It's Rotten

Confession:  I used to have this friend who USED to belong to a Rotary Club, USA that served absolutely hideous meals every Monday which (and not without much coaxing and pleading on my part) my friend photographed with a smart phone and relayed the images to me those afternoons, along with a funny (and often painful) description of the cuisine. 

I was sworn to secrecy, having ALSO begged to be able to use these as a Monday feature on the Chronicles.  Really, something this grotesque should be shared, you know?  Sort of like People of Walmart pictures, only of food.  But no, the only way I'd get the images was if I promised not to publish.  So I kept the secret, looking forward to Mondays like you can't imagine, knowing that no matter how completely rough the week was going at least around 1:30 p.m. I'd have this wonderful, horrible treat in my email to gag and laugh over.

Last week, without warning me, my friend quit Rotary and sent the last photo with a little note jokingly saying that the hope was that we could still be friends. 

Let's just say that I didn't take it well....

And I thought we could still be friends, but here it is, Monday morning and I'm faced with the cold, hard reality that there will be no more Rotary Rot forever.  Forever!  I'm just not sure we CAN remain friends.  Friends don't take friends' reason to get up on Mondays away so coldly and cruelly. 

So this is my therapy session, my way of dealing with the hurt:  I'm going to share some of the Rot with you along with my friend's descriptions. Am I going to be in trouble? Maybe. I can live with that risk.
I'm going to slap a warning label on here, though.
If you have a weak stomach, you'd do well to leave the Chronicles this minute.
If you're on a diet, you may want to print some of these pictures out and put them on your fridge!
Just sayin'...

How many ways can you think of to serve soggy beef fat?  Today we tried it sliced.  Actually, I didn’t try it—I saw it, snapped a quick picture, suppressed my gag reflex (which came on surprisingly strong and fast), and went to the salad bar.  Now I’m wondering how in the world a spinach salad, bowl of soup, and a mound of cottage cheese is going to hold me over until tonight.

It also bears mentioning that the Rotary Board met today at 11, and the agenda is attached.  Note the agenda item to make lunch an optional cost (right now, it’s mandatory part of the dues.  You pay for lunches, whether you come and eat them or not).  I thought it was a great idea—it would save me about $350 a year.  Moose liked it too.  Unfortunately, the rest of the Board nixed it for reasons I can’t explain. Rats.

Most of the time, people puke after they eat.  At the ----------, they prefer if you puke right in the serving trays.  Saves money on gravy…

Nasty, nasty.


I had salad bar. And even that was disgusting. Fortunately, my appetite was ruined, so I’m not hungry.

Dainty “PLEASE NO” Moore stew…
(Auto-correct changed it from "Dinty" to "Dainty", I was told.)

I don’t know what this is. I don’t even know what it was supposed to be. I even asked someone who ate it, and he didn’t know either. No one knows. I had Moose hold it up so you could get a better look at it. If you figure out what it is, let me know.

Actually, don’t.


Even the salad bar was nasty today. The sign said the soup was tomato, but turns out it was actually watered-down spaghetti gone bad. It even had foot-long spaghetti noodles swimming around in it.


Yuck.

…in some kind of red sauce, then cooked in hell’s oven until it is completely stuck to the pan…and served up as Rotary Rot.

*There was no description for this one.  The email title said, "Parts is parts" and the image title was "Foul".

I should say so!

I saved the best for last...

Or maybe it's the worst.

Turns out bacon doesn’t make everything better after all. Take the -------’s World Famous Cat Vomit, for example. Still looked and smelled like cat vomit, regardless of how much raw bacon they stacked on top of it.

Maybe if they’d have cooked the bacon. Yeah…maybe THAT would’ve helped.


Look how many pieces of bacon got picked off and left to fend for themselves in the puddle of greasy yellow stomach bile at the bottom of the pan…


Now THAT’s gross…

Today’s offering was the -------’s very own incinerator-lasagna. The ------- didn’t want to serve obviously burned food—they have a reputation to protect, after all—so they did the noble thing: sprinkled a little more cheese on top of the blackened heap and threw it back in hell’s cauldron. After all, why stop at one scorching if you can have two?? And who’s gonna notice?

* Editor’s note: That mangled, nasty looking piece on the upper left that no one wanted? Yeah—THAT one…?? Well, Moose ate it…


But wait! There’s…



 More!

