My five year-old daughter is a self-selected vegetarian, except that she eats bacon. This is understandable, I think. Bacon is good.
My friend, Tony, makes chicken wrapped in bacon for our tailgate parties, but when he runs out of chicken, he finishes off by bacon wrapped in bacon, which is my favorite.
It seemed impossible to ruin bacon, and then someone did this.
How lucky we are to have a wife and mother who makes so many delicious foods for us.
I don’t drink coffee. I rarely eat donuts.
Even still, I’d like to humbly offer my services to Dunkin’ Donuts, a business that has six locations (no exaggeration) within one mile of my home (also no exaggeration).
I watched this commercial last night, waiting for the irony… the moment when the commercial would turn on itself and make fun of its own stupidity, except that never happened.
Someone actually wrote this, filmed it and broadcast it, thinking it was good. Thinking it would make viewers want to purchase Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.
Dunkin’ Donuts chieftains, I promise you this:
I will write 50 commercials better than this one. Maybe 100. I realize that I am establishing a low bar based upon the mediocrity I witnessed tonight, but I will exceed that bar y a wide margin. I promise.
Make me an offer. Seriously. Make me an offer.
I’m a huge fan of Pop Tarts. I almost never buy them because I can’t help but eat the entire box at one time. But I would eat then every day if I could.
Not the chocolate or cinnamon nonsense. Good old fashioned frosted strawberry, cherry or blueberry for me.
But even if I didn’t love Pop Tarts as much as I do, I would’ve loved this video. The fascinating history of Pop Tarts (including how they got their name and the fiery toaster), along with the way in which the Pop Tart collector has chosen to present himself, makes this a three minutes worthy of your time.
I was visiting the pretend diner at Kid City, a local children’s museum. I was sitting at a Formica table, waiting for my daughter to serve me some plastic food on a plastic plate.
These are the two items she placed in front of me.
I honestly have no idea what either of these things are supposed to be. Nor did my wife.
Thoughts?
For people like me who hate mayonnaise (and there are many of us), foods like egg, chicken and tuna salad sandwiches are not viable options for us.
When I was a kid, my mother didn’t especially care about my hatred for mayonnaise. When the canned tuna fish was on sale, we were eating it, damn it. Initially, this meant tuna fish straight out of the can and onto Wonder bread for me. The result was a dry, bland sandwich, but even worse, it was impossible to keep the tuna inside the bread without the mayonnaise adhesive. Invariably, I’d end up holding two slices of bread in my hands with a pile of tuna fish in my lap.
In an effort to solve this problem, I began experimenting with alternatives to mayonnaise.
Catsup was not good.
Butter was ineffective.
Honey was a disaster.
Then I stumbled upon the solution:
Peanut butter.
Heat up a few tablespoons of peanut butter in the microwave or a sauce pan on the stove until it is warm and thin, then mix it with tuna fish.
It’s a protein-packed alternative that holds the tuna together nicely and actually tastes good, too.
I know you probably think I’m crazy, but years ago, a task in one of my A-Mattzing Races was to eat a peanut butter and tuna fish sandwich (the race’s theme was me). While not every competitor extoled the virtues of this combination, a handful did, and at least one continued to eat it in his regular life.
Tuna fish and peanut butter. Try it. And let me know what you think.
A Boston Globe piece entitled Skeptics add to food allergy burden for parents describes the challenges that parents of food allergic children face when closed-minded morons accuse a parent of being overprotective rather than vigilante when it comes to the health and safety of their kids.
The number of children with reported food allergies continues to rise — from 3.5 percent in 1998 to 5.2 percent in 2012, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. With that increase has come a heightened awareness of allergies, but some parents of allergic children say they are sometimes branded hypochondriacs or labeled as overprotective by neighbors, late-night comics, and even grandparents.Beyond suspicion that allergies can’t be fatal — particularly non-peanut allergies — some parents say they face disbelief that their children’s allergies exist at all. That’s a perception fed in part by the enormous number of Americans who avoid things like gluten or dairy for lifestyle rather than life-and-death reasons. Skepticism was likewise fueled by a 2010 study in the Journal of Pediatrics that found an overreliance on blood tests to diagnose food allergies had led to avoidance of foods that could actually be eaten.
“It makes it harder because people think we’re all misdiagnosed, that we’re hypochondriacs,” Francoeur said.
My daughter is allergic to peanuts. I have yet to run into one of these skeptical idiots, but if someone ever questioned my daughter’s food allergy or the caution that we take (Clara included) to ensure that she is safe, I suspect that I would do what I do best:
Find ways of verbally abusing them until they were silenced, embarrassed or crying.
