I’ve curated some favorite recipes that you can enjoy during this holiday season.
The first was passed down from my father:
Tag: Reminiscing
If we go missing, you’ll know who it was…
Two houses ago, when we moved into our first house in Georgia, after we’d been there a while, we found a couple of odd things in the backyard. Mainly, it was the occasional discarded Almond Joy wrapper.
Seeing as how I do not like coconut and there’s no reason Tom would be secretly eating coconut candy in the backyard (I’m not a candy dictator), the only logical conclusion to make was that we were being stalked. Stalked by someone who like to eat Almond Joys while he watches people watch TV, apparently.
The Almond Joy Killer, we called him (or her, don’t want to make assumptions).
We were never murdered (I guess they only “kill” Almond Joys), and we eventually moved. We moved on with our lives. And we moved AGAIN, to a different state.
We lived in our naive little bubble, thinking ourselves safe from a chocolate-smeared Peeping Tom (not my Tom, a different, peeping, Tom).
All that changed last weekend when Tom came inside after mowing the lawn. What did he bring with him? THIS:
DEAR GOD! He or she is back! I wonder if they went through a Mounds phase in the years between, and then they went back to feeling like a nut, and fell into their old ways.
Anyway, welcome back Almond Joy Killer, we’ll try and be more entertaining this time. Please don’t murder us.
1979 Sears Wishbook – Silky PJs for your disco key swapping parties.
I was looking around wishbookweb.com, which I love to do a disturbing amount, and decided to flip through the 1979 Sears Wishbook. Here’s some of the things I found:
I don’t care how innocent and out-of-the-gutter your mind is, there’s no way you see this picture of two couples in matching-but-different-color silk pajamas and NOT assume they are all going to have sex together.
Don’t these two look like the nerdy hero lead of a 1980s movie and his bully? If only both of them knew when they get home from school they put on the same robe, maybe that’d change everything.
Check out this super creepy Santa:
Did people seriously wear “Twas the Night Before Christmas” nightcaps even in the late 1970s?
In most of the menswear pictures, the guys all have one of their hands clenched like they’re holding something. My theory is that they’re cyanide pills and that no male models made it out of the photoshoot alive.
Did you think Snuggies were something new? You were so wrong.
Hey, kids, what do you think of Winnie the Pooh?!
And, lastly, on a VERY serious note – PLEASE SOMEONE FIND ME EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE WALL CLOCKS:
I Love-Hate You, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is a bunch of glorious bullshit. It is so corporate, sponsors sponsor sponsors – “The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade brought to you by NBC presents the cast of Annie courtesy of McDonalds.” That’s really not an exaggeration.
It’s awful. I watch it every year and love each terrible minute. Why? I’m not sure. It’s cheesy. It’s a wall to wall advertisement save for the occasional school band or cheerleading squad. Why would anyone want to watch it? It’s tradition. Tradition is a very powerful lure. But, more than that, I kinda like watching people sell their souls. I know that makes me sound like a terrible person and I don’t have any response to that. There’s just something about a musician who wants to be taken seriously as an artist having to lip sync a cheesy song on the Build-A-Bear parade float while a bunch of furries cavort about that warms my heart. And also listening to the absolute bollocks river of banter and product placements that the hosts have to vomit out of their Turkey day mouths. Real example: “”Hamburger Helper gives us a float to remember.” They had to say that!
And let’s not forget the balloons! I can’t see the giant balloons without remembering the scene in the 1989 Batman movie where the Joker tries to kill the entire city with poisoned giant parade balloons. I don’t hope that this happens at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. But, I don’t want to miss it if it does.
Another game I like to play is “What Will be the Most Embarrassing Clip to Watch in Ten Years Time.” The possibilities are endless! Here’s some examples (people with heart conditions, sense of decency, or allergies to train wrecks should not watch) they are really bad quality, too, just to add to the mood:
I wrote the thing about The Joker BEFORE I found this clip.
