Malaquinta

T & A (TNA) spent last week in beautiful Mexico.  The $5 charge at our resort for 15 minutes on the Internet didn't allow us to blog on-site, but now we're back!  Stay tuned... 

Our little angel

Ted loves him some cereal. The man can't get enough. I honestly don't think he would have any issues about eating it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner except that someone somewhere told him he's supposed to eat vegetables every once in a while, too.

I love cereal as well, but the only time I get to eat it is on Saturday and MAYBE Sunday (if we're not running late (which is usually every week)). I leave the house at 6:30 for work now, so breakfast is a piece of fruit or bread on my way out the door. Or, peanut M&Ms, of course, which can always be found somewhere in my car, desk, or on my person.

But I digress.

Did you ever wonder what your future children would get from you? Did or do the queries continue as you searched or search for a spouse? Whose traits will they inherit, good and bad? This is one of our favorite games. (For the record, if it's a boy, we definitely want him to have Ted's boobs.) I have a feeling that with Ted's much love for the crunchety goodness that can only be made better with some nice cold milk, and my, um, couth, this is what we might end up with.







Another bowl, anyone?

Bipolar Ballads

We've all heard that sappy 1982 Chicago hit "Hard to Say I'm Sorry/Get Away."  This adult contemporary gem starts off as a fairly melancholy love song and then at the four minute mark it segues into this strikingly more upbeat pseudo-rock anthem.  This song got me thinking, is there an entire micro-genre of music out there awaiting my discovery?  Let's call them bipolar ballads--tunes with drastic changes in tempo.  I was now on the prowl, what other schizophrenic ditties could I dig up?

I kept my ear to the ground, and I was serenaded by none else than rhythm and blues singer/songwriter Lionel Richie crooning 1985's "Say You Say Me."  If you can't help but picture Mikhail Baryshnikov strutting his stuff in a unitard when you hear this you aren't alone, it was featured on the soundtrack of one of my favorite Cold War era films "White Nights" (by the way, my favorite is "Red Dawn").  "Say You Say Me" takes an interesting spin on the bipolar ballad.  Namely, slow power ballad, jarringly interrupted by 15 seconds of pop confection, with a somewhat smoother transition back to said power ballad.

Now two songs do not constitute a micro-genre.  There had to be more!  Um, there are.  Allison and I finally wedded our musical collections about six months after we wedded ourselves to one another.  I love listening to my music on shuffle, so songs from the Allison music vaults come up with regularity.  On one of these occasions "Dancin'" from the infamous 80s film flop Xanadu started to pipe through my speakers.  Now this is a bipolar ballad in need of some serious psychotropics.  It's big band and then it's 80's rock and then it's big band and then it's 80's rock and then you're on the couch in need of a cold compress.  Fittingly, with the opening of Xanadu on Broadway, the soundtrack to this Olivia Newton-John career-killer is currently reregistering (at least minimally) on the national consciousness. 

Whenever I make a list I always feel good once it has three members, but there are a couple other songs I'd like to quickly deem BBs (bipolar ballads).  One that's more firmly enveloped within my musical tastes is Radiohead's "Paranoid Android."  Thom Yorke, lead singer of the band even admitted that it, "really started out as three separate songs and [they] didn't know what to do with them."  Allison has a contribution too, Led Zeppelin's "Fool in the Rain."  I want to hear more though.  So if you know a BB please let me know--they must not be forgotten! 

Not Hammer time - yet

I don't usually remember dreams after I wake up, but I had a dream last night that kept me from sleeping soundly, and is therefore blogworthy.

Our bedroom faces our driveway, and we usually have the curtains closed. In my dream, they were open, and Ted and I were talking when 5 rough-looking people started creeping down the slope of the hill. I had them in full view and was a little freaked out by their appearance, and was even more freaked out when they just slowly turned the doorknob to our front door and walked right in.

Now, you know when you watch scary movies and some strange sound is heard which makes the main character want to "check it out"? I know that "checking it out" moves the plot forward, but I can't help but think that character is very stupid for leaving the safety of a locked room uninhabited by strange bumps and sharp objects to go face the freakiness that must be awaiting him/her.

I was that stupid person in my dream.

