Pie, C'est Moi. Et Vous?

You Are Cream Pie

You're the perfect combo of simplicity and divinity. You are a secret hedonist. No one knows how indulgent you can be. You don't indulge often, but when you do, you go for the best. You have expensive taste - even if you aren't rich. Those who like you life for understated pleasures. You're not flashy or trendy, but you have a depth that most people lack. Interacting with you makes most people feel incredibly satisfied. You are gentle, super sweet, and in harmony with those around you.

What Kind of Pie Are You?

Because You Are Too Stubborn to Ask for Directions

Where the Goblins Live.

29 Days/29 Gifts

What would happen if you gave 29 gifts in 29 days? I don't know either, but I'm going to enlist the whole family in this project. Let me know if you decide to do it and tell me what happens. I'll post updates once a week (or more, if I'm so moved).

Fowl to Feast

I killed a chicken. Stuck it in a kill cone and slit its throat. Dipped it in a 145 degree water bath to loosen its feathers. Hung it up by its two legs and started plucking. Finally, I took it down and put it on the table and removed its innards.

Eight of us took the workshop for various reasons. The food editor of our local newspaper was there which made most of us nervous at first. You know, what if we can't perform the function. Here we are now - failures in print. One woman, who called herself Mud, was trying to reconnect with her family roots in the midwest as well as find ways to integrate the good elements of her time as a Hari Krishna. Most of us had read Omnivore's Dilemma or Fast Food Nation.

I did it because I want to understand the depth of my food choices. I figure if I can't take direct responsibility for eating meat, then I probably shouldn't be eating it. At various times, I 've been a vegetarian - even following a macrobiotic diet. While I benefited from those diets, I found that I require meat to give me complete balance. Many of the people at the workshop had been vegetarians. Even Steve, our teacher had been one as a way to rebel against his family who farmed for a living.

I started anthropomorphizing my bird immediately. I named her Myrtle. She was red and like most chickens looked ridiculously confused. I caught her in the pen and then carried her down to the slaughtering station and I held her and stroked her for about twenty minutes. We developed a relationship. When the slaughtering started, there was a little squawking amongst the flock. What was being communicated? Some of the birds, including my Myrtle, squawked back and forth. Both Myrtle and the bird in front of me kept looking keenly at the woods next to us. A good place to escape.

You can alter someone's breathing by modeling relaxation yourself. I know this from working as a massage therapist and it comes in handy with kids. We're constantly modeling behavior - good or bad - and the people around us pick up on it and adjust accordingly. So, I tried to be calm and relaxed as we stood waiting. Myrtle relaxed and settled down in my arms. I wanted to give her a dignified death, or at least one that wasn't fraught with terror. Practically speaking, the more relaxed the animal, the less lactic acid that gets distributed into the muscles. Lactic acid makes the meat tougher - you're eating fear.

It was my turn. My voice had that deep, calm tone that means I'm scared and out of my element. I turned her upside down, holding her wings, and put her in the kill cone. With the other hand, I reached up and found her head. I pulled it through the bottom of the cone and stretched out her neck. The idea here is to slit the throat at the carotid artery. The bird loses consciousness and dies, unaware of pain. That's the theory. How do we know for sure? I turned her head to one side to expose the artery and pulled my knife across it. It was shocking to feel the blood coming out of her warm. Her body jerked. It took several minutes before she was completely bled out.

There was a continuity to the moments preceding and during the slaughter that became increasingly hard to maintain. For one thing, as I was standing there plucking Myrtle, I became insanely hungry. But the repetition of movements - the plucking - makes it easy to check out. Also, I was surprised by how quickly, just a few plucks, and the chicken starts to resemble what you buy at the store. Except it's still warm.

