"All of Y'all Need to Eat More Whole Grains. 'Ceptin' the Poor 'Uns. You're Good"

"Wait! What's that?" asked seven-year-old Girl, catching a glimpse of the email I had opened on the computer tonight.

"It's just a message someone sent. But it's time for bed; go choose your book, and then we'll brush teeth," I responded, ever task-minded at 8 p.m. I get profoundly more task-minded when my husband has just run to the local brewhouse to pick up a Growler (read: big-ass jug) of micro-brew Stout for us to crack open as soon as the kids are snoring and dreaming of their Webkinz.

"No, but who are those people on the screen? I want to see them," she insisted.

"Okay, okay, but quickly. Then it's read, brush, and hop into bed with you, " I conceded, turning the laptop's monitor her direction. Quickly, there on the bed, Girl was joined by her five-year-old brother, Dinko, who chimed in, "What're all those people doing? I wanna see too."

"Well, the pictures in this message show people from all over the world standing next to the food they ate in one week. Then it tells us how much it cost for them to buy that food. Basically, it's showing us how different we are in the ways we're most the same." As I've mentioned before, I'm the parent who's devotedly working towards turning her children into The Boors in the Corner at future art openings.

For the next ten minutes, after we were joined by Groom (who'd been downstairs frying up onions, peppers, and fajita meat--cost: $5.43) on the bed, our little crowd of family scrolled through the photos again and again, up and down, responding to requests to "see the Italian people again so I can see their bread" or to "show me one more time the ones who live in a tent."

During this spontaneous family gathering, it was noted that:

--those Ecuador people don't seem to live in a rich house...but they have the best smiles
--Egyptian people are lucky because they live in Ancient Egypt, where the mummies are
--the Bhutan people have a richy-looking house, but there sure are a whole lot of them in it
--the Germans need to mess things up a little
--the Mexicans drink too much pop
--the Americans eat a shezbang of junk food
--the Polish people have the cutiest stuffed grey elephant in the whole hungry world

Do you see what we saw?


Italy: The Manzo family of Sicily
Food expenditure for one week: 214.36 Euros or $260.11

Germany: The Melander family of Bargteheide
Food expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07


United States: The Revis family of North Carolina
Food expenditure for one week $341.98


Mexico: The Casales family of Cuernavaca
Food expenditure for one week: 1,862.78 Mexican Pesos or $189.09


Poland: The Sobczynscy family of Konstancin-Jeziorna
Food expenditure for one week: 582.48 Zlotys or $151.27


Egypt: The Ahmed family of Cairo
Food expenditure for one week: 387.85 Egyptian Pounds or $68.53


Ecuador: The Ayme family of Tingo
Food expenditure for one week: $31.55


Bhutan: The Namgay family of Shingkhey Village
Food expenditure for one week: 224.93 ngultrum or $5.03


Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp
Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23

---------------------------

As we powered down the computer, the kids asked if we couldn't delete the photo of the crap-eatin' Revis family of North Carolina and substitute it with one of our family and its weekly eats.

"We'd have to put lots of apples and oranges in the picture," Dinko noted.

"And for my lunch at school, I'd need five peanut butter and jelly sandwiches," piped up Girl.

"Then we'd need a bouquet of biscotti," I continued...

"Plus yogurt, granola, pears, carrots, peas, and a box of Teddy Grahams," contributed Groom...

before we all shouted in unison, "And a tower of homemade cookies!"

Ten minutes later, after the kids' ears had been filled, their teeth swabbed, their bladders emtpied, and their bodies strapped to their beds,

I tromped down the stairs towards the Oatmeal Stout in a Jug,

and

I took a happy second to savor

my blessed good fortune.

"Good Vibrations"



As a teacher of writing, I caution my students against using cliches in their writing. Cliches are hackneyed and trite and require no thought on the part of the writer. For example, I point out to my young charges, the phrases it was raining cats and dogs and I was up at the crack of dawn are empty and hollow--they are dead to me. Please, I beseech my tuition-paying pupils, don't use the phrase sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll in your essay entitled "The Meaning of College Life." If you must use a cute little phrase, try reworking the cliche a bit, to freshen it up; give me, at the very least, free love, Yellow Submarines, and Janis Joplin. Go for some gusto, O College Writers of the World!

