The Taste That Creates Smiling Eyes

Let’s be frank – the economy is in the crapper. We’ve been tightening our belts despite what the administration wants us to do. It’s bad enough they are using my tax dollars to take care of the messes of other people, but don’t expect me to voluntarily put my own family at risk to “do my part to stimulate the economy” by spending any more than I need to.

I’m done with that soap box. I’ll get back to the real story.

We like to get Chinese take-out on occasion, but since we’re tightening our belts, Hubby’s decided to attempt making his favorite menu items at home.
Some of the ingredients are not found in your average, every day grocery store. Fortunately, there are some Oriental grocery stores in the area. There is an “East Oriental” grocery on Olive Blvd, but the “East East Oriental” grocery was closer to his office.

I guess that naming philosophy is on par with the 1st Baptist Church of X Community. I’ve never seen a 2nd Baptist Church of X Community (although there is/was a 3rd Baptist Church down on Grand Ave). If another Baptist Church is building in the area, it seems they find some way to make it a “1st” Baptist Church. There could be a 1st Baptist Church of X Community, 1st Riverside Baptist Church, and 1st Family of God Baptist Church all within a mile of each other. The important thing is that they are the “First”.

But I digress again.

The variety of rice was almost overwhelming. But the sheer quantity of rice was over the top. There were bags of rice as big as the 25lb Purina Dog Food bags! Everything seemed so bizarre – there were oodles of rice cookers and five pound bags of crushed red pepper (I think the bottle we have in the spice drawer is more than a year old and that’s only one ounce).

One hard to find ingredient was pure rice vinegar. After sweating it a bit, the East East Oriental grocery store did not disappoint. They had one brand of pure rice vinegar. He swears up and down that he did not pick this one out on purpose, but that it was the only one available.

First, I would like to point out the red oval with the “this-is-why-I’m-so-special” wording on it.

“Made from fine Soft Water”: I understand this. Soft water is devoid of pesky minerals that can affect the taste. But, why is soft water capitalized? Is that a brand of water? I have soft water in my house, but I don’t ask my friends if they would like a glass of “Soft Water” like I would if it were a bottle of Aquafina.

“Mild & round vinegar”: This I don’t get. What the hell is “round” vinegar?

Moving on, take a look at the actual bottle:

Now, sound out the name.

All I can say is if it is that good, maybe we shouldn’t keep it in the kitchen.



Silver lining:

1. God Bless my husband for taking our budget seriously. Making it at home is almost always cheaper.


2. We should all take a multi-cultural field trip once in awhile. This experience reminded me of the time I went into a Mexican grocery store, and they had fried pork rinds the size of a small child.

The Head Fake

At Carnegie-Mellon University, it is somewhat of a tradition for departing professors to give their “last lecture” to a public audience. In 2007, one of their professors, Randy Pausch, was dying of pancreatic cancer and delivered a (now quite famous) last lecture – so much so that the term “last lecture” has become synonymous with his presentation that day. In case you’ve never seen it, the link is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo It’s a little over an hour in length, but it’s a very good presentation – definitely worth watching.

Anyway, one of the things he talks about is the “head fake”. Essentially, it’s the art of distraction – getting you to pay attention to one thing, while something entirely different is happening on the side, such as with an illusionist. Now that you know what the term means, you’ll understand the title a bit more. You see, we went out to dinner with my mother-in-law over the weekend, and she didn’t want to become the subject of one of my blogs. So, on Monday, I published something entirely different, knowing full well that I was going to be publishing this one later in the week. Therein lies the head fake.

My brother-in-law, Steve, and I have birthdays in January. Every year, my mother & father-in-law graciously take the adults out for a nice dinner. This year was at Kitaro, a hibachi restaurant where the chef cooks your food right in front of you.

We did not all arrive at the same time (they only seat your entire party) so there was a little time to belly up to the bar. My in-laws had already had a couple of drinks, but there was one in particular they said was really good and the bartender was just itchin’ to make it. The “Volcano” is billed as a two person drink. Thinking it was something like a fishbowl margarita, I told her I could take it on myself. She raised her eyebrows and went to make the drink.

Dude, it was sooooo cool. Obviously, she didn’t believe me when I said could drink it myself because it came with two super long straws. But the niftiest feature was the flame in the center. That’s right, the drink was on fire! I took one long sip and made the “whah” pucker face and shivered. It was pure alcohol. This must be a standard reaction because the bartender was standing by with a cup of juice. She asked if we wanted juice poured in (only an alcoholic would say no). All I could do was nod my head because my face was still contorted in the pucker.

After we were seated and ordered our drinks, my mother-in-law ordered some spring rolls as an appetizer. Apparently, there were a few too many made while they were at the bar so the bartender let them have them for free. She said they were really good and wanted us all to try them.

When the spring rolls arrived and were placed in front of her, she said, “Who ordered these?”

“You did.”

“I ordered these? Well, ok. Here, pass the plate for everyone.”

I did not want one so I didn’t even look at the plate, but apparently there was some kind of sauce.

Now, my sister-in-law has once or twice, at various meals, dirtied up the table cloth. Since then, there is always a comment telling her not to spill on the table cloth – fortunately, she is good natured enough to take a joke.

I tell you this because as the plate is being passed between my mother-in-law & sister-in-law, it got tipped and the sauce slid off. There wasn’t a table cloth so I guess my mother-in-law's plate was a good enough substitute. Needless to say, my mother-in-law needed a new plate.

During all this commotion, one of the straws from the Volcano fell to the floor. Had this been a utensil or a soda straw, we would request a new straw. But since it was going right back into the alcohol, we figured all the germs would be killed off. Besides, the five second rule was still in effect.