I live less than a mile away from this farm. The day's event promised to give "poultry eaters a deeper connection to the food they consume." What this means is that - essentially - I paid for the opportunity to butcher my own chicken. It's kind of odd when you think about it (and, of course, that's the point). People the world over either hunt/grow and butcher their own food every day. My great grandmother raised chickens in her back yard. She hung their dead bodies on the clothes line. Here I am, three generations later, paying someone for the opportunity to get reconnected to my food. I can almost hear great grandma say, "I broke my back raising chickens so that my children's children's children could pay to wring a chicken's neck?"

I took Myrtle home and put her in a brine bath - salt, rosemary, thyme, peppercorns, garlic, a bit of sugar, and water. I let her soak for a couple of days and then I roasted her in an iron skillet. Superb. Obviously, I'm not going to be doing this on a regular basis. That's not our set-up here. I have started buying less meat and have found that the little I buy goes a long way with the family.

The children have also become more aware of where chickens, etc come from. We've talked about how everything the chicken eats becomes part of us - we're made up of the sun that shone on the grass, the water that fell from the sky, bugs, gravel, etc. Carter observed that it might not be a good idea to eat so much ice cream because you wouldn't want it to become too much of you. Indeed.

I Still Cannot Talk About the Derby

Decadent & Depraved. But we already knew that.

Fabulous Bust

I'm inexplicably attracted to this.

No Pie; Cake

My son has been planning his 8th birthday festivities for about three months now. We've settled on an activity - boating at Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park. I had to talk him down from the idea of renting a motor boat that he and his sister could drive. Seems his estimation of his amazing 8-year old powers are a bit inflated. Now we just have to settle on the cake. There are three contenders.

1. The R2-D2 Cake (A friend suggested this one and to be honest, perhaps he has over-estimated my pastry-making abilities ever so slightly. I'd need more than the force to pull this off.)
2. The Lego Cake is more my speed.
3. Speaking of Speed. Carter is caught up in the Speed Racer movie marketing push and wants a Speed Racer ice cream cake from B & R. Spritle! Chim Chim! Come out of the glove compartment!
   

No Pie for You

How do I explain to Olivia that the penny in her Blue's Clues pouch will buy her absolutely nothing anywhere? Can't even buy time at the parking meter.

Army Gives Soldiers the 5-13 = Nothing

"The next thing I remember is waking up on the ground." Men from his unit had gathered around his body and were screaming his name. "They started shaking me. But I was numb all over," he says. "And it's weird because... because for a few minutes you feel like you're not really there. I could see them, but I couldn't hear them. I couldn't hear anything. I started shaking because I thought I was dead."

Eventually the rocket shrapnel was removed from Town's neck and his ears stopped leaking blood. But his hearing never really recovered, and in many ways, neither has his life. A soldier honored twelve times during his seven years in uniform, Town has spent the last three struggling with deafness, memory failure and depression. By September 2006 he and the Army agreed he was no longer combat-ready.

But instead of sending Town to a medical board and discharging him because of his injuries, doctors at Fort Carson, Colorado, did something strange: They claimed Town's wounds were actually caused by a "personality disorder." Town was then booted from the Army and told that under a personality disorder discharge, he would never receive disability or medical benefits. (RTRH)

h/t Adam Szymkowicz

Five Words You Never Want to Hear

Mom? Astro ate my deposit.

Yeah. The dog ate Olivia's poo. Right out of her potty. He ate her poo!

Mom? Astro ate my deposit.

After Olivia made this admission I ran to the bathroom to inspect the poo-catcher and when I walked by Astro, the beast had the audacity to pick up his head and lick his lips. No Shame! Like eating poo is the most natural thing in the world. Natural as in it came out of my daughter's ass natural.

I furiously scrubbed the poo-catcher and put it back in the potty. But what about the dog? He followed me around for an hour afterwards. Smacking those lips that touched - nay, ate! - my daughter's poo! Finally, my husband put him out on the deck so we didn't have to hear that telltale smacking. Are there enough mint dental rings in the world to wash the poo from his mouth? Are there? No. There are not.