There they were, creeping through our hallway and into our kitchen and dining room. In a low voice, I demanded they tell me who they were and what they wanted. One of them got angry at this question and produced a rusty, heavy hammer from behind his back. He walked toward me with much stealth, each step exponentially decreasing my confidence level. Ted joined me at that point, but stood behind me instead of in front of me. Thanks, baby.

I told them I didn't know why they were here, but that there was no reason we couldn't figure something out. That's when Hammer Guy got really freaky and started banging dents into our beautiful dining room table that we got from Easy Life Furniture* - where "the only way to get it cheaper is if you import it yourself, but you don't know how" - and basically making me very upset.

THAT'S when I remembered the crapload of cookies I made last Sunday (which was both in my dream and for real). I had been craving the amazing chocolate chip cookies that Dana has brought to a few functions, so I finally busted them out Sunday afternoon, much to the pleasure of Ted and me. This recipe really does make a crapload, though, so I had to freeze half. It was this bag of frozen cookies that I took out of the freezer and assuaged our dining room table attackers with. I had to talk to each one, but I offered the cookies, and as they chewed and smiled, the anger passed and they left, with no further scathing.

That's where my dream ended, but I'm telling you - if you ever find yourself in this situation, you better hope to high heaven you have some of those cookies in your freezer, or you will be headed straight to the ER. That is... if they let you live.. MWAH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!


Cookies That Prevent You From Getting Hit in the Head with a Hammer

1 Cup Shortening
1 Cup Butter
1 ½ Cup White Sugar
1 ½ Cup Brown Sugar

3 eggs
2 tsp Vanilla

5 ½ Cups Flour
1 ½ tsp Baking Soda
1 ½ Salt

1-2 bags Semi-Sweet Choc Chips

- In a mixer (or with hand mixer) cream together the shortening, butter, and both sugars.

- Add the eggs and vanilla and beat for THREE minutes (beating for a full 3 minutes is very important. You’ll see the consistency of the batter change as you beat the eggs with the butter mixture).

- In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

- Mix half the flour mixture into the butter/egg mixture. When it’s incorporated, mix in the other half of the flour. Add the chocolate chips (I like to use 2 small bags of chips. Sometimes I use 1 bag milk chips and 1 bag semi-sweet chips)

- Using 2 spoons, drop spoonfuls of dough onto cookie sheet, or use a mini cookie-scooper.
- Bake at 350 degrees appx 7 minutes. The key is to leave them a little doughy. You’ll know they’re done when they are just slightly golden on top. If you wait till the bottoms are golden, you’ve cooked too long.

Makes 5-6 dozen cookies**

Thanks for letting me live, Dana!

* - This is truly the jingle on the radio commercial for Easy Life Furniture. When Ted first told me, I didn't believe him, and would wait for the commercials just so I could hear it. He was totally right, and now it's our favorite jingle to sing. Some of you have been blessed to hear it from our lips. Others of you can only hope.

** - This is a lie. If you use a small cookie scoop, it makes about 8 dozen. Not that I'm complaining. See previous post.

A Balanced Diet

My verbosity does not even approach the furthest outskirts of my wife's, so don't expect many Allison-style, multi-paragraph narratives from me. I love Allison, and one reason I love her is that Allison = Different. For Allison's birthday, as she described in the previous post, she and her bosom buddy Megarino threw themselves a shindig (or was it a hoohaw?). At said shindig the guests were not-so-gently prodded to present some sort of talent. Now I have talents, but most of them are not of the performance variety so I had to stretch the definition of the word talent. Allison says one of my talents is being a brat, so I thought, "Ha! I'll be a brat for my talent and roast the love of my life at her birthday party!" It was probably better live, which isn't saying much, but here is the online version of the roast. The original was in PowerPoint format, which being a graduate student, is another one of my "talents".

Now remember, different does NOT mean bad! In the case of Allison, it means good, fun, lovable, unexpected, bright, shiny, smart, beautiful, etc. As an example I thought I'd illustrate how Allison's view of the food pyramid differs from the traditional view of the food pyramid.