It’s an unprecedented Rot-ary two-fer!


If it the pot-shot wasn’t enough for you, maybe an pic of the greasy aftermath clinging to a white plate will send your stomach into full convulsions…

This is sort of an appropriate place to end the post, even though I have other images that are dear to my heart.  You can see how my Monday afternoons will be sad and empty.  *sigh*

Party, party, party!

I told you I'd post about the Cohagen School Halloween Party, and so I will...

One thing you need to know, before I get rolling, here, is that our new teacher Mrs. Carroll came from a school system where the kids and teachers weren't allowed to dress up in costume for Halloween.  She was SO tickled, to see all the kids in their various costumes that we could've just dressed 'em up and walked them around the gym, and it would've been a big deal for her. 

Really, that's pretty much all the kids needed, too. 

Here they are, in all their glory, completely unimpressed with the idea of a group picture. 

This one makes me smile, because I think only one child is actually looking at the camera, and the cow is making a break for it! Also, please note Batman.  Batman KILLS me.  He's the most cherubic little super-hero, ever.  I see that we're missing the little devil, too....you'll catch her later in the post. 

The mummy contest, in which one child is the mummy and the other kids on the team attempt to swath him/her in cheap, one-ply toilet paper as fast and completely as possible.  This game is a particular favorite, because the kids can't believe their good fortune in being able to totally WASTE an ENTIRE roll of toilet paper!  And no one yells at them!  In fact, parents are cheering.  This is craziness...
(See the pumpkin in the background, with a ramp?  That was for Pumpkin Mini-Golf.  Traci made a hole-in-one, lefthandedly.  This is a huge accomplishment and needs to be acknowledged in a public forum.  Please congratulate her if you see her out and about....and no, she didn't get a big old prize for it, nor did she make a little kid cry....)

I don't think they actually WON the mummy contest, but they did get points for having a gen-u-ine Egyptian princess on their team.
The mummy does look a little worse for wear, but she recovered nicely and went on to play...

...Smoosh the Wart on the Witch.

(I was NOT the witch.  I painted the witch.  Let's just get that straight here and now.)

Here's Traci, giving each little contestant their multi-colored wart and instructing them carefully on the goal of the game. 

Ah, THERE'S the little devil!  I can't think of a more unlikely costume for this particular child, but she was so darned cute!  The "big kids" (ages 7-8), waiting their turn at the witch game....

We think he MAY have cheated. 

Here's the rogue cow, corralled for a couple minutes.  Honestly, I couldn't look at this baby without laughing!  Even in this picture, you can see the bright little eyes and ambition; my Gramps would've said, "She's a caution..."  and in a good way. 

FOOD!  You can't see, but there's another table with more food.  One thing about Cohagen: everyone feels very strongly about making sure people at a potluck get fed, and fed WELL.  We're talking fried chicken, pickles and cream cheese rolled up in ham, gooey butter cakes, homemade sugar cookies, brownies, and more.  Yum!

Jack o'lanterns!

I'd think one could tell by the name tacked on the punkins, but did you know Halloween basically started in Ireland? A holiday full of teasing/pranks, candy and big stories....yeah, that would be Celtic, alright.

(I like the fangs, on the big one.)

The crazed cat, Guns Up Jack (Sparrow) o'lantern, and friends, looking zany and completely at ease!

Nothing but bones and grins...I think Weight Watchers is working, don't you? 

And Mrs. Carroll sent home goody bags full of TERRIBLE, WICKED junk to make a parent want to weep.

Things like fake, rubber witch's fingers that Angus promptly discovered would keep his REAL fingers clean when he picked his nose, eliminating that pesky "Gross! Go wash your hands!" admonition.

I was trying to come up with some sort of retribution, but then realized that she gets the kids on Tuesday.  You know.  The kids with the sugar hangovers from the night before...

It goes around, it comes around...

She packed up her potential...

I found these images a few weeks ago, when I was feeling very uncertain....ironic, hm?

I saved them, wrote down the website, intending to write to the author/artist and tell her how much I liked her work, how it made me smile and looked just like the stuff in my head. 

The little slip of paper got tossed, I'm sure, because it was written on the back of an envelope; it makes me sad, because I can't credit her, here or write to her, either. 

I'm hoping I find her website again, and then will do so.

