Wait..no Tommy the cat? Please..

Ok, Lutheran kid who was raised by an ex-Baptist mom here. One minor correction. They were refugees at one point, read Matthew 2:13–23 which describes the “flight into Egypt”. And since they were fleeing Herod, you could even say they were political refugees. The math is a bit shaky but if you factor Herod’s reign and…

Where they fit on the shelf, so it is a voyage of discovery every time I have to find a specific book. But the beauty of it is I always discover a gem I’ve forgotten about. We have two large bookcases in our dining room, a book area in the spare room and a bookcase in our bedroom.

Even once in a while the Daiso in San Francisco will have the Japanese Kit-Kats.  I’m amazed at the flavors and the ornate packaging.  I really like the matcha flavored ones.

“Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime. Old garlic, burnt garlic, garlic cut too long ago and garlic that has been tragically smashed through one of those abominations, the garlic press, are all disgusting. Please treat your garlic with…

A version of this showed up at every freakin’ Lutheran pot luck of my childhood, along with three bean casserole and Swedish meatballs.  It was as predictable as coffee and cake after services.  

Oh boy things have changed since I had my kids With my daughter, I didn’t eat any cheese because it made me nauseous. But boy I couldn’t get enough of spicy food esp. Kimchi, which I ate by the bowl full. With my son, it was elote con queso on daily basis. And I’m sure that the little hole in the wall in Salinas…

And you gave me the perfect opening for this Frank Zappa tune, which I thought of immediately upon reading this article:

As long as they are not dented on the seams you are ok. 

There’s a really nice brewery right down the street from my house with a beautiful bar and seating.   Best part?  All they have is either live music or people spinning vinyl records.  Even better part?  People actually TALK to each other instead of gluing their eyes to some talking light box.  There are plenty of…

My husband grew up in a family of 6 kids and they had a “fruit chart” that equally divided all the fruit (including grapes) up between the family members. He never thought it was weird until he was in his teens and realized that this was not a norm in most households.

I vaguely remember some pundit saying that Neil Young could press his own shit into the shape of a piece of vinyl and RS would give it an A.  

The problem with Rolling Stone is that they can’t figure out their core audience: Boomers still into Rock? College students? Millennials? Those odd-ball Gen Xers who love alternative rock? So what they end up with is a magazine that fails on all accounts.

I saw that in a double feature with Caligula. Someone in my college film board had a very weird mind set.

I never realized how much we watched this until my son, a Kubrick fan, and I went to see the Kubrick exhibit in SF.  When we saw the models for the war room, we instantly turned to each other and said “Gentlemen! You can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!

Young Frankenstein. I’ve always been a fan of classic horror movies and this comedy is so spot on. The lines from this movie are intertwined now with family conversations and references.

Pretzels are fun to make.  I am still looking for a good Bavarian style pretzel recipe though; I’ve never been able to quite replicate what we ate in Munich.  The “bretzels” there were so good, my husband was trying to figure out if he could smuggle a few dozen back in his suitcase when we came home. 

One of the things I make on occasion is homemade sauerkraut. Its not hard but temperature regulation is key. We had a huge heat wave one summer and our garage where I set the crock, rose drastically in temperature. The smell of over fermented cabbage probably is banned by the Geneva convention for chemical warfare…

1. You can make homemade vanilla extract by infusing vodka with sliced vanilla beans. I don’t think I’ve bought commercially made in years.