Secret Love of Coffee Mugs

Secretly, deep down inside, I think my new-found love of coffee these last few years may be due in part to a love of coffee mugs. They're so colorful, arty, ceramic-ey, cute and fun. It's hard not to pick up new ones when I see so many cool ones out there. Here are a few of my favorites:

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Yogurt Slices

I've been making my own homemade yogurt. It's quite a bit cheaper than buying it pre-made, I like to think it's healthier and I get to make it as thick as I want. I make it with a gallon of whole milk at a time and it makes enough yogurt to get me through about 2 weeks, eating about a 1/2 cup a day mixed in with some homemade granola, some lemon juice and a bit of homemade lemon curd for tart sweetness. Yum!

I've always like my yogurt a bit on the thick side, so when I first discovered Greek yogurt I was very happy. Now that I make it myself I let it drain for as long as I want until it's nice and thick. I sometimes let it drain too long. Is yogurt supposed to be sliced? But it's perfect!

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As Tasty as Paper Fruit

So I've been very creative lately. I rearranged my art station yet again. It's closer to the main family action (and therefore easier to slip in and work for 5 minutes here and there) yet, I have it cordoned off so it's not particularly easy to get into and not easy to see me when I'm holed up in there. All walled off in the back quarter of the guinea pig's room / music conservatory / backup pantry / catchall room for stuff, aka the room previously known as the dining room.

I have some work surfaces, storage for my stuff, a radio. What more could you want?

Here's one of the things I made:

Yes, it's a fruit bowl and fruit. Made out of paper. I know. Who makes things like that? Apparently I do. It was fun. I don't know what I'll do with it now that it's done, but I like it. 

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Like a Cherry Cordial, but with a Fly Center

You know what's disgusting? Finding a big fat black house fly floating in your coffee. That's what.

As you may know I'm not a big fan of bugs, but I'm not a complete wimp about them either. At least not all bugs. I'll pick up earthworms and let ladybugs walk on my hands. I'll pet woolly bear caterpillars, admire large slugs

and even be somewhat delighted by large green katydids walking up my stomach.

But something about a large housefly doing the backstroke in my coffee really turned my stomach.

You see, I poured myself a nice cup of coffee from the big urn at work. Then I poured in a bit of sugar from the sugar canister. I didn't think much of the lump of sugar when it plunked in. Sugar lumps happen. And usually they are tasty. But when the sugar lump has a fly center, like a corrupt, mutant cherry cordial, it's kinda gross. I carried my coffee down to my desk, took off the lid, poured in a bit of creamer and stirred it up. And a big fat black house fly floated up to the surface, no longer camouflaged in sugar crystals.

It took my mind a minute to process that it was actually a large insect floating in my much-anticipated morning beverage. I poked it several times with the coffee stirrer, watching its bloated, dead body, translucent wings, six legs and bulging eyes bob up and down.

I then carefully covered my mug again and returned to the break room. I dumped it down the drain and spent the next 15 minutes scrubbing my coffee mug and vowing never, ever, ever, ever, ever to use the sugar canister again. (I have a history with those things anyway).

Then I poured myself a fresh cup sans sugar and took it to my desk, trying to tell myself that I had scrubbed every fly molecule out of that cup. I wasn't quite convinced despite the elbow grease I had applied, the sore muscles I had acquired and the mounds of soapy bubbles I left behind in the break room sink. But I stirred it several times and nothing gross bobbed to the surface. I added some sugar from my own stash in my drawer (that sugar stash is a whole blog post in itself - maybe I'll tell you about it sometime). I stirred it several more times. It seemed safe. I tentatively took a sip. No legs. No wings. At least not that I could detect with my taste buds or my tongue.

I finished the cup with nary an incident, but I may not ever be able to drink coffee with quite the same carefree aplomb again. Damn fly!

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Dunkable, Drizzlable, Delicious

  So I finally got a chocolate fountain. I know I know, what took me so long, right? I mean, a chocolate fountain! Flowing with sweet, chocolately goodness! How could I have gone so long without one. I even managed to find one with a timer so each morning at 6AM it starts up and I wake to the smell and sounds of trickling chocolate drizzling down.

Ok, so the timer and the morning chocolate are just a dream, but I did get a chocolate fountain.

For the last few birthday parties we set that baby up with an array of dunkable, drizzlable, tasty treats - cookies, pretzels, strawberries, Krispie treats, cake, marshmallows, potato chips. I have to say, a Krispie treats dunked in chocolate is one of the most delicious things ever. EVER! Really!

