Duh.

Beep Beep! Roadrunner, The Coyote’s After You! 7 Random Things To Tell You On A Wednesday

/ Ally Bean / 203 Comments

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1. I am agreeing. Social connectedness can take on many forms. I read THIS article about lively front yards that include any items like, but not limited to, garden gnomes, porch swings, plastic flamingoes, little free libraries, and assorted other decorative stuff. The conclusion was that: “residents who expressed themselves with items in front of their house reported feeling a greater sense of place.” 

2. I am enthusiastic. What beach reading books are to summer, ‘Bunny Rabbit’ TV Shows are to your mental health. Bunny Rabbit TV shows aren’t literally about rabbits, they are shows that give you a lift, not requiring more from you than your willingness to be distracted in a lighthearted way from your woes. I grok this term, enjoyed the article and the comments that followed, and haven’t stop thinking about which TV shows to put on my list since I read about this idea.

3. I am ditzy. In my ongoing attempts at being mindful of water usage, I pour the end of our glasses of drinking water onto the houseplants. Welp, in a moment of *duh* I poured the remains of a flavored club soda [San Pellegrino Dark Morello Cherry & Pomegranate to be exact] onto a large pothos. And within days the plant turned yellow-ish and began dropping leaves. Yes, I murdered a plant.

4. I am laughing. According to my results from the Pottery Barn Style Finder Quiz my decorating style is Farmhouse: “rustic woods, hardworking metals, and sprinkles of barnyard whimsy.”  Me thinks not. While the metals around here may be hardworking [not sure what that even means] the wood is refined and there is NO barnyard whimsy here. As if.

5. I am enthralled. I’ve learned that after soccer, badminton is the most popular sport in the world. Who knew? As such there is scientific research about which shuttlecocks, also known as birdies, are best: ones with duck feathers or ones made of nylon. Learn more HERE about findings that “may represent a new arc in the history of the beloved sport.”

6. I am indulging. I decided that I NEEDED something sweet to eat, something devoid of nutritional value. So I scrounged around online and found this Strawberry Rice Krispie Treats recipe that adds freeze-dried strawberries to the classic recipe. Divinely delicious.

7. I am entertained. I stumbled over this website, MovieGrid.io, that offers a daily online challenge about movies. Titles of said. Dates premiered. Stars in movies. You have 9 chances to answer 9 questions correctly which, if you do, creates a completely filled-in grid of 9 movie posters, NOT like what you see immediately below.  

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QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

What gives you a sense of place? Is having one important to you?

What’s on your Bunny Rabbit TV Shows list?

If you take the PB style quiz, what style do they say you are? Do you agree with the results?

When you want something sweet to eat that is devoid of nutritional value, what do you turn to? Are you on Team Rice Krispie Treats with me?

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Let’s Laugh: Three Absurd Conversations + Something I Cannot Explain

/ Ally Bean / 243 Comments

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Three Absurd Conversations

ONE – Out to dinner with friends. The conversation turns to ice cream. The questions: 1) What is your favorite flavor? and 2) Where do you buy it?

My answer: Spumoni is my favorite flavor but it’s difficult to find, usually only around Christmas, and never for sale in Kroger where I shop most of the time. Seems like they could have it.

A friend, a lawyer, pipes up and jokingly says: It’s not Kroger’s fault for not having spumoni, it’s your fault for liking a weird flavor of ice cream.

Immediately everyone at the table agrees with him and starts laughing at me while I’m forced to admit that he could be right. He might have a point.

You like vanilla, it’s everywhere, no problem.

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TWO – Overheard while shopping in Dillard’s. An older couple, mid-80s, are in the women’s clothing section near where I’m standing. She’s looking at blouses, he’s looking bored. She pulls a blouse on a hanger off the rack and tells him she’s going to try it on.

He seems surprised and says: I thought we were just horsing around here. Then he makes a low guttural snorting sound like a horse whinny while attempting to prance like a horse.

She looks over at me, rolls her eyes, then turns to him and says: Slow down there Roy Rogers, hold your horses, and wait here.

This spunky reply made me laugh out loud and him smile like the ornery cute kid he probably used to be.

Oh, to age with your sense of humor intact.

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THREE – Said by the husband after he plugged in the heating pad so I could lay on the bed with it on my aching thigh.

Him: You’re not supposed to sleep with the electric heating pad on, so once you fall asleep turn it off.

Me staring at him: Think about what you said.

Him: Really, that’s what the warning on the tag says.

Me: Keep thinking.  

Him after long pause: OH… I see the problem.

Which confirmed that he still understands logic, but had me in stitches laughing at and thankfully with someone who rarely says anything illogical.

Even the brainy ones can be dim. 

Something I Cannot Explain

This isn’t my car.

Mid-afternoon I pulled into a parking lot adjacent to a city park and found this car *parked* [abandoned?] in this awkward way.

There were no indications that the car had hit any other vehicle, stopping midway while pulling into the parking space.

After I parked down the way and walked back by the car I saw that the inside of the car was tidy. There wasn’t a note on the windshield explaining what had happened. There was no police citation on it.

It was just a half-parked car in the way in a public parking lot with nary a soul around to explain the situation.

Any idea what was going on here?

