When Life Gives you Lemons you Make Marmalade

   

Here are some more food blogs written by chefs who have published

 rangette.blogspot.com   this writer is a chef who has published a book called Delancey.  Now a lot of chefs have pictures of the food and the craft but I like seeing the actual hands used in making the dough and rolling it out and such and her blog does an excellent job of that including little baby kids helping out in the process. Now why do I say Baby Kids?  Well I like adding the word baby to any nickname of sorts to make it seem cute for instance: my baby cat, my boodoh baby, my chocolate yummy baby.

Here's another one www.thenaptimechef.com What a great name for a blog! A picture of a chef taking a nap before taking on the daunting task of cooking comes to mind. Here's a new expression she writes When Life gives you lemons you make marmalade.  Of course her blog has to be called The Naptime Chef.   What can I expect if I buy her book? Well its a how-to guide on Fitting Great Food into Family Life.  One of the greatest pictures on her blog has to be freezer friendly spaghetti.  Another of her recipes that are freezer friendly is  Not Just for the Kentucky Derby Chocolate-Pecan Pie {Powernap} This caught my attention just because the other day my nephew was trying to describe for me Kentucky Derby in his game of Taboo(a word game)

This is Off the Script

I went to a new YMCA in St. Paul on 875 Arcade St. It was unique in that it had an indoor playground for children equipped with a jungle gym, stationary climbing truck and playground set inside a semi enclosed glass wall and doors.  Perfect for a parent who wants to walk around the indoor track ten million times all the while watching their little ones in the indoor playground.

On top of that the track also circles a basketball court on the first floor so that you could watch your middle/high school kid take on the world of B-ball.  You could even call them out from above "Heyyyy Johnny or Heyyy Sasha." (Or what have you).

Worded or Wordless

More YMCA.  After becoming dizzy from circling making many rounds around the track, I partook in some treadmill walking.  You know this is a virtual age when you realize that there are more touch screen features on certain YMCA machines than others (particularly St. Paul YMCA's vs. New Hope).  While walking on the treadmill, I realized I could watch my favorite sitcom, plug in my I-pod, see my facebook updates or watch a youtube clip from the touch screen.  I chose searching You tube clips, and to my favor I found a rather nice one about a couple who shares their home and their cooking ideas with the world in a video channel called Adventures to the Tar Pit on Youtube.  

Well after having my fill of fantasizing about the tar pit's family version of chocolate chip cookies, I moved on to explore another video clip.  This one is called Toy Hunting.  It introduced some new girly toys that are currently on the market for kids.  And when I say introduce I mean that a young woman literally walks around a department's toy store aisle and picks up toys and describes them to the lesser known audience.  Toys like Briar Beauty Barbie (got enough B's in that name) And a miniature doll called Adopt Me, amongst other dolls.  Now as much as I may like the idea of dolls I couldn't help think of the toys from my childhood

Sally secrets

PJ sparkles

Pillow People

Pound Puppies

Pipe Works

Lite Brite

Popales

Ragedy Anne and Andy

Toys of the 80's and 90's

A Great Powder Day:Life is Good

   
A Story called The Ugly Sweater Contest Brought No Warmth or Cheer.


The ugly sweater contest brought no warmth or cheer.  In fact it brought bigger uglies in even bigger ugly sweaters. 

"Why you wear that sweater man?" 

It said, I can't breath all over it, a red turtleneck sweater sinching at the neck.  Too tight for his breathing tube so Tommy Tucker shot a spit ball straight through it, bought the guy some breathing time while Cindy Lou was putting up the Christmas tree.  
"Hand me that skirt, would ya?"  

Why they call it a skirt anyway? Jonathon thinks. Do trees need skirts too?  Are they masquerading for some late night tree fella to take them to the ball; maybe abominable snowman-Would he be wearing a skirt too?  Or maybe he'd be wearing a kilt, a Monsters Inc sorta fella-ready to carry the tree skirt lady away.  But what would they do together late at night?  The bristles of the tree coming in for a late night smooch and the abominable snowman gets pissed.  Tells the tree, he's had it.  His five o'clock shadow was one thing but to be kissed by an overgrown tree was another. 

"The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norton Jester

"The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norton Jester Milo. A young boy is so bored with life he decides to have an adventure of a lifetime.  His daily routine was racing home as fast as he can just so that he can ignore the world and everything in it.  He finds himself in a wander land with two kings who rule that land: Dictionopolis, for his love of words, and Digitopolis, named for his love of numbers.  These kings quarreled and created a rift in their division of societies and their rule over them.  Milo the boy realizes he must save reality and rhyme, to bring normalcy to a world where things are extremely off balance.

I found that some of the book has a "Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" vibe to it.  The fact that Milo comes off as such a bore in the introduction of the novel ,and then having him wake up to a world of make belief was hopeful to me.  The book introduces so many bizarre characters, I only wish the writer had time to explore those characters more, and bring their purpose into Milo's existence more meaningful at the close of the book, instead of just introducing them to get Milo through the exploration of the two kingdoms.  

I like the fact that Tock, Dyne, the .58 boy, and Chrona-the-Great all gave Milo gifts that would help him explore the land,but these gifts seemed a bit of the Wizard of OZ type: not useful at all.  Overall, the book needs a sequel, to explore a second visit to the now changed attributes that Milo created.