In any case, a chocolate fountain is an incredible invention! The only downside was that I grossed out all the guests when I stuck my face under the fountain and just drank it straight up. It was messy, but wow! That was delicious!

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The Dangers of Mozzarella Bricks

We use a lot of mozzarella cheese in our house. We use it in homemade pizza, ziti-bake, lasagna - you know, all sorts of high-fat, delicious meals.

So, always looking for ways to save a few bucks, one day several years ago I decided to get mozzarella cheese in brick form. I figured I could shred it myself and save a few bucks over the pre-shredded stuff. I get ideas like this once in a while and sometimes they turn out to be a great idea, other times not so much. I'll let you decide which this was.

So, I unwrapped my brick of cheese. I sniffed it over soundly. I licked the edges (no, wait, I did not do that). Then I pulled out the food processor. It has a shredding blade and people on the internet said I could do this. (If it's on the internet, it must be true, right?)

First, let me say that I rarely use my food processor. It seems like a good idea, but I almost never have food that requires 'processing'. I cut carrots and potatoes by hand. And most of my other food I can chew myself. (I know, I'm sure I could use if for all sorts of wonderful things that would make my life so so so much easier. But really, digging it out of the cupboard is more work than I usually want to get involved in.)

So, I rarely use it.

But it seemed like the perfect tool for shredding mozzarella.

So, I began.

Before too long, the food processor began to make a lot of scary noises. It vibrated and shook like a china shop in a 7.5 earthquake and then cracked into pieces. There were two things it did not do.

1) It stopped just short of flinging its blade across the room like a batarang and
2) It did not shred my cheese.

Needless to say, I gave up. I shredded the stuff by hand, returned the (obviously defective) broken processor to the store and moved on with my life.

And, having a short memory, a year or so after that I decided to try again.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

The outcome wasn't quite as spectacular, but was basically the same. A broken food processor and some chunks of cheese with blade-nibbles on the edges.

I gave up and shredded the stuff by hand.

It's been a few years and it's getting to be time to try it again.

But I must say, the 30 cents I saved on the cheese has so far not been quite the investment I had hoped:

Food processor #1:	-$35.00
Cheese savings:	$0.30
Food processor #2:	-$35.00
Cheese savings:	$0.30
Pain and suffering due to stress, frustration, near-death experience:	-$2,336,792.00
Overall net:	-$2,336,861.40

If you do a search on the internet you will see that many many people do this. I suspect they either have industrial strength food processors, or they are lying out their, um, noses.

And while I do have a nice, new food processor sitting in a far dark corner of the cupboard, I no longer have an urge to shred mozzarella cheese with it. Or anything else.

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Gumby Loves Breakfast Pizza!

Now that's breakfast! Yummy breakfast pizza! Even Gumby and the cat want some!

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Some Days It's Better Than Others.

You know, I never really enjoyed or drank coffee until the last few years. I always preferred cocoa or nothing when I wanted a warm drink. But these last few years I've embraced coffee like a long lost friend.

And although I enjoy a cup just about every day, in a perfect world where calories didn't count, I would still be loyal to cocoa. There's nothing better than a cup of chocolatey, creamy, hot cocoa! But since calories do count, and I can have a cup of coffee with cream and sugar for 100 calories or less (versus 200 or more for (decent) cocoa), I stick to coffee most of the time. And most of the time it's very tasty.

But every once in a while, as I'm drinking my daily cup at work, I grimace, finish the bitter concoction in one big swallow and rush for the breath mints. Some days it's better than others. 

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An Irrational Fear of Caffeine Addiction and Coffee Mate

I usually drink decaf coffee. I have this irrational fear of getting addicted to caffeine and getting headaches on those days when I don't drink it. I hate headaches. And I have a secret belief that caffeine is a powerful drug with incredible magic powers that should be used sparingly. I'm just like that.

But I do occasionally have caffeinated coffee. Sometime just to amuse the kids - they like me best when I'm full of energy and bouncing around the house like Tigger.(I can be downright bouncy bouncy bouncy bouncy, fun fun fun fun fun, the most wonderful thing about caffeine is . . .  well, you get the point.) And sometimes I just like the extra kick if I'm sleepy.

So, the other day at work I went out to run an errand in the morning while my computer was being worked on. While I was out I stopped at Dunkin' Donuts and got myself a medium full-caff coffee. It was delicious and I was full of energy all day. I was SO productive!

But then later in the day, about 3 in the afternoon, I saw my little bottle of half and half. I bring my own half and half everyday for my daily decaf because I'm afraid of the Coffee Mate. I know - so many fears in this one little mind - but it's made out of chemicals and strange mysterious substances that fill me with unexplainable dread. So I avoid it.