In the meantime....

Carving it up!

Our school had a Halloween party on Friday (more on that in another post) and the party organizer extraordinaire (not me...I'd the the party organizer franticlinaire or something like that) told us there'd be a jack o'lantern contest.

You saw the word "contest", didn't you?

Or, as Maggie and I prefer to call it, "We've Gotta Win Opportunity".

I KNOW.

I know!!!!

I'm going to get all sorts of scoldings and tut-tuttings about competitiveness and how some things are just for fun and that not everything in life is a contest.

Of course.

But this WAS a contest.

It was billed as such!

If it's going to be an exhibition, then it needs to be called that.

(And the party organizer extraordinaire, who reads this blog, is now rolling her eyes and laughing at us....)

Now.

Maggie had picked up a Better Homes and Gardens Halloween magazine about a month ago, with all sorts of ideas for the holiday, including decorating one's entire house in the theme of the Mad Tea Party from Alice in Wonderland, and 10-12 full size skeletons posed in various odd situations, like golfing on the front lawn or offering treats off a tray.  (I tell you this so you will realize that I'm NOT as over-the-top crazy as you may first think. I fall in the moderately crazy range.)

In this magazine, there were carved pumpkins of every description, ranging from your basic, traditional triangle eyes and nose, to professionally done real-life portraiture.  She fell in love with the black cat...a simple, very cool and untraditional jack o'lantern.

We were going to do it, anyway, because we both liked the idea, but the "contest" really gave us the push.

There was spray paint involved, so I had to go to the hardware store.

There was tagboard involved so it looked like I was going to have to go to....gulp....Walmart, but fortunately I found it at the grocery store.  Yes!

There were cottonballs and drill-bits involved.

I'm telling you....we were INTO this!

You may be wondering about Angus....

Well. 

He just wanted a scary face pumpkin. 

I thought I was going to do a witch pumpkin, myself, and found a little old used witch's hat at the second hand store, plopped it on a plain pumpkin and was trying to think about the face.

He saw THAT and immediately wanted a PIRATE jack o'lantern!  (I'm sure you didn't see THAT coming...)

What follows is the documentary of the 2011 jack o'lanterns:

Zee blank gourd...

We didn't turn the kids loose with the knives....BUT they DID have to get the pumpkin guts out.

It was a deliciously hideous experience.

Some folks can't take the slime, so they use tools. They also use persuasive big, green eyes when they tire of the tools and toil....

So, Maggie wanted to taste the raw pumpkin, because she is a full-sensory sort of girl.  If she's going to experience something, there's no halfway with this child.  She tasted the flesh, she tasted the slime and then decided the seeds would probably be much the same so she passed on them. 

She was also the one who squealed with the awfulness of it all, then went back for more.  Because she's just dying to hunt something, we told her that when she started hunting, she'd have to gut out her own animals, just like gutting the pumpkin.  This was a startling thought.  You mean....take all the smooshy, icky, slimy stuff out of their tummies? Yup.  Hmmmm......
After thinking it through, she decided that she could do that, but was grateful it wouldn't have to happen for a few years.

There's a gap in the process, because my hands were covered in pumpkin goo, too. 

Here's the basic cat face, after 40 minutes of intense, precise carving:

It looks pretty simple, but I wanted it exquisitely smooth and clean.

In the meanwhile, the boys pulled together a Jack (Sparrow) O'Lantern, acceptably scary and....is that a TTU symbol on the eyepatch? The double T was too much, but this is the look they're going for...
(Incidentally, when Angus got up the next morning, he came running out and looked his pumpkin in the face, sweetly saying, "Guns up, Pirate Punkin!"  That's my boy...)

The black cat, after two coats of spray paint and tagboard accessories.  Maggie tried to hug it, and introduced all the real live cats to their new friend.  They were decidedly unimpressed. (Figaro, however, snuck onto the table in the middle of the night and chewed the ends of the Pumpkin Cat's ears!  I think he felt a little more threatened than he let on during the introductions....)

After ear repairs, the jack o'lanterns were hauled to the school party, where they rahther stood out....
(You'll see more in the party post....)

Did they win?

Well, every pumpkin won in different categories, because it's not really a cut-throat sort of contest, you know.  Maggie was SO hoping for a cut-throat contest, but was satisfied with the acknowledgement of a scary design. (Scary? Loony, maybe...)

