Finally! My Labor Day Weekend Getaway...

I've kept you all in suspense long enough. I just know you haven't been sleeping well not knowing what my mystery picture was all about...

Riiiight.

Anyway, props to Monnik for guessing correctly. After dropping the kids at MILs for their annual Circus weekend, we spent Labor Day weekend in Sandusky, OH. Home of the Roller Coaster Capitol of The World: Cedar Point.

This impromptu mini-vacation signified, for me, the fulfillment of a nearly lifelong dream. Many have been the hours that I have stared slackjawed at my television screen watching documentaries such as, "Top 10 Wildest Rides," and "Top 10 Amusement Parks of 2007." I can watch them over and over and never get bored.

As you may have ascertained, I am a roller-coaster aficionado. Only lack of money and means has kept me from teetering over the precipice into Junkie status. Funny thing is, I have always been deathly afraid of heights. Introspection has revealed to me the truth: it is not the height I am afraid of, but the fall. Goofy but true. Send me to any amusement park, and I can tell you without even looking at the map what ride I am most afraid of.

Ready? Don't laugh:

I'm SERIOUS!! Just looking at this picture gives me the heebie-jeebies. I just can't put my faith in these things. They don't look PROBABLE. The cable looks small, the cars look heavy, and the little thingy that clips onto the cable? I mean, LOOK AT IT. It doesn't look right! A large percentage of these horrifying contraptions were made in the early part of last century. Am I the only one who has noticed the bodily expansion of our population over the last 75 years? I mean, what if the thing is running at capacity and more than half its occupants are grossly overweight? No thanks.

But put me in front of this beauty, and my mouth begins to water:

This beastie is called the Top Thrill Dragster. It is an out-and-back coaster that launches the rider from 0 to 120 mph in 3.8 seconds, climbs vertically to 420 feet, then drops straight back down, twisting 270 degrees before leveling out and returning to the station. I counted it: this ride takes a whopping 15 seconds from launch to stop. See? You can hold your breath the whole time!! This ride was recently Tallest AND Fastest in the world. It's a title that is always fleeting, and I believe is now held by an almost identical coaster called Kingda-Ka at Six Flags Great Adventure....a mere 8 mph faster and 45 feet taller than this ride. In my experience, second best was still quite a ride.

Three or four of their other giant coasters have been routinely voted in the top 10 best by coaster enthusiasts in recent years; and one, Maverick, got best new coaster of 07. I did not get to go on this one as after we waited in line 30 minutes it broke down and I had to pee so bad we just got out of line. 5 minutes later it was running again, but I wasn't about to start waiting all over. Something saved for next time, I guess!

Cedar Point is home to 18 rollercoasters. A few are wimpy, and though technically qualify as rollercoasters, do not count toward the thrill factor at this park. They do, however, serve nicely to offload some of the crowd. Lines were long by my standards, but hey, my local amusement park has 3, count 'em 1-2-3, rollercoasters, two of which will chip your teeth or send you gimping to the nearest chiropractor in screeching agony. If I have to stand in line more than 30 minutes, that's a long line in my book.

Coaster designs were varied, ranging from wood to steel, with one wooden/steel hybrid racing coaster that was lots of fun. In the steel variety (my favorite for smoothness and speed), there were stand-up, suspended, traditional, and minimal-restraint varieties. The Millenium Force was one such coaster, with just a lap bar and no sides to the cars. Once the Tallest and Fastest, it was a breathtaking ride with unbelievable smoothness.

I found this side-by-side comparison of the largest rides at Cedar Point:




The one on the left is probably comparable to the biggest thrill at my local amusement park. You can see that this was a HUGE treat for us!

As an extra treat, this whole park takes up almost an entire penninsula in Lake Eerie. Temperatures are moderate, and the views are spectacular

Aside from the park, we found a great little place to eat. When I go on vacation I don't want to eat at chain restaurants. I want to find something good and local. Asking locals where they eat is a great idea, but we couldn't find any locals at Cedar Point (go figure, they probably avoid it like the plague). So we turned to our handy-dandy GPS. We decided we wanted Barbecue. Voila! Two local restaurants, in opposite directions. We drove East 11 miles, and ended up in the middle of a trailer park as GPS-Aussie-lady announced perkily, "Arrah-vang at deistinah-tion..." Opting not to go knocking on trailer doors demanding BBQ, we punched in the other location, now 22 miles away. As we pulled up to this destination, this time a dark underpass in a run-down residential neighborhood, we gave up on BBQ and decided to go somewhere close by.

