Eat your vegetables

I just read that there are no essential vegetables. This is something I have believed passionately all my life, and it is gratifying to see that someone in the food industry finally agrees. The article that made this astounding announcement was targeted at kids, but hey -- unessential for kids should be unessential for adults, too, right? The article said that since fruits and vegetables are in the same food group, as long as you get enough fruits to make up for the missed veggies, you're okay.

Of course, this flies in the face of everything our mothers told us. "If you want to grow big and strong, eat that spinach!" they admonished. "If you don't eat your carrots, you'll go blind," they solemnly warned us. Now, they have no ammunition for getting kids to eat all that gross stuff. A kid in the know can cite proof that vegetables are not essential, and help himself to more grapes.

But wait! After checking the new Food Pyramid, which replaced the Four Basic Food Groups I grew up with -- moms are always telling kids not to play with their food, and here the government keeps playing with whole food groups -- I see that fruits and vegetables have been separated into their own categories. Well, at least now we won't go blind from ignoring our carrots.

Trapped!

My brain frequently has arguments with various other body parts during the night, particularly my bladder. I will awake to the urgent messages of that organ to get out of bed and head to the bathroom, only to have my brain say, "What's the big hurry? It'll still be there in the morning. You don't have to get up right now."

"Oh yes, she does," the bladder will interrupt. It's not gonna be a pretty sight if she doesn't, pal."

"It's too cold to get out of bed now," the brain says.

"It's about to get a whole lot warmer in here! Get up!"

"You'll never be able to get back to sleep. Just ignore that big bully down there."

As if I didn't have enough wars going on within my own members, my husband's arm or leg will sometimes get involved in the fray. Just when the bladder has lost all ability to reason and I have decided to give in to its demands and get up, down will come my husband's arm, like a railroad crossing guard, fwoomp, right across my already full bladder. Now I really have to go to the bathroom, but there is no escaping that vise. "See?" says my happy brain. "I told you just to back to sleep. Now you have no choice." Sometimes I suspect that my brain is in control of not just my body, but my husband's, too.

Annoying salesperson habits

Why do salespeople always say hello and goodbye when you can't see them? You walk into a store, a voice says hello, you turn to look for a person attached to the voice, but it appears to be coming from a mannequin. Or a lamp. Right away, they have you at a disadvantage. Do you say hello back to an inanimate object? Or aim your voice somewhere beyond the object? Are you sure they're even talking to you? Already they're forcing you to make a choice, and you haven't even looked at the merchandise yet!

And when you leave the store, there might be a salesperson stationed right on your way to the door, who is in full view as you walk toward it, but this person will not say "goodbye, thanks for shopping with us" until you are past him. Why?? He sees you coming, has plenty of opportunity to give his spiel, but he waits until you are beyond him and you either have to turn around to answer or keep walking and aim your answer at the door. They must have instructions on how to make customers feel the most uncomfortable: Victim is one step past, two steps, three steps -- OK, now!

I went into a mattress store once that had a mirror all across the back wall. This not only made the store look enormous, it also gave the salespeople more opportunities to trick customers. As I walked toward the back of the store, a voice said, "Hello!" "H-hello," I answered somewhat tentatively, not knowing whether the voice was coming from the mirror, in front of me, or somewhere off to my right. I looked furtively around for a body attached to the voice, while trying to look like I was interested in the mattresses.

"How can we help you today?" the mirror said. I turned toward it. "Oh, I'm just looking for a new mattress," I told it. Come out and show yourself! I wanted to say.

"What size are you looking for?" the mirror went on. I still could not see an actual person, and this was getting frustrating. Was he rooted to the floor somewhere, unable to move? Or was he amusing himself at the spectacle I must have made as I whirled from one side to the other, trying to locate him? I did not want this to continue, shouting answers into oblivion, so I did not answer, just kept moving toward where I thought he might be.

"Well? What size mattress are you looking for? Full? Queen? Twin?" His voice was sharper now. Ah, I thought, I must be getting closer.

