Music Monday

This is how it started: I saw this weird clip of a nutty looking Boy George on Today and it triggered a mad musical YouTube journey to share with you, dear reader.

In no order at all, here are some songs I like a lot.

1. So Real by Jeff Buckley. Do you know the late Jeff Buckley? A former roommate of mine introduced me to his dreamy, swoony songs album Grace and just at the height of our crush, he died by drowning at age 30. Suck.

I love love love this album--the best known track is probably his haunting version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, which is gorgeous. It hurts my heart to see this referred to as "the Shrek song." Blerg.

2. This Woman's Work by Kate Bush. So it's not the most riveting video--it was 1989 fer crying out loud. Doesn't Kate just have the most amazing voice? Originally in the soundtrack for She's Having a Baby, which I never saw but features a baby-faced Kevin Bacon. Huh, a John Hughes movie that came out in 1988? I'm unclear why I never saw this.

3. The Weakness in Me by Joan Armatrading. Sorry kids, versions by Melissa Etheridge and Keisha White don't hold a candle and I refuse to link them. Although if you choose the Melissa version, you can see lots of dramatic lesbian shorts. Love the homegrown YouTube video.

4. Pretty much anything by Roxy Music. A million years ago when I was majorly in love with Duran Duran, I read an article in Tiger Beat or some such, where they cited Roxy Music as a major influence. Being the suburban kid that I was, I'd never heard of Roxy Music so got a tape from Tower Records. I quickly learned that Bryan Ferry owns cool, as you can see in the video for Jealous Guy. Bryan dated Jerry Hall before Mick was in the picture. And Roxy Music is how I learned of Rufus Wainwright, who opened for them several years ago. See how it all comes around? Years from now I'm not sure if I'll still be listening to Duran or Rufus but I know I'll be listening to Roxy. For old school Roxy, try Love is the Drug. For newer school Roxy try More Than This or the torchy Slave to Love.

5. 1967 from Adrian Belew. A total Renaissance man, Belew has worn many hats- guitarist for David Bowie, fronting King Crimson and an impressive solo career to boot. This guy rocks.

6. Island in the Sun by Weezer. Though Weezer falls squarely in the hipster boy realm, I defy anyone to resist their bouncy, happy tunes, perfect for driving or house cleaning. This is a pretty funny video courtesy of uber-hipster boy Spike Jonze, but whatevs. That monkey is damn cute.

Whoopsie! Bad Mama

Last night I got home rather late after being at a training all day then meeting a friend for dinner. The cats were off the wall, so I let them run up and down the hallway like a stampede of wildebeest. When they got bored of that, Gussie barged in on my downstairs neighbors, requiring a quick extraction and apology. Then I tried to answer some work emails but they were both acting like such pests, with their howling and attempting to eat my desk chair, I couldn't complete a thought. Figuring they needed more attention, I started hurling around the fuzzy mice, which are now all missing their eyes, ears, noses and tails (I watched Josephine chew off and consume one such tail a few days ago.) After about five minutes of this, they seemed tired but still agitated and I finally saw why: no food.

And this is why women shouldn't work outside of the home. Because you forget to feed your children.

Drool

I grew up in a family where it was perfectly normal to discuss your lunch plans over breakfast. At lunch we would strategize dinner. Also de rigueur was dreamy recollection of the prior meal, or really any particularly good meal. Even now, I'm sure that either of my sisters or me could name any dish or side that late Nanny used to make for Christmas, even though the last Nanny Christmas was probably fifteen years ago. Since going out into the world, I've encountered that strange breed of people who view food as nothing more than fuel, and would no sooner discuss a meal than they would their last trip to the gas station. Weird.

Fast forward to the interwebs years, and surprise, surprise--I've become a big fan of over-the-top home cooking blogs. I simply love sharing other people's trials and triumphs in the kitchen. The drawback is that I don't get to eat, but on the upside, I don't have to do any dishes and these bloggers are often amazing photographers. Or they possess admirable Photoshop skills. I can't tell the difference, but whatev. If I can't be eating a great meal, the next best thing is reading about one.

Do check out Pittsburgh Needs Eated. Don't ask me about the grammar of this title, but for the love of sugarcane, will you look at this cake? Lisa the baker/cellist can call it whatever she wants as far as I'm concerned, as long as she keeps baking and taking pretty pictures of her efforts. In fact, it's a variation of her ranger cookies that I'm baking right now.

