Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

That's military-speak for WTF, which I'm sure you all are familiar with.

I think it should be the new name for my "coupon rant." Because it is more inclusive. And while I'm ranting off and throwing tantrums about stupid things, I definitely want to be inclusive.

I was already in a mood this morning, for reasons I won't get into here. Add to that my favorite NFL team deciding to not attend the game today (apparently), and I was primed for my rather-late glance through the paper.

I found a couple of things to rant about in the one, lonely coupon insert, but they were fairly ho-hum. I was spared from mediocrity, however, by the TV.

Have you seen the new Hershey's commercials? Where people pop out of a glob of waxy brown goo (oh, I'm sorry, it's called chocolate) and grab each other's hands in a soul-warming round-the-choco-globe display of We Are The World-style peace and joy? Yeah. And the voiceover says idiotic things, basically claiming that eating a Hershey bar will give you friends, happiness, togetherness, and possibly world peace.

Folks, I've yelled it before and I'll yell it again... in the broadest interpretation of the word, Hershey's is food. It is not a magic life-fixing elixir. It is not a foil-wrapped solution to any of your problems. It is not a logo-imprinted bar of good emotions. It is candy. (Not even good candy, at that!) Eating a Hershey's bar will not make you happy, even if you share it with your best friend. Any emotions you experience while doing so are a result of your own good will... the act of sharing, not the magic of the thing being shared. Eating a Hershey's bar will not give you a happy family, will not fill their hearts with happy memories of time spent together, and will not bring about world peace. Especially since most mass-market chocolate relies on slavery and bloodshed.

Food is very important, and nourishing food can certainly improve your overall moods, simply because you'll feel better physically. It's really hard to be chipper and helpful when you're nauseous and exhausted... which is exactly how I'd feel if I were to eat a damn Hershey's bar. But if you turn to food for emotional/mental support for the things that are wrong in your life... you won't find happiness. Been there, done that. Discovering multiple food allergies was the best thing that ever happened to me, in that regard... because it was no longer convenient (or even possible in some cases) to use food as a balm for every wound or the center of every celebration.

The longer I spend away from much TV, the easier it is to see just how blatantly it tries to brainwash people... grrrrr....

Shoulda Woulda

I should have checked my own blog to see what I did to the duck last year... if I had, I would have enjoyed said duck a lot more. Live and learn, I guess. And a wrongly-cooked duck is still a duck, and ducks are delicious. I did at least recall that last year one duck was devoured by two happy carnivores, so since my mother (The Queen) is here this year, I bought two ducks. Double ducky goodness, and double duck fat. I have no idea yet what I will be doing with all that lovely duck fat, but I'm looking forward to whatever it is.

This year I scrounged the internet for a recipe, completely ignoring all the lovely cookbooks I have on my shelves. *sigh* Found, and crazily decided to use, a very vague recipe on a message board. What can I say? Momentary insanity? The fault might not lie in the recipe, but the ducks themselves. They were half the price of last year's glorious bird... since I had to buy two, I went with the cheaper option. And boy could I tell. Tasty, but definitely not inspiring a choir of angels to sing. They sho' looked purty, though!


Our Christmas Menu:

Orange Roasted Duck
Roasted Sweet Potatoes (I didn't use the cinnamon, or the nasty cooking spray)
Garlicky green beans
Noah's Bread rolls (a great all-purpose gluten-free recipe)
Salad
Pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream

Our Christmas Eve Tradition

We really are ridiculously stubborn.

But... when you take a girl raised in Kansas and a boy raised in Kentucky and stick 'em in balmy South Carolina... they get Ideas. Like "wow it's shorts weather on Christmas Eve, let's GRILL!" And then they decide that was an awesome Idea the next year, too. And the year after that. And then they get moved back to arctic Kansas... and they rethink things (neither of us can remember what on earth we had for Christmas Eve Dinner that first, frozen year. We were in shock.) We may have grilled the year after that, as the house we were in had windbreaks on three sides of the grilling area...

