Hum Drumming in the Rain

It’s cold and gloomy outside. There are all sorts of leaves on the ground that are now soggy. Jack and I are a little ticked that we can’t go for a Crunchy Walk around the block.

He’s convinced me to set up his little race track and he has the Car de Jour out to play with on it.

I’ve just finished a small mountain of work and am trying to decide whether I “want” to iron or crack open a book. I should clean the house. Should but won’t.

Listening to the new Durian Durian album…?

Our pals took a recent trip to the foodie mecca that is Jungle Jims. I’ve never made the trek there but was pleased to share in their bounty which included durian fruit, a cheramoya, and Uncle Joe’s mint balls.

So, after heaping servings of Shepherd’s Pie and beer (the boys), Woodchuck cider ale (me), and Vernor’s (the Pregnant One) the weird fruits were presented.

Cheramoya taste like bubble gum perfume. They are somewhere between a cantaloupe and pineapple in texture. One down, one to go.

Durian fruit are about the size of a football and spiny as all get out. They grow in big tall palm-like trees. It wouldn’t, we agreed, be good at all to be under one should it fall.  We touched it gingerly. We sniffed it. The weird food guy, Andrew Zimmern has waxed rather poetically about the horrors of the durian. The Today Show hosts have pronounced it wretched, too. The four of us decided it smelled woody. (It reminded me of the inside of furniture from India. I used to spend a lot of time at Pier One and World Market.) We cracked it open and scooped out the custardy fruit. And, again, disappointedly, found nothing offensive in the taste or texture of it.

We wondered what people do with a durian. There’s a lot of fruit in it. It’s not like a neat little banana or orange– there’s enough to feed several people. We fired up the laptop and did a quick search for durian recipes. We vetoed the originally promising “Durian Gingerbread Pudding” when it needed spinach and fresh ginger. The photo of it was green. Green and pudding are not appealing.

Durian ice-cream? Durian coconut surprise? Durian cake? It was during the reading of the Johnny’s Durian breakfast muffin recipe that the phrase “never drink alcohol while eating durian fruit” jumped out at us. WHAT? A quick google search brought up a slew of old wives tales and anecdotal references to a theory that drinking alcohol while eating durian fruit leads to certain death.

Oh dear.

We push our nearly finished bottle of Woodchuck (me) and glasses of Scotch (the boys) away from us and wonder how long until the Pregnant One will have our three bodies to deal with plus Jack who, all the while, was trying desperately to play with Sadiedog.

A little more searching had us convinced that probably our night will yield only a hangover (it would be my first. How exciting. I’m 19 again. Go College Team! Yay!) and possibly a night or two of diahreaha. (Oh, joy.) Durian apparently sucks the water out of you– we immediately all filled glasses with water and started to drink while laughing off the psychosymatic effects of too much book learnin’.

(It also occured to us that perhaps we should run a google search on “pregnancy + durian”– all’s well there. The three of us still should have a driver to get us to the hospital…)

Poor Pregnant One. She left the room to return to the three of us laying on the floor as though dead. She was nonplussed and set the dog on us.

Uncle Joe’s mint balls were minty but not very ball shaped. Unless your ball had rolled into the street and been flattened by the durian that had fallen out of the tree… They were one of the odder flavors– the mix of toffee and mint was akin to brushing your teeth after eating a slowpoke. Not bad– but odd.

If this is my last blog, however, you’ll know not to consume the very deadly combination of cheramoya and durian. Live and learn. And enjoy a mintball.

My kingdom for a Mallomar…

I love my little Mitten-shaped state. I do. I’m quite happy to be nestled amid the Great Lakes…

But it seems collosally unfair that Mallomars are not distributed here.

I watch a lot of Gilmore Girls reruns. On average, at least every three episodes there will be a mention of Mallomars. I want one. And yet– apparently, it’s a regional thing that cannot be breeched. A Google search tells me that they are only available at certain times of the year in the Northeast.

Which explains why, three years ago, on a trip through Upstate New York to NYC, and 43 separate stops at various sized markets we couldn’t locate any. Poor Robby. I dragged him through all those corner stores in the city and all those sprawling suburban markets for naught. You can’t get a Mallomar in June.

Sigh.

I’m going to go drink a Vernor’s all the while knowing there must be somebody in New Hampshire jonesing for a sip while they eat their box of Mallomars.

Sad.

Extreme Home Mock-Over

I’m off my game this week. Some of the people I work with have been existance banes this week. Fun suckers. Arse pains. Donkey tongues.

I don’t know what a donkey tongue is either. It just came to me. I like it. I might try it out loud and see if it works.

The saving grace is that I have a life outside of work. I have a family that I enjoy spending time with. Last night, for example, after Jack went off to bed (after trying comically hard to “go poo on the potty, Mommy!”) Robby and I settled in. Robby got out the bills– which usually makes him grumpy. I got out the computer to do some work. In the background we had ABC’s Extreme Home Makeover on. And oh, how we laughed.

The trick to watching EHM is that you have to get passed the sappy sob story. Accept that the family is far better than your own. Accept that they deserve to be given a multi-million dollar mansion in which to live, their mortgages paid off, and a pro-series kitchen to boot. Accept that their well-scrubbed children will cherubically pipe up, “I’m so glad mommy doesn’t have to work so hard.”