Hopefully all three.
Unfortunately, I have encountered people who bemoan the sudden increase in food allergies and ask me why I think so many children today suffer from this condition.
My typical response is something like:
Did you mistake me for a medical research scientist? Or some all-knowing seer? How the hell am I supposed to know? Why would you even ask me that question?
I don’t ask these questions nicely.
Though I have yet to encounter any skeptics in regards to my daughter’s allergy, I have dealt with skeptics like this before in regards to my own allergies.
I am allergic to bee stings and mustard. Each of these allergies illicit different types of responses from skeptics.
When a bee is flying in close proximity to me, my reaction is to exit the area immediately. While most people see this as a perfectly rationale approach (especially given that I nearly died and required CPR following a bee sting once). an occasional idiot will scoff at my avoidance strategy and assure me that if I don’t move, the bee won’t sting me.
First, I wasn’t moving when the bee that almost killed me stung me, so this is simply not true.
Second, I think of bees as tiny bullets. While bees might rarely sting a person who is not moving, rarely is still enough to kill me. I often ask, “If a man was waving a loaded gun in your face, would you remain seated and calm, even if he assured you that he would not fire if you remained still?”
This usually shuts the person up.
The most common response to my mustard allergy is to doubt it’s existence entirely. Since these people have never encountered a person with a mustard allergy before, they assume that my allergy must not be real.
Several years ago, one of these skeptics was present when I accidentally took a bite of a burger with mustard and had an immediate reaction. My face and hands broke out in hives and breathing became difficult for me. While I do not enjoy this reaction, it was quite satisfying to experience it in front of my skeptic.
The best response to these food skeptics is to ignore them. Their skepticism is merely a sign of their stupidity, and stupid people are best ignored.
If this proves impossible, the next best response is to respond immediately and harshly. Hit them where it hurts. Acquire allies. Make a scene. Call them names. Divulge long-held secrets. MAKE THEM CRY.
Ensure that they will never openly doubt the food allergy of another person again.
The plan was to spend the afternoon in the library, toiling away at the manuscript. But as I was packing the laptop, this was happening, which means that progress on my book ceased around 1:30.
I’ll regret the lost time in a few days when I am pecking away into the wee hours of the morning, attempting to polish a modicum of perfection from an ugly slab of granite, but at the moment, I don’t regret a damn thing.
I enjoyed a lovely and perfect Thanksgiving yesterday.
In the company of some of our best friends, we shared food, conversation and football. We chatted about our work and our children. We laughed at stories told from a year gone by. There was great debate over whether or not I am a hipster (I’m not).
In addition to the food and conversation, my son, Charlie, took more steps yesterday than he has at any other time in his life.
My daughter, Clara, who only eats fruits, breads, cheeses, yogurt, bacon (she doesn’t realize that it’s meat) and some vegetables, enjoyed a dinner slightly different than the rest of us and was understandably hungry when we arrived home that night,, but this was to be expected.
It was truly a perfect day.
This post is not meant to impugn the perfection of the day in any way, but the only thing that could’ve made the day better was a change in start time. I believe that noon is the ideal time for the Thanksgiving Day meal. I have hosted Thanksgiving many times in my past, and whenever I did, food was on the table as close to 12:00 as possible.
A noontime meal provides these key benefits:
1. The meal does not interfere in any way with football. The first game of the day kicks off just as you finish eating.
2. The fabled late day turkey sandwich is now a possibility and a necessity. When I hosted Thanksgivings in the past, I made sure to have the best breads and cheeses for these late day sandwiches, which were oftentimes better than the meal itself.
3. Desserts can be eaten much later in the day, after the meal has been better digested. There’s nothing better than eating pie two hours after the meal the first football game enters halftime.
4. It eliminates the need for the awkward pre-Thanksgiving Day meal. Rather than eating a lunch that doesn’t consist of turkey or ham or skipping lunch entirely in order to save room, make the Thanksgiving meal the breakfast, lunch and dinner of the day.
5. It affords a drinker who’s had one too many glasses of wine during the meal the time needed to sober up.
6. Best of all, it transforms Thanksgiving into a all day affair, which is what it should be.
I realize that the noontime meal is a rarity. Other than the ones that I have hosted the holiday, I have never experienced one myself, but I would argue that the closer to noon, the better.
J. Bryan Lowder of Slate suggests that the perfect time for a Thanksgiving dinner is 8:00 PM, claiming that:
“the harsh winter light streaming violently through the windows casts an unappealing pall across (the meal). Candles cannot hope to compete with the sun, so everyone looks and feels washed out and, as a result, prone to petty palpitations and the flaring up of old resentments.”
