August 17, 2010 by kim.

What is this??

A doughnut, yes, but how did it get to be so small? When I took it out of the bag, the first thing I said to Chris was, “that’s not a doughnut, that the appetizer to a doughnut.” Here’s another doughnut, and it is only slightly bigger:

I know I shouldn’t complain. After all, I shouldn’t really be eating such sugar bombs as these. I’m just disappointed that when I do opt for something so luscious, that I don’t get my money’s worth. Same price, smaller pastry. Chris had a cookie that was larger than the boston creme concoction:

If I wanted just a teeny tiny taste, I would have gotten a doughnut hole which really isn’t a hole, it is actually the opposite of a hole. It’s a ball. a doughnut ball generally about the size of a ping-pong ball, and that’s being generous. Still, a fried nugget of dough can be pretty tasty …

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August 9, 2010 by kim.

The San Rocco Festival took place this weekend (and a couple of days before) in Fort Lee, NJ, (as it has for the last 82 years here), and in many different cities around the country. It’s a festival celebrating Saint Rocco, the patron saint of pestilence, where he was said to have prayed for and cured many of a disease that had struck Italy.

There’s your history lesson for the day.

The festival consisted of food, music, and games in a 3 block area of the town. Yesterday was the day of the procession of Saint Rocco.

A statue is carried around the town, and money is pinned to it to raise funds for the Italian American Mutual Aid Society. Here are a couple of videos of the procession:

Pretty cool, no?

Other than that, it was a pretty small affair. We didn’t go on any rides (too expensive) or play any games (you know how fair those games are), but we walked around and did get plenty to eat:

Italian Sausage with onions and peppers

Deep Fried Oreo

Corn

Cannoli (we shared this)

Dippin’ Dots (ice cream that tasted like Nerds candy – we tried a little, but didn’t eat much of it)

Popcorn (we shared this)

Sno-kone (blue-raspberry flavor – shared it)

Cotton Candy (blue-whatever flavor – again, we shared it)

Surprisingly, we weren’t sick after eating all that junk food. We really did like the deep-fried Oreos, although we initially weren’t too sure about it. Deep-fried? Oreo? It’s not something I’d eat every day, but it was tasty.

Next month – Feast of San Gennaro in NYC!

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July 22, 2010 by kim.

Went to Starbucks and ordered an iced tall decaf mocha with whip. I was asked my name so the barista could write it on the cup. I said ‘KIM’. She heard:

Close.

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July 2, 2010 by kim.

CRACKER JACKS

Remember when I told you all about Cracker Jacks and how their prizes totally suck nowadays? Well, I had bought a 3-pack and when I posted in May, I had only eaten one box. Since then, I’ve polished off the other two, and here are the “prizes” that were inside:

Wow. Clever.

The final prize was a huge favorite of kids everywhere:

A pencil topper.

Again.

Lame.

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June 27, 2010 by kim.

Who are they kidding? Putting a maple leaf on a plastic cup of corn syrup does not magically turn it into maple syrup. It just makes it into a pretty package of corn syrup (which is fine in moderation, if you believe the T.V. commercials).

Yep. You’d have to get up pretty early in the morning to pull one over on ol’ Kim here, and I reckon they just didn’t get up early enough.

No sir, they did not.

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June 5, 2010 by kim.

I didn’t know you could train chickens to lay eggs like this:

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May 12, 2010 by kim.

I haven’t picked up Cracker Jacks in a long time, but a three-pack called out my name when I was in the A&P last week. Forget that I was hearing voices, and let’s focus on the Cracker Jacks. I remember when I enjoyed eating this snack as a kid and always looked forward to the prizes inside.

Boy, was I disappointed.

Not only was I disappointed, but my folks were as well. Seems they had picked up a three-pack around the same time I did (they must have heard the same voice), and also tried a bag of the same product. We came to the same conclusion. The popcorn was tough, the peanuts were miniscule, and the prizes sucked.

Sucked, I say! Sucked! When I was a kid, Cracker Jack had TOYS. Things you could play with. I remember one toy that was a little puzzle or pinball game with tiny metal balls that you tried to get into certain areas to complete the puzzle or get points. THAT was a toy! They also had tops, instant tattoos, whistles, plastic toys, etc. Now? Now what “prize” do you get? This is what you get:

Wait for it …

A PENCIL TOPPER? What kind of a prize is that? It’s a piece of PAPER! We didn’t even have a regular pencil to put it on:

Are kids even using pencil and paper anymore? I think the prizes need to move into the 21st century here. How about an iPod? They have really small ones that would fit into the box, easy.

On a side note (ha ha, this is from the SIDE of the box), it doesn’t taste like I remember at all:

Nope. Not at all.

Liars.

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May 8, 2010 by kim.

I love strawberries! They are so sweet and tasty and … pretty. Most of the time. Well, some of the time. Pictures. In pictures, they are very pretty. In reality, they are more often than not bruised, mushy, and sometimes moldy. Yuck. I think it has to do with the berries being crammed into plastic containers and bouncing around on a truck. Here are some strawberries I bought the other day:

They look good at first glance, but every one of these had some sort of imperfection that I had to remove.