Did you go and look at French Laundry at home when I wrote about cook-through blogs? You didn't?! Go now! This nutcase intrepid lady is plowing her way through The French Laundry Cookbook, with notes on ingredients and music to cook by. Though not her day job, she is clearly an ace in the kitchen, unfazed by multi-day recipes calling for distilling oils through cheesecloth, making ice cream and sawing apart (really) a pig's head.

For staggering and unapologetic amounts of dairy, check out The Pioneer Woman Cooks. This coronary inducing ditty is just the tip of the milkberg. I can't say I've made any of Ree's recipes but I'm fascinated by ranch life and the never-ending parade of calf nuts--which they don't eat, as far as I can tell, but feed to the dogs.

Speaking of balls, I also like In Praise of Sardines. One, Brett posted all those pictures of the organ-meat fest which is sort of right on, use the whole animal but also kind of blerg. Second, Brett is owner of soon-to-open SF restaurant Contigo. I'll assume this is why he hasn't posted in almost a month and be forgiving. He has made me kind of intrigued about sardines, as has Jennifer from Last Night's Dinner but I'm still a little afraid. Those eyeballs, gah.

Summer Reading

It's hot and sunny, perfect weather to read near a body of water. I would happily be sitting in a beach chair with my toesies in the surf if the water wasn't so forking cold here. Thank God my east coast vacation happens next month, where the ocean warms up enough to avoid death by hypothermia.

Here are some of my recent favorites:

1. The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon. I won't lie--initially this book was confusing as hell. I forced myself to persevere because I so loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and I'm really glad I did. Once I got my bearings (you can avoid my disorientation by reading pretty much any blurb about the book), I started over and then couldn't put it down. A virtual rewrite of history in which Israel is destroyed after WW II and Jews are resettled in Sitka, Alaska. The premise itself is sort of mind-boggling, but this funny/sad buddy detective story zips right along. Yes, there's a lot of Yiddish and some made-up words, but you'll figure it out. Plus author Michael Chabon lives in Berkeley, so reading him is the literary equivalent of being a locavore. Locabibliovore. There. I've just coined a new term.

2. What to Eat by Marion Nestle. This book is packed with very practical, common sense advice on what to eat, what not to eat and why. She also has a great blog at that site where she comments on current events in food politics, like when Kraft added vitamin E to Kool-Aid in an effort to convince consumers that colored sugar water can be good for your children's health. Blerg. I plan also to check out Food Politics.

3. The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta. Perhaps you don't recognize this name but if you saw Election or Little Children, then you know Tom Perrotta. His books are smart, funny skewers of middle American life but just as you think it's going to be a farce, a frothy romp, Perrotta injects a hefty dose of darkness and unease as his painfully human characters muddle through their messy lives with tragicomic results. Ugh. I've just irritated myself by using the word "tragicomic." You get the idea, though.

4. Pretty much anything by Anthony Bourdain. I've read Kitchen Confidential and just finished Gone Bamboo and really liked them both. Bourdain's got quite a foul mouth and seems like just the kind of person you'd want to have dinner with--especially if he's cooking. Also I actually learned some things about cooking, most of which I've forgotten already except: that little set up of dishes with chopped things and bowls of spices that you have at hand when you're cooking? It's called mis en place. I then actually saw that phrase used in the faboo cook-through blog French Laundry at Home and was ever-so-pleased with myself that I knew what she was talking about.

Happy Vagina Friday!

Reader, here's a too much information alert. My vagina has been on the verge of a bad mood for about week. Pre-yeasty conditions, not at all helped by long sweaty hikes in hot weather. Tonight, determined to turn the tide, I took the proverbial bull by the horns.

I've already talked with you about the amazing mannose solution to urinary tract woes but when your problem is more yeasty than bacterial, boric acid is the way to go. You can buy empty size 00 capsules and boric acid powder at a health food store and fill them yourself. Because boric acid can be irritating, I fill mine about half-3/4 full for an infection, and less than half for preventative. Insert one capsule at bed time for as many days as you feel you need it. Wear a pantyliner the next day. Though it's nothing like the disgusting goop that Monistat creams produce, what goes up, must come down.

