Bookmarked For Later

I have a little bit of a bookmark problem.

I just went through my Firefox bookmarks trying to find an article I wanted to share with a friend, and noticed my "Recipes" bookmark folder, sitting there looking all small and closed and innocent.

"Oh, hi, Recipes folder," I said, "how've you been? Let me click you and see how big you've grown."

I have seventy recipes in there. At least a dozen of them are actually bookmarks for pages with titles like "Fifteen things to try with fresh lemons," or message board threads titled "Share your favorite soup recipes." Out of the list, I've tried exactly three recipes. That's pretty terrible.

Even terribler? I haven't been adding as many recipes to my browser bookmarks lately, because of a delightfully time-sucking website called Pinterest. I can save recipes from anywhere and get to them all on this one website! Even better, I can save pretty pictures of food that catch my eye, without even knowing what's in the recipe! The result of this witchcraft is that I have 74 pins on my "Food" board, only a few of which I've tried.

Add that up, folks. That's a minimum of 144 recipes. 

I need to get off my butt and start trying some of these. I saved them because I wanted to try them, right?

I'm making a commitment to myself here and saying I'm going to try at least one new recipe each week from my bookmarks, so I can weed out the ones that don't work and print out and save the ones that do.

I can't promise I'll come back and report on every single one (unless there's an overwhelming demand), but you'll certainly be hearing about the successes and the glorious disasters, because those are always fun to write (and read!) about.

Waffle Wars

One can rely on certain topics for inducing a charged debate on the internet. Politics. Religion. Which Star Trek captain was the best*. One does not, however, generally see waffles inspiring people to volley arguments through the wee hours of the morning.

One of my favorites from xkcd.com

It all began on Twitter. A friend asked for advice about buying a new kitchen appliance: she only had the money and space for one, and couldn't decide between a waffle iron and a sandwich maker. Replies were heavily weighted towards the waffle side - understandable, in my opinion, because who needs a machine to make a sandwich? It started to get weird when someone in the waffle camp shot down the grilled cheesist argument about melty cheese being better than waffles by saying you could melt cheese on waffles.

Whoa there.

Usually, I wouldn't get too worked up about waffles. They're pretty far down my list of preferred breakfast carbohydrates, behind pancakes, crepes, and french toast. But in what crazy world are people gumming up a waffle's tiny perfect squares with a melting slice of cheddar? "Waffles are for syrup!" I protested. Maybe whipped cream and strawberries if they're for dessert, but cheese is right out.

Then someone suggested Bearnaise sauce, and all hell broke loose. I just viscerally disliked the very idea of non-syrup toppings on waffles. 

Shortly after the Waffle Wars broke out, my friend Angelique asked me about chicken and waffles:

Allow me to expand on my response.

I don't understand the idea of "chicken and waffles" because:

1. It's a breakfast food paired with a not-breakfast food. "Steak and eggs" on a breakfast menu seems a little weird to me too. I feel like pork is an acceptable breakfast meat, but other meats don't belong with pancakes or waffles. I concede this may be my own cultural conditioning talking.
2. Wait, is chicken and waffles even FOR breakfast? Is it dinner? Where does it belong? I need labels. I like categories.
3. It's bone-in fried chicken, which is normally eaten with one's hands. But waffles are a fork food. I can't picture how one successfully eats this meal, especially since Google image searches lead me to believe that one is often piled on the other. Do I pick up the chicken and eat it, taking waffle bites from time to time? Do I fight the fried chicken pieces with a knife and fork, crushing the waffle beneath? I'm also told that syrup is usually involved in this dish too, which confuses me even more, because it would make the chicken harder to pick up and eat.

In a bold, unexpected, psychological attack, maple-syrup-hater Tasha sent me a link to a bunch of non-traditional waffle recipes, many of which cross firmly into "dinner" territory. Like chili topping a cornbread waffle, for example. At first I was appalled by the concept, but as I scrolled through the list, a couple of recipes actually appealed to me. What does that mean?

After more thought than I probably should have devoted to this topic, I've come to the conclusion that my issue isn't with savory waffles, per se. It's with dinner waffles. Waffles are a breakfast thing. Like French toast or croissants. This ham and cheese waffle makes sense to me, because it can still be served at breakfast (or maybe brunch), and I'd still be within reason to dump maple syrup on it.

Those people who are monkeying around with waffles for dinner... well, I contend that once you're making them out of cornbread and putting chili on them or using them as the bread layer of a BLT sandwich, they're really "waffles" in name only. It's like if someone made curry French toast. Ok, so maybe it's technically French toast, but it's so far from what we know and love as French toast that they probably should have given it another name entirely. But what do I know? I prefer pancakes anyway.



*Picard. By a mile.

Discombobulated

Last week, a post on a message board made me angry.

That's not unusual. But this post didn't involve my usual trigger subjects of homeopathy, Ryan Seacrest, or teen paranormal romance. The post was about words. I love me some words.

This guy, this... troll, claimed that some words are "unnecessary". The words he chose to accuse of superfluity: copacetic and discombobulated. His argument: they're hard to pronounce, "sound stupid", and other words can easily be used in their place.

Okay. Come on. First of all, they sound fantastic. Saying "discombobulated" out loud just now is the most fun I've had all day. Give it a shot, you'll enjoy it. Secondly, if you think "copacetic" is hard to pronounce, try some of the easy beginner words on for size, like "lamb" and "knife".