The good thing is that everyone was pleased, the pumpkins met expectations, we had family time in the production of them, and they're considered members of the family for another couple days.

Out of Milk

Lists, lists, lists....
I'm a compulsive list maker. 
Not that it does me a whole heck of a lot of good, really.  Generally, I think people who make lists seem to get through them, but for me they seem to be more of a way of organizing my brain "out loud" than anything.  I'm not one of those people who are frantic about getting everything checked off; I LIKE doing that, but I don't lay awake at night in a cold sweat if there are two things left on the list by the coffee pot. 

Lists are crazy things.  I like to see how people write them, what sort of order, how they notate, their shorthand...
I make little boxes next to my list items, like bullet points.
If I'm in a big hurry, it's a little dash, then the item.  And I have sub-lists. 
Some people number, some people write mish-mash as thoughts come to them.
Some...bless their little OCD hearts...use different colors of pens.  I consider it gain if I find a pen that writes without skipping!

Grocery lists, though, drive me NUTS.
I can't seem to keep the one nice little notebook by the fridge with the list that I can add to as we go.  My notebooks have been known to walk off to other rooms, or, instead of tearing out the page I take the whole book to the store and don't get it back to its spot. 
If I tear out the paper, it gets crammed in my pocket or purse....sometimes it makes it to the store, sometimes it doesn't.  Shopping without a list is painful, especially as far from the store as we live! 

This week I found an application for my phone that will SAVE ME!
It may save you, too, if you have a rough time with shopping lists.
It's called Out of Milk, and it's brilliant.  Even I can run it without help!  It's the perfect blend of simple and expandable that I never seem to find in any computer programs. 

It has three sections:
Shopping List
Pantry List
To-Do List

Each of those can be expanded if you wish.  For example, I created a Christmas Shopping List that I can just punch ideas into.  The Pantry List also has a Spice List, because people like me who lose shopping lists, never seem to remember if they have pumpkin pie spice or not and buy it again in a panic, two days before Thanksgiving, only to get home and find its aged twin in the cupboard.  D'oh!  I love the spice list. 

BUT....
The absolute COOLEST feature on this little app is the ability to scan barcodes from a container you're about to throw away.  Yes.  Just like those little bippy machines in the stores!  (If you think I scanned about 25 things in a row, just to watch it work, you're right.  It's so cool.  You can't believe how fun THAT is...)

So when I'm out Christmas shopping...you know, the whole 15 minutes of that that I do every year....I can scan bar codes on things I think might work for the kids, then go home and look for them cheaper online. 

Rarely am I this excited about technology!

Rarely does technology work for me!
(Really.  I think that's why I can never get all worked up over things like Kindles.  I seem to find all the bugs that the programmers missed.)

Rarely do I recommend anything having to do with organization COUPLED with technology!  In fact, I may never have done so prior to this post.

Anyway, if you want to read the official blurb and check it out for yourself, go to
Out of Milk and see what I'm so excited about!

Your Manners Are Showing: The Handbook of Teen-Age Know-How

From the inside of the book jacket:

(Copyright 1946, incidentally...)

What's your dating rating?  Are you ever baffled by the right fork at the wrong time?  Do blue moods besiege you? Do you have money troubles, parent problems or clothes jitters?  Would you like to be more popular?

(So far, she just described me EXACTLY at age 40, with the exception of the dating rating...)

If you're like most teen agers, these are just a few of the everyday problems which come up one time or another.  So here's the book that was written especially for you.

YOUR MANNERS ARE SHOWING is the bright and sensible low-down designed to help you put your best foot forward in every social situation.

(Well, YEAH!)

These gay illustrations, breezy verses and simple gems of good advice make it easy for you to remember the basic rules of good behavior which are essential for smooth, smart operating.

Introductions, invitations, letters, waiters, dates, visits, parties, tablemanners, cigarettes or small talk will never seem so tough again aftyer you've read Betty Betz' (YES, that's her REAL NAME!) slant on how to handle them.

Why wait until it's too late to insure your social success when YOUR MANNERS ARE SHOWING makes it easy and fun to be popular?

Indeed.

I'm just reading this book now, in the hopes of dealing with many of those issues plaguing my social life.