"Uh, I'm just looking," I said. Looking for you, pal.

The conversation continued this way, him trying to get answers from me while staying hidden and me trying not to give any information while trying to find my torturer. I never did see a real person, and I finally got fed up and left. I thought later that I should have looked up. Maybe he was hiding in the rafters.

Family messages

When we were engaged, I tortured my then-fiance with all manner of marriage preparation books, the kind where you both write down answers to deep, personal questions and then discover you have absolutely nothing in common. Just kidding. But many of these books encourage you to dig around in your past to discover why you are like you are and why your fiance is like he is. One question was about the "family messages" you grew up hearing -- things like "Always do your best," "Family takes care of each other," "You appreciate more what you sweat for," etc. I pondered over what messages I might have received while growing up, but could only come up with my father's admonition to "eat your carrots. They'll put hair on your chest!"

I didn't think that was the sort of message the writers of this book had in mind, and I was curious to see if any of my siblings remembered more meaningful messages. Maybe I just hadn't been listening. So one day while we were working out in my brothers' basement, I asked him what messages he remembered. He put down his weights, assumed a scowl (imitating, I assumed, our mother), and said in a stern, deep voice that surely never came from her, "DO YOUR HOMEWORK!"

I sighed. "Not that kind of message," I said.
"What do you mean?" he said. "Didn't Mom ever bug you to do your homework?"
"Please," I said, somewhat prissily. "I didn't have to be told to do my homework."

Since my brother couldn't come up with any "family messages" either, I concluded that we didn't get any. This made me feel somewhat deprived, as all my life I've thought I had a pretty good home life, and now I discover that I've been cheated out of wisdom for life's challenges. But at least I finally have a reason to go to therapy.

A hate affair with food

My husband's definition of a Picky Eater is somewhat liberal. If there is one food you do not like, you are a Picky Eater. So that would include most of the population, except for him. However, to him I am THE Picky Eater. But I tell him I am much less picky than I used to be. Just ask my siblings.

When I was 3 or 4, I would only eat steak. My mom complained to the doctor about it. He was very ahead of his time. These days, experts tell parents not to cater to kids' food whims but to encourage them to eat a variety of foods. This doctor told my mom, "If the kid will only eat steak, feed her steak!" So she did. While my parents and older brother and two sisters had meatloaf, I would gnaw on a ribeye.

Even when I was a teenager, salad to me was just lettuce. We'd go out to a restaurant and the waiter would say, "Salad or coleslaw?" "Just lettuce, please." "Lettuce?" "Yes, lettuce. Don't put any of those other things on there." "How about dressing?" "No, thanks." Nice and dry, that's how I liked my lettuce.

I still do not like my food touching. In fact, don't put the spaghetti sauce on top of the noodles; it goes next to it so I can eat them separately. Although I have learned to eat spaghetti like conventional society says it should be eaten, I still prefer it this way. And if the cottage cheese starts getting too curious about the rice next door, please give me a clean plate. Better yet, just give me a plate for each food. My father thinks this is crazy and always tried to tell me that it didn't make any difference, because the foods get mixed up in your stomach anyway, and you've gone to all that trouble for nothing. I don't really care what happens to it down there, but in my mouth, I definitely notice when foods are vying for my taste buds. I like to give them all equal time.

I have debunked the popular belief that "just try it, you'll like it." My aunt generously offered to make dinner for our family one night while she was visiting. She made up some sort of stir fry, one of those foods that is a nightmare for Picky Eaters, because we can't identify what is in it. Is that stringy thing a shoelace? What's that fuzzy stuff -- was the dog sniffing around my plate? She insisted I at least try it, and I warned her I wasn't going to like it. So I tried it, and of course I didn't like it. She did not talk to me for the rest of her stay. But at least I didn't have to try anything else suspicious.

when I was young my mom used to work at Sander's, a wonderful ice cream place that was an icon in Detroit. Sometimes I would to go work with her, and one day I was there the whole day. At the end of the day I told one of the other employees that I'd had the best two meals of my short life that day. She asked what they were. "I had a hot dog for lunch and a hamburger for dinner!" I told her. The sad thing is, I still think those are the two best meals.

