Sweetener Shame

I admit it: I am a sweetener addict.

Sweet-n-Low, Equal, Splenda, Truvia! Convenient packets, bulk-measure granules, little "pills" in a tiny bottle! I have my preferences, of course, but when necessary I will press into service any of the aforementioned products.

Lately, though, I am noticing a disturbing trend in public spaces: sweetener use is being subtly monitored---no, more serious!---even CONTROLLED.

In restaurants, that little basket of sweeteners on the table suddenly has perhaps 4 or 5 total, next to a similar number of real sugar packets. After cajoling the kids to swipe some extras from another table, I can appropriately sweeten one glass of iced tea, but come on! Once that rotten waitress waters down my drink by refilling it without my consent, I have to ask her to refill the sweetener basket (and endure her disapproving looks).

And then this morning, public humiliation at the local McDonald's, when I innocently stepped in to buy a large coffee and relax with some free WiFi:

At the counter, the smiling droid takes my order and then politely asks me, "Would you like cream and sugar in your coffee?" At first I just reply "No thank you," since I take it black with just a boatload of sweetener.

Suddenly I panic, realizing that McDonald's doesn't have "open bar" in terms of condiments---so I have to ask him for my sweeteners right here at the counter. I stammer "But I need a lot of Sweet-n-Low. Like maybe twelve."

His eyes bulge open incredulously as he hears me say "12." The situation worsens when he tells me, "We don't have that, only Equal and Splenda." I immediately recalibrate my needs, since "blue" and "yellow" packets don't really compete with the powerful "pink" one.

The look on his face, though, prevents me from actually demanding the right amount of sweetener (maybe 15?!?) for the giant coffee, so I just go with "Half Splenda and half Equal."

To my horror, he then actually types into the ordering computer my sweetener request: tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap for 6 Equals and tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap for 6 Splendas. Then, to make sure everyone around got it, he confirms to me, "So 6 Equal and 6 Splenda, that's 12 total."

Of course once I slink over to a booth and pour all twelve into the coffee, it's still not sweet enough! I consider going back to the counter for more but decide instead to pour and type out this rant.

Stop shaming me because I'm sweet, people!

Requiem for Stacy

Stacy!

Our good doggie is gone today.

Fifteen years passed too quickly,

A fair long time but still a cheat.

No more click-click-click

Of nails on the wooden floor.

No more roof-roof-roof

At delivery men and joggers on the walk.

Birds and bunnies free again

To walk the yard, no fear!

The stealthy, speedy hound

Is chasing prey elsewhere now.

Independent creature, perhaps aloof?

Haughty or just proud?

No, she will not fetch the ball,

Wear dress-up clothes, 

Or play with toys.

She does not snuggle or cuddle

Or rush to see you,

Navigating the world instead 

On her own terms.

Yet she does love, in her own way,

Nodding or tossing her head as she walks by.

She looks at me with clear intent---but what?

"Thank you for the milkbone," 

Or maybe something more profound I hope.

Older, slower, she still keeps watch 

For chances to escape.

"Stay here," the lesser dogs must say,

"There's food and warmth and love.

What will we find outside the gate?"

She answers "FREEDOM!"

And they follow her willingly.

We round them up and they return,

But in her eyes we see the glint of satisfaction.

Now she is gone but not away,

Still in our hearts and in this house.

Odd memories here and there,

Sneaking and slinking up to remind us.

Like Stacy.

A noble beast!

Shortbread Chronicles, Chapter 15

Flour, sugar, butter, salt. Only four ingredients but an infinite number of wrong combinations. On the surface, a completely simple recipe: the devil is in the details, as the old saying goes. 

Today I continue my quest to create the delicious (or at a minimum, fairly edible) shortbread cookie. I have generously titled this recap "Chapter 15," although I feel certain I have baked (and trashed) more like 25 or so batches of shortbread in the past year. No more random attempts! Starting today, I will be scientifically chronicling my failures---if I eliminate all the recipes that aren't shortbread, won't I eventually find the recipe that is? 

For today's version, I have turned to the book Tea with Alice. This recipe is allegedly from the Liddell family, whose daughter was of course the "Wonderland" Alice---an expert on Mad Hatters, tea parties in general, and thus shortbread. 