Apparently Lowder dines in some horrible, post-apocalyptic world, so if this is the case for you and the appearance of the food and your guests is critical to the success of the holiday, perhaps an 8:00 PM meal is a good idea.
But for those like me who live in a world where winter light doesn’t violently stream, candles burn with a fairly consistent flame and my friends look good in almost any light, the noontime meal might be something to consider.
Yesterday’s hosts admitted that there was definite appeal to the noontime meal save one:
The need to rise at some ungodly hour to begin preparations.
While it is true that you may need to begin cooking the turkey as early as 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, once the bird is in the oven, you can return to bed for a few hours and awaken to house that already smells of Thanksgiving.
Not bad. Right?
I don’t know J. Bryan Lowder at all, and I’ve never read any of his work, but I don’t think I’d like to spend an evening dining with him anyway. The claim that “everyone knows that dinner—especially a dinner party—is served at the hallowed hour of 8:00 PM” is enough to make me think he’s at least a pretentious snob and possibly worse.
This may not be a fair assessment at all, but all I have to judge is about 700 words.
Lowder’s only concession to his 8:00 start time is the admission that it’s inconvenient for anyone who has traveled from more than two hours away. But he also asserts that these people should probably be staying the night anyway.
Knowing nothing about this guy, I have to assume that he’s about 25 years-old, lives in Brooklyn, enjoys Thanksgiving with six other hipster friends in an apartment somewhere in Williamsburg, and may actually live on the set of HBO’s Girls. Lowder has no idea what “staying the night” might mean for a family of three or four with small children or a host whose home isn’t blessed with a guest room or even an elderly grandparent.
I know it’s hard to think beyond a two foot radius at times, but c’mon.
Unless your Thanksgiving excludes children, anyone over 55 and anyone traveling more than 30 minutes from their home, an 8:00 mealtime is simply insane.
I don’t even think a regular dinner party should begin at 8:00. But the again, I’ve never been very interested in what “everyone knows.”
Our first night of Hanukkah dinner was a delicious grilled cheese, apple and bacon sandwich.
As my daughter chomped on a slice of bacon (the only meat that she eats), she said, “Bacon is perfect for Hanukkah, Daddy. Don’t you think?”
I’m not Jewish, but even I know that there’s something wrong with that statement.
This may come as a surprise, but every so often, I don’t write something in fear that it may offend readers. I know. Based upon some of the things that I’ve written in the past, can you imagine how awful these things must be in order for me to avoid saying them?
Here’s an example:
Last week I wanted to write a piece about juicing. Specifically, I noticed that so many of the juicers who I know are juicing or have juiced are lost souls who lack sufficient self esteem, self confidence or direction in life. They tend to be people who latch onto every latest fad, dietary or otherwise, in a desperate attempt to find the missing piece of a puzzle that’s missing more pieces than they know or are willing to admit.
Juicers often talk about the mental awaking and spiritual enlightenment that comes with juicing. Juicing programs have names like Renovation, Excavation, Glow, Clean, and LOVE Deep. While the idea that juicing can do any of these things is nonsense, it explains why everyone who juices secretly despises their lives:
Happy, confident people don’t need to glow. They don’t require any spiritual awakening. They are not seeking renovation, excavation or love at the bottom of a bottle.
No one juices because they like juice. They juice to become better people.
This, of course, is absurd.
While the idea that all juicers feel like this admittedly an exaggeration, it’s a slight one at best.
But I opted not to write this piece, in fear that I might offend juicers everywhere. Perhaps there are some truly self-actualized juicers who don’t think the world is treating them unfairly. There may be juicers in the world who don’t feel undervalued, ignored, underutilized and under confident.
Perhaps there are some happy juicers out there after all.
But I chose not to write the piece, feeling like doing so would only annoy a large segment of people.
Less than a week later, Katy Waldman of Slate wrote the damn thing for me. Her piece, entitled Stop Juicing: It’s not healthy, it’s not virtuous and it makes you seem like a jerk, attacks juicing on a number of levels, and while she doesn’t spend as much time on the psyche of the juicer as I might have, she feels essentially the same about juicing that I do:
It’s stupid. And if you’re doing it, shut up about it. No one cares.
I just wish that I had said it first.
AC Peterson’s, a family restaurant in West Hartford, Connecticut, invites performers from the adjacent theater to sing show tunes on Monday evenings to their diners. Three or four young talented men and women walk around the restaurant with a microphone, singing songs from shows like West Side Story, Annie and The Sounds of Music, collecting tips in a large jar as they do so.