But I digress - I saw my half and half and thought, "Hey, I could get some more coffee. I don't want to waste that tablespoon of half and half!".

So I did. I went up to the break room. They were out of decaf, so against my better judgement I had my second 12 oz cup of fully loaded coffee for the day.

Shortly after that it was time to depart for the day. On the ride home I was energetic and singing along with the radio. But then, 5 minutes from home I hit some construction. I was at a dead stop in a line of cars on a road that was down to one lane, for a full 10 minutes. (Especially frustrating when I could almost see my house.) Now, 10 minutes doesn't sound like much, but my coffee - all 24oz - kicked in about 1 minute into the wait. If you've never seen me fully caffeinated, you don't want to witness it in a closed space like a car. In the kitchen it's all bouncing, jumping, flipping, raucous laughter, obnoxious comments and fast breathing. In a car, where I am driving, where I need to keep my foot on the brake and my hands on the wheel it's like confining a cat in a bag, like shaking a box full of rubber balls, like trapping a frightened grasshopper in a bug box. In other words, it's a lot of bouncing, rebounding and ricocheting. Lots of hand tapping on the wheel, bouncing legs, seat dancing. The guy behind me must have thought I was nuts!

But finally I was able to start moving and got home pretty quickly. Once home I got out a saw, some sandpaper, a hammer, some brushes and paint and got the most done in 15 minutes that I've ever gotten done in such a short amount of time. Then it was off to karate for some sparring. And when I got home I baked a few cakes and mixed up some Friday muffins. (You think I'm kidding, don't you? Well, you'd be wrong.)

By the end of the evening I'd finally exhausted my supply of caffeine and slept like a baby until morning. (and by 'slept like a baby' I mean I was up several times during the night - not out of hunger, but just for the usual kid-crises that always occur in the darkest hour of the night.)

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Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs

  So Snickers came home from a party recently with an awesomely descriptive snack. Now, a normal party bag will have blow pops or pixie sticks, smarties or tootsie rolls or even a chocolate bar on occasion, but this is the first time I ever saw . . .

"Sour Chewy Cubes".

I love that! Sour Chewy Cubes! It reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes "Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs" - Calvin's favorite cereal. It's a very descriptive name. Calvin describes his cereal as "tasty, lip-smacking, crunchy-on-the-outside, chewy-on-the-inside, and they don't have a single natural ingredient or essential vitamin to get in the way of that rich, fudgy taste." Hobbes says it's like "eating a bowl of milk duds".

Well, Sour Chew Cubes are much the same. They are sour. They are chewy. They are cubes. And, as you would expect, there is nothing nutritionally redeeming to them. But the name. Oh the name! Whoever invented these things is a master at subtlety, the king of understated sneakiness. I mean, who would guess from the name that they are sour, or chewy or cube shaped?

I almost want to eat them just because I love the name.

Almost.

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The Origins Of The Food We Eat

When I was a young girl, like many young girls, I was into girl scouting. It was all fun and badges and crafts and giggling. And for a couple of summers in a row I went to girl scout camp for a week. An entire week away from home, in the woods, with a bunch of girls, camping, hiking, giggling, swimming, playing, giggling, eating toasted marshmallows and even, get this, hunting.

Yes! One year we got up in the morning and were told we had to hunt for our very own breakfast. Can you imagine? A large group of 10 year old suburban girls who don't know a parakeet from a hawk, or a rabbit from a fox, or a bowie knife from a bow and arrow, out in the woods, hunting for breakfast! Inconceivable!

And you would be right. This wasn't exactly like trapping a rabbit in a cleverly built trap, or tracking a deer by following prints and spoor and letting a perfectly aimed arrow loose to bring down a 12 point buck. This involved, as you can imagine, a lot of giggling, and . . .

wait for it . . .

wait for it . . .

Hunting for miniature boxes of cereal hidden in the bushes!

Classic! An awesome time that I still think about today. What a great way to teach us about nature and the origins of the food we eat. (That's sarcasm in case you missed it.)

If only the hunter-gatherers of forgotten yore had it so easy! If the cavemen could have quietly snuck up on a box of Frosted Flakes, or bashed in the side of a box of Fruit Loops with a carefully thrown rock, think how different things would be today.

On second thought. Don't think about it too hard.
 
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What's For Breakfast Today? Donkey Flakes!