And so we begin:2 1/2 cups of flour + 2 sticks butter + 1 tsp salt + 1/3 cup confectioner's sugar. Rolled immediately after mixing without chilling the dough at all. Into the 275-degree convection oven for 30 minutes, cooled for an additional 10 minutes.

The taste is not bad: plain (as shortbread should be, I think), with a hint of salt. Texture is a little off though: when I bite it, breaks up in a powdery mess.  Luckily they are pretty small so maybe the best choice here is to eat them whole (the Queen would not approve). Perhaps they will continue to harden up and then they might be bite-able. Appearance is certainly not a success though:  they remained completely 'white' instead of browning on the edges or the bottom, giving them a not-cooked look. I sprinkled half the batch with sugar, a clear violation of shortbread guidelines, in the hopes that the extra sweetness might tempt the kids at least. The other half is the standard plain.

Why is this so difficult?! 19th-century little girls in their play kitchens could make shortbread. Pilgrims with wood-burning open hearths could make shortbread. Scottish women, Girl Scouts, Lorna Doone---they all could make shortbread.  I have high-tech baking gear and access to the finest ingredients (free-range cows wail and moan over the amount of their creamy butter I have ruined with my baking), but I still can't make decent shortbread!

"Why are you even trying this?" my husband recently asked. "It's the worst cookie on earth.  Shortbread may have been good back when molasses and ginger were popular dessert flavors, but it's a little outdated for the current era."  His version of an acceptable "cookie" is something with chocolate, nuts, frosting, Oreo crumbs, and shards of M & M.

So the final result is...awaiting further review.  I won't toss it in the trash just yet, preferring to wait for the family units to weigh in with their opinions later.  The dogs, of course, enjoy ALL my shortbreads ("They're just like our Milk Bones, Ma'am!") so at least a few won't go to waste regardless.

The Malinois iPad

As my birthday approached earlier this month, my family (apparently stumped for gift ideas) suddenly started beating the drum for "Let's get another dog." Not just a dog, in fact, but a PUPPY. Since we already have a one-eyed senior canine slinking around the house in addition to an insecure younger shepherd mix, I assumed they were joking. "That would be great," I told them sarcastically. "Go get me a Belgian Malinois."

In case you haven't been tuning into the Westminster Dog Shows or Animal Planet on television, you might not be so familiar with the Belgian Malinois. To simplify things, I'll just say that it looks kind of like a German Shepherd and is used almost exclusively in law and drug enforcement. High demand and limited supply means 1) you have to shell out some serious coin to 'reserve' a puppy; and 2) the finicky breeders probably won't sell you one anyway once they find out you are planning to keep him as a pet (horrors!). Let's say I felt pretty confident that no such animal would be showing up in a cardboard box with a birthday bow on it.

Under duress from my husband, I agreed to research the idea, and presented information about local breeders and upcoming litters---including critical details about certification of elbows/knees and the all-important bite strength (yikes!) of the doggie parents. I repeatedly asked "Did you get my Malinois yet?" My husband simply smirked and replied "I have my sources."

Perhaps hearing all the discussion about puppies, the existing household canines made their preferences known that week as well. They vomited their food, escaped from the fence, shed all over, killed a rabbit in the yard, and demanded to be let outside at all hours of the day and night. A puppy would be even worse than we are! they seemed to be telling us with their actions. I agreed.

On my birthday, we all went out to dinner. "What about the puppy?" I reminded them as we backed out of the garage. They assured me, "He'll be on the porch when we get back."

Hours later when we returned, I had presents but no puppy on the porch. As I began to open the last present I asked "Is my Malinois in here? There are no airholes punched in this box." My husband answered "He's in there along with everything about him."

I opened the box, reached in, and pulled out...an iPad. In a way, the iPad was kind of like a puppy in that I neither asked for nor needed either one. Hmmm.

The iPad is superior in that it doesn't vomit or ask to be let outside, of course. An actual puppy would commonly be considered more fun though (except perhaps by my kids who want to use the iPad just to play Angry Birds). It's a toss-up.

I plugged the thing into the computer and registered it as "The Malinois iPad," adding a Malinois screensaver for good measure. The one-eyed dog gave me a nod and slinked back to her lair.

Smoke Pit?

[Official transcript of car conversation with children on June 9, 2010]

HIM: What's the deal with the smoke pit back there?