I’ve always found the whole thing a little annoying. With the music playing and the performers singing, it makes conversation difficult.
Then this happened, and I realized what a complete and total jerk I was being.
Does the first step of a juicing regime require you to tell every person you know that you are juicing?
Asking for a friend.
I can’t eat Pop Tarts anymore, even though I love them with all my heart.
I can’t buy a box of Pop Tarts because it’s impossible to eat just one bag. I have to eat the entire box in one sitting, and that’s not acceptable.
I can’t buy a single serving bag because its mere existence is too depressing.
Add to this the news that frosted Pop Tarts actually have fewer calories than unfrosted Pop Tarts.
I love frosted Pop Tarts. They’re my favorite.
This depresses me even more.
"Dad, can I tell you two things? Number one: Special K is super good. Number two: Can I have more Special K?"
Three minutes later:
"Here, Dad. Special K is so good that I saved a little piece for you. I only ate half of it. But the rest is for you."
Two minutes later:
“Dad, the only bad thing about Special K is that I eat it so fast. Also, can I more Special K?”
My daughter is a lot like me. She possesses a distinct and often divergent point of view, and she cares little for what others may think of it. When everyone is sitting, she stands. When everyone is singing, she is silent. She does things her own way, in her own time. Conformity is not her concern.
She owns a shirt with the image of a dog on the front, but she wears it backwards because she doesn’t “want to have to look at that dog all day."
Thankfully, she also possesses an uncommon level of sweetness that allows her to be compliant to authority figures when necessary.
I’m hoping that this will always be the case, but if my genes win out, it won’t.
Speaking from experience, it will be critical for my daughter to find the right spouse someday. Some people are harder to be married to than others. I’m not always the easiest, and I think my daughter will be the same way.
Case in point:
On Friday night Elysha and I went to dinner at Peppercorn’s Grill in Hartford before I was to take the stage at the Mark Twain House to tell a story.
As the hostess seated us, she leaned in close to me and whispered, “I’m going to have to ask you to remove your hat.”
I was dressed as I normally am for a storytelling event: jeans, a shirt, a good pair of shoes and a baseball cap. The lighting at many of these events is pointed almost directly into the storyteller’s eyes, so a cap with a brim helps to diffuse the glare and allows me see my audience better.
Needless to say, I was angered by the request. While it’s entirely within the restaurant’s rights to impose a dress code, I found the arbitrary nature of the request insulting and ridiculous.
I also become unreasonably annoyed and petulant when anyone tells me what to wear. It’s #10 on my list of shortcomings and flaws.
Did my hat somehow detract from the experience of my fellow diners?
Did it harm the reputation or image of the establishment?
Did it threaten profits?
Snobbery and pretention. That is why I was asked to remove my hat. Management had deemed hat-wearing patrons unworthy of their establishment’s fine reputation. I was being asked to conform to their snobbish standards.
I despise snobbery. I abhor pretention. But I hate conformity most of all.
My first reaction was to turn around and leave, but we only had about an hour before the show, and we were using a Groupon. If we didn’t use it, we would lose it.
My second thought was to refuse to remove the hat and see what happened. Again, the limited amount of time I had to eat, coupled with the potential loss of the Groupon, prevented me from taking this course of action, though I seriously considered it for a moment.
Elysha also loves this restaurant. We celebrated our anniversary at this restaurant back in July. The food is great. The parking is free. The wait staff is extraordinary. Even though she was almost as annoyed about the request as me, I wasn’t going to spoil her evening.
This represents significant growth, by the way. Ten years ago, I would’ve spoiled the evening. I’m a much better person today.
But I couldn’t let it go, either. I couldn’t allow this ridiculous request to remain unchallenged in some way. After we ordered dinner, I proposed a plan:
We would return to this restaurant in the near future. In lieu of a hat, I would wear my oldest, most ill-fitting concert tee-shirt from the 1980s. Motley Crüe, perhaps. Better yet, Skid Row.
Add to this a pair of ripped jeans and my rattiest pair of sneakers.
If the restaurant is so concerned about their image, they’ll have no choice but to turn me away. If a simple baseball cap is unacceptable, a man dressed in the ancient, torn, ill-fitting clothing of a heavy metal fan from 25 years ago can’t be deemed acceptable.
Right?
Or was it simply an aversion to hats that the restaurateur suffers, and if so, what if a woman wore a hat to dinner? Would she be asked to remove it as well?
What if I had been an 80 year-old man wearing a fedora? Would I have received the same treatment?
What if I had wrapped a bandana around my head? Would I be asked to remove my bandana as well?