  Sometimes (like once a day) I come up with a crazy idea. Now, not crazy as in driving 150 miles an hour along the edge of a rocky precipice, or crazy involving weapons and explosives. Not even crazy as in running naked down the street. A more boring kind of crazy. More along the lines of 'why in the world would she waste her time doing that?' kind of crazy. Case in point:

Now, what on earth would make me want to spend hours making this? I have no idea! It seemed like a good idea. Fun. You know, just one of those things. You do things like this too, don't you?

And the ducklings and the hubster keep asking me what gave me the idea. I can't remember. All I remember is that Snickers and I were talking. I don't remember if we were discussing tomorrow's breakfast, or if we were discussing donkeys. Either is equally likely. For all I know we were discussing things that have multiple words associated with them - like donkeys and asses. In any case, somehow I ended up suggesting that he have Donkey Flakes for breakfast. With milk. The conversation undoubtedly involved giggling and eye-rolling. And it planted the seeds.

On a related note, I firmly believe that time you enjoy wasting, is not time wasted*.

* unless, of course, it involves TV, or Facebook. then it may well be wasted.

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That Coffee Was a Little Fishy

You know how different fish tend to live in different parts of an aquarium? Like Whiskers and Zoidberg the albino catfish, Cord, our loach and Creepy and Crawly the ghost shrimp. They were bottom feeders and rarely ventured from the bottom. Then the tetras tend to stay in the middle of the tank along with the guppies and the mollies are always up at the top, sipping air and blowing bubbles and having a grand ol' time.

Well, I was reminded of that the other day while drinking a cup of coffee. No, it didn't taste fishy, nor were there bottom feeders in the cup, nor was I watching anyone in particular when the thought crossed my mind.

Instead, I was at a Starbucks at Barnes and Noble. I've been there many times before, and I'm usually a fairly observant person (or so I thought), but I somehow managed to overlook, in all the times I've been there preparing my coffee, at that very same counter, the fact that there are several little spice shakers. There's the usual creamers and milks, a slew of different varieties of sugars and artificial sweeteners and right there along with the rest of it there is cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla powder and chocolate. Right there in front of my nose. Basically waiting to be noticed. Doing everything but jumping up and down. And somehow I missed them. WTF!

But anyway, I noticed them on my last trip and was very excited. I love cinnamon! I love nutmeg! I often add them to my homemade hot chocolate and bake with them all the time. So, in my excitement I added cinnamon AND nutmeg AND vanilla to my coffee along with the usual sugar and creamer. I guess I'm one of those people who drink coffee under the pretense of liking coffee, when I actually only like covering up the flavor with other flavors. But in any case I was just so excited to see them that I went a little crazy and added a bit of everything. It's a good thing the onion powder, garlic powder and minced peppers weren't out.

But anyway, I added the cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. It smelled heavenly!

And now you're expecting me to say that it tasted god-awful and I couldn't even drink it, aren't you? Aren't you? I know you are. But you're wrong. It was actually delicious! Hot and slightly spicy (not in a cajun, hot pepper way, but in a hot baked cookie fresh from the oven way).

And to tie things up, why on earth did that make me think of fish? Well, by the time I was done I noticed that the cinnamon had a tendency to float on the top in the first few inches of the coffee, whereas the nutmeg sank towards the lower 1/3 and formed a gross  nice sludge on the bottom, along with the undissolved sugar. It was an unexpected surprise - it was like two coffees in one! I was jumping up and down with excitement. Just when I began to bore with the cinnamon coffee, I reached the nutmeg layer. It was intriguing. It was entertaining. It was delicious. It was downright fascinating! But truth be told, it was a little fishy.

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On Your Potatoes? Really?

  The other day my roasted potatoes were a little bit bland. Oh no! I know! Tragedy. It was terrible! But really, not so much. I mean, it's only potatoes.

But, in order to satisfy my tongue and also to gross out the kids, I heated up a little bit of tomato sauce for dipping. The hubby and Sweet Pea were dipping in ketchup (ick!) so I thought I'd try a little bit of tomato sauce.

Ugh! Ick! Yuck! Sauce? On potatoes? Oh Mom! You are so disgusting. Eeewwwww!

The faces around the table were priceless. I think I would do it again, many times, even if I didn't like the taste. The faces were awesome!

It reminded me of Calvin and Hobbes. There were a couple of different sets of Calvin and Hobbes comics where Calvin was making these terrific and horrible faces - one set was when he was eating dinner (and it was eating him), the other was family portraits. Priceless! Well, those faces across the table really brought Calvin and Hobbes to mind.

And since I know that you all are waiting with baited breath to find out if the bland potatoes were fixed by the application of some tomato sauce I will tell you . . .

Drum roll please. . .

Sure, they were OK. A little weird, but good.

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