Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

Surfing around just now, and I came across one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. I’m just going to put the whole article right here, so even those of you who are too lazy to click over have the opportunity to read it. Hope you like it as much as I do:

Cabbage Fever

My son doesn’t like vegetables. Except for that one he had an affair with.

I had Tivo’d an episode of "Good Eats." This one happened to be about cabbage and my three-year-old saw it. For whatever reason he liked it, and asked to see it a few times that week.

While I was at the supermarket, I decided to surprise him and bring home an actual real-life cabbage. When I presented it, he flipped out. The boy carried it off to his room and played with it for almost an hour, rolling it around, pretending to cook it, and who knows what else. I think he felt like he was hanging out with a celebrity since he’d been seeing so much cabbage on TV lately. When I asked if he wanted me to really cut it up and cook it for him, he almost burst into tears.

Later that night I put my son to bed, and just as he was dozing off, he bolted up and screamed "I WANT MY CABBAGE! I WANT MY CABBAGE!" I wasn’t going to fight with him. He’s three, he’d win. I just wanted him to go to sleep, so I gave him the stupid cabbage.

I swear to God, he lugged that cabbage around for the next week and a half. He took naps with it. He brought it for rides in the car. He even threw a tantrum when we wouldn’t let him bring it into Toys ‘R Us.

As a concerned father, I was getting a little worried that he and the cabbage were rushing into things. I mean, they had just met. But nine days after it began, the love affair was over. The cabbage was OUT. Tossed aside without so much as a kiss goodbye, or even an explanation. And to be honest, that was fine by me. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a racist or anything. I like cabbage. I just don’t want my boy dating one.

Kind of reminds me of the story of my friend’s younger brother. He has Autism, and one October, his mother asked him what he wanted to be for Halloween. His answer? "I think I would like to be a triangle." And so that is what he was!

Kids live outside of the box because they don’t yet know what the box is!

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Someone else beside my Dad and Adam’s dad roasts pigs! They seem to appreciate the complexity of the thing.

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Jamie Oliver is right: Nigel Slater is a genius. His recipes are infinitely doable, tasty, and his writing borders on the erotic. He demands that all of his food photography is in no way prettified. He’s all about the taste and the sensuality of food. He likes the crunchy, chewy bits that stick to the pan. I highly recommend you rush out to the bookstore right this very second and buy both Toast and Appetite (at least do that search-inside-the-book thing… read a few pages… you won’t be sorry).

Want some amazing recipes? Some kind soul has done something I have attempted to do on my own computer, but they have done a much better than I would have done. An excerpt, just in case you still aren’t paying attention:

Real cocoa is a bit like great sex. Once you get used to it, nothing else quite rings your bell. Once you have sipped a cup of real velvet-textured hot chocolate, there’s no going back. Made with squares of dark, slightly bitter chocolate, melted slowly over hot water then whisked with full-cream milk (none of your cocoa powder and sterilised semi-skimmed here, thank you), no cup of average cocoa will ever taste quite the same… I have never really thought that much of drinking chocolate. Sweet, bland, thin. A Cadbury’s flake of a drink. Rather than conjuring up Juliette Binoche or Johnny Depp smouldering over a cup of chocolat at a tiny café table, it has always smacked of chequered slippers and the phrase, ‘I’m going up to bed now, dear.’

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I’ve always thought February was the worst month. The weather generally sucks. The only celebration that’s going on is Valentine’s Day, which seems to do much more to depress people than to make them happy.

People in relationships feel pressured to have this unforgettable time together, and it’s hard to arrange that, especially since you’re competing with everyone else for the good restuarants! And you’re supposed to have strawberries dipped in chocolate. What?! Strawberries are completely out of season in February. What are people thinking with that?

People NOT in relationships of course feel that their lives are miserable and without meaning because they aren’t in a relationship. It leads to feeling unloved and useless and over the hill, which usually isn’t at all true.

So the weather blows, the main holiday blows. There’s no sunshine. It’s usually rainy or snowy and grey. Then in terms of the school calendar, you’re about as far from a break as is possible. It’s when things tend to go south behavior-wise. I don’t know why exactly, but I see it every year in the kids I work with.

I wondered if others hated this month as much as me. It seems that they absolutely and positively do!!!

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What an amazing site! My favorite part is all the old advertising cookbooks. They have the full cookbooks scanned in. They are fascinating.

Of course, my favorite is the Quaker Oats cookbook

Here is a little plug for a cheese factory!

Here are some very interesting-looking desserts in an advertising cookbook for food coloring!

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