Our chef, Sam-I-Am (who likes green eggs & ham), was excellent! He was the most entertaining of all the chefs I could see. He was constantly clattering on the grill, flipping stuff up in the air and/or into his hat, making flames (more fire!) while cooking our food the entire time. I turned down the onion soup and grilled onions, but accepted the onion fried rice with no onions – he made it special for me.

While we were watching Sam-I-Am, I looked at Hubby and said, “He’s noisier than you.”

Hubby in turn said, “Yah. If I had a flat stove, I could do this.”

I thought, 'My ass, you could cook like this.'

Do you know how dirty my ceiling would be? Never mind the floor. We have a textured ceiling and I would never get all the eggs he flipped up in the air off it. As I think about it now, he may have been referring to the amount of noise he could make. Note to self: NEVER buy a flat stove.

At the end of Sam’s cooking show, he was tossing grilled shrimp at us. He used his spatula to flip it up and we were supposed to catch it with our mouths. He had really good aim, but none of us actually caught it with our mouths. My mother-in-law technically caught a shrimp. A hot shrimp hit my mother-in-law in the neck and bounced into her shirt so she did end up with a shrimp hickey and a little surprise for my father-in-law later.

Silver lining:
1. I am very blessed to have in-laws that I love and even like. And I think they generally like me, but after this, I might be in the dog house.
2. Dinner was fantastic, not to mention entertaining. Almost as entertaining as Thanksgiving at Hubby’s aunt & uncle’s.

My Mother-In-Law Didn't Want to be the Subject of Monday's Blog . .

. . . so I left her out of it.

Several years ago, Hubby had grilled some pork chops and was saving them for lunch during the week. My mom happened to be in town for a week and I took a week of vacation. Hubby was on call, but at home.

Mom was hungry, started looking in the refrigerator, and found the pork chops. She had hardly taken them out when Hubby practically pounced on them.

“These are for my lunch this week.”

“Well, could you share one with your mother-in-law?”

“No, I made these special for my lunch.”

Pitifully, my mom said, “All I ever wanted was a pork chop.”

Now, any time we can’t have what we want, that phase has a funny way of coming up.



Fast forward to this weekend.

On Friday night, we dropped the kids off at the “Parents Night Out Co-Op”. On the check-in table was a flyer for a great discount at the Brickhouse Bistro, we had nothing better to do, so we decided we would go there for dinner.

Hubby loves their pork chops and was salivating all the way over just thinking about it. We sat down, ordered a couple of beers and briefly looked over the menu. The biggest decision we had to make was what kind of appetizer we were going to get.

Our waitress was ready to take our order. Hubby could hardly wait and blurted out, “The pork chops, please.”

“Oooo, sorry, we’re out of pork chops.”

He was so deflated.

After the waitress left, he said, “All I ever wanted was a pork chop.”

All I have to say is “What goes around, comes around.”

Boy, am I due for a huge kick in the pants because of this blog.

Silver lining:
1. We had a nice dinner without kids constantly needing our attention or climbing all over us.
2. Fortunately, the eating experience this weekend would only get better. Saturday night, no kids (again), Kitaro’s – mmm – mmm – mmm – mmm – mmm!

Don't Eat the Flowers!

My grandma is a remarkable woman.

When she was 85, she was "Gettin' Jiggy With It" at my wedding. I love that memory.

She says things like, "Beau-ti-ful" and "Won-der-ful" while exaggerating the vowel in the first syllable.

She is now 94 and still volunteers at a center that prepares meals / helps those in need. God bless my Uncle Dan who lives with her and helps take care of her. Dan also drives her everywhere because she can't see worth a darn!

While we were up in Wisconsin, Grams joined us for a Thanksgiving feast at my dad's.

Everything was delicious - turkey, dressing, home-made gravy, lumpy non-powder potatoes, pink jello stuff, seven layer salad, the ever present green bean casserole - mmmmmmmmmm!

Dan, in all his kindness, loaded Grams plate with a little bit of everything. When he was going back for seconds of seven layer salad, my grams said, "Oh, what's that?"

He told her what it was, to which she replied, "I didn't get any of that."

He said that she had gotten a little bit of everything. I also pointed out that there was still a little on her plate, as evidenced by the peas.

She bent her head down to look and says, "Oh, I can't see what's on my plate. I've just been eating what's here. All I know is I'm not eating the flowers." She was talking about the design on plate even though they actually had leaves on them.

Gotta love her!


Silver lining:
1. Being 500 miles away, we don't get to see her very often. At 94 we are blessed to still have her here on earth and we all got a chance to see her at least one more time.
2. We made my grams' year by being there for a holiday.
3. She is still getting around by herself (except for driving) and has a sound mind - we can all hope to be doing so well when we're that age.

I'm Going Crazy, Want to Come Along?

That was my dad's favorite expression when I was growing up. He would have the car keys in his hand and I would ask, "Where are you going?"

The response was usually, "Crazy, want to come along?"

The answer was always yes.

My kids drive me crazy sometimes. Take, for example, a recent dinner at the Covey household . . .

Part of the meal consisted of macaroni & cheese. My husband has gotten both girls hooked on BBQ sauce on their mac-n-cheese (GROSS!) so it is now a standard request. One night, we were out of sauce (DUN-DUN, DUUUUUUUUUN).

Cupie: I want some BBQ sauce.

Me: We don't have any.

Cupie: But I want some.

Me: Didn't you hear me? We don't have any BBQ sauce.

Cupie: BUT I WANT SOME.

This was obviously a lose, lose situation so I did what every good mother should. I ignored her and ate my dinner. Now, don't give me that look of horror! The way I figure it, I didn't throttle her; therefore, I'm a good mom.


Silver lining:
1. I may have broken the BBQ sauce on macaroni & cheese habit.
2. I'm one step closer to the nut house - where I can veg out & sleep all day in a padded room