ME: Huh? [with dumbfounded expression]

HIM: That smoking thing at the library.

ME: They had a smoking area in the library? Are you sure? Where was it?

HIM: In the front outside by the door. A smoke pit with cigarettes stuck in it.

SPOUSE: Do you mean an ashtray?

HIM and HER: What's an ashtray?

ME: Good grief!

SPOUSE: Was it a big canister?

HIM: Yes. And it had like 5 cigarettes stuck in it!

ME: That's not a "smoke pit." It's not even an "ashtray," it's for putting out cigarettes before you go in the building so you're not littering or catching the place on fire.

HER: What's an ashtray then?

ME: Think about it:"ash" plus "tray"---?

HER: [no response, cogs turning loudly in brain]

ME: It's like a dish where you drop your cigarette ashes when you are smoking in the house.

HER: That's gross!

ME: [to spouse] Maybe I should take them to Wal-Mart and browse the ashtray aisle to get them some education on this topic, I'm sure there is a fine selection there.

SPOUSE: [no response, eyes rolling]

HIM: No!

HER: So the thing at the library is full of ashes from cigarettes.

ME: No, it's full of sand that you stick your used cigarettes into to put them out. People are not standing around the "smoke pit" tapping their ashes onto the canister.

HIM: Why do they have that out there then?

ME: So people can smoke all the way to the last second before going into the library and then have a place to throw the cigarette away!

HIM: Hey, don't get all over me because I don't know the rules of SMOKING!

HER: At least I didn't call it the "smoke pit" like he did.

SPOUSE: Good for you then.

Dangerous Cuisine

“I want FUDGE!” was the note scrawled at the bottom of last week’s grocery list. No other information, just that emphatic remark in bold pencil.

Since the entry was made in cursive writing, I correctly assumed that it was my husband who WANTED FUDGE, not the smaller household citizens (who I don’t even think know what fudge is). I suppose since his comment was on the grocery list, I could have interpreted this to mean “Please buy fudge” instead of “Please buy ingredients to make fudge.” At the time, I lazily thought it would be easier to make it at home rather than get in the car and drive out to buy some. Plus, it would be a candy-making experiment (according to the kids)!

Chocolate, sugar, corn syrup, butter, and vanilla. How hard can this be? A quick internet trip to the recipe site of my favorite “scientist-chef,” Alton Brown, and I was prepared to give the fudge cooking a try.

SUNDAY, BATCH 1: Uneventful cooking and cooling processes---or so I thought, with zero previous fudge attempts in my culinary past. After the requisite “setting up” time in the pan, we ended up with a thick chocolate sand confection. “Delicious!” said the little one as I pitched the rest of it in the garbage. Checking the directions again, I think the error on this batch was not enough stirring before the final drop in the pan.

MONDAY, BATCH 2: Cooking and cooling as before, but with a twist at the end: a ride in the Kitchenaid mixer---a minor violation, since I was supposed to hand-stir. I quizzically monitored the mixer to watch for the fudge liquid to lose its sheen; after others agreed that we were clueless as to what exactly we needed to see, we plopped it in the final pan and waited. And waited. And waited. Then we committed a major violation by shoving it in the refrigerator to see if it would harden up. The next morning we had thick chocolate icing (hey, at least it was no longer gritty like Batch 1). “Delicious!” said the little one as he spread it between two toasted waffles and I tossed the remainder in the garbage. Another recipe review suggests I may not have precisely monitored the high cook temperature and the low cooling temperature. Damn my $5 thermometer!

TUESDAY, BATCH 3: This time I hovered over the pan like I was splitting the atom. High temperature---OK! Cooling temperature---UH OH! I apparently let it cool just a little past the critical point, because it was already setting up while in the pot. I knew I had to stir, so I frantically started pulling the taffy-like blob out, and boy was it stuck. It was like I had melted a dozen Sugar Daddies in the pot. With one hand pushing the pot-handle away and the other hand pulling the sticky blob toward me, I got exactly what I should have expected: the blob popped loose and the saucepan snapped back with terminal velocity and cracked me straight in the face.