And then mock them mercilessly.

A guide (taped or TiVo’d. No live-time viewing here):

The first 5 minutes are crucial. It will introduce you to the family and Ty will inevitably make it sound like this is the most deserving of all the families they’ve helped thus far… The next few minutes will be the interview with the individuals and a tour of the state of their current residence. Skim it. Tune in to see where the family is going on vacation…

After the commercial zip past the part where the local building team is assembled. You won’t miss anything… The worker bees will be dressed in blue, they’ll make a speech about working hard to finish on time, there’ll be some one there with a connection to the family, blahdittyblahblahblah. Then they’ll rip the house down while the vacationing family watches. (Doesn’t this ever freak out the little kids? It can’t be good to see the vulnerability of modern architecture to large machinery when you are in the Night Terror Stage. Surely, “Don’t worry, you’re safe in your own bed in your own house” rings a little hollow after that. “Will the scarey loud man knock it down with his excavator, Daddy?”) Last night they ripped down the “dream house” their dead father had worked so hard on. Ripped it down with glee. Don’t know what to say about that…

Skip the frantic interviews with the Design Team. Yes. You’re building the most extreme room ever for the kid of the week. We get it. Crazy! You’re just insane! Wow! Keys will be given. Furniture unloaded. We get it. They’re the most deserving family ever.

Watch the Reveal. It’s a study in cultural differences. Stoic fathers, weeping mothers, sobbing fathers, collapsing mothers, jumping teenagers… It’s interesting. And then enjoy the tour of the house. Count how many times people say, “Oh my God!” over and over. Really? You’re going to bring God into it in this way? Huh. Wonder at some of the inexplicable choices made by the Design Team. (Last night for example there was a silo/observation tower attached to the house. Well sure. Just what every teenager wants. Awesome. “Where’s Jimmy?” “He’s in the tower huffing bleach with his buddy from shop class.” And a white couch– really? After 40 minutes of telling us that the kids want most to be able to invite their friends over you give them a WHITE couch? “Want to come hang out tonight? We can’t eat Cheetos or drink anything other than water but it’ll be awesome!” “Uh, no thanks. We’re all going to Dylan’s. They don’t have a silo.”)

Skip the part where Ty will gather the parent(s) outside of their room because he’ll give the same speech about how important it was to give them a special place of their own because they’ve been taking care of everyone else and this was to show them how… blahdittyblahblahblah. Try not to envy their inevitable infinity tub and 6 nozzle shower. It’ll just make you bitter.

There’ll be something else to see for the family then they’ll bring in the Design Team. Hope for Paulie. He’ll cry and wear something odd. Paige will be wearing pink and have done some little girl’s room “so that she can be a little girl” (huh?). Eduardo will do something exteme to the outside. Again. Ty will welcome everyone home.

And then you can go back to your life where you aren’t deserving of anything.

For the Love of Peat

Our trip to Ireland was wonderful. We saw a lot of the southern part of the country with daily excursions from our little cottage in Terryglass. Robby had a Guiness at just about every meal (I think the only exceptions were breakfasts and on the plane?) and I indulged my love of all things Cadbury. JackRabbit loved the colorful death-trap playgrounds. Momma and Eric discovered soda bread and are now life long converts to its ministry.

And we all got pretty good at “recycling” peat. Our little cottage had a stove suitable for burning wood or peat. We had beautiful, unheard of weather the entire time we were in Ireland. Apparently, before we arrived, the region had endured two solid months of rain every. single. day. Every conversation we had along the way included some variant of, “Oooooh! You’re so lucky now aren’t you? Sooch lo-vly weater we are having now, aren’t we?”

Still– there is an eternal dampness to the country. Our damp towels, laid out to dry, were just as damp in the morning… so a nice fire was an appealing way to create both atmosphere and dry out things. At every store there were bundles of “peat” briquettes but they had the appeal of a fake fire log.

And then we saw a chunk of peat on the side of the road.

We never bought any peat– fake or real. It became part of each days adventure to find peat. Ireland had maybe two straight roads in the entire country. The rest are twisted and wobbley and akin to a very poorly designed roller coaster. Momma and I, in the back seat of the rental, were jostled and jarred about. The daily “Peat Watch” gave us something to focus on. By the third day we were able to anticipate where the peat would be– which kind of twist in the road or bump along the way would be enough to dislodge a brick of peat from the delivery wagon. We carried an old shopping bag designated for peat and counted it a successful day when we could return to the cottage with it full.

At night we’d fire up the little stove with sticks from behind the cottage and toss on a chunk or two of peat and enjoy the radiating heat. It seemed right to sit by the peat fire with our journals and postcards and books and puzzles. Nibble on bourbon creams (which have nothing to do with bourbon at all– they’re chocolate biscuits with chocolate cream filling) and sip our tea.

They’re doing all kinds of construction in Ireland with European Union funds to “improve” the roads. Around Limerick there are all kinds of modern highways being built with overpasses and entrance ramps. It will completely cut out the lost time in traveling around that city.

And the peat industry should see a real decrease in their product losses.

Tis a shame it is.