Toll House Cookies

Comfort food is about mom. I mean, everyone needs, deserves, gets, and puts up with a mom of some sort or other at some point in life. Even in this age of male cooks, male foodies, inventive guys showing up with their favorite version of macaroni and cheese, a hearty stew, or some kind of apple pie: I would argue that comfort food still means and requires Mom, capital M.

Well, I would have, that is, until the other night.

Evan and Kelsey would be home for a day or so here this past weekend. I figured, Chinese New Year and all, we’d go out for Chinese for dinner. I might do breakfast on Saturday if I don’t have to go in to the hospital. Then again, we could just head down to Greg and Lou’s and sit at the counter and watch the cooks dance and the wait-staff fly while we feast on pancakes and omelets.

All this I’m thinking after cleaning up the dinner dishes and standing by the kitchen counter finishing off the last two chocolate chip cookies. Now that wasn’t too thoughtful. Staring at the empty cookie jar I had no choice but to spring into action.

In less than 2 hours, the kitchen was back in order and I was heading off to bed, satisfied I'd done my motherly duty. They wouldn't be minutes fresh out of the oven when they walked in the door the next day, but they’d be as good as any mom ever made. Straight off the back of the Nestlé’s Toll House Morsels package. No fancy foot work required.

Comfort food is about traditional foods made by following traditional recipes and using only traditional ingredients and…….well wait a minute. I guess at the end of the day, the only one ingredient that's really got to be there-- mom or no mom-- is the love……..although the salt, sugar, and fat don't hurt.

Phyllis Diller or Edd China?

So I'm sitting here with my daughter the other morning and she says, "Your hair is really getting long!" Like I don't know this. I've already had one no-spot-available and had to cancel two scheduled appointments for a cut. Not that I don't like my hair on the longer side. I don't get the whole close-cropped buzz cut thing-- never have. I gave that look up when I hit double digits.

Not that I'm interested in going the other way. I still see the occasional grey-haired guy with a ponytail and I really want to just say: Really? As overused as that exclamation has become in contemporary use, I'd like to say it to that guy with the long grey ponytail. Then again, what business is it of mine?

I'm old enough-- j u s t  b a r e l y-- to remember when the Beatles began to spread their corruptive influence on the hair fashion of male American youth. I'm old enough-- j u s t   b a r e l y-- to remember  older relatives speaking in disgust about hair that was peeking over the tops of ears, sideburns that were descending to the level of earlobes. Outrageous!!

Anyway, 10:30 Saturday morning-- the lord was willing and the creek didn't rise-- I was able to bring some law and order to this mop. No more homage to celebrities past and present. As ever, it is, once again, all about ME. An orderly mop.

So That's How That Works

Sometimes a person has the craziest dreams and all you can do is wonder: Where did that come from???

I woke up this morning to that very thought and then realized: So that's where that comes from!  It's like  math-- sometimes if you just back up and work through a few really easy problems, pretty soon you understand the concept and, voila!, math genius in the making.

So I'm lying in bed this morning thinking about this dream I had, crossing rivers, looking at property on a lake. Suddenly I come to a wooded area. In a clearing there is a large fallen log from which a large population of squirrels starts to exit. And all of a sudden, scene change, I'm watching this on TV with Evan. And as the squirrels emerge from their winter lodging, they begin to pair up and, in the best Animal Planet fashion, we are provided with a close-up of their mating. Suddenly, and quite uncomfortably, I'm watching a squirrel couple stand on their haunches, face to face, grasp each other with their little squirrel paws, kiss on the mouth, and, well, let's just say it goes on from there with little squirrel protuberances searching for little squirrel hollows. And there I am on a sofa with Evan, watching this, getting very uncomfortable and wondering to myself: Should I change the channel? Turn it off? Or let the show play out and not act like it's any big deal? And then I wake up.

It didn't take long to recall a conversation from two days prior when one of the women in my office was recollecting her husband's coming of age talk with her son. I remember thinking at the time that was kind of weird. I couldn't really put myself in that position.