In the face of my exhortations, they yawn a lot, send a few text messages, and then start zipping and unzipping their backpacks loudly.

Clearly, the cliche battle is mine alone to wage, and, therefore, I do my best to uphold my No Cliches, Especially on Sundays, policy. So I trot through life, whistling to myself: to convey a sentiment with precision in writing, the last thing a writer should use is a worn-out, overused cliche.

But you know what? Right now I need one. Because? The weather this week, here in Minnesota? There's only one way to tell you: it's not the heat; it's the humidity.

It's so humid, friends, that our toilet is literally wrapped in a bath towel right now; it's sweating so much condensation that the bathroom floor was becoming slick with toilet sweat puddles. So we wrapped it.

It's so humid that, during yoga class the other day, I was dripping with sweat to the point that, when I lowered myself from a Downward Dog into a Child's Pose, my dripping legs failed to actually stop when they made contact with the mat, and I slid right through, off the mat, thereby losing my, um, connection with the center of the earth and, er, all my chakras went out of alignment. And I said a bad word, too.

It's so humid that, I kid you not, I washed my hair before bed the other night, and 18 hours later it was still wet. YES, I've heard of the modern invention called hair dryer, but the idea of willfully and purposefully applying heat--even a dry heat--to any part of this body when temperatures are almost 90 degrees is anathema. Thus, my follicles remain moist. (How's that for a pick-up line?)

Suffice it to say, this week is not breezing by for me. In fact, my naturally-buoyant spirits have felt oppressed, suppressed, by the thick air and the ongoing sensation that I'm breathing through a wet washcloth. Even staying up until 2 a.m. each night, reading the new Harry Potter, hasn't gotten my mojo rising (but nice job, Ms. Rowling! I can't believe you killed off the entire cast of characters on the last page like that!!).

So what, gentle readers, can do the trick for me during this challenging week?

Fortunately, I can answer that question thanks to Jazz , who tagged me some time ago with just the meme I need: to list five things that raise my vibrations. Thinking of these things has provided exactly the counterpoint that my soggy spirit needs:



1. The nightly date with my beau. Quite unconsciously, we fell, a few years ago, into the pattern of tucking in kidlets, having a drink, and plugging the DVD of our tv-show-of-the-moment into the player, which we watch, rapt, while we eat a delicious dinner (tonight: cold sesame noodles with chicken and sugar snap peas). While our days consist of the chaos that can accompany parenting young children, my groom and I have a protected hour or two each night, a time of focus and shared experience, that keeps us, if not on the same page, at least on the same episode. Result? The the love remains in its groove.

2. Speaking of food, there is one meal in particular that is guaranteed to turn my frown, how you say, upside down: a fried egg sandwich. The sheer simple elegance of this dish gives me a big ole case of The Happies. There is butter, egg, toasted bread; toss on some salt and pepper, and I suddenly feel nestled to the bosom of a loving world. Yes, steak rocks. Sure, chocolate saves. But the fried egg sandwich is my ultimate comfort food.

3. My Teva flip-flops. Last weekend, I attended a farewell party for a good friend. While I was grateful for the chance to pay tribute to how much I like this guy, I was put off by the invitation, which asked guests to bring an appetizer (no problem) and their own drinks (what the hell? This is something I've experienced several times now in Minnesota, and it just peeves me. I mean, are you hosting the party or not? If you are, howzabout you put out some food and, if you can't do that, at least provide some drinks? If you don't want to do that, howzabout you go to a movie that afternoon instead of pretending at some kind of faux hospitality? I was glad, however, that guests weren't also asked in the invite to come over the day before the party and clean the host's house. Hmmmmm. As it turns out, I am digressing. None of this has anything to do with my flip-flops, really. Gotcha!). Okay, so at this party, we were asked to leave our shoes by the door, so as to not track Nature into the house. Then we were lead out the back door of the house to a patio. After standing, barefoot, on that patio for a couple hours, it was pure, rabid bliss to get home and slip my aching dogs into my soft, accommodating, saucy little Teva flip-flops. Even if the blood of small hamsters is the highly-guarded secret of Teva's manufacturing design, I don't care. These things are that good. Power to the bloodsuckers!