Now Allison has her own take on the food pyramid. The base is a solid foundation of M&Ms. To be honest it's actually peanut M&Ms, but under duress she will dabble in other varieties.A casual tour of our apartment reveals how deep her love affair with the M&M goes.Here's a commemorative M&Ms shopping bag on the floor of her closet.Let's see, we've got lightbulbs, a bike lock, a garden hose nozzle and oh yeah a couple bags of peanut M&Ms. Of course! That's a very logical place for the M&Ms! Candy bowl in front entry....check.
Peanut M&Ms in candy bowl....check.
"Uh oh, we're almost out! Get another bag--I think there are some in the garage next to the lawnmower."Phew, in case you finished those M&Ms you snacked on when you first came in the house there's another bowl of them on the dining room table (20 feet away). Mmmm, this time it's the dark chocolate plain M&Ms.On our way back from a Utah Thanksgiving we stopped in Las Vegas to see "Mamma Mia". We were stretching our little legs after a long day's drive when Allison noticed someone carrying a shopping bag emblazoned with the M&Ms logo. It's almost as if the earth stopped rotating, Allison made a bee line to the unsuspecting purchaser of M&M's paraphernalia and blurted, "where did you get that?" Surprisingly unshaken, the man gave us directions to M&M's World, a few blocks down The Strip. Now we had an hour or so before the show so Allison made an executive decision and we were off--off to see the wonderful wizard of M&M. I've rarely seen Allison move faster, we were like the crowded masses rushing into some New Jersey Wal*Mart at 5 am on the day after Thanksgiving. I think the highlight for Allison was being able to, um....er....grope (is that the right word?) a bigger-than-life model of Yellow, the peanut M&M.
The next layer of Allison's food pyramid, and only mildly secondary in importance, is chocolate. Yes, yes I know...M&Ms consist of chocolate, but Allison's devotion to them truly transcends merely lumping them in with the entire pantheon of chocolate. So keep your quibbles to yourselves--in Allison's food pyramid, M&Ms and chocolate are two discrete layers.

As indisputable evidence of Allison's love affair with all things derived from the cacao bean, I took a snapshot of her recipe books. Let's browse the titles:

1000 Chocolate, Baking and Dessert Recipes
The Art of Chocolate
The Essence of Chocolate
Chocolate Cakes
A Passion for Chocolate


and


The Ghirardelli Chocolate Cookbook


Just in case we couldn't find the right recipe in "1000 Chocolate, Baking and Dessert Recipes", heck! there are only 1000 of them, it's good to know we have 5 other cookbooks dedicated to the subject. I must make a confession, however, one of the books was a Christmas gift from me, but hey, a man's got to know his woman.

Next on the pyramid, and again only slightly less important is Trader Joe's. You know, that unique grocery store that has a unique place in Allison's heart. Once while we were dating I made the 'mistake' of asking Allison what her favorite Trader Joe's item is. 3 hours later the conversation topic was still going strong.

We've got more TJ's bags in our house than the TJ's on Lake Avenue.

Guess which Rose Parade float Allison was more than game to pose in front of?

Oh yeah, and then there's that tippy-toppy-tiny little part of the pyramid. I can barely read the fine print but I think it says something about bread, cereal, rice, pasta, vegetables, fruits, milk, yogurt, cheese, meat, poultry, fish, beans and nuts.

I love you Allison! Happy Birthday (again)!

The Best Thing that Ever Happened to February v.3

Many of you have asked how my birthday party went, so while it's still February, here's a synopsis.

Megan and I have been having a joint birthday party for years now. We were born six days apart in the same town, same hospital. We grew up together but then she moved 30 minutes away which could have been to Australia for as much as we saw each other. Our paths crossed during our early single days and then out of the blue one day she called me to see if I wanted to move in to an apartment together in Pasadena since she had accepted a job close to there. I responded with an enthusiastic affirmative and we've been great friends ever since. We lived in that very cool apartment on El Molino (we became self-proclaimed Molineras) for two years, at which she married Brett.

The first February we shared together Megan proposed we have a joint birthday party. Though we weren't running in all the same circles, our mutual and individual friends would totally get along. In planning the party, we were trying to figure out what to do for entertainment, and she came up with this great idea of telling people that instead of bringing a gift, they were to bring a talent - ANY talent - to bring and share. We had a ball coming up with our own talents. I can't remember what I did, but Megan did a FABULOUS tap dance, and we did a bit of a comedy act about our birthday trip to Hawaii. Another big thanks to all the hilarious acts that ensued. I have photos, but they're on that thing called "film". And I don't have a scanner.

And so, without further ado, here are the acts that made us laugh, sigh, and wonder how in the world they do that: (explanations/captions are below the pictures)

The Showoffs (official name) Phil and Claire, singing and playing a number from Jekyll & Hyde. How did she know I heart Linda Eder?

