By Andrew Birden
There are only a few tasks that we, as modern human beings, still share with our distant ancestors. We don’t have to wander the wilderness grubbing around for slow-witted wooly mammoths, we don’t have to creep up to the waterhole because a sabertooth tiger might be feeling a little peckish, and thank goodness we don’t have to wear leather underwear.
Talk about chafing.
But there are still a few activities that we perform that are uniquely human, that separate us from the rest of the stomping chomping breeding creatures that make up animal life on this planet.
I am talking about watching television with your children.
Granted, television has only been around for 75 years, YouTube has been on the scene for less than three years, and this new video-on-demand stuff from NetFlix looks like it might change the whole broadcasting landscape. But the ritual of gathering together as a family and listening to stories has been going on for hundreds of thousands of years.
Some anthropologists say we started telling stories as a way to pass on knowledge through an oral tradition, others say we tell stories of great accomplishments, awful tragedies, and fantastic adventures in order to gain understanding and insight into the mundane tales of our own lives, and others just say it is a natural offshoot of religion as we try to understand why the world works the way it does.
Personally, I think we do it because we’re bored.
Regardless of the reason, we still perform a version of this ritual. It happens when the kids settle down to watch television or play a video game, one parent prepares dinner, and the other parent tries to understand and interpret what the kids are watching. It’s even more fun when the kids start telling you about the show.
If you haven’t done it, I highly recommend you find an eight-year-old to explain an episode of Spongebob Squarepants. It doesn’t matter if you know Patrick the Starfish or believe that the farmers of the undersea civilization of Bikini Bottom milk jellyfish for their precious jelly. It’s not about the darn cartoon. It’s about the child.
The kid will wave her arms, laugh and giggle, make faces, and I’ve seen a child entertain an easily-bored adult for over an hour by describing a 12-minute episode of this incomprehensible cartoon.
What’s even more fun is trying to explain to the child why a 40-year old reference to Star Trek’s Captain Kirk makes sense on that same episode of Spongebob Squarepants.
Talk about entertainment.
But try to show a kid some of the movies we knew when we were growing up, and it is a completely different situation.
The other day I thought I would try to introduce my kids to the classic scary movie, Poltergeist. They’d never seen it, and I knew it would scare the living Cheese and Rice out of them. While pitching the movie to the Friday Movie Night committee, which is chaired by their mother and for which I am the treasurer and all-around movie delivery guy, I explained to my suspicious sons that Poltergeist scared and delighted millions of kids, that it was about a little girl who gets kidnapped by some scary spirits, and that it scared me as bad as Alfred Hitchcock’s, Psycho.
To which my family responded as follows.
My wife and confident said, “Psycho didn’t scare me.”
My youngest asked, “Is it a cartoon?”
And my oldest asked, “Who is Alfred Hiccup?”
I rolled my eyes and contemplated the whole frustrating truth of existence.
Then I popped some popcorn and started the movie. Pretty soon, the whole family joined me, and we screamed and hollered while munching on that big bowl of popcorn.
Papa’s Popcorn
WHAT YOU NEED
6 tablespoons of canola oil
2/3 cup of high quality popcorn kernels
1 4-quart or larger covered saucepan
3 Tbsp or more of butter
Salt to taste
WHAT YOU DO
1. Put the oil into the pan and heat it on medium high heat.
2. Do that thing where you place three kernels of corn into the oil and wait for all three to pop. That’s when you know the oil is hot enough.
3. After those three kernels pop, pour the rest of the popcorn into the pan in an even layer, cover the pan with the lid, and remove the pan from the stove.
4. I get the kids together, and I’ll hold the pan while we count backwards from 30. This gets all the kernels to a temperature that is just shy of popping.
5. Put the pan back on the heat and start swirling it around. The kernels will pop like crazy, and you should keep the lid cracked a little so the steam can escape.
6. Once the popping is pretty much over, dump the popcorn into a large bowl. Melt the butter in the hot pan and pour it over the corn.
