Heavy Heart

Some good friends of ours are going through hell right now. There is something wrong with their son and they're going through a ton of testing. The diagnosis doesn't look good and, if he does end up with the condition the specialists suspect, there is very little they can do for him and survival is very slim. One of the parents works in the medical field so the process has been less chaotic for them than for someone unfamiliar with the system; however, all that knowledge is little consolation right now.

They know that I'm available should they need anything. For now there's not much we can do other than wait. Gotta go give my kids a hug now.

Cooking With the Queen of Improv

One thing I dislike about being a busy mom (wait, "busy mom" is a redundant term, right?) is the fact that I don't get a lot of time to try out new recipes, let alone go shopping for special items that I normally don't stock in my bulging pantry. So when I see a recipe I like, I become the Queen of Improv. Sometimes the results are delicious; sometimes they're comically bad. Fortunately, they're often good enough to cancel out the bad.

I was inspired by reading this great article in Sunday's Seattle Times about cooking with local seasonal produce. The article includes a great recipe for Farfalle pasta with pine nuts, currants and kale. It sounded delicious and, as we do not eat kale on a regular basis, I marched down to my local grocers to pick up a large bunch of organic kale. I was surprised by how reasonably priced it was, about $3 for a HUGE bunch.

Of course, I was so busy with other "to-do's" that I didn't manage to pick up the rest of the ingredients. So tonight, during a busy weekday evening, I decided to do the Improv using substitute ingredients I already had. I used chopped walnuts instead of pine nuts, raisins instead of currants and (the biggest difference) spaghetti noodles instead of farfalle (or bowtie) pasta. I also used more garlic than the recipe called for, as our family subscribes to the "if-four-cloves-are-good-then-six-is-better" school of thought.

"What's for dinner?" the kids asked.

"Spaghetti with kale, garlic, walnuts and raisins!" I announced, with just the right amount of enthusiasm - enough to try to get them excited but not enough to make them suspicious.

Silence. "Um, that sounds interesting," said my son cautiously.

The results? It was delicious and the whole family enjoyed it. The toasted walnuts and thin slices of sauteed kale gave a nice crunch to the noodles, and the raisins' sweetness balanced the kale's peppery bitterness quite effectively. I believe some family members went back for seconds and both kids asked me to make it again. Ding, ding, ding -- WINNER!

One of these days I may try to find time to follow the recipe exactly so it'll look as pretty as the Seattle Times photo below. Until then, I am still unashamedly and unabashedly the Queen of Improv.

Photo from The Seattle Times

Most Amazing Mom

A friend turned me on to this this amazing blog post, in which a mom discusses her preschool-aged son's experiences dressing up as Daphne from "Scooby Doo" for Halloween.

What a ballsy woman she is to allow him to be what he wanted to be and to stand up to the judgemental comments other parents made. I am amazed by how threatened people can be by something that goes outside of THEIR concepts of "normal." People, it's a preschool Halloween party, not the Pride Parade. Wish they had kept their mouths shut. As the saying goes: Opinions are like assholes - Everyone's got one, and they all stink. (Or something like that.)

I remember being very sad when my son learned about "acceptable" gender roles. He loved the color pink until kindergarten, when he informed me that it was a color for girls. He also gave me a listing of which toys were for boys and which ones for girls. Why do we teach boys that it's NOT acceptable for them to play with dolls, yet it's okay for girls to play with toy cars? (And as the parent of both a boy and girl, I'm glad girls have a lot more leeway with "acceptable" toys nowadays, but I don't think it's fair that this doesn't work both ways.)

Just because a little boy wants to dress up as a girl doesn't make him gay. I have never worried about my son turning into a real pumpkin, Teletubbie, skeleton, clown or Darth Vader.

And if the little boy in the blog turns out to be gay, so what? As a mom, I would prefer that my kids be straight, if only for the reason that life is so much harder when your private preferences cause you to be shunned socially and banned from legally marrying. However, if I had to pick between a gay adult child who was emotionally healthy and had happy monogamous relationships versus a straight adult child who slept with everyone and ended up on a "Girls/Boys Gone Wild" DVD, guess which one I'd pick?

Photo from Nerdy Apple Bottom

Happy Halloween!

It is impossible to escape Halloween when you have two kids, so in the spirit of "If-you-can't-beat-'em-join-'em," each year at this time we eat way too much candy, carve faces into pumpkins and scare ourselves silly with movies we love.

I love movies that combine horror with sick humor (see my previous post about Leprechaun). My current favorite is Zombieland (see movie clip above), a 2009 release about four eccentric individuals who have to band together for survival after a zombie infestation has left the U.S. looking like a Michael Jackson video.

