Coupon RANT!

Blshvrddtygrrrddle.

I know it's not a word, but at least it's not profanity.

I actually got goosebumps and dizziness from my outrage this morning. That's a first for me. Wish I had gotten a picture of my arms, to prove it.
Anyway, there I was, on the last page of the last coupon insert from the Sunday paper. I had slogged through, as usual, no longer expecting more than irritation from the usual crappy coupons for phood.

And there it was.


I have never been a fan of Easy Bake Ovens. I was a big ol' meany and didn't let my son have one during his excitement for all things cooking. Their mixes were crap and I didn't want him to think that adding water = cooking. But, now I see, at least it was an oven.

2010 is here, baby, and that means advancements, progress, moving forward. How shall we teach our younglings? Easy Bake Microwave & Style Kit. Because, microwaves are where it's at, and the focus really should be on the brightly-colored sugar on top, not the spongy cake-like transport.

Ugh.

Microwaves suck. They damage the proteins of food so much that the body can barely recognize them as sustenance. I don't use ours. My husband does, occasionally. Microwaves are fast, I'll grant them that, but I don't think we need to be that ADD about our food. PLAN AHEAD. Know that you will likely be hungry 5 times a day, at predictable times. Have stuff on hand. Start cooking BEFORE you're dizzy and weak.

If you want a brightly-colored pancreas-bomb, bake one. It really, swear-to-god, doesn't take that long. Especially if you make tiny ones. There are plenty of silicone bake sets for teeny little cakes. Mixing, from scratch, takes 15 minutes, tops. The oven can preheat while you're at it. Baking bite-size cakelets would take about 15-20 more minutes. Clean up the kitchen and make frosting (it's seriously just butter + sugar... it's a no-brainer.)

They won't be health food, but they will fall into the category of food with an "f." Which is a vast improvement these days. Unfortunately.

I. Can't. Eat. Butter.

My long-time readers may need to sit down for this. You all situated? Comfy? Ok...

I have been butter-free for two weeks.

Jack (9 months old) is feeling better.

I no longer feel that familiar brain-fog/exhaustion after breakfast. (Seems *I* only react to breakfast butter... other-times-of-day butter don't make me feel like someone slipped me cheese.) But Baby Jack seems gets Green Acid Poo Of Doom from any-time-of-day butter.

In Food Allergy World, these items of note combine to create a diagnosis of You Can't Eat Butter Anymore.

I have very strong feelings about this. I worship at the altar of Mother Butter and Father Bacon. Now my goddess is dead (blasphemy!) I worry because now I'm using more coconut oil than I was before... still have to get my fats, you know... and I'm allergic to coconut protein. Perchance the coconut oil is more pure than the butter? Still no idea whether ghee is ok... haven't acquired a taste for it, so I haven't used it enough to know. I'll get on that eventually.

Eggs were back on my menu and then gone again. I find myself needing to google "vegan" recipes. I swear to add meat to every single one of them!

In other news, I swear I'll be revamping this poor redheaded step-child of a blog. Soon. My version of "soon" means, well, hopefully before the end of 2010, but don't put money on it. I see that I have a whopping 9 faithful followers, so I'm excited to make this thing pretty and easier to use. I envision a fancy bloggiful launch, complete with merchandise.



I miss you, Butter. But I know you shall not remain dead to me forever. I still swear undying loyalty, and my lips shall touch not the cursed margarine! (Because, really, what could they possibly make it out of that I'm not allergic to?!)

First (Annual?) Superbowl Wing-Off!

I realize that it's cliche to eat Buffalo wings for the Superbowl, but... well... we can't always be original. Besides, the Fairy Child recently discovered that chicken is edible when smothered in spicy sauce. She hadn't eaten chicken for 10 years until that lucky discovery, so Buffalo wings have been on the menu every few weeks this football season. Getting protein into the Fairy Child is important.In a moment of sheer... er... genius (yeah, we'll call it that) I decided to challenge the Fairy Child to a wing-off. I'm not generally prone to such measures, but it struck me as a fun idea, and before I had the chance to ponder the implications of a pile of spicy wings on breastmilk for a newborn... the plan was made. So, here we go.

What: 1st ever family wing-eating challenge, a.k.a. "wing-off."
Who: Fairy Child, "The Bottomless Pit" vs. "Butter My Bacon" Bekki
Where: our kitchen table, South Texas
Why: I tend to run off at the mouth sometimes...

Now, to make the wings... I no longer have a deep fryer. I received one, from my mother-in-law, about 6 or 7 years ago. It moved with us, to three states, in many Army moves, never yet used. I had planned to use it a few times, and was always daunted by the idea of all that hot oil and the responsibility therein. So it was left untouched. And apparently, insulted. When I finally tried to use it a year or so ago, it was mysteriously dead with no signs of foul play.


So... baked wings it is. 375 degrees, for about 50-60 minutes. I like to season my wings with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and paprika. Paprika makes pretty much everything taste better. I tried shaking the wings with seasoned cornstarch once, hoping it'd make a crispier skin. It did not. So now I'm quite lazy about it, and simply season them on the cooking pan. When done, I toss them with wing sauce. Since I love to cook, do I make my own special top-secret-recipe wing sauce? No. No, I do not. I tried that twice and they were awful. I love Buffalo Wild Wings' sauces- the Spicy Garlic and the Medium are both quite tasty. Neither can be called healthy foods, but I'm not eating them all that often. I also don't seem to react allergically to the yucky soybean oil in them, which is nice.