Anyway. Point is... we've been in South Texas for three Christmas Eves now. December is often when we get really smug about living in South Texas. Because of days like yesterday, when it was sunny and 72. So, naturally, grilled steaks were back on the menu, we were back to our Christmas Eve Tradition (we've done it enough times now, it counts as a Tradition.)

But today was not sunny, nor was it 72.

Today was 40-something, with howling winds that threatened to teach our gazebo how to fly.

Not good grilling weather.

As I said... we're stubborn. The Little Guy shrieked into the wind and ran around the yard, playing football, while the Grill Geek... er... grilled. (That's why I call him that.) I was warm and cozy inside.

So the pic is the Grill Geek's plate... as my steak had already been commandeered by the now-very-hungry Little Guy, and wasn't photo-worthy.

A festivus for the rest of us

We like to celebrate Festivus. Partly because we have, in years past, tried to celebrate every single holiday occurring in December, and partly because my husband feels some sort of affinity for the day. We don't yet have our own Festivus Pole, but we're hoping to get one soon. Beyond the official rites of Festivus, there is also a meal to be shared. No one is real sure what the traditional Festivus Feast includes... we can only guess by what was shown on the table in the Seinfeld episode. Many have concluded that it doesn't really matter specifically what is eaten, but that "comfort food" prevails. So, tonight we had comfort food... things the Grill Geek prefers, because it's his holiday.

Our Festivus Menu:

Good Eats Meatloaf (basically... I never actually follow recipes)
Annie's Gluten-free Mac & Cheese (two boxes for the three piggy cheese-lovers)
Mashed potatoes
Braised beet greens

We would have had dessert, as we normally do for special occasions, but... since it was the Grill Geek's holiday, and his sweet tooth only pops up for cheesecake (which I can't have and therefore won't make)... we went without. Probably best, since there were two diabetics present.

After dinner we aired our grievances, but in a funny way, and decided it was probably best to skip the Feats of Strength this year.

I know this blog is about what I would eat, but I felt inspired this morning to list the things my kids won't eat. Mainly, I want to commiserate with the mothers (and fathers) of other, erm... selective children. And let me state that I know that being a bit choosy about food is actually an extension of a natural, biological, evolutionarily-protective instinct. And I've had the joy of watching my daughter "grow out of it" a bit. So I have faith that my son will as well. But it can still be grating when a foodie like me wants to make a feast and has to think up something for the kids to eat.

Things My Son Thinks Are Poison:

Salad
Meat with sauce (recently had some awesome brisket, but it was slow cooked in sauce...) this includes chili, but somehow does not include taco meat
Citrus of any kind
Mashed potatoes
Chicken nuggets
Hot cereal
Muffins
Fish
Soup
Food with "dots" (I kid you not... if yogurt has the fruit's abominable seeds in it, no go)
Pretty much all candy except tootsie rolls, Snickers, and gum

Things My Son Will Eat His Own Body Weight In:

Meat: sausage, beef, chicken, pork
Green beans off my plate
Rice pasta, especially leftover, cold, from the fridge
Mac & cheese (from a box, ugh!)
Rice
Bananas
Cheese
Chocolate milk
Raw beef
Bologna
Carrots and celery dipped in mayonnaise
Nut crackers
Toast with almond butter
Whipped cream
Chips with guacamole
Pistachios

Things My Daughter Won't Touch:

Cold meat
Mashed potatoes
Chicken nuggets
Hot cereal
Fish
Any chicken except Buffalo wings
Pork
Soda
Most French fries
Soup

Things My Daughter Will Eat Her Own Body Weight In:

Double cheeseburgers the size of her head
Pasta
Rice
Salad
Berries
Mac & cheese
Grilled cheese sandwiches
Buffalo wings
Sliced & fried polska kielbasa
Very well-done steak (shudder, it's cruel to do that to a steak!)
Biscuits/rolls/breadsticks
Yogurt
Dill pickles
Shredded cheese (why? what makes shredded taste better?)
Cold cereal (ugh)
Whipped cream
Candy
Pistachios

No coupons?