Now, thanks to a randy NC-17 squirrel dream, I can totally put myself in that position. I get it. That is how those crazy dreams work. Can't wait for tonight.

Just One Thing

"Just one thing." I never got that. I'm sure there are answers to be found on the web-- I mean 102,000 results in 0.41 seconds (I know, for-ever) but, personally, I never got the whole just one thing bit.

Until Thursday afternoon.  Now I get it. Now I know.

Tuesday morning dawned with the terrible triad: Late for work, couldn't find my office keys, and my glasses were MIA. The latter really bugged me. I knew I'd worn them home the afternoon prior. Beyond that, I could not remember where the H I would have set them down. They weren't in any of the usual places. They weren't in my coat or the shirt I'd worn the day before, or the pants. Nor were they in any of the unusual places in this drafty old house. They were just quite simply gone. The office keys, however, were easily located in the back pocket of my khakis as I, annoyed as heck, plopped down hard on the frozen front seat of my car. One problem solved.

For two days I lamented the passing of one of my favorite pairs of glasses. There are others in this house but the missing pair were of the go-to-work, look-smart, expensive variety and they would have to be replaced.

Years and marriages ago, I had a brother living on a farm in, what we refer to here in the Great Lakes State as, far-northern-lower-Michigan, or more simply, “up north.” It’s a land of hardwood forests, lakes and streams. It’s a land populated by mosquitoes, black flies, and "no-see'ms" in the summer, deer hunters in the fall, and snowmobilers in the winter.

We used to joke about the two old above ground fuel storage tanks that stood at the end of the driveway on that farm: one tank for insect repellant, one for lotion we’d say. Those are both seasonally requisite items here. In the summer: gallons of insect repellant.  In the winter: buckets of lotion. When the entire landscape freezes for months on end, a person’s skin will take on the cracks, wrinkles, and scales of a tortoise if not properly cared for. It’s a lesson I’ve learned and I’m never far from a shot of lotion for face and hands. 

(Ready?) And that leads me to my lost glasses-- lost, that is, until yesterday when I decided I should stop in the surgery bathroom and put some lotion on my face and hands prior to leaving and heading out into the arctic cold. Just like I’d done three evenings before. The glasses? Not lost, stolen, or destroyed. They were right where I left them 3 evenings before: Perched on a roll of toilet paper on a counter in the surgery bathroom. Guess when I take them off I'm not as smart I look with them on.

And now, coming painfully full circle: 

As a person ages, it really is about just one thing: 

             Remember where the hell you put it!  Life’s too short to spend your time looking.

What's In A Number?

My sister sent me a set of coins the other day-- a U.S. Mint Set from 1970. Seeing it brought back happy memories of that year: 13 years old, racing around UCLA on my wanna be stingray-like bike. "Blonde hair shinin' in the sun." Nothing but blue skies and warm weather.

That was also a time in my life when seeing a -8 was not necessarily a bad thing. If there were a hundred questions and I got a -8, chances are that was still a low A. Then again, if it was a spelling test of 20 words, well, -8 might just land me in some hot water.

Which brings me to today's -8:  I'm not going to suggest a grade for this score but it certainly did land me in hot water. Lots of it.  And for as long as I could stand there.

Growing up as a kid on LA's westside in the 70's there was no conception of minus eight degrees. Minus eight degrees existed in a science lab up the street at UCLA. Minus eight degrees existed in the pages of National Geographic. Minus eight degrees was an absurdity, an aberrance noted because, surely, somebody froze to death. Minus eight degrees was screeching coins into blocks of dry ice.

Unfortunately for this adult no longer residing on the westside of Los Angeles, this morning it is minus eight degrees and that means I'm going to bundle up in a down coat and mittens and watch for patches of ice as I haul the trash out to the curb. Then I'm going to go fix someone's broken bones--- someone not from the pages of National Geographic but from right here in the middle of Michigan-- someone who also knows the dark side of -8, someone who slipped on the ice.

