Sunday, February 22, 2009

Food

I am crazy about food and what it does for us not so much nutritionally but emotionally. I could consider food to be the core of my universe. I use it to show love. I use it to broaden experiences. I use it bring back the past. I can't get enough of it. I found a post today from a London pastry chef that nearly moved me to tears. She wrote it December 1, 2005 and I am going to link to it here. It is a short blog post but is worth a read. It is exactly how I feel about food.

So who's coming for dinner?

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Warning: Rated R for foul language

Okay so I am blindingly pissed off. We are in Vermont on vacation. The children are on vacation from school so we decided to take the economical route and spend the week up here where we already have ski passes and can cook our own food. Well I say we when referring to the vacation which technically means the taking of time off. Wait, here let me go get the proper definition of VACATION...from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary (which by the way has an advertisement for Arbua built into the dictionary's definition of Vacation - seriously - no joke)

1: a respite or a time of respite from something : intermission
2 a: a scheduled period during which activity (as of a court or school) is suspended b: a period of exemption from work granted to an employee
3: a period spent away from home or business in travel or recreation

Yes, I whole heartedly agree with M-W in their description of the word. That is what three of the four of us are one. Yes one person in our family still has yet to embrace the term VACATION. So the three of us who are on an actual vacation went skiing today for a few hours and arrived home in time for lunch. The local weatherman (who should be shot) forecasted this morning a storm coming in this afternoon which would last throughout the day tomorrow and would accumulate to about 2" inches of snow but could be rain. So at lunchtime I left the children with the one who is apparently NOT on vacation to run to the grocery store 20 minutes away. Not that I asked the one not on vacation to stay with the kids but I simply said aloud that I needed to run to the store to buy provisions for our Fondue dinner and none of the other three people I call family offered to join me. So off I went. I secured most of the provisions at the local store but they were out of Sterno. At the registers I noticed out the big pane glass windows that it had started snowing. It wasn't much and was falling into wet puddles on the ground. Wet snow most likely going to turn to rain as the weatherman predicted. So I drive to the hardware store which is on the way out of town to see if they have sterno and luckily enough they do. I grab the sterno and a few other kitchen items and get in the mini-van. I start the hike out of town and literally, the minute I start even the most minute bit of incline I realize the snow is sticking to the ground and is coming down at a pretty scary clip. So we all plow up the hill trying to stay in the tracks outlined by the car ahead of us. The road out of this town to the place where I need to go is all hill. One long climb out of the valley. So we are all plugging along until some shithead, who has pulled over, decides he is going to get back on the road an cuts in front of me. I hit the brakes and lose my momentum and traction. GAME OVER for this SPY girl in her fucking mini-van. I could not regain traction and ended up having to pull over. So while I am pulling over I get caught in a snow drift which tosses the whole car a little too close to the edge of the road which consists of a cliff with no guardrail. I get the car stopped with the ass of the vehicle still in the road and call back to the house in a frantic panic. We call AAA and then I call the police because it is clear to me that one little tap from another car will send me right over the cliff. I will not lie. There was lots of yelling and crying going on as I was completely unsure of what to do. My mother was telling me to stay in the car with my seatbelt on and my husband was telling me to get out of the car. What kept going through my head beyond just trying not to get killed, was why in the hell do I have to make the trek down here to buy food for everyone all by myself. Why is it that when I said I was going to the grocery, no one offered to keep me company. Why? BECAUSE GOING TO THE GROCERY STORE SUCKS! But this sucked even worse.

About 25 minutes into the ordeal, a tow truck arrived and two toothless wonders told me they would tow me about a mile to the town line but that was as far as they could take me. Yes, this was a AAA response team. So I pile into the middle of the front cab of a tow truck (a first for me) and at that moment I had a cerebral clashing of the titans. As I took my seat between the two grubbiest guys I have ever seen, I felt an instant wave of relief to be out of my fucking car and into what felt to be the safer option. Until I realized that a) I did not have a seatbelt and b) they had not shown me anything indicating that they were the tow people from AAA. Then that instant wave of relief turned into stomach churning fear as the tow truck pulled out onto the road.

A mile later they drop me off at apparently the town line where I usually take a right hand turn off this road to the one that takes me home. They dump me in about as much snow as I was originally stuck in and say have a nice night. I call my husband to tell him of my progress and he is pissed off that the tow won't take me home. Yeah- join the club! So I start the car, clean off the windshield wipers, defrost the window and pull into the road. Half way across the road all my dashboard lights go on as if I have stalled the car but it is still moving. Then the steering wheel goes. It will turn in one direction but not the other. I get stuck again. I restart the car. Dash lights all still going wacky and the car is now reading out of gas. But a minute ago I had a full tank. I cut the engine again and restart this bitchy whore of a car and now I read half a tank of gas but still all the warning lights are on including the break light. I must reverse myself out onto the road with blind faith because I can see shit and then miraculously start moving forward. I get back on the road and start the second half of my journey home. Immediately a GMC car is on my tail and is riding me pretty hard. My hazards are on indicating that I am in mini-van hell so back the fuck off. But he does not. So if you drive a GMC and were in Vermont this week behind a mini-van clearly in peril, I say to you - you suck, get a life, have a heart and fuck off! You followed me all the way home not letting up on your eagerness to drive me off the road. My steering was off, the car was sliding all over the place and there were at least 5 instances where I nearly went careening off the road or into oncoming traffic.

Finally 2 hours later I pulled into our driveway and just sobbed on the steering wheel. Adding insult to injury, no one was seemingly waiting with baited breath for me to get home because I was there for 10 minutes before the one NOT on vacation appeared at my car door.

I am now sitting at the dining room table with a screwdriver a little off its usual ratio. I have told those three people with whom I am vacationing, that I will not be making dinner nor will I be all that helpful tonight. My husband is now getting a crash course in making rice and roasting carrots.

*****UPDATE***** The storm that was forecasted to bring maybe 2" of snow and possibly rain, actually dumped 9" of snow in about 7 hours. I would never have left the house if those moron meteorologists could EVER get it right around here.

Monday, February 09, 2009

just saying is all....

Read a quote by Fellini today ..... yes, Federico Fellini the Italian movie genius. He was quoted as saying he loves zaftig women because a woman who doesn't love food isn't good in bed. I am pretty comfortable with what that says about me. Plus, I am Italian ; )