And yes, boric acid is the active ingredient in Roach Prufe. It's a touch odd/disturbing that something you insert in your cooter can also be inserted in your kitchen cabinets for insect control but I need to tell you that both things work. Do not however put Roach Prufe in your vagina! It has roach pheromone in it which is just a horror movie waiting to be written.

And just so it's clear that I give equal air time (heh heh) to all genitalia, check out the banana hammock on David Beckham in his new Armani ad. Becks used to do more for me, but then I heard him talk and all I can think about is Michael Jackson, the mega sexual buzzkill of all time.

This and That

Josephine keeps smelling Gussie's ass, makes wicked bad smell face, recovers, then goes in for another whiff, repeats. Is that like the cat version of taking putrid stuff out of the fridge and not being able to stop yourself from smelling it, then trying really hard to get other people to smell it? She's an odd little cat but by gosh I love her.

I have an itchy rash all over my legs which can be attributable to either 1)poison oak that I hiked through two weeks in a row, 2) phenomenally dull razor or 3) some horrific combination of the two. Stay tuned.

Oh, this is rich. The AMA is picking on Ricki Lake for her support of home birth in her documentary The Business of Being Born. (Trailer starts if you click this link, so check your volume if you're at work). Obviously no one at the AMA watched this movie otherwise they would have known that Ricki Lake had her first kid in a hospital and during the filming of the movie, the director who was planning a home birth, was transported to the hospital on the advice of her midwife. Annoying. But not surprising.

Confession: Denise Richards It's Complicated makes me wish I had cable. Because she seems like a media-whore dimwit with crazy eyes, but I want to know. Actually, after viewing this clip she still seems like a dimwit but kind of funny, too. I love her can-do attitude when it comes to balancing the demands of family life with personal grooming.

Another Bay Area Beauty

This weekend I took another gorgeous, gee I love the Bay Area hike, this time at Mt. Tamalpais, or Mt. Tam as it's called in these parts. Of course I forgot my camera but I did have my camera case! Erm.

We did a loop from the Pantoll Ranger Station, going in on the Dipsea Trail and coming back on the Steep Ravine trail, not quite how this link describes it, but you get the idea. The Dipsea starts in woods, then opens up to beautiful rolling hills with wide ocean views. I was smarter this time and wore sunglasses and a hat to protect my still-tortured eyeballs. Oddly, there were far fewer flowers along this trail than I had seen at Point Tomales the week before. Not too many critters, either but lots of furry poop along the trail indicating some little bunny had a life-ending encounter with a bobcat or maybe a mountain lion? The poop didn't seem big enough for that. I get super excited about things like furry carnivore poop.

We came back on the Steep Ravine, which is both steep and a ravine. You work for it, that's for dang sure but you are rewarded along the way with beautiful redwoods, lush ferns, mossy fallen trees and lots of little waterfalls and clear boulder-lined pools to dunk hot sweaty feet. Toward the end you get to clamber up a ten-foot ladder, which adds a Survivor feel to the whole endeavor.

Incidentally, day use is now $6 at Mt Tam, which I'm going to go on record as saying is too much. Not because the park isn't worth it and not because it isn't actually stunningly gorgeous but because these are state parks and state taxes ought to pay for these parks so that they are free. Yeah, I said it. FREE. Nature for the people!

There isn't much happening in the world of celebrity trash gossip, I'm sorry to say. I'm unmoved by both Jennifer Aniston and John Mayer, so I'm meh about their couplehood. I'm generally grossed out by the Lance Armstrong/Kate Hudson merger, so I don't want to talk about that, either.

Okay, there is one thing--Katherine Heigl, what is your damage? First she trash talks the movie that helped make her famous, Knocked Up. Not that I didn't agree with her assessment that the film was sexist but uh, I didn't make a million dollars from it. Now she's opting out of the Emmy competition for her Grey's Anatomy role because the writing sucked. Again, can't argue with you there, Katherine but it is after all, the side your bread is buttered and last time I checked you were not an indentured servant to Grey's Anatomy. Please leave the Criticizing to the Professionals, thank you kindly.

This Will Perk You Right Up

I know, it's only Tuesday, gah. Maybe this will make you feel better.

Sad

Recently I've been reading about the epic, very public and one-sided feud between Rebecca Walker and her mother, author and feminist Alice Walker. By her own account, Rebecca's relationship with her mother had been deteriorating for years; at age 38 they are now completely estranged.