7. Salt it to your own liking.
8. Serves 4-6.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
Quiche and Construction By Andrew Birden
For those of you who are not living under a rock for the past two months, you may have noticed there is a lot of road construction going on these days. I suppose it’s the state using the new stimulus money we borrowed from our children’s children’s children’s Chinese bankers to hire hundreds of people to build a road that will be full of potholes by the end of next winter. It’s not the construction company’s fault the road will deteriorate so quickly. Potholes are like another symbol of the state and her amazing weather; “Welcome…crunch!...to Maine,…bang!…the way life…wham!…should…thud!…be”. Lucky for us, once all those potholes have peppered the road, all we will have to do is wait for the following winter. Then Mother Nature does her seasonal schtick and fills in all the potholes with ice for 8 months.
The many men and few women who work those jobs have a thankless task. But I am here to thank them for all the work they are doing. I’ve seen these folks working on clear sunny days, in driving rain, in blistering heat, and they work from sunrise to past sunset. This group is working their butts off. Right now, the whole crew of rumbling dozers, front-end loaders, trucks, surveyors, and all the other multi-super-sized equipment that rolls around on large metal treads is apparently decided to park itself in my front yard.
I know it is difficult to lay down new road, and I know that at some point I will appreciate the work these folks are doing. But right now, all I can think is that this whole operation is making me lose sleep.
I’ve been having to get up earlier and earlier each morning just so I will have enough time to stop along that path of destruction…er…construction in the road while some guy in a yellow bib holds up a stop sign in one hand and a cell phone in the other. I’ll dutifully watch this man while he carefully avoids looking me in the eye because it would probably make him or her feel weird, and all I want is for him to turn that sign around so that the magic word “slow” is displayed in front of me.
When it says slow (the equivalent of “open sesame”), then I can cruise along over pothole-peppered roads , zipping by cranes that are swinging loads of dirt and watery muck about and generally just trying to get my sleepy carcass to work.
But no, this project is freaking huge, and there seems to be umpteen flaggers controlling the traffic between my house and the nearest town. I find myself stopping three times on my way to work, and three times on my way home from work. And here’s the weird thing, the same people are always operating the flag stops.
I was riding with Mrs. Chef the other day, and she pointed to one of the morning flaggers.
“It looks like he’s having a better day today.”
“Who?”
“The guy with the sign. When he first started doing this job he smiled a lot, but last week he was frowning whenever I drove by in the morning, and when I came back in the afternoon, he was looking pretty annoyed. He looks like he is in a better mood today.”
So I guess Mrs. Chef notices the construction workers as well.
When we got to the other end of this particular construction area, I noticed the opposite flagger talking into a radio as she flipped her sign around. It was that pretty construction lady with the huge ear protectors that I happened to notice every morning. I could guess why our first flagger was in a better mood, but I didn’t say anything to Mrs. Chef.
All I know is that eventually I will have an extra hour returned to me each day. Instead of sitting in my car as it idles endlessly in the heat of summer, or it sits in the rain that seems to be falling every freaking day lately, I know that in some distant future I will be cruising along a nice new roadway. I’ll someday be able to zip back and forth, and the construction equipment and the workers that operated all that equipment will be like the memories of helpful and noisy friends from a particularly busy summer.
Until I hit the first pothole.
Roadbed Quiche
WHAT YOU NEED
1 package of frozen tator tots
1/4 cup of butter
1 sweet onion
3 cloves of garlic
1 cup of chopped portabella mushrooms
2 teaspoons of Italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
1 (6 ounce) package of feta cheese, crumbled
2 cups of shredded Cheddar cheese
salt and pepper to taste
5 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
salt and pepper to taste
1. Here’s how you make the road bed. Cook the tator tots according to the package directions then use a potato masher to crush the tator tots into a potatoey dough. Spray two 9-inch pie pans with cooking spray and spread the mashed tator tots into the two pans, forming the crust for the quiche.
