What have we done!?!?
Tomorrow is the day that trumps Valentine’s Day in pounds of chocolate sold. (I basically made that up, but it has to be true!) Halloween when parents let their kids go door to door and beg for sweets which will eventually give them a sugar coma later that evevning, the kids AND the parents. When I was little I remember coming home and dumping out my bounty on the living room floor. All of the colors of the rainbow were represented: yellow with Dots, orange with Butterfinger, brown with Tootsie Rolls, red with Kit Kats, etc. It was a glorious time for all involved. Of course I had to restrain myself from digging in because Dad would need to check for razor blades and pin holes. Looking back I now realize that he just wanted first dibs on the Milky Ways, but I’m sure his dad did the same thing to him on Halloween, so he earned it. So you may be asking, “This is a nice stroll down Memory Lane and all, but what’s your point?” To be honest, I miss the days when schools allowed Halloween and Christmas parties with goodies galore.
Now, when my dad decided to bring in goodie bags for all of his little goblins, he was told to take out all of the candy. It’s a peanut free school. WHAT?! What have we done over the past generation or two that has made kids so allergy-ridden? I say, when a kid can eat solid foods give him a scoop of Jif peanut butter to build up his tolerance. Why does EVERY kid need to suffer when ONE kid has an allergy. Literally, there is one kid in the entire school that has the allergy, but God forbid (it’s a Catholic school so that’s fine to say) the other kids benefit from a teacher’s generosity! The candies were individually wrapped then put in plastic goody bags and sealed and were going to be given out with the instructions to be opened at home. I think the kids should have a choice. If they wanted a goody bag then they should be offered the chance to take one. Just because there is a possibility that a piece of the individually wrapped, then bagged, then sealed candy might have been processed in a plant with nuts, all the fun is taken away. So keep the allergic kid home from school that ONE day…I’m sure he/she knows how to work an Epi-pen by now. (Too harsh?)
So I say, let’s go back to days of yore with Paydays, and Snickers and Peanut M&Ms and bring on the apples from the old ladies…because in those days the razor blades wouldn’t ruin Halloween for everyone!
For a scary costume...stick one of these on your kid!
And just so you know, I’m aware that some kids are so allergic that they can’t even walk by peanuts and I’m sure it is an AWFUL allergy to have, but I don’t see why the other kids need to miss out!
Turning The Jack5ons in to The Jack$ons
When Michael Jackson died, the worlds of music and entertainment lost an originator and an icon. MJ was one of a kind and will never be reproduced. Now that all of the nicey nice things are out of the way, why does one of the richest families feel the need to benefit from their brother’s/child’s death? Now if and when This Is It comes out on DVD, I will be one of the first to Netflix it…this isn’t where I have the issue. The purpose of the tour was to bring the music to the people/fans, so I have no issue with making money off of it, afterall MJ left 3 kids and at least 1 chimp to support.
What turned my stomach was seeing a commercial for The Jack5ons: A Family Dynasty on A&E. One of the clips is all the remaining brothers (Jermaine, Tito, Jackie, Marlon, Donatello, Michaelangelo, Donner, Blitzen) getting out of a limo in some tacky black suits and shiny satin shirts smiling for paparazzi, loving the limelight. Earth to the Jackson family….no one cares about anyone besides Janet and Michael (unless you want a psychic reading from Latoya)! At the funeral everyone and their moms asked “Who the heck is Rebbie?” and where did they keep her all of this time…rundown Neverland? Just because you were in the headlines for a few weeks (remember? your brother died? ringing any bells?) doesn’t mean you are now the “it” family again or that people want to know about your secret lives.
Now if you did this while all of the Jackson 5ers were still with us, you would have a true audience. Now though, the show will be like a car wreck, something you don’t want to watch but can’t take your eyes off of. I feel bad for the Jacksons for the tragedies that have fallen on their house, but I think it’s disgusting that they feel the need to line their pockets from death. Am I a little harsh…why yes I would say so. Would I say this if any of the Jacksons came knocking on my door, probably not. Would I ask what brand of shellac Jermaine uses to keep his helmet hair in place, absolutely!
At least it isn’t Apple…
Time for a random observation not supported by a SHRED of research or scientific study. In the past, let’s call it 6ish months I have noticed a gaggle of new babies with the same name. One might say that with all the babies born in the USA every day (which is 11,000 by the way) there is bound to be tons of repetition…maybe even more than one person would say that. But it’s not like the name is James or John or Mike, the name that has inundated my life is Liam.
Now there is nothing wrong with the name Liam, it’s technically a word both backward and forward so how could it NOT be cool. Nonetheless here is the rundown: in the past 6 months there have been 6 Liams born (and possibly a seventh coming soon) with the only connection being yours truly. Wrap your head around that one!
I am all about going different with a baby name, but here’s a newsflash folks (and again….no offense to your bundle of joy) the name you thought you were breaking ground with is becoming steadily more popular with each passing year and is now 75th on the 2008 boy’s names list. Here’s one good thing though, there are NO known nicknames for Liam. Good for you, you just saved your kid years of torment on the playground and hours on a therapy couch. I mean it’s not like you named your kid Moxie Crimefighter!
I have a bone to pick with Walmart!