An "All Foods" search by Garmin revealed a restaurant called Crabby Joe's. Down a gravel road and out to the shores of Lake Eerie (Marblehead), Crabby Joe's was a bar with a deck enclosed by a permanent wedding-tent. Sounds seedy, but to us it was just local. A 50-ish man played keyboards in a corner with a pricey sound system singing covers of anything from Neil Diamond to Elvis Presley and more. We ordered the house special, "Drunken Mussels by The Pitcher," and some beers. What a lovely surprise when a beer-pitcher full of mussels and filled to the brim with a butter-garlic-wine sauce arrived, complete with tongs and soft lovely bread for dipping. We joked later that we should have just ordered 2 pitchers! After the appetizer I had local fresh-caught perch fillets, and we danced to "Fools Rush In," our song from our wedding, only done by UB-40 in 1996.

We played pool, got invited onto a 30 foot yacht by some creepy guy named Stele (yes, he spelled it for us), and I got hit on by some local thugs who were trying to sneak their 18 year old hoochie-mamas into the bar.

All in all, a vacation to remember. We'll definitely be back.

Omnivore 100

Kind of a fun meme-thingy, as I love to try new and interesting food.

Here’s what I want you to do:
1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating. (I hate having to do the html to get the crossout, so I'm going to italics them)
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at http://www.verygoodtaste.co.uk/ linking to your results.
The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:
1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche (cajeta crepes, yum!)
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (on a wharf in San Francisco!)
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (skinny cigar - uck)
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal (vindaloo almost killed me...)
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu (love sushi, but it CAN'T be that good!)
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine (the midwest equivalent, not the original deal)
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (yum, yum, yum and yum!)
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate (mayan)
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Wow!! 73...not bad. I'll try most anything once. I DO draw the line at insects, though. And anything made of blood.

How 'bout you?

Happy Birthday Lulu! (+ a wee little rant)

Today my gorgeous, loving, smart, precocious, strong-willed, darling daughter turns FOUR. It's kinda crazy. It seems like it wasn't so long ago that she snuggled her tiny little 7lb. body into the crook of my neck and sighed her warm, sweet baby breath into my neck as I bent slightly to brush my lips against her downy newborn head.

And here she is today. How time rushes by! You can see her strong-willed-ness plain as day in this pic: she insists that whatever pants she wears must be rolled up. Jeans to capris, capris to shorts....I shudder to think what she plans to do with shorts... And the socks must be pulled up too. Usually I insist on short socks but today was chilly and it's her birthday so what the heck? She's happy.

She was most excited about taking birthday cupcakes to her daycare for her 4-year-old class. Here's where my rant begins. When I was a kid one of the coolest things about having a birthday was getting to take treats to school. My mom was quite clever so I brought the best treats, and the class always loved me and said I had the "best mom ever". I would nearly bust with pride, and the treats were always fantastic. Running a close second was the cake I would get at home and of course the presents.

So we got a note a couple months back saying no birthday treats at daycare. They instead encouraged us to send gift bags of little toys for the kids (read: small bags of choke-hazards and junk). Ugh. They have since relented and okayed treats IF, and only IF, a comprehensive list of ingredients is attached. Mind you, treats are still discouraged, but if one MUST send them, they will somehow be screened for allergenic and/or offensive ingredients.

I think they did the list thing just because they figured no one would want to take the time to bake AND write a synopsis. They don't know ME. I just rustled myself up some vanilla cupcakes, glopped as much homemade birthday frosting on them as they would hold, sprinkled them with pretty artificially-colored sugar sprinkles, and cut out the ingredients list from the box, taping it on a notecard with a few other ingredients,. Eh -VOILA, Lulu had a whole mess of contraband cupcakes to take to day-care.