2. Now we go back to a pretty zippy quiche recipe. Set the oven to 350 degrees.
3. Using the butter and medium heat, sauté the onion, garlic, and mushrooms until the onions are starting to brown (about 5 minutes). Sprinkle the Italian seasoning and salt into the pan and continue cooking for two more minutes.
4. Add the spinach, feta, and half of the cheddar cheese to the skillet and stir the whole thing together.
5. Spoon half the mixture into each pie crust.
6. Whisk the milk, eggs, salt and pepper together and then pour half of the eggs into each pie shell, carefully combining with the vegetable mixture.
7. Bake the pies in the oven for 15 minutes, then sprinkle the rest of the cheddar cheese across the top and bake another 35 minutes or until the quiche has set. Let the pies cool for 10 minutes before serving.
The many men and few women who work those jobs have a thankless task. But I am here to thank them for all the work they are doing. I’ve seen these folks working on clear sunny days, in driving rain, in blistering heat, and they work from sunrise to past sunset. This group is working their butts off. Right now, the whole crew of rumbling dozers, front-end loaders, trucks, surveyors, and all the other multi-super-sized equipment that rolls around on large metal treads is apparently decided to park itself in my front yard.
I know it is difficult to lay down new road, and I know that at some point I will appreciate the work these folks are doing. But right now, all I can think is that this whole operation is making me lose sleep.
I’ve been having to get up earlier and earlier each morning just so I will have enough time to stop along that path of destruction…er…construction in the road while some guy in a yellow bib holds up a stop sign in one hand and a cell phone in the other. I’ll dutifully watch this man while he carefully avoids looking me in the eye because it would probably make him or her feel weird, and all I want is for him to turn that sign around so that the magic word “slow” is displayed in front of me.
When it says slow (the equivalent of “open sesame”), then I can cruise along over pothole-peppered roads , zipping by cranes that are swinging loads of dirt and watery muck about and generally just trying to get my sleepy carcass to work.
But no, this project is freaking huge, and there seems to be umpteen flaggers controlling the traffic between my house and the nearest town. I find myself stopping three times on my way to work, and three times on my way home from work. And here’s the weird thing, the same people are always operating the flag stops.
I was riding with Mrs. Chef the other day, and she pointed to one of the morning flaggers.
“It looks like he’s having a better day today.”
“Who?”
“The guy with the sign. When he first started doing this job he smiled a lot, but last week he was frowning whenever I drove by in the morning, and when I came back in the afternoon, he was looking pretty annoyed. He looks like he is in a better mood today.”
So I guess Mrs. Chef notices the construction workers as well.
When we got to the other end of this particular construction area, I noticed the opposite flagger talking into a radio as she flipped her sign around. It was that pretty construction lady with the huge ear protectors that I happened to notice every morning. I could guess why our first flagger was in a better mood, but I didn’t say anything to Mrs. Chef.
All I know is that eventually I will have an extra hour returned to me each day. Instead of sitting in my car as it idles endlessly in the heat of summer, or it sits in the rain that seems to be falling every freaking day lately, I know that in some distant future I will be cruising along a nice new roadway. I’ll someday be able to zip back and forth, and the construction equipment and the workers that operated all that equipment will be like the memories of helpful and noisy friends from a particularly busy summer.
Until I hit the first pothole.
Roadbed Quiche
WHAT YOU NEED
1 package of frozen tator tots
1/4 cup of butter
1 sweet onion
3 cloves of garlic
1 cup of chopped portabella mushrooms
2 teaspoons of Italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
1 (6 ounce) package of feta cheese, crumbled
2 cups of shredded Cheddar cheese
salt and pepper to taste
5 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
salt and pepper to taste
1. Here’s how you make the road bed. Cook the tator tots according to the package directions then use a potato masher to crush the tator tots into a potatoey dough. Spray two 9-inch pie pans with cooking spray and spread the mashed tator tots into the two pans, forming the crust for the quiche.
2. Now we go back to a pretty zippy quiche recipe. Set the oven to 350 degrees.
3. Using the butter and medium heat, sauté the onion, garlic, and mushrooms until the onions are starting to brown (about 5 minutes). Sprinkle the Italian seasoning and salt into the pan and continue cooking for two more minutes.