Their show-off spawn, Thomas, who sang "Teach Me to Walk in the Light" complete with cape. His brother, who rocks the karaoke place with his rendition of "Sweet Child o' Mine", was sick and had to cancel his show. Tickets will be refunded.

I did a little Peggy Lee ditty with the always fabulous and stunning Michelle Budge at the piano. She ratcheted up the sass, and I was [ ] this close to climbing up on the piano, but my subconscious remembered at the last minute that my mom just had it refurbished. Not a good idea.

My own father upstaged me with a recited story of a man standing in a cow pasture, witnessing the game of football for the first time. All in a hick accent. Priceless.

Mike Moore channeling Bob Marley and his "Redemption Song." The thing I love about Mike (well, one of them) is that he has no issues about laughing at himself. He forgot a lyric, paused the whole song, 4 people sang the line he forgot and he just picked right back up again. When we go to weekly karaoke, he does the same thing, but his fix is usually more entertaining than the actual lyrics.

Phil busted out some magic tricks with ropes and coins - had me all in a tither about how he did it. That's my brown head in the foreground - transfixed by the goings-on, ready to catch a flip of the hand to prove it's not magic. Alas, it was magic.

Emily did "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on her eyebrows. Awesome.

YMCA dance party, accompanied by a classical pianist. 'Nuff said.

Megan (on the right) and Carol Ann singing "I'll Fly Away" from O Brother, Where Art Thou? Megan also started the festivities with a song she wrote long ago drawing similarities between the hardships in our lives and the La Brea Tar Pits. I love folk music.

I didn't get a picture of one of the acts - my very own husband roasting me. It was hilarious, and I was so busy trying not to wet my pants that I forgot to pull out the camera. He'll post about what he did later.

And what's a party without food? Here's the main spread: Bacon-Wrapped Dates, Mini Pesto Parmesan Pizzas, Sausage-Stuffed Mushrooms, Baked Chicken Sandwiches, Veggies, Cheese & Crackers. We scarfed.

The dessert spread, which is also a main spread for me: Cream Puffs with Caramel, Raspberry, and Chocolate Ganache dipping sauces, Ted's Almond Cake slivers, Fruit Platter, and the Birthday Cake - Vanilla Bean with Lemon Curd and Blueberries.

And what's a birthday without blowing out the candles?

Yay for 31!

This next one is my favorite, and not just because Ted and I look so cute.

Thanks to all who joined in the fun and sent all their birthday wishes! We look forward to another great party next year!

New Favorite Cheese

Ted and I seldom get to eat dinner together. I'd have to use the fingers and toes of both of us plus my other (undisclosed) lover to count how many times I've been asleep when he gets home. Same for the number of times I've left and he's still conked out. Recently, we've been working on coordinating a little better so we can have a few more meals at home. Well, on one of these nights, I was busy slaving away at various teacher-related tasks, having picked and nibbled all night. He came home and was hungry, so he started banging pots and pans around in the kitchen.


And then I heard it. The tell-tale sound of a VHS-sized cardboard box being ripped open and the unmistakable shimmy of dried pasta sliding out of it into a pot of boiling water. "ARE YOU MAKING MACARONI AND CHEESE?!?", said I. Long ago, friends of mine mentioned they refer to it as "yellow death" and I admit the name has kinda stuck. As the 8 minutes ticked by, however, I realized I was actually a teensy bit hungry.



"YEAH, YA WANT SOME?" he replied.



"UM....A LITTLE BIT. REALLY LITTLE." (We were in different rooms, see, so we had to yell.)



More clinking and a small clang. Then he enters the living room proud as a peacock, yet not smiling, and he set this in front of me and all my papers:






As I was laughing with glee, his first words were, "And it's SHELLS and cheese." And as he walked back to the kitchen, "Oh, baby. Don't you know it's all about presentation?"

Becky, I don't have arms long enough to thank you for that training. I was still laughing when I took my first fresh-ground-pepper bite. It was really good! I had to compliment Ted on his masterful work, to which he retorted, "I don't mess around with the macaroni. I was king of it in college. The secret is heating up the butter and milk before you add it - makes it creamier."

Consider me converted. I know what to ask for next time he cooks. hehehehehehe