All the while JeepMan was telling me I shouldn't do it, that we should just buy some apples or carrot sticks and dip.

Birthday apples? Birthday veggies? This would have been a sure way to get ostracized and possibly beaten up after school when I was growing up.

I think birthdays are for sugar. And calories. And fun. And special treats. If the moms can't hack their kid eating a cupcake, then tell the staff they can't have one. If your kid is allergic to something, I'm sorry, life sucks, and the rest of the kids shouldn't be punished for it.


Miss Teacher's eyebrows damn near made contact with her hairline when I walked in with the cupcake tray. I promptly handed her the ingredient list and told her Lulu wanted to give cupcakes for her birthday and that's what she was going to do. 'Nuff said. They said, "...Okay..." for what else, really, was there to say?

You and I both know all the teachers are in the back room scarfing the leftovers anyhow. And do I care? No way! Birthdays are for cupcakes, with oodles of frosting and sparkly sprinkles. And don't anyone try to tell me otherwise.

***Addendum: Curses! The daycare gestapo got me...sent me home most of the cupcakes I made, minus a few the staff ate and one for each of my kids. Said, "Sorry, but these didn't come out of a certified kitchen so we aren't allowed to serve them." WTF is a "certified kitchen?" 'Cause I'm telling you from first-hand foodservice experience that I have never seen a commercial kitchen that is cleaner than mine at home. Certified what? Roach -free? Pesticide-free? Kosher? Vegan? WHAT??? Oh, well. Maybe next year I'll just have the daycare make Lulu's cupcakes in their own CERTIFIED kitchen. Grrr...****

Princess Jim (MIL Musings #2)

By now everyone who reads this log is somewhat aware of my MIL from previous posts.

For Christmas at the in-law's house, MIL always goes waaay overboard. Which is fine. It's Christmas after all! One of the areas where she really splurges is the 5-foot buffet table that she dedicates entirely to sweets. Cookies, candies, fudge...it's all there. There truly isn't a square inch of space. A pack of ravenous teenage boys couldn't demolish that table in one day. There are always leftovers that she freezes and re-gifts, and re-gifts....until at least April.

One reason she has so many goodies is that she is a hairstylist. Many of her clients give her treats as thank-you gifts for the services she gives them. Some of her clients sell their goodies once a year, like the client who takes orders every Christmas from all the ladies in the shop for his famous peanut brittle.

This year she had a new treat. Of all the sweets out there, I am a cookie fiend. Chewy, crunchy, crispy, gooey: I've met very few cookies I didn't like!! On a snowman tray were these innocent-looking cookies:

Ooooooh! But when I tasted them!!! These were the lightest, crispiest cookies I have ever tasted. They almost disintegrated in my mouth when I took a bite! They tasted of butter, sugar, and something a little richer....what was it? Only after I swallowed did I realize there were a few tiny bits of coconut left in my mouth. I generally don't like coconut, but it was somehow perfect in this cookie.

I HAD to have the recipe. I was devastated when I asked my MIL and she informed me that some lady who comes into the shop sells them by the shoebox-full every Christmas. She didn't know what they were called either! The only information she could offer was that there was some weird ingredient in them that you could only buy at the drug store.

Ok, now I was curious. What would you put in a cookie that you would buy at a drugstore? Tums? Laxatives? Gas Drops? What?!? I searched and searched the internet for this cookie. I came up with NOTHING.

Despair. Standing between me and cookie bliss was my MIL. Hopeless.

The next week, we drove up to her place to show off the new Jeep and to get haircuts for Plato and JeepMan. Imagine my surprise and delight when she gave me a bag of these cookies and declared, "I found the recipe, I had it all along!"

She lugged out her giant book of recipes and flipped to the cookie section. There on a handwritten notecard was THE recipe. The secret ingredient? Ammonium Carbonate. The name of the cookie? "Princess Jim's Cookies." Weird, but who cares? I asked my MIL who Princess Jim was. She replied, "I don't know...that's just what they're called." Okay, whatever.