As for those other words that could be used in their place: forgive me, but isn't that the entire point of synonyms? Having slightly different ways to say the same thing? If you kill off synonyms and antonyms, you end up in a world of emotionless Orwellian Newspeak, devoid of nuance and tone. That's a boring damn world and I don't want to live there. We're talking doubleplus ungood here, folks.

Yes, I could use "bewildered", "taken aback", or "rattled" in the place of "discombolulated" and the meaning wouldn't change. The words all have a very similar denotation in that they all mean "confused and upset". But they've each got their own connotation, which is the connections your mind makes to other words and feelings when you read them. When I'm writing a silly story and a character is approached by a wizard who hands him a magic hat and tells him he's destined to save the world, I may say he's discombobulated by the encounter. If I'm writing a serious story and someone's being told that the man she's been married to for a decade has a secret life and a second family overseas, I may say she's rattled by the news. I know I would be!

I will grant that sometimes fancy-pants words get used unnecessarily in the place of simpler ones. Not everyone in every novel needs to have creamy alabaster skin, and sometimes the sky is just blue. Not cerulean or aquamarine or azure. Sometimes blue will do. Simplicity is generally the best rule. That's not to say that fancy words don't have their place. I use many a highfalutin word when the mood strikes and I feel like it conveys what I want it to. Sometimes you need to break out some discombobulation, and that's just copacetic with me.

But people who utilize "utilize" when they could totally be using "use"? Beatings. Beatings for all.

Thankful

Many of my friends made November into an exercise in gratitude, taking time each day to be thankful for an aspect of their lives and to share those thoughts on social media sites. I didn't climb onto that bandwagon, even though I enjoy challenges and I think that this one in particular is wonderful and meaningful, because I was in a dark and bitter place as November rolled in. I didn't feel like I could be genuine in my gratitude.

I feel like it's been a long, rough year, and I will be genuinely glad to shut the door behind it. I suspect that I will feel tears of relief on my cheeks when the New Year is rung in. I sat to write this post today, and at first, all I could think to say was that I'm grateful the year wasn't any worse than it was, but that isn't really in the Thanksgiving spirit, is it?

I am thankful, above all, for my husband. He has been a steady and level presence, as he always is, and he has helped to hold me up. More than ever, this year, I am grateful that we cope with life's rough patches in different ways and that our personalities complement each other. If I'd married someone who was more like me, this would have been an even more difficult year. I am so, so grateful for his love and patience.

I'm thankful for my family back home in Montreal (and Vancouver!). I don't see them as often as I would like, but phones and the Internet are wonderful things (for which I am also grateful) and help us to stay together. I'm glad that my parents are both happy to put their busy lives aside to answer when I call, and are so eager to stay involved in my life.

I'm thankful for all of my in-laws, for being the sort of people who call me family and mean it. I don't think I could have stayed here without knowing I will always have the support of my American family.

I'm thankful for my friends, both online and off. They trust me to listen to their troubles and offer support, and they are always ready to return the favor. I'm especially grateful that they are the type of people who are happy to pick up the friendship where we last left it, if time and work and life's demands keep us apart for a while.

I'm thankful for my home and all the projects we've accomplished in it.

I'm thankful that I now have a job that pays my bills without jeopardizing my health, and coworkers who enjoy being silly whenever they can get away with it.

I'm thankful for the tools I've learned to use against the heavy blanket of depression, and for the progress I've made so far.

I'm thankful that many of my complaints are "First-World Problems". I live in a peaceful country (angry election rhetoric notwithstanding), where I can do, learn, and say what I please, and I always have clean water and access to good medical care. Compared to much of the rest of the world, I've got it pretty good, so I guess a little gratitude is called for. I'll try not to forget that as I welcome a new year.

The pet of your dreams

Full disclosure: the topic of today's post was shamelessly stolen from a Paul and Storm podcast I had the pleasure of listening to on the Montreal road trip. Many, many times while we listened to their chats, Dave and I hit the pause button and discussed our own views on the topics they brought up, which was really the best part of the drive. I took some notes on topics I wanted to explore on my own blog, and today's post will be the first of (hopefully) several Paul-and-Storm-inspired musings.

Assuming that science was able to make it happen, what pet would you be willing to pay 

20 thousand dollars for?

My first thought, my first immediate thought: House Hippo!!

Hippopotamuses are among my favorite animals at zoos. They look like they've been overinflated with a bicycle pump, and they're smooth and shiny and have those disproportionally tiny tails that make them so comical. Of course, in real life, hippos are vicious. They're incredibly large, aggressive creatures who are known to attack humans any chance they get, capsizing river boats and just being mean old sons of bitches.

SO CUTE IT BURNS

But if science could create a teeny little hamster-sized hippo, and maybe breed out some of that aggression, I would be seriously tempted to save up my money and get one. Of course, the cats would hate it, but if I built it a little hippo habitat in a fish tank, it might work.

Unfortunately, I doubt that very much research money is going towards the shrinking of giant wild animals for house pets, so my house hippo dreams are never likely to be fulfilled. So, just in case I ever end up rich enough to spend obscene amounts of money on ridiculous pets, I have a backup plan.

Glow-in-the-dark cats. 

No, really. These are a real thing. When scientists are trying to splice a gene into an animal's genome, they need a convenient way to know whether it worked. One of the simplest ways for them to do this is to pair a glow gene, usually from jellyfish, with the important gene. If your test animal glows, then the insertion was successful. And adorable.

Glowing kitties of the future!

How great would it be to have a cat nightlight? Considering how often my boys like to dart around my feet when I'm walking downstairs in the darkness of early morning, a little glow could go a long way to keeping my neck intact.

What super-creature would you fork over 20 grand to have in your house?