Stoned for the Holidays

Every year it starts earlier:  Holiday music in stores, Christmas decorations, gift catalogues. It's no longer the holiday season; it's pretty much the holiday quarter of the year.

Suffering under the influence, Evan has already started and revised his Christmas list more than once or twice. Taking a trip to the hobby shop has deteriorated from a fun morning to a hand wrenching, angst producing event-- each time leaving with another revision of that list in mind: Rock polisher, telescope, steam locomotive, diesel locomotive, RC cars, RC airplane.

Walking out to get some shopping done for school clothes Saturday afternoon it was all he could talk about: worried as to whether he might get this or that, what he should wish for.

"Evan, this is ridiculous. It's too stressful. You are way too worried about presents."

"I need a worry stone."

"A worry stone?! What about Santa?"

"And a wishing stone."

At least I know what I'm getting him for Christmas.

Pop Tart Redux

The old saying is, something to the effect of, you can never go home again. And that saying, I'm here to tell you, is wholly incorrect. The fact is, often times one can go home again-- it just might not be quite the same as when you left it-- or more likely: how you remember. You may have to do some pruning, patching, paint, and plaster. And other times it just won't work-- gone.

Unfrosted Blueberry Pop Tarts brought me to this understanding. When I was a kid, Blueberry Pop Tarts were among my most favorite, and least available, food treats. (You'll note: just Pop Tarts. Frosting the little bastards was a nasty idea still lying well ahead in the youth of this country's over indulged future.) Heated in the toaster or right out of the box, I loved those Blueberry Pop Tarts.

The bond was strong. Over the years, while walking through grocery store aisles filled with cereals and breakfast bars and snacks, I have cast many a guilty glance toward the Pop Tart selection, a selection that has grown to the point the product is almost unrecognizable from my youth. (I'm pretty sure though-- looking at the assortment of hideous flavors, all slathered with some type of frosted surface-- that a stoner from my generation has been in charge of product development for some time now.) Whoever it is that is in charge of product development, I have noticed in all those visits, someone at Kellogg's holds unfrosted Strawberry Pop Tarts dear to heart as they seem to always be available. (Again, more support for the stoner theory of product development.)

And then it happened: A week or so ago I nearly bumped into a large displaystand filled with boxes of unfrosted Blueberry Pop Tarts. The clouds parted, the sun shone down in great Jesus beams, and a box of unfrosted Blueberry Pop Tarts levitated to my shopping cart. Hallelujah! I proceeded to tell my daughter about just what great fortune this was, that plain Blueberry Pop Tarts were one of the finest breakfast pastries ever conceived. And now my daughter knows, I too, was a stoner.

But I digress. After getting home from the market I immediately unpacked one of the foil pouches, snipped open the top, and admired the unchanged appearance of that micro thin delicious pastry, appearing unchanged, after all those years.

Of course, being of my age and generation (I know, it's redundant but it sounds so erudite), I had to read the nutritional information.  (Another annoying development since the golden age of Pop Tarts. Who in their right mind wants to know the fat and calorie content of a Pop Tart, for crissakes!) Ignoring what should be a black box warning, I put one of the pastries straight into my pie hole-- no need to toast 'em, I told my daughter as she looked on somewhat bewildered but, by this point, certain of her father's history of drug use. And that's when it happened. The filling was right but the pastry itself, all anemic looking, cold and dense, tasted like, well, lard.

To say I was disappointed goes only half the distance. I felt cheated, lied to, frightened and confused all at the same time. How could my memory be so wrong? How could I have fooled myself so completely in creating such an unrealistic expectation of eating a mass produced slab of pastry with more perforations than an acoustic tiled ceiling?

To her credit, my daughter was surprisingly sympathetic. She doesn't like to see her dad suffer. To my credit, I didn't give up. About two days later, home alone, I slipped another Pop Tart in the toaster and warmed it through. Success! The aroma, the pastry, the filling-- it was all there.

Yep. Sometimes you can go home again. Even if it's just to enjoy a moment with a 240 calorie, 6 gram of fat pastry; filled with blueberry jam, buttered, not frosted.