This one looks perfect except for the indentation on the front:

After removing the offending piece, it looked like this:

Not bad …

This one required a little more work with the knife:

Hmmm. After cutting off the green top, there isn’t much left, is there?

Basically, you’ll need at least two mangled strawberries to make one whole, edible strawberry.

Anything to sell more produce …

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April 20, 2010 by kim.

I thought it was clever …

Chris and I ordered breakfast at a diner a few days ago. Just your basic eggs, bacon (or sausage), potatoes and toast. The waiter asked if we wanted our toast buttered, and we said we did. And so it was.

Naturally, I forgot.

I put jelly on my toast and then realized that the butter was on the other side, presumably melting between the two pieces of bread. It wasn’t, though.

Here is my jelly toast:

Here is the piece of toast underneath:

Here is the other side of the jelly toast:

Why is the butter not melted? Is it butter? Chris kept telling me that it was whipped butter, but I’ve never seen whipped butter look like that. It didn’t taste like butter … it didn’t taste like much of anything but a little like plastic. It sort of looked like Miracle Whip to me, but I don’t think I’ve ever eaten Miracle Whip so I really don’t know whether it was Miracle Whip or not.

Cool Whip. That would have been tasty.

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April 2, 2010 by kim.

That would be me. A slow cooker. Someone who takes forever just to make a seemingly simple meal. Baking is my forte – not cooking. Still, I was inspired after watching the movie Julie & Julia. Not so inspired as to try the difficult task of making French food (I’m not that brave), but just enough to try and make some of the things I’ve been seeing on the Food Network. Specifically, on Cooking for Real and Everyday Italian. Sometimes Barefoot Contessa. Sometimes.

I decided to tackle this cooking thing also because I was getting sick of the same old things that we make all the time. Tacos, fajitas, Boboli pizza, chili, pasta, hot dogs, macaroni & cheese, etc. Not too exciting.

The first dish I decided to do was Spaghetti with Olives and Breadcrumbs, Fennel Slaw with Prosciutto, and Bruschetta with Tomatoes (I modified it a bit with onions and pepperoncini and no basil). Looking at the recipes and the preparation times, this meal should have only taken 40 minutes to prepare. Not for me. My time ended up being 4 hours.

4 HOURS.

Let us factor in the issues that I had to begin with.

First of all, the fresh parsley that I bought a few days before had frozen and died in my refrigerator. I misread the directions on storing parsley. Particularly the part about not refrigerating it. Okay. I went and got new parsley. Then I had to shell a little over a quarter of a cup of pistachio nuts. That was fine. I did it while I watched a cooking show. No real time lost there. Then, I looked at the olives I had bought two days prior. They had some weird white specks in them, rendering them useless. Next, the tomatoes I ordered from the A&P (I ordered roma, I got some small vine tomatoes) three days before had white fuzz growing on the vines. Sigh. I had to go back to the store to get some tomatoes and green olives. When I got back, I had to start prepping.

I had to pit the kalamata olives I had, slice up the green olives, cut up the fennel, make the pesto, toast the bruschetta, cook the pasta (I used rice spaghetti which is very hard to work with), make the topping for the bruschetta … by the time Chris got home and was able to help me thin out the pesto (it had ended up the consistency of Spackle, as did the rice noodles), we finally sat down to eat at 8:00pm.

Boy!

It tasted good, at least, and didn’t look too bad:

The next night we had a California BLT. California, I guess, because it had avocado on it. Another simple dinner. Ha ha. The prep time was listed as 10 minutes with a cook time of 25 minutes. Cook time, you ask? Yes. When you are baking the bacon in the oven on a baking rack, it takes 25 minutes. It tastes great, though! Still, the whole thing took me over an hour. You wouldn’t think so, but with me – it did. Washing the lettuce, slicing the avocado and tomato, making guacamole for a side dish/dip … it all took way more time than necessary.

Again, it was very tasty:

The bread I used was ciabatta mainly because I had it left over from when I made the bruschetta the night before. What I really wanted was a large loaf of white bread, but we don’t have any bakeries nearby and the grocery stores don’t sell Texas Toast size bread. I suppose I could have baked a loaf myself since I seem to have the time, but I didn’t. I ended up eating my sandwich without the top slice because it is such a hard and crusty bread that I couldn’t unhinge my jaw enough to take a bite. Too big.

Even something as easy as tuna salad on a cracker took me a half an hour to make:

First I had to set up my plate because when I do open the tuna, Matilda gets all excited and I don’t want to make her wait too long. Then I had to separate out a portion for kitty and another portion for kitty for tomorrow’s lunch, then put the tuna in the food processor, then look something up online which really got Matilda agitated, then put in some mayo, chives, and Spanish olives, then check to make sure Matilda was okay because she pretty much gave up on me giving her any lunch and was uncharacteristically quiet, then pulse pulse pulse, and then it was finally done. That took me 30 minutes.

Sad.

The next thing I’m going to try to make is Baked Felafel Sandwiches with a prep time of 20 minutes and a cook time of 40 minutes. That would translate into about 6 hours, Kim time.

I hope Chris eats before he comes home …

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