College student "Columbus" is neurotic and has managed to survive by following a hilarious set of rules, such as "cardio" (stay in shape so you can outrun the zombies), "double tap" (when you shoot a zombie, shoot it a second time just to make sure it's completely dead), "fasten seatbelt" (because you never know when you'll get into an accident driving away from the zombies) and "don't be a hero" (self-explanatory.) He encounters "Tallahassee," a free-living wild man on a quest to eat a Twinkie before the last batches on Earth go bad. They eventually encounter "Wichita" and "Little Rock," two crafty sisters who are bent on survival at all costs and not looking to team up with anyone.

There is some wickedly funny dialogue and situations in this movie, including a hilarious cameo by a celebrity who plays himself. This flick definitely gets your adrenaline up as you are torn between the tension of watching the main characters try to avoid getting eaten and laughing hysterically at the same time.

What scary movies do you like?

My New Fight Song (Warning: Potty Humor!)

I should not find this song amusing at all, for I have traveled the world, lived many adventures and cultivated a sophistication that makes me a legend in my own mind. However, Hawaii song man Jimmy Borges does sing about "nuts," and that makes giggle.

Kukui High School is a fictitious school that has been referred to in the new "Hawaii 5-0" series. The Kukui is a nut that has many useful applications, among them lamp oil, medicine and necklace adornment.

Capitalizing on this new development, someone created a new Kukui High School Web ("Home of the Fighting Nuts") Web site, accompanied by its own Facebook and Twitter page. Me likey! It's like the high school I always wanted to attend, full of funny people and alumni who are, like me, simply nuts.

Seriously, it's also really fun to see how many site visitors post comments and enjoy sharing their pretend "memories" of the old alma mater. It's also another example of how the Internet can create community and liven up people's days.

I don't think I remember my old high school song, for which I am very ashamed. So I have decided to adopt the Kukui High version. Any school song that includes the line "Raise your nuts up to the sky" is one that I can remember and, therefore, fully meets my musical criteria.

In fact, I think they should update a few classic songs with that line, just to liven them up and make them more memorable. Here are a few selections:

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear [insert name here], RAISE YOUR NUTS UP TO THE SKY.

Frosty the Snowman had to hurry on his way, but he waved goodbye, saying "Don't you cry," RAISE YOUR NUTS UP TO THE SKY.

Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop, when the winds blows, RAISE YOUR NUTS UP TO THE SKY.

You get the picture.

Did Someone Say 'Bacon?'

Blame it on a lack of imagination, but I have never once taken a bite of delicious chocolate and thought, "You know this needs? BACON."

Thank goodness more creative minds than mine work at Vosges, which created Mo's Dark Bacon Bar, a combination of 62 percent dark chocolate, alder wood-smoked bacon and alder wood-smoked salt, according to the company Web site. (There's also a milk chocolate version, which I haven't tried.)

It's a very intriguing idea, combining the the sharp sweetness of dark chocolate with the smokiness of the bacon and the light tingling from the salt.

"I don't taste the bacon, but I taste the smokiness," said a friend/guinea pig who was offered the first bite. I concurred, but upon further sampling (and for research purposes only, I consumed the rest of the bar myself), I could also pick up the crispy texture of the bacon, which was just assertive enough to make its presence known but not overpowering.

It's pretty yummy, but with a $7.50 retail price, it's not yum-yum enough to be a regular part of my chocolate repertoire. Not when I have a Frost Doughnuts, with its awe-inspiring Smokey Bacon Maple Bar, just minutes from my door.

As you might have deduced, I have quite the liking for bacon.

Bottom photo courtesy www.frostology.com

I'm Somebody Now!

In the 1979 comedy "The Jerk," there's a scene in which Steve Martin's country-bumpkin character move to the city, gets a job delivering phone books, discovers his name listed in a book, and shouts, "I'm somebody now!"

That is exactly how I feel being featured as September's Commenter of the Month on the most excellent of blogs, House of Annie.

(On a side note, my dear husband, the Silent Swede, was very amused when I broke the news to him. "I don't actually comment on blogs THAT much," I explained defensively. "Sure," he said, and went back to chuckling in his Silent Swede way.)

I mentioned House of Annie last year in this post but want to tell you again how much I enjoy this blog! Married couple Nate and Annie capture their culinary adventures as they cook and eat their way into your hearts. I started reading their blog when they lived in California and it has only gotten spicier (literally) and more adventurous now that they live in Annie's native Malaysia. The photography is outstanding (and makes me a little ashamed of the stuff I snap with my iPhone) and the writing is descriptively fun.

It's high-quality food porn. In fact, should you happen to stand outside my home office window and hear me moaning and muttering, "Oh, that's SO good," and "Please, don't stop," chances are I'm visiting House of Annie.

Turns out that Nathan is from my home-turf of Hawaii. He and Annie met while students at the University of Hawaii, my alma mater. Their blog's August Commenter of the Month, the awesome Ben from Cooking With the Single Guy, also is from Hawaii. We Hawaii peeps are all over the place and we rock!

Well, they rock. I'm still working on it.

Thanks for the shout-out, Nate and Annie!