If Rebecca's recollections are accurate, Alice Walker would certainly not have won any prizes for mothering. Ever fearful of losing her focus as a writer, she was often absent--if not actually physically gone at her writing retreat, she was distanced, doling out the duties of parenthood to others, wishing to see her daughter as a "sister," not the dependent person a child is. Rebecca was, and clearly still is, devastated by her mother's ambivalence, longing for the kind of mother that derived her life's joy from motherhood.

Such is the stuff mother-daughter rifts are made of. Can you think of a single woman you know who was mothered exactly the way she wanted to be, who felt truly known and understood by her mother? Getting over that disappointment and learning a new way to connect to our mothers is what adulthood and therapy is for. In her bitter and sensationally titled essay How My Mother's Fanatical Views Tore Us Apart, it is not only evident that Rebecca has not done this work, but that she has laid the blame for their unsatisfying relationship and eventual schism on feminism, which struck me as utterly absurd.

In Salon, Phyllis Chesler discusses her own take on the feud, though again I do not agree with her assessment that the second wave of feminism valued abortion over motherhood. I was a women's studies major in college and in the early 90s, that meant you couldn't avoid Alice Walker. The Color Purple, In Search of Our Mother's Gardens, and Living the Word have survived many bookshelf purges in the past fifteen years since I graduated. Holy shit, I'm old.

After I read Rebecca Walker's article and Chesler's response (Alice Walker has been publicly silent on this subject as far as I can tell, to her everlasting credit), I scoured my bookshelves for Walker's books and others I've kept through the years by Cherrie Moraga, Audre Lorde, Virginia Woolf, Zora Neale Hurston, and Linda Gordon to name a few. Not a one of them espouses the so-called feminism as represented by Walker and Chesler: abort, and if that doesn't succeed, neglect or ideally abandon your children.

What I remember instead were honest words about how few choices women had about their bodies and futures, the difficulty of mothering with such narrowly prescribed ideas of motherhood, how isolating motherhood could be, how women's emotional and physical work was devalued, how difficult it was to be both as artist and mother.

It pains me that Rebecca Walker is blaming feminism for the very real, difficult but not particularly unique chasm between her mother and herself. I see that she is hurt. Understandably so, that a woman who was a hero to so many thousands of women throughout the world could not meet the needs of one little girl. She feels misunderstood. Perhaps she's a bit stubborn and wants to be right more than she wants to be happy (hats off to Dr. Phil for that one)--maybe Alice Walker really was a nightmare of a mom. But to blame feminism for this, in the process sounding like a mouthpiece of the religious right, is just downright weird.

Does Rebecca not realize that her ability to choose and embrace motherhood after a period of self-described ambivalence during which she attended Yale and became an author in her own right, owes a huge debt to feminism? She seems to take for granted that these options were open to her, showing a curious lack of history. It would appear that caught up in the pain of her fractured relationship she did not grasp that if she was able to see as far as she did, it was because she was standing on her mother's shoulders.

All Roads Lead to Polterwang

Interwebs is a cornucopia of delights, is it not? One such delicious tidbit in the virtual horn o'plenty is learning how readers get here. Since there's not many of you, this can be accomplished in less than ninety seconds. As I scroll through the searches that lead to Professional Critic, it becomes clear that no matter where you started from on the globe, many of you arrive here via polterwang.

Perhaps you encountered this odd word out there on the vast plains of the world wide web and aren't sure what it means. You've come to the right place. Let's break it down.

Polter = ghost, as in don't step into the light Carol Anne.

Wang = you know, willy.

Thus, polterwang is the phenomenon of certain pairs of pants giving a woman the illusion of a penis. If you're a woman, this has surely happened to you, quite possibly in a pair of jeans that you liked so much except for that small, or rather big, problem.

It's the cousin of camel toe, also caused by ill-fitting pants, but those on the overly tight end of the pants-fit continuum. This problem can be compounded by fabric type, the stretchy yoga variety being one of the worst offenders.

Obviously I'm equally drawn to polterwang, hence my original post from back in December, which drew in such a varied crowd.

I feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Whoever said that technology can be isolating has clearly never experienced the uniting force of polterwang. Thanks, Fug Girls.