I get all ready to make my bloggy comeback, and there are no coupons? What is wrong with this world? C'mon... kill ten thousand trees to print up toxicly-inked incitements that convince me I am an inferior mother because I don't gas my kids with Lysol when they come in from playing in dirt. (Dirt... ew... it's so... dirty.) Is this a Christmas reprieve for my ego? Will they recommence the assault on my sanity on the 27th? Or wait until the new year? Let us not forget that we will need to be bombarded with reminders that it's time to make our New Year's Resolutions. If we somehow weren't reminded, we might not only forget that it was a new year, but also forget that it's time for our annual self-loathing to begin and self-punishment to ensue. So, I certainly hope they don't leave us hanging for long. If the coupons don't return on the 27th, we'll be 3 whole days into the new year before we have our bright, colorful, low-fat instructions.

I do think they need to figure out just exactly what they want us to do. They seem to give mixed messages. On the one hand, we've all learned from commercials and coupons and print ads that fresh baked cookies = love. If I don't have a plateful of sugar for my children on a regular basis, they will grow up believing their mother didn't love them. They make it perfectly clear. And holidays will be remembered with tears in therapy if I don't include lots of rolls from a tubular can. But then they also want us to all lose weight. You can't have it both ways! I can either love my family or have them be thin. And I absolutely cannot love them at all unless I've been pampering myself properly. That requires layers of body products that mostly smell like all the food I'm not allowed to eat. Vanilla volumizing shampoo, chocolate mint intensive conditioner, berries-and-cream anti-wrinkle moisturizer, probably some sort of grape-extract eye-lifter or whatever other goop a dutifully-young-looking mother ought to use.

But if I did all that, there's always the risk that my poor starved children would eat me.

I'd better start baking some cookies.

Commercial Rant

It's like my good ol' Coupon Rant, but... minus the coupons. Just a different marketing angle. Let me start by pointing out the obvious... if your "food" requires marketing, it's probably not really food. If you have to be talked into eating something, because your natural instincts would not lead you to recognize it as sustenance... it's probably not real food. And if marketing gurus are buying their third Lexus from the money they earned to convince you (and thousands of others) to eat said... thing... I can guaran-damn-tee it isn't food.

Ok, so what got my knickers in a twist today? Dominos Pizza. What a shock. I hold a big grudge against pizza in general, but only because I can't have any. It is not inherently evil... but even if I made my own gluten-free crust, I'd have to sub the cheese with something, and well... after you've made so many changes to something, you can't really call it "pizza" anymore. It'd be bruschetta with sausage, perhaps, but not pizza. Anyway, the commercial I saw today, while sitting on my butt, being a proper American couch potato watching football, had my mouth literally hanging open. Once I resumed breathing, the rant began.

The commercial in question showed a busy Dominos location, phones ringing constantly, with a manager-type explaining that with the price so low for such a delicious lunch, the only bad thing they had to say was... they were imposing a limit of 256 per household per day. Then they showed the customers hauling away stacked boxes of pizza in every way imaginable, including an irate mom who had brought a semi and was mad about the daily limit.

Yeah.

And not one of them was fat.

While I hate to go along with media hype in any way... (even so much as to keep my mouth shut about my bout with H1N1 because I don't like feeding the hysteria), we are in the midst of a huge problem with our huge butts. Worst of all, our kids are getting fat. And no, I am not prejudiced against fatness. I *am* however concerned about the illnesses that go with it, or more likely cause it, and all of it stems from eating absolute CRAP like Dominos pizza. The government even recommends that we all make sure to get plenty of grains and carbohydrates every day, despite the fact that it has been PROVEN that more than 150 grams of carbs per day cause illness. And there are a lot of carbs in pizza, especially in the ridiculous quantity most people serve themselves.

Oh, I know, Dominos still needs to make their profit... I wouldn't want the poor dears to have a bad fiscal year and then fire all those poor delivery boys. We *need* people to gorge on pizza, for the sake of the economy. Or some shit like that. Just think how many jobs we can create when we get sick!! Diabetes employs so many... lab techs to take your blood, machinists in the factories that make glucometers, pharmacists, doctors, nurses, eventually surgeons... and then of course all the marketing gurus to design and sell you sugar-free, fat-free phood.

Maybe Dominos will come out with a fat-free pizza. Wonder what that would be made out of?