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A Glimpse Into The Time Before Morsels: A Recipe, A Realization, A Research Project

/ Ally Bean / 231 Comments

Maybe you know this already and I’m the last to know, but I’m going to tell you my story anyhow.

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I HAPPENED UPON A WRAPPER from a Nestlé Semi-Sweet chocolate product [see photo immediately above].

I found it among the recipes that my mother had saved, filed loosely in an old notebook. The recipes, ranging from the 1940s to the 1990s, are from her mother and newspapers clippings and friends and packaging. No rhyme or reason to them, just saved.

My best guess is the wrapper is from the early 1940s. It intrigued me.

After glancing at the front I looked on the back at the recipe. I skimmed the recipe and it initially looked about the same as any chocolate chip cookie recipe you’d see today.

The copy on the wrapper states that it’s THE ORIGINAL Toll House Chocolate Cookie recipe created by Ruth Wakefield of Whitman, MA. And it could be. However the current Nestlé website says that this recipe, a recipe that differs in one significant way, is the original Toll House Cookie Recipe.

You see, it wasn’t until I turned the package over again and looked closely at the front that I realized this WASN’T a package for Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate morsels [chips] that we have today. It WAS for a bar of chocolate that was to be cut into “pieces the size of a pea” by the person making the cookies.

As in if you want chips of chocolate in your cookies, do it yourself, darling [see photo immediately below].

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I HAD A DUH! MOMENT because I’d no idea that chocolate chips had not always existed, which is a rather lame thing to say. Obviously someone invented them. They don’t fall from the heavens above fully formed, now do they?

After a bit of research I discovered that chocolate chips were originally a kind of molasses chocolate-coated candy made popular in the early 1890s by Kauffmanns of Pittsburgh, PA. In 1897 a court case involving the use of the trademarked name “Trowbridge Chocolate Chips” also described chocolate chips as being molasses chocolate-coated candy.

However by the 1930s as Wakefield’s recipe grew in popularity the term *chocolate chip* morphed from being a kind of candy into being an ingredient in cookies, so much so that by the early 1940s Toll House cookies were often referred to as chocolate chip cookies.

Seeing an opportunity for increased sales, in 1940 Nestlé started making and selling manufactured chocolate chips that they called ‘morsels.’ This was in addition to the semi-sweet chocolate bars for which they were known.

So with that short history lesson on what I’d call the primary ingredient in Toll House Cookies, I’ll end this post by asking you:

Did you know there was a time when you created your own chocolate chips [aka morsels] to put in your cookies?

What do you call cookies that have chocolate chips [aka morsels] in them: Toll House Cookies or Chocolate Chip Cookies?

And more to the point, made any of them lately?

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SOURCES:

A Brief History of the Chocolate Chip via Mental Floss

Chocolate Chip Cookies Chip versus Morsel via New England Recipes

The First “Chocolate Chip” Was a Molasses Candy via Smithsonian Magazine

Who Baked the First Nestlé Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie? via Chowhound

In Which I Wash My Mouth Out With Soap Because I Did Not Think Ahead

/ Ally Bean / 176 Comments

It’s not that I swear all the time.

I only do so when the situation calls for it, according to my own moral compass. Thus when I tell you that I let out a string of curse words you may be assured it was necessary.

Here’s what happened. It’s a one thing leads to another scenario.

Winter arrived. My skin got dry and itchy so I stopped using Dial bar soap in the shower, switching to a gentler bar of soap that isn’t so intense. But because I’m a frugal woman I put the partially used bar of soap in a drawer in the bathroom cabinet near the sink.

This drawer houses items I use to make myself presentable– including, for instance, a tub of moisturizing cream and a few bottles of leave-in hair conditioner and a razor or three.

Also in the drawer there’s a box of Arm & Hammer baking soda that I occasionally use instead of toothpaste. I use the baking soda every few days so the box is open (with the little cardboard lid thingie sort of closed) in the drawer. It’s a throwback to my childhood when people sometimes used baking soda for the cleaning of teeth. [Don’t judge.]

And this is where the trouble began.

As I’m sure you know baking soda is often used in refrigerators as a way of absorbing odors in them. Very effective, good stuff. BUT did you know that if you put an open box of it in a drawer with an unwrapped partially used bar of heavily scented soap, the baking soda will absorb the scent, the flavor, the essence of that soap?

Of course thinking on it now you do, but I was not so wise. I didn’t anticipate the consequences of storing Arm & Hammer baking soda and Dial bar soap, side-by-side, in a closed bathroom drawer.

Hence it came to be that one morning I reached for the now Dial-soap-scent-infused Arm & Hammer baking soda and used the baking soda to brush my teeth, not knowing what had happened to it in the drawer. From this experience I learned can confirm that Dial soap tastes awful, rating high on the yuck-o-meter, if there is such a thing.

Also I can confirm that while I don’t swear often, it’s a skill you never forget, like riding a bike. I know this to be true because between rinsing my mouth out with water multiple times, I used words of the sort not meant for a PG-13 family blog like this one. Thus I’ll paraphrase what I said using The Good Place’s Eleanor Shellstrop‘s sanitized curse words instead of my own.

Holy mother forking shirt balls! BLEECH!

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Happy Weekend, everyone. Try to keep it clean.

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