They needed the eggs

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‘Special Cozy and Delicious Weekend Edition‘

So. Those of you who follow my blog (thank you!) know that I’ve been trying to restrain myself. Limit my posts to twice a week. But I’m breaking my self-imposed rule today.

See, the Duchess of Devonshire died. Not that I knew her or anything, but I do think of her around this time of year because that’s when I dust off the le Creuset and make her boeuf bourguignon. Which is absolutely the best BB ever. (Recipe included at the end of this post. So, if you’re bored, feel free to skip ahead.)

But if you’d like to find out what the heck the Duchess of D has to do with Malcolm Forbes, read on.

Malcolm Forbes wasn’t a Duchess (or even a Duke), but he was probably pretty close to what passes for Royalty on our side of the Pond. He was powerful, he knew a lot of famous people. Besides, he had tons of money, certainly more than Debo (as she was known to her friends and fam, but not to commoners like me — or even Malcolm, I bet).

Well, Malcolm was one of the Dude’s Dad’s patients. (The Dude would kill me for mentioning this, Continue reading

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L’shanah Tovah, Rocky. Wherever you are

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‘Okay, so I got that phrase from a Macy’s ad’

Just because I didn’t grow up wishing my friends and family a Happy Rosh Hashannah doesn’t mean I don’t sincerely wish it today. I do! I especially wish it to the person who introduced me to feasting, fasting, and the dreidel song, my freshman roommate at the University of Missouri, Roxanne.

Now, you have to remember that my U of Mo stint took place back in the days when people didn’t mix much while growing up. There was exactly one person in my hometown who would have known, personally I mean, what the heck a Hanukkah Bush was. And he married a local girl, so I’m betting he put up a Christmas Tree like the rest of us, bless his closeted little heart.

So, anyway. Back to Roxanne. She was this Continue reading

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Yup, Summer’s officially over

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Toasted cheese

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Farewell BLT. Welcome Toasted Cheese’

When I was a kid back in the Midwest the highlight of our summer was the Clinton County Fair. It was hot, it was dusty. It was noisy, it was crowded. But it had carnies and cotton candy and corn dogs. We loved getting sick on the rides and even sicker on the food. (We also used to have a blast arguing over which high school girl was going to be crowned Miss Clinton County Fair, but that’s another story.)

But the Fair always made my Mom sad. She said it was because Fair Time, even though it was right at the height of ‘calendar summer’ — July, for heavens’ sakes — meant, for her, that Summer Time was pretty much over. I never understood this until I got older and summer started lasting ten minutes.

Anyway. According to the calendar, today is the day Summer is officially over, the ‘end’ being September 21 (or is it 22 this year?) But I say ‘calendar schmalendar’. We all have our own, very personal, ways of deciding when Summer is over, or about to be. For some, it’s Labor Day. For others, it’s when Continue reading

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Oh no, Danger Man

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‘Somebody’s gonna get hurt’

As some of you blog fans know (‘blog fans’; ow, how unattractive does that sound?), I was toying with the idea of writing about Scots and New Yorkers. But I thought that might be a tad incendiary, at least before The Vote. So Danger Man it is.

You’ve seen Danger Man. He’s everywhere: not riding his horse, not riding his skateboard, not riding his motorcycle.

Danger Man has kids who walk to school. He has a wife who lives on bathroom doors. He has dogs, cats, farm animals, and lots of machinery. But most of all, Continue reading

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Daddy said ‘Don’t touch’

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Steve Jobs holding forbidden iPad

‘Tech Giants’ kids don’t play with iPads.’

All right. I promised never to rant in this blog. So I’ll try not to. Really. But I ran across this article in the New York Times and couldn’t keep myself from sharing and ranting (er, commenting) about it.

It’s titled ‘Steve Jobs Was a Low-Tech Parent’, and it’s by Nick Bilton.

It’s all about how people like Steve Jobs (you know who he was) and a bunch of other tech giants (Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired, for example) deal with the issue of children and the devices they desire.