First….get over the fact that I went to Walmart, it’s the place to go for cheap housewares and prescriptions and car stuff and…well you get it. Second they were advertising their Halloween Boo-tique as THE place to get Halloween stuff for cheap and I’m a frugal gal. So I took a stroll over to the Boo-tique and found two aisles…not exactly the costume and supply warehouse they were leading the public to believe. One was filled with candy, a chocoholics dream come true. The next aisle was 1/2 costumes and 1/2 accessories and paper goods. It was in this aisle that I realized why their adult costumes were so cheap…there was nothing to them.
EVERY adult woman costume was a skanky spin on something real. They were cheap (in both quality AND taste) because there was literally nothing to them. Let’s see there was Skanky Angel, Slutty Devil, French Maid, Whorish fairy and Trampy Dorothy among others. There was no costume that extended below the knee….none. OK there was one but there was a slit in the skirt that went up to the neckline so it really doesn’t count. Even the “plus size” costume (singular) that they did have was a very tacky Poodle skirt, and of course it was the most expensive in the store.
So I ask, when did Halloween become a day to celebrate all things prostitute? Why can’t I look cute and Halloween-y without putting “the girls” on display? Call me too practical but if I’m spending the evening passing out candy at the door, I’m not looking to freeze “my girls” off. All I’m saying is…why not offer a non-prostitutized version of costumes (no that wasn’t a word, but I’m still using it) for women that are bigger than a 4 and don’t have hips of a 9th grade BOY? On the bright side, for all you working girls out there looking to expand your enterprises into fantasy play and still have money left over to wedge in your bra….is Walmart the place for you!!!
Apple Bread Recipe
A couple of weekends ago I took a trip to Honey Pot Hill Orchards to go apple and pear picking. I have been apple picking all my life and can’t ever remember being impressed by an orchard….that’s why this time was different. This place was huge! They tell you its a “hike” to get to the pears (450 yards) and you’re expecting mountains and streams but it was a lovely walk through apple orchards, blueberry fields and pass one ginormous house that I can only assume belongs to Mr. Honey Pot. But I digress….the pears and the apples were double the size of anything you see in grocery stores and they are very sweet and very yummy. All told we came out of the groves with 30 lbs of fruit in 2 $15 bags (and in our pockets and arms and mouth). So here I am with more or less 20 lbs of apples and no idea what to do with them. At first I made an apple pie, then came the apple cake, now I’m on to apple bread.
Believe it or not, a recipe for apple bread that isn’t apple bread pudding was sorta kinda hard to find. I scoured the internet (and by scoured I mean searched for like 15 minutes) until I found a recipe that didn’t have 300 ingredients and looked to be yummy. I found a winner on Foodgeeks.com (yes, I’m a dork) and because I am so happy with how the bread came out I am going to share with you my take on the recipe (I tweaked the original). Oh and just so you know this isn’t “bread” bread, it’s bread that you eat slightly warm with melted butter on a cool day with a cup of tea to warm you from the inside out type of bread. Here we go:
Ingredients:
1 cup oil
3 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 3/4 tsp vanilla
4 cups apples, peeled and diced
3 cups flour
1 3/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
Chopped nuts (optional)
Combine and set aside the oil, eggs, sugar and vanilla. Put flour, cinnamon, soda and salt in a separate bowl. Gradually sift dry flour mix into oil mixture. Add apples. (At this point it may look too dry, but, in the end, it isn’t). Empty mixture into two greased regular loaf pans or three foil loaf pans. If you like a bit of crunch, sprinkle chopped nuts (I used walnuts) on the top. Bake in 300° oven for 1-1/2 hours. Cool 10 minutes before removing from the pan.
Trust me, the cooking temp is right and so is the wait time. I tried to extract the loaf before the ten minutes and a small part of it broke off (which was my sample piece). Here is a picture of the apples and the bread (from my phone so they aren’t the best quality) Enjoy!!
Here is a Honey Pot apple next to a store-bought apple
Apple bread right out of the oven...and in to my tummy
My whole life, I was wrong…
I admit it, I am not as perfect specimen as I once thought I was. Yes, it is very hard to believe, but with help from Jack, Jim and Mr. Smirnoff, it will go down a lot smoother. After you recover from your shock at this epiphany you will want to ask: “Amanda..NO, what in the name of Marco ‘BLESSED’ Polo are you talking about?!” Well my friends for the past twenty-ish years I have been misquoting THE matriarch of baking, Miss Sara Lee. My whole (perhaps a slight exaggeration) baking life was based on the notion that “Nobody does it like Sara Lee.” The famous jingle would be caught in my head and I believe I have uttered it on more than one occasion. Needless to say that when I brought home a pumpkin pie by Miss Lee tonight and saw the tag line…my world froze. Instead of “Nobody DOES IT like Sara Lee” the true slogan is “Nobody DOESN’T like Sara Lee.” And the true slogan is in fact a LIE because my mother DOES NOT like Sara as she informed me earlier this evening (SWEET more for me). [Because of our long history, we are on a first name basis]
So in the last few hours I realized that not only had I been wrong in my quotation but that the true quote was a LIE. In fact, it would actually be safer for whoever is behind the baking empire to switch the slogan to “Nobody DOES IT like Sara Lee” because that could definitely be a better proven and supported statement than the bold-faced lie that every human that can masticate enjoys her creations. [Why do I have a feeling that at least one of you giggled when you read masticate?] As for me, I will persevere and heal my wounded ego with pie!