Kitten on a Leash, Update

I'm sure you've all been wondering how Gussie's leash training is going, but being too polite to ask, you're waiting for me to bring it up. Well, reader, what can I say? It's a complete disaster. There's been no significant improvement since his initial spazzy response. We went outside once and the poor animal was so scared he wouldn't put a paw across the threshold for days.

Strangely, he is pretty bold off leash. Just in the past few days I've had to extract him from the apartment across the hall occupied by two nice Tibetan men. They were gracious about the fact that Gus was sprawled out on their living room rug making arrangements with the movers. My next door neighbor was not quite as happy to have him walking through every room in his apartment, measuring the closets.

I was so sure Gus would grow to like the leash, if for no other reason than to soak up all the attention I knew he would get. He's an extrovert, a cat of the people and needs to mingle for his mental health. Unlike his insanely adorable and introverted sister whose favorite spot is under the bed, jammed between dusty storage boxes. But once that harness is on, Gus falls into the grips of St. Vitus' dance for an audience only he can see.

I've not totally given up, but I'm getting close. This thing that's supposed to be pleasurable is kinda torture for us both, possibly worse than a loony kitty bouncing off the walls and me, leaving behind a trail of broken pottery and bloody claw marks. Hmmm. Maybe a few more tries ...

Weekend Beauty

Reader, sigh. If $4.50 gas and million dollar starter homes are getting you down, taking in the beauty of the Bay Area always makes it seem worth it.

Sunday Teacher and I went on the most glorious hike to Tomales Point, in the Point Reyes National Seashore.


Tomales Point is where the Pacific Ocean meets Tomales Bay. This is the ocean side. I bet there's lots of sharks down there.

And lots of gorgeous wildflowers up here. The hills were carpeted with these lush yellow lupine, the air full of their sweet fragrance. In between are wild radishes, pretty and deliciously spicy.





Not sure what these are. Sweet pea of some kind? Purty.







A Dr. Seuss-y thistle bush with hot pink flowers.










and tule elk






Also: carpets of California poppies, that happiest of flowers to which I did not do photographic justice, woolly caterpillars, large shiny black beetles, brown bunnies, voles, and right at the end of the hike, velvety purple wild irises. By the time we saw these though, I was nearly staggering with fatigue, my plummeting blood sugar levels howling for large quantities of fried oysters and beer, which were consumed shortly thereafter.

Satisfaction for the Price of Half a Tank of Gas

Last year I loaned $25 each to two entrepreneurs registered with Kiva, the global microfinancing organization. A few days ago, I received a notice that Maria de los Ángeles Cardona García, who used her Kiva funds to repair a copier and increase inventory in her stationary shop, had paid back her $750 loan in full.

My Kiva account reflected the $25 credit, which I could get back, donate, or reloan. Deciding to reloan was the easy part. This was by far the best $25 I have ever loaned--where else can $25 help move someone toward self-sustaining livelihood? As an added bonus, Kiva has added an incredibly low default rate, (but not without risk--we all know from Suze Orman that you should only loan what you can afford to not get back). You do not earn any interest on these loans, so this is not a money-making venture. Since it's a loan and not a donation, it's not tax-deductible either.

A lot has changed in the year since I chose my first loan recipients. There are many more participating countries and within them, more groups rather than individuals. I rather liked that although the group members were working independently, they were responsible for the loan together. Apparently Kiva had a shortage of potential recipients earlier this year but that was not the case any longer-there were pages and pages of projects that needed funding.

Many of the profiles touched me--I was especially struck by the special disclaimer on the Kenyan groups' profiles: Disclaimer: Due to recent events in Kenya, the security situation in many communities remains unsettled, affecting many local businesses. Lenders to this entrepreneur should be aware that this loan may represent a higher default risk, and should be willing to accept this additional risk in making their loan.

After scrolling through dozens of profiles, I finally decide to loan to a project in the middle east figuring I would do my part to make amends for the otherwise hawky US presence there. I found a group of Pakistani women looking to expand their respective businesses. That sounded good to me, and I was especially impressed by Asasah, the field partner, who has a 100% repayment rate. Can't beat that. I applied my $25 credit to their project, pushing them a bit closer to their $1150 goal.

Though the idea of meeting a loan recipient seemed unlikely, Nicholas Kristof, New York Times columnist, did so last year, much the surprise of the Afghan baker, who didn't know what the internet was but opened a second bakery with his loan. Right on.