Most of these people, CEOs and founders of companies like Twitter, the afore-mentioned Wired, and even Blogger — people who make their living in and around the use of personal technology — strictly limit the use of Continue reading

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Winning money isn’t funny

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Bruce Dern in Nebraska by Alexander Payne

‘Betting everything on the Sweepstakes’

Poor Bruce Dern. His character didn’t win the sweepstakes in Alexander Payne’s movie ‘Nebraska’. And he — Bruce — didn’t win the Oscar for playing him either. I forget now who did. (Don’t we always forget? No matter how exciting it gets around Oscar time?) But that’s not the point of this post.

I’m posting to tell you about my own experience with a sweepstakes. It was almost as sad as Bruce’s. (That Payne movie is dark, people. Really dark. And I don’t just mean the black and white footage.)

Anyway, back to my sweepstakes story. This was during my Ogilvy Days. As you may know, I worked on a lot of interesting accounts: Hershey, who made yummy chocolates. Kimberly-Clark, who made useful paper products. General Foods, who made, basically, powders (Shake ‘n Bake, Country Time). And then there was the Sweepstakes Company, who made a lot of money selling magazine subscriptions — er — dreams.

I will not name the Sweepstakes Company. Though my blog is new and probably has, like, 13 subscribers, if I name this Company it would be just my luck that Continue reading

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To hell with kale

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‘An Ode to Corn’

Last night was the fourth night in a row that we did not have kale.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t like kale. Kale has its tasty uses (see yummy recipe at the end of this post for proof). It’s just that I love corn. Which is what we had last night–yes–for the fourth night in a row. I’m not talking Niblets here, people. I’m talking fresh-from-the-farm-stand corn-on-the-cob corn.

It would be hard for me not to love corn. After all, I grew up in the Midwest right in the heart of Corn Country. My Grampa Henry grew corn. My mother spent her summers detasseling corn. My dad spent his working in a plant that processed Green Giant MexiCorn.

Now I understand that there are a heck of a lot of kale-lovers out there. Enough that there are rumors of a Continue reading

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Proof that Swedes are geniuses

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As if we needed any more evidence of superior Nordic brainpower, watch this:

Heh heh heh. The BookBook. I can just hear Grandpa Peterson chuckling over that one. Right after he finished his raspberry pie and very-weak-but-constantly-present coffee.

Speaking of food, I’m glad to see that my fellow Swedes are concentrating their brains on what they are good at (witty commercials, impossible-to-construct furniture) because they are certainly no great shakes in the culinary department.

My Grandma Peterson used to serve a traditional dish called lutefisk every year at Christmas. It’s made from a fish that’s been Continue reading

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Blame it on the Cronut

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‘Shamelessly flogging the blog’

Surely you’ve heard of the Cronut. It’s a hybrid of ‘donut’ and ‘croissant’, and is extremely popular amongst the nose ring-and-fedora set. So popular that I’ve read of Cronut Wars in Williamsburg (that’s Hipster Williamsburg, not Colonial Williamsburg). You can read about this pastry rivalry by clicking on the link below.

‘In Greenpoint, a Situation Ripe for a Doughnut War’

But first let me indulge in some shameless self-promotion. And introduce you to the Plog. Like the Cronut, it’s a hybrid. A hybrid of ‘plug’ and ‘blog’. See, unlike those dueling bakers of hipster pastries, we bloggers receive no compensation for our labors (at least I don’t anyway–there’s not even a tip jar on my countertop.) What do we get? A nice warm feeling knowing that our posts are being read (and, fingers crossed, enjoyed).

Call me crazy, but I’d really like to avoid the literary version of the ‘tree-falling-in-the-woods-with-no-one-to-hear-it’ scenario, so I’m going to go out on a limb here and invite you to Continue reading

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Gone Baby Gone

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Mom Vase

‘The Nest. Is it half-empty? Or half-full?’

I think I can trace my rather non-involved mommy style back to a certain babysitting gig where I had to keep track of the kids’ poops on a chart. There were two of them (kids, that is), and a correspondingly healthy number of poops.

That, and a few other instances of dealing with what we now call ‘helicopter parenting’ put me off hovering. But I have to admit in all honesty that I was never destined to be one of those let’s-bake-a-zillion-cookies-and-then-whip-up-some-papier-mache-heads kind of moms.

The Dude (thank you!) was happy to handle Playground Duty. When the Child would say ‘Run, Mommy, run!’, I was apt to reply ‘Mommies don’t run; babysitters run’. And when well-meaning adults would exclaim Continue reading

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