4. Add the spinach, feta, and half of the cheddar cheese to the skillet and stir the whole thing together.
5. Spoon half the mixture into each pie crust.
6. Whisk the milk, eggs, salt and pepper together and then pour half of the eggs into each pie shell, carefully combining with the vegetable mixture.
7. Bake the pies in the oven for 15 minutes, then sprinkle the rest of the cheddar cheese across the top and bake another 35 minutes or until the quiche has set. Let the pies cool for 10 minutes before serving.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Mess O’ Turkey
At night, after we’ve managed to shut off the television, called a halt to the unending battle between the forces of older brother vs. younger brother, endured the dessert debate (Can we have a treat? Haven’t you already had a dessert? That was carrot cake, not dessert. It was cake. Dessert is supposed to be something like a piece of candy. You don’t get candy before bedtime. Ah, Mom, pleeeeeaaaaaase!), we have to send the children to the shower to perform those nightly rituals that seem to take up so much of our adult life.
I mean, seriously, when I am preparing myself for a day at work, it takes me a good 30 minutes to do all the things a dude must do in order to avoid being known as that smelly guy.
But kids? Heck, I’ve an eight-year-old who brushes his teeth in two seconds, washes his hands without running any water, and declares he had a bath by just glancing at the empty tub. For boys, it seems, hygiene is more matter perspective and expressed conviction rather than actual cleanliness.
There’s a part of me that suspects this problem may be the fault of their parents.
When we brought the first baby home from the hospital, we didn’t know what the heck we were doing. At the hospital, the nurses kept our little poopmeister as clean as a whistle. They gave us lessons in bathing our infant that made the task look so easy and efficient that we knew it would be a snap. After watching those nurses, we knew we could keep our children spic-and-span. And didn’t the newest member of the Chef family look so happy and peaceful as the nurse expertly removed his diaper, bathed him, washed his hair, dried him with a luxurious blue towel and then put a fresh diaper in place.
When we came home from the hospital, I walked my wife, who carried our precious new son in her arms, to the door and up the stairs and got her comfortably in bed. After all, she was a new mother who had gone through a physically demanding ordeal and I was the loving doting husband who was there to make her feel all warm and fuzzy.
What happened next made that whole doting husband/father schtick last for only 20 minutes.
We both noticed that our little expression of worldly optimism was a little stinky, and being paranoid new parents, we knew diseases from the non-sterile world just had to be all over him. In order to show my sincere intention to share the burden of rearing our new child, I told Mrs. Chef to relax and that I would bathe the child.
It was quite the learning experience. First off, a baby will scream his head off if you run the water in the bathtub. The sound echoes loudly in the tiled room and will startle a child so badly that his cries would make you suspect we were torturing him at Guantanamo. Second, an eight-pound human being does not fit under the faucet in a standard kitchen sink. Trying to rinse the soap off of a child without getting suds into his eyes takes college-level calculus, a plumb bob, and the GPS off of an iPod. And finally, soap apparently transforms babies into wriggling fish.
After almost dropping my son four times in that first 20 minutes after he came home and actually dropping him at least once, I concluded that there must be some secret knowledge that women have that gives them an instinctive ability to wash newborns. So I called my wife to rescue me.
But I can now say that when it comes to bathing an infant, there is no gender gap, there is complete equality in the incompetence that parents have when it comes to keeping their child clean. To be fair, Mrs. Chef didn’t look nearly as panicked as I felt when the little sucker came slipping out her hands and into the baby tub like her forearms were a ride at a water park. We both eventually learned the fine art of keeping an infant somewhat clean.
But I have to tell you that there were times when I just wanted to take the kid outdoors, dangle him by his feet off the back porch, and spray him down with a water hose.