What if I had been one of the many film or television stars who make their home in Connecticut? Kevin Bacon? Paul Giamatti? Michael J. Fox? Paul Newman? Would I still have been asked to remove my hat?
Elysha and I spoke about all of this as we waited for our meal, but here’s the thing. The most important thing:
Elysha supports the plan. She agreed without hesitation. She would never do such a thing (even though she thinks their hat policy is rude and arbitrary as well), but she has no qualms about me being me. She’s willing to go along to see what happens. I think she may even be looking forward to it.
Perhaps a majority of spouses would feel the same way, but I don’t think so. I suspect that many would veto the plan entirely or at least attempt to talk their spouse out of it. Others might tell their spouse to execute the plan without them.
I don’t think there are many who would’ve instantly, happily agreed as Elysha did.
And it’s not because Elysha thinks this is a great idea. In a perfect world, I think she would prefer that I simply avoid wearing a hat whenever we dine at Peppercorn’s Grill, but she also knows that as silly as this may seem, it’s important to me.
Above all else, my wife wants me to be me, and she wants this without reservation, hesitation or uncertainty.
It is why I feel like the luckiest spouse on the face of the Earth. How rare it is to find someone who not only accepts but embraces you for being you.
This is what I hope my daughter can find someday, too. If my suspicions are correct, she, too, will not be the easiest person to marry. She will likely possess certain ideas and beliefs that run counter to the thoughts and actions of the majority. She will do things her own way, in her own time, regardless of what others may think. She will need to find someone who can accept and embrace this about her, as Elysha has done for me.
Not someone simply willing to accept the Skid Row tee-shirt, but someone willing to support it without reservation.
I just hope there are more people like Elysha in the world, because based upon what I see and hear, she seems like a very precious commodity.
I can’t remember who sent this to me, but I couldn’t agree more.
I weighed 255 pounds when my wife got pregnant with our daughter in 2008. After finding out that we were going to have a baby, I almost immediately began an “eat a little less, exercise a little more” regime that included regular trips to the gym, push-ups and sit-ups at home and calorie counting via an iPhone app until I was able to count calories with the expertise of a nutritionist.
Since that day in 2008, I have lost more than 60 pounds.
I was an idiot to wait as long as I did to get fit. From the ages of 30-35, I gained the weight through a series of poor dietary decisions which included an affection for candy bars and a switch from Diet Coke to apple juice. Once I finally committed myself to living a healthier lifestyle, I discovered that it wasn’t all that difficult. “Eat a little less, exercise a little more” works, and if you are patient, it is not hard.
Most important, I had a reason to lose the weight.
I didn’t try to lose weight to improve my appearance. I didn’t do it to feel better or increase my athletic performance.
I did it to save my life. To save my life for the sake of my children.
A new Tumblr called Hot-Dog Legs challenges viewers to determine if what they are looking at are legs or a pair of hot dogs.
It’s shocking how much the two look alike.
Perhaps this will finally bring an end to the self-indulgent photos of surf, sky and a pair of suntanned legs. Probably not, but there’s always hoping.
Truthfully, I like hot dogs a lot. They’re my second favorite food, topped only by ice cream cake. And legs are great, too.
So whether the photo contains dogs or legs, both fine with me.
Comedian and podcaster Marc Maron recently described his tendency to drown his sorrows in a bowl of cereal.
He then went on to describe his bowl of cereal as Puffins, some almond milk and a little stevia.
Is this really what the world has become?
I was vaguely aware that a pastry known as the cronut existed.
This morning I heard the NPR story that described the lines for cronuts in New York City. Apparently people are willing to wait more than three hours on the street for this croissant-like pastry shaped like a donut.
As expected, one of the customers defended the hours she spent waiting by claiming that it was “an experience.”
Consumer experts know better.
Irma Zandl is president of the consumer trends company Zandl Group. "There are parts of the brain that become super active when a fad idea is heard, and people want to pass it on."
"One of the things that we've seen with the advent of all these blogs and social media is that people's desire to be tapped in and to be perceived to be somebody who is in the know is much greater."
I can’t begin to imagine the degree of self-loathing and required in order to waste hours of your life standing in line for a $5 pastry so that you can be perceived as someone in the know.
One person interviewed by NPR takes a bite of her cronut after waiting in line for two hours and declares, “Totally worth it.”
But the bite wasn’t what made the two hour investment worth it. Not was it “the experience” of waiting in line.
It was the ability to tell her friends about the bite, the chance to tweet about the bite and the photograph that she will post on Facebook of the bite that made it worth the wait.
It’s not about eating the cronut.
It’s about being a person who has eaten a cronut.
How sad it must be to be that person.