mass market.

Pssssst. There's an espresso bar in the back.

If you still have time to kill, wander around back of the restaurant and stroll through the garden.

 

Kathy likes gargoyles, but they haven't all made it into the garden yet.

Have you ever been in the back storeroom of a restaurant? Lots of food.

This is northern Minnesota, so the General Store sells bait. Don't worry, this fridge is as far away from the kitchen as you can get.

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The town has a number of little specialty shops -- stained glass, gifts, clothing, a scoop shop, a B&B -- plus it is on the 49-mile Heartland [bike] Trail. On the first Sunday of August every year the six restaurants cooperate for the Taste of Dorset.

   

If you go to Dorset before August 3, 2008, don't try to order the spaghetti balls. They won't be ready until then.

   

The only bad thing about Dorset? No LYS; in fact, I don't think there is one for 40 or 50 miles. A business opportunity awaits for one of you knitters out there...
 

County fair: fare.

 

Certain foods are de rigeur at a county fair. Mini doughnuts. Popcorn.

Anything on a stick.

I think of funnel cakes as a Right Coast phenomenon that spread. In the Midwest the required food is cheese curds.

Those were good. Let's look at them some more.

   

My choice for lunch was a pulled pork sandwich from Big Ed's. After smelling the barbecue as I walked past there was no other possibility.

But not all the food is grease/fat/sugar. There is a lot of real food on display, too.

Remember where real food comes from.

Be thankful there are people who are passionate about producing it.

Not everyone has the food they need.

Some of us have more than is good for us.

 

Not me, you understand. I am mere skin and bones, just a few cheese curds and a bratwurst away from starvation, really.

Merry, merry

It was just me and my two boys-but-nearly-men at home today, as Smokey worked a double shift on both Christmas Eve and today. Even after missing his flight out of JFK Andrew landed at MSP only 3 hours after the time he should have arrived. We picked him up and met Smokey for dinner at a Chinese buffet (bless the Buddhists!) during his dinner break so we could be together for a bit. Today the boys and I watched Clerks II -- not exactly a Christmas movie, but who cares? -- and I fixed us Christmas mac and cheese. Sorry about the blurry photos. I still haven't totally mastered this camera.