I went home elated! On the way, though, I started thinking....who WAS Princess Jim? Why were they his cookies? What was Ammonium Carbonate? I pictured a drag queen in a kitchen mixing up cookies and accidentally reaching for a bottle of some stomach remedy instead of the baking soda; whoops! But what lovely cookies!!

When I got home, I googled "Princess Jim's Cookies." Nothing. "Princess Cookies." Too much. "Princess Ammonium Carbonate Cookies." Bingo!

Then started laughing hysterically. Here it is:

Princess Gems
1 Cup Shortening
1/2 Cup Butter
2 tsp. Ammonia Carbonate (Baker's Ammonia)
2 Cups Granulated Sugar
2 1/2 Cups Sifted Flour
1 Cup Shredded Coconut
Mix in order listed. Form into tiny balls about 3/4" in diameter. Place on cookie sheet 1" apart. Bake 350 degrees for 20-25 min. or until light brown. Dust with powdered sugar while warm.

Yep, that's right. Princess GEMS.

No Drag Queen. No Possessive. A bit boring really.

I don't care what they're called...they'll always be Princess Jim's Cookies to me! And it will always make me giggle.

Fair Fun and a New High Score on the Grossness Scale

I've been going to the State Fair in my home state for my entire life....really, I have only missed maybe one year of my 34 years on this planet. It's a HUGE fair, and we always have a great time. I now live an extra hour and fifteen minutes from the fair, and have two young kids to tote around, so the motivation to attend each year drops a bit...and this year it was going to be hotter than snot (does snot qualify as hot?, it's really more body-temperature...but I digress). 96 degrees with 96% humidity is not my idea of fun, and I actually was planning to just skip it this year.

Funny thing is, JeepMan loves to go. Of all the things I would think he wouldn't want to do...but sometimes he surprises me. So we went.

We got there when the gates opened and took advantage of the cooler morning temps. We walked through all the animal barns first: cows, pigs, sheep, horses. Lulu loves animals and would have stayed in the barns all day long. Plato had lots of questions about the animals, mostly concerning their oversized genitalia. We then had an Elephant Ear (huge piece of fried dough with butter, cinnamon and sugar all over it) and a smoked turkey leg for breakfast. Ahhh, eating at the fair. Where anything and everything goes.

We then went to the Ag building and stood in a long line to see the Butter Harry Potter and the Butter Cow. The kids loved it! We perused the exhibits and scored free samples consisting of a hard-boiled egg on a stick and Soy Chocolate Chip Cookies . Then it was back to the pig barn to see the Farrowing exhibit: that's where the newborn baby piglets can be observed, and petted if you are lucky. Lulu was lucky, and now she wants a "pig-o-let" for Christmas!

After the farrowing display, the kids wanted a snack. Here's a picture of them:








It must be noted that the time of the cotton-candy chowdown was approximately 9:30 am. JeepMan and I had a little corn-dog fix at the same time (we shared).

The rest of the day was filled with excitement, sweat, and a gradual degradation of Lulu's mood to whining and cranky. We stopped for lunch, and as we waited for our food to be procured (a-la JeepMan), Lulu was getting restless. She kept putting her feet up on my (bare) leg, and I told her to stop it, that was gross. I said there was poop and pee on her shoes from cows, sheep, horses, and pigs.

Next thing I know I look over and she is LICKING the bottom of her shoes, looking at me out of the corner of her eye the the whole time to see what my reaction would be! UGH! This kid!!

A quick stop at the cake display, the kids getting soaked running through the water fountains, temper-tantrums in stereo about not getting to go on the oh-so-safe-looking midway rides, and it was off to home.

They were both asleep before we left the parking lot.

We did it, another year of the Fair!

Oh, and JeepMan is thinking he wants to go back next weekend......ugh.

What Doesn't Kill Us...

I have had a great weekend. Friday night we had a couple beers and snacks with some friends from JeepMan's work. I hung out with the kids yesterday (JeepMan was in the garage most of the day, surprise, surprise!), went shopping for clothes and plants, then went out last night with some friends to a wine-tasting/hors d'oeuvres event. Today I got most of my new plants put in, and did some transplanting as well; it should be cool and rainy for the rest of the week -perfect for the plants to get established. Then it started raining right on cue after the last of my plants were in, so we went out to Spiderman 3 (average, but passable as entertainment).