My initial reaction was to clamp the dishtowel to my head, to contain the blood and loose flaps of skin and bone that certainly must be hanging loose. Through my haze, I heard my husband casually asking “Are you OK?” to which I immediately replied “NO.” I expected aid at that point but all I got was another “Are you OK?” to which I again replied “NO!” Little frightened children then ran over to inquire about me and I shooed them away (lest they see my mangled face and keel over immediately). I tentatively peeked at the dishtowel to confirm blood loss and finally someone arrived with an icepack. “Is my nose broken?” I asked; there was a very long pause and finally my husband said “Uh, I don’t think so. But you might have some shards of the pan in that cut.” With that diagnosis, it was back to the fudge before the batch was a complete loss.

While I held the ice to my face, my husband attempted to get it out of the pot and into the pan. This was no small feat since the glob was now proceeding smartly into final set-up mode. Once he had it in the pan, it seemed clear that this batch at least would harden into the normal fudge format. Whew! I turned again to ask how my face looked. “Let me finish chewing this,” he answered, a giant piece of maybe-fudge in his mouth. “OK, now I can check you.” Gee, thanks, honey. Thirty minutes later, I had a butterfly bandage over the gash in my nose and two bruise-lumps blooming on my head.

The final analysis? The little one said “Well, I thought all the fudges were delicious, Mommy,” as if that made up for the fact that I was perhaps permanently disfigured. My husband ate a piece of the Batch-3 product and said “Yep, that’s fudge. But it makes too big of a mess in the kitchen.” The last citizen in the household said “I like brownies, fudge is weird.” And that was it.

Attack of the Mutant Snacks

It’s airy, cube-like, and orange: the GIANT CHEETO. I recently came across this freak of the potato-chip world at my local grocery store, and was intrigued enough by the idea to purchase a bag. The package itself didn’t really offer any additional information as to what I would find inside; apparently the marketing group thought the words “giant” and “Cheeto” would serve as sufficient clues.

In the safety and privacy of my own kitchen, I ripped open the bag and found…GIANT CHEETOS. Well not really. In my mind, a Giant Cheeto would look the same as a standard Cheeto, only bigger. The standard Cheeto is a tube-style item, either a plain tube (the puffed version) or a twisted tube (the crunchy version). Giant Cheetos are a completely different shape: a cross between a cube and a sphere perhaps, since they are squarish with rounded corners. Why not just go with the regular sphere, I wonder. Maybe there is some kind of patent infringement with the once popular Planter’s Cheese Ball.

At least we can agree that the Giant Cheeto is in fact giant. It’s a little bigger than a ping-pong ball, and my child could barely put it inside his mouth and then chew it up normally. No need to worry about ounces, I checked the portion size and it revealed that you need only to consume eight of these at a sitting. Yikes! So I ate one. And I must say, the Giant Cheeto has design flaws that made the culinary experience somewhat unpleasant.

First, SHAPE & SIZE: The shape dictates that you must pop the whole thing in your mouth whole, since biting it would result in a snowstorm of Cheeto dust fluttering down over you. You get the usual cheese (or maybe cheeeeez) flavor when it first hits your tongue, but as soon as you start chewing it turns to a sensation more like eating a handful of those styrofoam packing peanuts---tasteless and filling. It almost seemed to be expanding in my mouth as I tried to chew it and swallow. Again, no worries about exceeding the recommended serving size: I doubt you could eat eight at one sitting, period.

Second, RATIO OF OUTER COATING TO INNARDS: Similar to the Atomic Fireball candy, the Giant Cheeto has too much flavorless ‘innard’ in relation to the flavorful ‘outside skin.’ This is less of a problem for the Atomic Fireball, since once the hot outer coating burns off, you at least have a plain sugary ball to suck. With the Giant Cheeto, the outer cheese immediately melts away and you are left trying to chow down the tasteless inner core. I suppose this is the reason the previously-mentioned Planter's Cheese Ball was only about the size of a large marble.

The little kids thought these were fun at first, but even they stopped after a eating a few units (probably the Giant Cheetos expanded in their tiny child-stomach immediately). And now the bag remains in the pantry, half-full, while the household does battle over who gets the last Pringles in the can or the Nacho Dorito crumbs. Will the rest of the Giant Cheetos get eaten before they go stale? Or even more curious, how will we be able to tell when they are stale?

These may not be around for long, so get some soon if you dare. Hopefully the Giant Cheeto doesn't signal the beginning of a new age in snacking---Ranch-flavored mini-Cheetos, anyone??