Let’s remember: someone had to actually write this song, then she had to learn it, then she had to pre-record it, then she had to learn dance moves to it.
Remember when Victoria Jackson seemed sane riding around on a giant snail? Also, Phyllis Diller, RIP, this is EXACTLY how one should behave performing in this parade. I’m serious.
Jordan Knight of NKOTB gives up on lip synching about halfway through (unless one of the other New Kids sings that line, I bet someone knows! Show yourself!). I also LOVE that Donnie looks positively delighted that children have no food to eat or a place to go.
There’s a very good chance I will be live-tweeting this marvelous event, so please stop by and laugh at things with me: @cannibal_nerd
A Trip to the State Fair, Part One
Ten years ago Tom and I moved to the Atlanta area. For ten years, I’ve missed out on the North Carolina State Fair.
While I realize that since the state fair is comprised of traveling rides and food carts, my state’s state fair is probably not much different from any other state fair. But, I like to pretend it’s special, and, really, since every single thing is in the exact same place every single year – it is kind of unique in that way (meaning that say the South Carolina state fair probably puts the Worlds Smallest Horse in a different same place every year than North Carolina). That’s one thing I love about it – it doesn’t really change, although I would say this year there were less peanut shells all over the ground, just an observation.
After finally making it back to North Carolina, one of the things I was really looking forward to was getting to go to the State Fair again.
We (Tom, my sister, and I) went on a Wednesday afternoon, which meant a light crowd, which is good – less second hand smoke and faster access to fried foods. We arrived hungry, because as we all know, it is important to save as much room as possible for the delicious treats. But, we’re health-conscious folks, so luckily, we found some healthy fare:
This was called a “bucket” of fried veggies, which I find misleading. I would think a bucket would be at least the size of a standard beach sand pail. That’s not so say that we should have or want an entire sand pail of fried foods (lie), but if you’re going to sell a bucket of something fried – by god, it should be a bucket. I’m pretty sure that’s in the constitution.
But we didn’t let this get us down – we persevered – it’s amazing how brave humans can be in the face of inaccurate bucket descriptions. We plowed on! We moved forward! Tom and Mandy shared some sweet potato fries and I had an ear of roasted corn that was dipped in a vat of butter substance. I know, it’s inspiring.
One thing my sister likes to do every year is go and see the professional cakes from the cake decorating competition. As we made our way through the building, we found winning deserts in the non-cake category:
This is just cruel. “Oh, look! These treats were so delicious, they won ribbons and everything! You can’t have any!”
After sighing and fogging up the glass wishing I could taste what at that point was probably stale, brick-hard cookies, I noticed my sister standing in a long line.
I thought, “ooh, maybe they’re passing out samples of winning deliciousness,” so I went over and asked her why she was in line.
She was in line to LOOK at the winning cakes. I wish I had gotten a picture of it. The line was probably 20-25 people long. It was the only line we stood in the whole day. I tweeted about the absurdity of waiting in a long line to simple see a cake, not eat one. I had several responses that pretty much said “why in the hell would you do that?” I don’t know, other than because my sister wanted to stand in line to see cakes, that meant we had to wait for her to see the cakes, so we might as well wait in line, too.
The cakes were alright, I guess. My two favorites were the headless horseman and Alice in Wonderland cakes:
My first thought was, “I want that headless horseman cake served at my funeral.” Immediately after that was, “I want some cake.”
And you know what? The fair doesn’t sell slices of cake! Maybe some cupcakes, but not actual slices of a whole cake. And that, that just really gets to me. As much as I love the fair, there are elements that reflect the crushing disappointment that life can be.
Sometimes a bucket full of fried goods isn’t actually a bucket, and sometimes you have to wait in line for cake and not actually have any cake. But what do you do? You pick up the pieces, and then fry them, sprinkle them with powdered sugar, and you eat that shit. That’s what you do.
Stay tuned for my next installment of “A Trip to the State Fair,” which will pretty much just be more musings about fried foods.