Setting up a blog

Setting up a blog is not easy. Oh, they try to make it as easy as possible for you, but anything that gives you more than one choice about something is automatically harder. See, if there was just one format everyone had to use, only one color, one font -- that would be easy. But no. First you must decide on a user name. You must pick a name for your blog. Then you must write a description of the blog name. Then you need a name for something else, which you would think would be the same as the blog name, but the folks who run the blog think they are doing you a favor by letting you pick another name; you know, maybe you had two or three choices for the blog name and now you can use them all. It's actually good that you have several names in mind for your blog, because chances are as good as getting in the wrong lane at the grocery store that your first choice will be taken. In fact, chances are good that your 25th choice will already be gone.

After that misery is finally over, you must choose a template. Here there are about 80 to choose from. And the thumbnail sketch you get of them hardly shows you what the differences are, and so you must labor through all 80 and then try to remember what it was you liked about number 3. And after about number 11 they all look alike anyway, so they might as well spare you all those other options.

After making all these decisions, you are too tired to do any actual blogging. If they really want to offer helpful choices, why not give us templates with already published entries to choose from? For instance, you could pick #1, The funny blog: "Did you hear the one about...."or #2, The wailing woe-is-me blog: "Whyyyy does everything have to happen to meeeeeeeee?" or #3, The learn-from-me-not-from-painful-experience blog: "If you think you need to use a blowtorch to fix your toilet, think again...." Now there's a choice that would make your life easier.

Recipes

I cannot understand how cookbooks figure the stated prep times in recipes. A typical recipe declares that the dish is "a snap to prepare: prep 10 minutes, cook 30 minutes." Yeah, right. It takes me longer than the prep time just to find all my utensils and ingredients.

One recipe I tried recently was shared by a woman who said she likes to make it when she's "short on time on a weeknight." So far, so good, I thought. Who isn't short on time on a weeknight? Let's see what she's got. When I finally finished making the dish (yes, just one dish, not a whole meal), it was so late my husband said he would just have it for breakfast. And I thought, who are these women who work such miracles when they're short on time? They must be formidable when they actually have time to cook.

If cookbooks and magazines were honest about this issue -- say, if they were required by a Truth in Preparation Law to disclose actual recipe times -- this is what recipes would look like:

Look for pan: 10 min.
Realize pan is in dishwasher, dirty. Wash: 2 min.
Realize you forgot to soften butter. Put in microwave: 2 min.
Answer phone, explaining why your all-hardwood-floor home does not need a carpet-cleaning service: 10 min.
Scrub vegetables vigorously under cold running water to remove all suggestion of bacteria: 15 min.
Attempt to cut vegetables with dull knife. Try remaining knives. All dull. Remember that you were going to order a new knife set on the Web. Go to computer: 30 min.
Wait for new knife set to arrive: 16 days

Total Cook Time: 10 min.
Total Prep Time: 2 1/2 weeks

Even after you get your sharp new knives, it takes a while to cut and chop. So this means, for instance, that if you plan to make a stir-fry Thanksgiving weekend (great way to use up all that leftover turkey!), you need to begin chopping your veggies by the start of school in August.

Of course, they don't write recipes like this because people would throw out their cookbooks and magazines and order carryout. Total time: 3 min. (+ delivery)

Going out to shovel

My husband, at my prodding, went out to shovel. This was not a big job, since we don't have a driveway; it only involved shoveling a flight of steps and around his car. The problem was, in addition to not having a driveway, we don't have a shovel. We live in a townhouse with not much property, and it hasn't snowed much this year, and so we just haven't gotten around to purchasing a shovel yet. Maybe we hoped that if we didn't get one, it wouldn't snow. Back in Michigan this wasn't much of an issue, as I paid association dues to have the snow shoveled for me, but here in Maryland things work slightly differently. You still pay dues, but they don't shovel the snow. I'm not sure what the dues are for. Probably so the association officers can winter in Barbados, where they do not have to shovel snow.