Really, Really Good

A few days ago I heard a news item regarding Ted Kennedy's brain surgery, namely that afterwards he said through a representative, "I feel like a million bucks." Huh. Should we assume that was the Percocet talking? Or maybe that what he really said is, "I feel like shit" and when you put that through the spinner, the rep coughs out the million bucks. Like playing the record backward, maybe? for those of you old enough to know what a record is.

I've known some people here and there that have had surgery for a variety of reasons, and I can't recall that a one of them proclaimed a million buck state afterwards. More so, I remember groaning, vomiting, and begging for opiates which all strike me as perfectly reasonable responses to surgery.

I don't believe people I know are made of weaker stuff than Ted Kennedy--although you do need to be pretty tough to walk away from a drowning woman in your sunk car--sorry, Ted, I know it was years ago but I bet that's little comfort to her family.

Anyway, this Times article about the almost pathological need to be upbeat, to be okay, to be feeling great! was timely. I see it in myself and others around me, but I also know that it can feel like a huge relief to admit that you're miserable, sad, without hope, possibly desiring to pack it in, or if not pack it in, to go to sleep for a long time only to wake up when things are much better. How little room there is to express such things, even to yourself.

Several jobs back, I encountered a very psychotic person who had a very sane grip on his process. He used to say, "Thoughts are like waves ... they come and they go." I thought that was a pretty spot-on observation, and just the same for feelings. Even the most overwhelming feelings is just that--a wave that will knock you down, tossing you head over ass, getting salt water in your eyes and sand in your nethers, but then you'll get up again, maybe a bit scratched or bruised, but essentially okay.

That's what I tell myself and I do believe it most of the time but there's not much popular support for it. Almost the opposite--acknowledging these feelings is like a personal failure, as though you've not been able to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps out of your sadness, something you ought to be able to do unless you're a huge loser. I blame Oprah, and Tom Cruise of course and Dr. Phil, too.

Interweb Finds!

I have a television but no cable and as I'm no fan of Two and Half Men, or Law and Order: Predictable Script Unit, when I'm fresh out of Netflix I usually read or surf the interwebs looking for tidbits to share with you, reader. Some especially nice ones popped up this week.

About a year ago I read Julie and Julia, which started as a blog, became a book and then a movie with Meryl Streep, chronicling the author's attempt to make all 524 recipes from the Julia Child classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking in her small apartment kitchen. Though this wasn't the kind of cooking I wanted to do, nor necessarily the kind of eating I wanted to do, it was very entertaining. This turned out to be the pioneer of the "cook-through blog" movement.

In this vein, DC resident Carolyn Blymire undertakes The French Laundry Cookbook in her blog French Laundry at Home. Now this isn't at all the kind of cooking I want to do for I am far, FAR too lazy. And cheap. But it sure is the kind of cooking I want to read about and most of the time, eat (the giant cow tongue and pig head dish was a little off-putting, I'll admit). Carolyn, if you're ever in need of a west coast taster, call me!

One of the many things I find amazing about cook-through bloggers (aside from their astronomical grocery bills) is how they all find the time and energy for shopping, cooking and clean-up on top of their full time jobs, which many clearly have. These are not one-pot meals, reader, and you'll see no evidence of short cuts. In fact, two day recipes after traipsing to ten different stores to obtain obscure ingredients seems part of the cook-through blogging experience. My hats off to all of them, truly. Most nights after work I want to commune with the couch and a glass of wine from Trader Joe's and if I manage to complete one chore, I feel I've done well for myself.

Staying in the food realm for a moment, you may enjoy this surprisingly vitriolic rant against the Chicken Caesar salad. I like it for many reasons, his crankiness natch, but mostly because I can sometimes astonish myself with the breadth of my complaining, but strangely, oddly, Chicken Caesar salad doesn't really bother me.

Best Not Read This on an Empty Stomach

Like a roadside car wreck, I could not tear my eyes away from this horrifying story about a woman who encountered more than she bargained for in her granola. I have found weird things in my food before, but the worst has been slugs or spiders in organic salad, which while not great, is not so bad because at the very least the presence of bugs is visual evidence that your food has not been drowned in pesticides. Once while working for a bagel company which shall remain nameless, I lost a bandaid in one of the batches, so some bagel-eater out there has me to thank for the unhappy memory. Sorry! But this really, REALLY takes the cake.