Unfortunately I haven't felt too good since, probably some GI bug, but then I am not complaining. It's been a relaxing and fulfilling few days, and I am thankful for that.

Speaking of thankful, I have to give thanks for the safety of my Grandma. She is 84, and still drives wherever she wants to go. Apparently she was driving back from church this morning on the gravel (which she has been driving on her whole life), hit some ruts, and drove the car into the ditch. She said she was going about 35, but the police wonder if she was going faster. The car popped out of the ditch and flipped end-over-end. Amazingly, the airbags didn't even deploy. She crawled out the passenger window, and a neighbor called 911 for her. She had a laceration on her temple which was stapled shut, and possibly some fractured ribs. I imagine she won't be feeling too well over the next few days and weeks. It's amazing to me that she could survive a crash like that at all, especially at her age. She must have a vigilant guardian angel...

Now, speaking of what doesn't kill us...

I have never been one of those moms who is a dirt-and-germ-o-phobe. I subscribe to the theory that exposure to a variety of germs at young ages actually strengthens a child's immune system. Really - it's not just an excuse for me to be a lazy mom! I mean, I still want my kids to wash up after using the restroom, and I always use a paper towel as a barrier between myself and a public restroom door handle...it's just that the "usual" dirt, drool, and other nastiness that kids manage to get into from day to day doesn't faze me too much.

So Lulu was sitting next to me in the theater this afternoon. The lighting was dim (as it generally is in a movie theater). We were waiting for JeepMan and Plato to return with from the snack bar with the pop and popcorn. Lulu asked me where Daddy and "Pwato" went. I said they were getting snacks. She says, "I hope dey bwing mo pock-own."

More? Popcorn?

I mentally slapped myself in the forehead. I looked over at her and yep, you guessed it. She was chewing a piece of mysteriously acquired popcorn. OK, that's gross.

But that was nothing. I have had one instance for each child that I was viscerally disgusted over. I still get queasy thinking about each one.

When Plato was about 14 months old, we had taken him to a Chinese restaurant. I remember he was toddling, but not too well. We ate supper, walked around the mall a little, then piled into the car to head home. He was sitting in the middle of the backseat in his carseat; he was old enough to be facing forward. Usually he would chatter up a storm in the car, but this night he was quiet. Too quiet. We looked back and there he was, happily picking rice off the bottom of his shoe and eating it. I looked at JeepMan, he looked at me, and we shared that oh-so-bonding sensation of mutual nausea. Suddenly his sharing of mouthed toys at daycare and picking his nose seemed positively sanitary.

Which leads me to two days ago. I mentioned that we had gone to a restaurant with some of JeepMan's coworkers? We had been sitting there for a while, too long in retrospect, chatting with another guest. Now, normally we are extremely strict about restaurant behavior with our kids: we stay in our seats, we don't run around, and we use our best manners. This night however, we were unusually slack - basically because JeepMan still had a full beer to drink and I was tired of wrangling the monsters. So we were letting them walk around, a little, in the area of the table. Well, around the table led to under the table before long. Pretty soon, JeepMan asked me what was in Lulu's mouth. I looked and told him she had a piece of popcorn in her mouth. "From the floor?" he asked (Deja Vu, you say?). I said no, it was from the table (indeed there was popcorn strewn across the table). About 5 minutes later, Plato asked me if he could have a piece of gum. I told him I didn't have any and he whined, "No Fair! Lulu has gum!!"

The horror of it all dumped over me like a watercooler full of ice cold gatorade...

I looked at her and there she was, sitting under the table, chewing gum. Gum I had not given her. "Where did you get the gum, Lulu?" I demanded. "Wite dere..." she told me, offering The Grin (at once so self-satisfied, innocent, and strangely evil), and pointing her chubby finger at the underside of the table.

I took a big breath, swallowed the dry heave, confiscated the gum, and repeated silently the mantra of many a sane mom:

What doesn't kill them makes them stronger, What doesn't kill them makes them stronger, What doesn't kill them makes them stronger....