But back to my husband shoveling. He wanted to know how he was supposed to shovel the snow without a shovel. I made the rather obvious suggestion that he borrow one from the neighbors.
"So you think I could borrow one from the neighbors?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Without asking?"
"No! Of course you need to ask first."
"I hate talking to people. Can't I just use the broom?"
Although we have, on occasion, used the broom to sweep off a dusting of light, powdery snow on the steps, this snow was sandwiched between layers of ice.
No, you can't just use a broom, I told him. I advised him to ask Chris and Abbie, the neighbors we know best, for their shovel.
"Could I ask Steve?" he countered. "He wouldn't mind, would he?"
"I don't know if he has a shovel. I haven't seen him out shoveling. I know Chris and Abbie have one. Go ask them."
"But I hate being social."
"You're not having tea with them, you're just asking if you can borrow their shovel!"
He rummaged in the basement. "Isn't there anything else I could use? How about a dustpan?"
I would not comment on that.
Apparently resigned to his distasteful social task, he asked where his boots were. "I didn't know you had any boots," I said.
"Oh. Maybe I don't." Sigh. "I hate being social."
The door slammed. Later I checked on him through the window. Yes, he had an actual shovel, approved for shoveling snow, and was attacking the icy stuff encasing his car. On the car itself, however, he was using half an ice scraper, as his had broken some time back and he never replaced it. I supposed it was too much to suggest that he borrow one of those, too.

When he came in he announced that he had returned the shovel to Chris and Abbie's porch.
"I put it back," he said.
I nodded, engrossed in my work.
"I mean I put it back without telling them it was back. Do you think that was okay?"
"You didn't tell them you were returning it?" I said incredulously.
"That wasn't okay? Do you think I should have said something to them?" he said, worried now .
"Well, yes, it would have been nice to thank them for loaning it to you."
"Do you think I should go back?" he asked anxiously.
"No," I said. You hate being social."

Recipe angst

I love those recipes in magazines sent in by readers that say, "Oh, I just created this gourmet dish with 17 ingredients from what I had on hand." If I created something just from what I had on hand, we would be eating peanut butter and potato chip crumbs on toothpicks. In fact, my husband says I have enough potato chip recipes to write an entire cookbook about potato chips. (Hey, at least you always have the crumbs on hand.)

And what's with cooks always having drop-in visitors, whom they inevitably need to feed? "This dish is great to keep in the freezer for when unexpected company drops by." Who are these people? Are we talking about the FedEx delivery person? Your mother-in-law? Who drops in unannounced and expects to be fed -- a gourmet meal to boot, to judge from some of these meals people keep "on hand"? The only unexpected company dropping by my house are stray animals, and they aren't looking for anything fancy. I have enough trouble keeping up with making meals for two, let alone making extra for people I didn't invite. I say, if someone comes to your house without being invited and wants to come in, they should expect no more than MAYBE a glass of water, and even that is dependent on whether you keep a clean glass "on hand" for just such an occasion.

Writing

I really miss my work with Glencoe McGraw-Hill. They were the client I did the most original writing for, until they folded in Nov. 2005. Hopefully those two events were not connected -- my writing for them and their folding.

Snow amusement

The snowplows here in Maryland are very sophisticated. In the parking area behind our house the other day, I was witness to their ingenuity: A pickup truck drove straight down the middle, while a man perched on the back of the truck rattled and shook a contraption that grudgingly spit out a few drops of salt every few feet. I gathered that the salt dropper was supposed to work without any human intervention, but it was clearly not cooperating. And for this we pay association dues.

Here I am!

Yikes! Now that I'm set up, I suppose I shall have to write something here occasionally. And something "slightly humorous," to boot. Well, at least now I can stop writing my thoughts on sticky notes and putting them all over the house.

But my funny everyday stories will have to wait until tomorrow, when my brain is not saying "Sleep, sleep -- I want sleep!"