This story reminded me that it's been a while since I visited the FDA site and as usual, it did not disappoint. If you are a person with serious food allergies, you may want to bookmark the warnings and alerts page. I was surprised by how many recalls and alerts are related to "undeclared" ingredients, i.e. those that do not appear on the ingredients list, a potentially deadly mistake for those with serious allergies.

For the very first time, I saw a warning letter issued to an airline. If you've ever worried about the quality of airline water, you've been right to do so. Southeast Airlines was recently busted with a water tank full of paint chips.

Though I deplore the use of hokey Comic Sans font, this cosmetics quiz is actually jam packed with good information about cosmetic safety and FDA oversight of the industry. Hint: there isn't really any, and though it's confusing as all get out, this page explains it all.

Enough of all this seriousness! Madonna's new single and video "Give it 2 Me" kicks "4 Minutes to Save the World" to the curb.

Mad Baking

About a year ago I encountered a new kind of cookie at a cafe. I can't remember what it was called but the name was an acronym and the clerk told Lizh and I rather more than we wanted to know about how the cookie was developed in Australia for the army because of rationing or some such. It all seemed random at the time, but the cookie, packed with oats, coconut, pecans, and chocolate chips was a winner. Shortly after that I encountered a baked goodie at Peet's called a "Mad Cookie" with those very same ingredients, so it's now one of my favorite treats, along with their ass-kicking spicy ginger cookie with big chunks of real ginger. Mmmmm.

Have you ever met anyone who said they "weren't into sweets" and wondered, "what the hell is wrong with you?" Human being are programmed to like sweet--this is why breast milk is so sweet, so babies want to eat and thrive. Therefore, people that don't like sweet things must be non-human.

Anyway, the Mad Cookie at Peet's is more than $2, admittedly huge but who needs such a big cookie and do I ever just eat half and save the rest for later? Reader, never. It was time to make my own.

I googled "mad cookie," and found nothing. Then I googled "australia cookie" and sure enough I found this recipe for the charmingly named ANZAC Biscuit, the official cookie of the Australian and and New Zealand Army Corps. This must be the thing, but where was the chocolate? And what in hell is golden syrup? How cute that they call it "dessicated" coconut instead of dried! Confusing metric measurements abounded--I would never be able to decipher this recipe, being the simple-minded American-educated gal that I am, so though I conceded that this must be the cookie the cafe guy was talking about, it was not the recipe I was going to make.

So I finally googled the ingredients and found a recipe for "Ranger Cookies." Since this had a decidedly military air to it, I figured this was the Americanized ANZAC and went for it.

I made some tweaks along the way. First, I substituted whole wheat flour for white flour. Normally I like to do half and half since sometimes a full whole wheat baked goodie tastes kind of bitter, the exact opposite of how a cookie should be, but this recipe had so little flour and so many other ingredients I figured it would work just fine AND would have the added benefit of being "whole grain" and therefore an important part of a healthy diet.

Sugar was reduced by filling up the 1/2 cup measure for each sugar a bit more than 3/4 of the way full (don't ask me what that comes out to be. If you're looking for math skills, you've come to the wrong blog), because I was using sweetened coconut. Also since most cookie recipes are so tooth-hurtingly sweet, cutting the sugar is usually a safe bet. Pecans replaced peanuts since that sounded better to me, and I used a bit more chocolate chips and coconut, cause that's how I roll.

I busted out the immersible blender to chop the oats so that some of them were finely cut and some whole. Important lesson learned tonight: do not use your immersible blender in a wide open container such as a mixing bowl as oats will hurl themselves into every corner of your kitchen. Instead use something narrower like a glass Pyrex measuring cup. It was my first use of my immersible blender and though it looks an awful lot like a vibrator, it worked like a charm, saving me from having to haul the blender out of the cupboard above the refrigerator, the most dreaded of all storage places.

Since whole wheat things seems to bake faster than white--I'm sure someone has written eloquently about this on the interwebs--I just learned the hard way, so I cut down the baking time. See how Professional Critic makes errors so you don't have to? You're welcome. That turned out to be 9 minutes--do not overbake and consider taking them out at 8:40. It really does make a difference.

The verdict? Delicious! I've eaten six two tonight and I'll probably eat the rest while watching The Riches freeze the rest, taking out one or two each day as a special treat. Enjoy!