Mess O’ Turkey
WHAT YOU NEED
2 tablespoons of butter
2 stalks of celery; chopped
1 small onion; chopped
2 medium carrots; chopped
1 cup of turkey; cubed
1 1/2 cup of gravy
1/4 cup of milk
2 tablespoons of flour
1/4 cup water; cold
WHAT YOU DO
1. In a saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Add the celery, onion, carrots and cook the vegetables for 5 minutes.
2. Add the cooked turkey, gravy, and milk. Stir and bring the mixture to a boil.
3. Turn down the heat to low and simmer for five minutes. Stir flour and 1/4 cup of cold water together and add to mixture. Simmer until it thickens, about 5 minutes. Serve over rice.
I mean, seriously, when I am preparing myself for a day at work, it takes me a good 30 minutes to do all the things a dude must do in order to avoid being known as that smelly guy.
But kids? Heck, I’ve an eight-year-old who brushes his teeth in two seconds, washes his hands without running any water, and declares he had a bath by just glancing at the empty tub. For boys, it seems, hygiene is more matter perspective and expressed conviction rather than actual cleanliness.
There’s a part of me that suspects this problem may be the fault of their parents.
When we brought the first baby home from the hospital, we didn’t know what the heck we were doing. At the hospital, the nurses kept our little poopmeister as clean as a whistle. They gave us lessons in bathing our infant that made the task look so easy and efficient that we knew it would be a snap. After watching those nurses, we knew we could keep our children spic-and-span. And didn’t the newest member of the Chef family look so happy and peaceful as the nurse expertly removed his diaper, bathed him, washed his hair, dried him with a luxurious blue towel and then put a fresh diaper in place.
When we came home from the hospital, I walked my wife, who carried our precious new son in her arms, to the door and up the stairs and got her comfortably in bed. After all, she was a new mother who had gone through a physically demanding ordeal and I was the loving doting husband who was there to make her feel all warm and fuzzy.
What happened next made that whole doting husband/father schtick last for only 20 minutes.
We both noticed that our little expression of worldly optimism was a little stinky, and being paranoid new parents, we knew diseases from the non-sterile world just had to be all over him. In order to show my sincere intention to share the burden of rearing our new child, I told Mrs. Chef to relax and that I would bathe the child.
It was quite the learning experience. First off, a baby will scream his head off if you run the water in the bathtub. The sound echoes loudly in the tiled room and will startle a child so badly that his cries would make you suspect we were torturing him at Guantanamo. Second, an eight-pound human being does not fit under the faucet in a standard kitchen sink. Trying to rinse the soap off of a child without getting suds into his eyes takes college-level calculus, a plumb bob, and the GPS off of an iPod. And finally, soap apparently transforms babies into wriggling fish.
After almost dropping my son four times in that first 20 minutes after he came home and actually dropping him at least once, I concluded that there must be some secret knowledge that women have that gives them an instinctive ability to wash newborns. So I called my wife to rescue me.
But I can now say that when it comes to bathing an infant, there is no gender gap, there is complete equality in the incompetence that parents have when it comes to keeping their child clean. To be fair, Mrs. Chef didn’t look nearly as panicked as I felt when the little sucker came slipping out her hands and into the baby tub like her forearms were a ride at a water park. We both eventually learned the fine art of keeping an infant somewhat clean.
But I have to tell you that there were times when I just wanted to take the kid outdoors, dangle him by his feet off the back porch, and spray him down with a water hose.
Mess O’ Turkey
WHAT YOU NEED
2 tablespoons of butter
2 stalks of celery; chopped
1 small onion; chopped
2 medium carrots; chopped
1 cup of turkey; cubed
1 1/2 cup of gravy
1/4 cup of milk
2 tablespoons of flour
1/4 cup water; cold
WHAT YOU DO
1. In a saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Add the celery, onion, carrots and cook the vegetables for 5 minutes.
2. Add the cooked turkey, gravy, and milk. Stir and bring the mixture to a boil.
3. Turn down the heat to low and simmer for five minutes. Stir flour and 1/4 cup of cold water together and add to mixture. Simmer until it thickens, about 5 minutes. Serve over rice.
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