Had I read it twenty-five years ago, who KNOWS where I'd be now?!?!

A sneak peak at some of my favorite tips, so far:

(Go ahead.  You can take notes!  You'll want to...)

You can't know how many nights I've lain awake, fretting about a situation such as this.

My popularity has obviously suffered because I've introduced gals and lads in the incorrect order.

*sob!*

*Ahem...*

This should be superimposed on every locker in every school in our great nation.

And a goodly number of billboards, too.

 

Speechless in the horror of how many times I've made THIS faux pas....

(PRETTY sure no guys ever kept notes from me for more than the amount of time it would take them to read 'em and flush 'em....)

I'd be devastated if Jill ever found out what Phil REALLY thinks of me....

I'd lay $100 on the table, betting that any teen I sat across from today wouldn't know what the heck billing and cooing is.

Or why it would make someone "enrapt".

 But WAIT....
There's MORE!
Read this little excerpt from the chapter entitled "Raising Parents":

Intrigued?

Want to borrow my little etiquette book to improve YOUR popularity in a bright and sensible manner?

Tough.

You can come to my house and read it, so we can sit and snork together....

Coffee Snob

I am one. 

I didn't start out this way; it's not my parents' fault....they raised me on Folgers.

It's my friends.

They're the wicked but well-meaning souls that have steadily encouraged my obsession with this legal, addictive stimulant.

It's true.

My friend/cousin Kari took me to my first Starbucks in L.A., exposing me to the idea of buying beans to grind at home.  (I had no idea that was a possibility!)

My sister (I guess we're friends.  :) gave me a little home espresso maker that made luke-warm (but heavenly tasting) coffee. 

My friend Justin introduced me to my first French press experience, creating a deep and abiding longing to own my own.  A longing that persisted for a couple years and remained unfulfilled (because I'm too cheap to buy one) until.....

My friend Traci gave me the prettiest little French press pot for a Christmas present.  Turns out, beans need to be ground a little more coarsely for the French press. A whole new project...

And last year, for my birthday, my sweet friend Shelly sent me a coffee roaster.

That's right.

This is coffee snobbery taken to an almost absurd level.

I roasted one...ONE, mind you....batch of beans, dropped the glass roasting container while I was putting it away, sat in the midst of the shards and cried my eyes out. It turns out this particular model of coffee roasters is no longer being made or sold anywhere, despite its popularity among java junkies like me, and I thought all was lost.  And cried some more. 

The green coffee bean dealers, Sweet Maria's, apparently recognized the need for replacement parts in order to keep customers buying their product, so they found someone who would rebuild the glass container for a small fee! Rejoice!

So, the day before my birthday THIS year, my coffee roaster was restored to full working order and I began my Sunday custom of roasting coffee beans for the first glorious cup of coffee on God's day....every week. 

Let me tell you this: if you have any coffee snob tendencies at ALL, you'll want to stop reading right here, shut the little window down, and walk away.  Consider this a cautionary note, and I can't be held responsible for the consequences if you continue on in this post....

I made this extra large so you could read the label.

You can see that obviously there are crazier coffee people than me, who describe the under and overtones of the brew with words like "piney resinous aroma".

Seriously.

The worst part is.....

I detected that aroma, too!

 Basically, the coffee roaster I have is just a hot air popcorn popper on steroids, with a filter on top.  That's it!  It's laughably simple, fool-proof even for me! 

So the beans look like this when they start.

After about 2 minutes, they're like this....

After 4 minutes, even prettier...

 5 minutes....

 6 minutes...

Done, at 7 minutes!

Were you wondering why I was roasting outside? 

There's smoke. 

My family finds it offensive and they aren't really hip on the fire alarm going off first thing in the morning.

Buncha wimps...

:)

Filter with the chaff from the roasted beans.

The beans swell with the heat, pop and split, and the fan in the bottom blows the chaff upward and out of the roasting container.

And here's the finished product, ready to be ground!

*This particular bean didn't get as black and greasy as I like, but it was still pretty good.

The best tasting coffee comes from greasy beans...did you know that?

Someday, I'm going to have a coffeeshop (on a beach somewhere) called The Greasy Bean....

Come for a visit and I'll roast you a special blend!

And the blessed beverage, tempered with cream, in my favorite mug!

(Also from Shelly, who did the illustration you see on it!)