So, all coated up in spicy soy... the wing-off begins. 6 wings apiece, the rest stay in a low oven to stay warm. Bang a gong, it is ON! Oh... in case anyone wants to know who my challenger is...

... a hungry, growing 11-year-old girl. Could there be anything more frightening?

The first batch of wings were tossed with Spicy Garlic... and went down very quickly. Although we set it up not as a sprint, but as a marathon. It was to be decided wing-for-wing, not timed. We still ate quickly. They were tasty, and we were excited.

Round 2 was tossed with Medium, which is supposed to be less-spicy than the Spicy Garlic. My competitor and I vehemently disagree. The blisters on my tongue stand as proof.

By the third round our mouths were on fire. I tossed the wings with as little sauce as I could get by with, but it was still too much. Here I show my margin of victory:

Two half-wings. Final count was 18 to 17. I credit my victory simply to the fact that I've had a lot of painful things happen in my life, so I have experience. LOL


Ah, the carnage. So many wings went down in so little time. Now we just have to relax, watch the game, and try to digest. Well... and try not to think about what that spicy sauce will do to us on it's way out....

Putting kids in a box

Today's rant isn't about food. Sorry. I flipped casually through the coupons this morning and didn't manage to get mad about anything. Perhaps I was distracted. Perhaps the coupons were more boring than normal. I do have a couple of weeks of backlogged rantiness hanging around here, cluttering up the table, but I honestly might never get to it.

Today's rant is about Toys R Us, and their rampant sexism. I had to go shopping today... my first non-doctor-related outing since the baby was born. My older son's birthday is coming up, and I didn't feel like clicking around Amazon. I wanted to see things in person. So there I was, with my list of ideas I'd come up with, plus ideas he'd come up with. And I noticed for the first time that they (the store) had made official something I'd jokingly referred to for years... the "pink aisle" was now truly pink. I had reserved that term for the Barbie aisles, usually, but it could be used to describe any of the very typically-girly zones of the toy department. I have a daughter, but she was rarely interested in the items in the pink aisle. I suppose she played outside the box. When she was three her favorite take-wherever-we're-going items were plastic snakes, Buzz Lightyear, and fuzzy stuffed snakes. No dolls. She eventually went nuts for Polly Pocket and then My Little Ponies, but that was the extent of it.

I said I was shopping today for my son, though. So why was I in a pink aisle? Why did I notice that the end caps of the aisles literally spell it out in painful sexist detail now? ("boys" and "girls" as if the blue and pink weren't enough.)

Because my son wanted a toy coffeemaker for his restaurant. Last year I bought him the un-pinkest play kitchen I could find, because he loves to cook. He prefers real cooking, and would almost certainly prefer a real coffeemaker, but sometimes a mom has to insist on harder-to-break plastic. So I had to shop a pink aisle for him, and hope he doesn't mind a glittery purple coffeemaker. He probably won't. He luckily has no idea whatsoever that he's supposed to like certain things and not others. He has all the "right" boy toys- sturdy metal Tonka truck, balls, Indiana Jones play set, Star Wars blasters, football helmet, and Duplos. But he also has a little shopping bag, play food, his own apron (another thing that was hard to find in not-pink), and this Christmas he asked for and got a Littlest Pet Shop adoption center. It's pink. With frilly bits and flowers. He loves it, no matter what Toys R Us thinks.

How dare they compartmentalize our children? There's already enough societal bias and strong messages about what's "right" to play with, without them being so damn blatant about it. Ads with girls playing with dolls and boys playing with trucks make it very clear what Everyone thinks about things. We don't need to smack our kids in the face with it. My son can read already, and if I took him to Toys R Us, I'm not sure what he'd think about those labels. On the one hand, he's a strongly-opinionated boy, secure in his rightness... so he may just think they're wrong and move on. On the other hand, he very much likes to learn how the world works, what the rules are... so I can easily see him boxing away his own interests just to match what some stupid corporation thinks he should or shouldn't enjoy.

I find it very ironic that cooking is a pink aisle thing, anyway, considering the rampant sexism that still exists in the male-dominated world of professional chefs. Gah!

I'm not sure what to DO about this. If I were a more organized woman, I might try to organize a boycott or some such thing. But I honestly have no idea how long they've had those infuriating labels up. Possibly years. I don't go to Toys R Us much.

I just know that they really pissed me off. How dare they tell my children what to play with? How to correctly have fun? My kids get to be whoever the hell they want to be.

Oh, my daughter was with me today, and nicely asked for a little play set with a horse, some accessories, and a little girl. I was surprised with her choice and tried to talk her out of it... she never picks toys with people in them. She agreed that she usually doesn't, and said her room currently has a "shortage of humans." I laughed at the funny way she'd said it... and then really laughed when my darling daughter further explained why she wanted the little girl in the play set. Food. For the wild creatures the inhabit my daughter's playtime. A feeder human!! So, my girl has finally found a use for little dolls... ha ha ha!

Pot Roast

I know I didn't post a coupon rant yesterday... believe me, there's a good one in the works, whenever I get the chance to sit, type, and think all at the same time. See... I had a baby on Wednesday, so I'm a bit busy. :-)

I did, however, stubbornly cook dinner tonight. Just couldn't help myself. It wasn't exactly strenuous. I made pot roast, and it smells divine. Stuck some potatoes alongside for a nice slow bake and I'll probably end up delegating the grilling of a couple of cheese sandwiches for the kids, since they tend to think pot roast is TOO tender and therefore poisonous.

And sorry, no pic... the camera is full of baby pictures.