4. My afternoon coffee. Before the age of 35, I had only ever had one cup of coffee in my life (at Mardi Gras in 1991, when I hadn't slept for some days). But when I hit 35, Groom took a job as a barrista, and I learned the beauties of showing up at opportune times to kipe his free "shift drink," so long as it was sweet and frothy and basically a dessert in a cup. All of this occurred when I'd just had Kid #2, so once again coffee was used to get me over the hump of not having slept for some days...or some months. Now, even when relatively well rested, I rely upon my 3 p.m. mocha or latte to get me through the mid-afternoon dozies. I also am very good at making the case that a mocha is nothing--nothing!--without a little biscotti sidecar.

5. Exercise. It's the best of all addictions, this need to raise my heart rate every day. And, like coffee, my devotion to exercise only started in my 30's. And, like coffee, exercise has been essential to making me a better parent. When I go for an hour run every day, I actually think, reflect, and plan. If I didn't run, we'd never have a shopping list or take a trip or enroll the kids in camp. I needs me thinkin' time, and I love seeing the world by foot, up close and smelly. And on those days when I hit the gym instead of the trails, I love reading my celebrity gossip while ticking the minutes by on the treadmill. And at the end of my exercise, I'm all sweaty, which is...

...em...just what humidity does to me, too. So now I'm back where I started. I was feeling better there for my first four vibration raisers, but now I'm just back to sweaty. Dag. What to do?

The good news is that that blogging, as well, inflates my spiritual balloons. And right now, today, my ballooons are blowing in the breeze for my fellow blogger, Diesel, who, as you read, is hosting a little party over at his crib. His Media Office has sent out this press release:

Diesel, the twisted genius behind the humor blog MattressPolice.com, has announced the publication date for his first book! Antisocial Commentary: From the Secret Files of the Mattress Police, is a hilarious excursion through the mind of Diesel. From topics as varied as James Blunt and the Incredible Hulk to global politics and perpetual motion machines, Antisocial Commentary is a tour de force of satire, sarcasm, and just plain silliness. Savor such essays as “The Force is Middling in this One,” which answers the question “What happens to someone in the Star Wars universe who isn’t quite Jedi material?” and “Harry Potter and the Inevitable Slide into Satanism,” which explores the nefarious connection between the works of J.K. Rowling and the minions of the Devil.

Diesel's book will be published on August 15, but for a limited time we fellow bloggers can pre-order a signed copy at a discounted price, so if you're a fan of Diesel's and have ten bucks burning a hole in your birkin, head on over to MattressPolice.com and give him a big ole virtual (and financial) hug. The book is guaranteed to raise your vibrations.

"The New Joy of...Cooking"

There's no better way to challenge the loyalty of one's readership than to post a recipe.

I could, therefore, entitle this post something Sally Fieldlian like, "You DO like me, right? You WILL come back, even though I'm posting a recipe? I promise it will be just this once, and I won't weep hysterically and wipe my snot on your shoulder, if only you promise to return one day, when the recipes have gone away."

But the asparagus furor that arose out of my last post made me want to provide some specifics about one of the backbones of my springtime diet: nearly-broiled asparagus. If you, too, love that green stuff so fervently that even the funky urine odor an hour after eating it doesn't dissuade you, then this recipe is for you.

First, you're going to need a baking sheet, the kind of big ole rectangular pan you could hit Simon Cowell in the chest with terrifically hard and then take away imprints of his chest hair tufts for posterity. Now, this pan doesn't have to be huge-huge (damage can be done to Cowell even with a moderate-sized pan), but you want it big enough that it could double as a clown shoe in a pinch.

Then you're going to need at least a pound of asparagus--because, really, who eats less than that? And to tell you true, if you live in the Land of the Wild Jocelyn, you'd do well to start out with at least two pounds. Some fine folks, home after a long day's work at The Company, standing in the kitchen with good posture, wearing a tailored suit, might look at the stack of stalks and think, "Oh, good, we've enough for the whole family. Lovely." Here in our household of unemployment, slouching and t-shirts, though, we are realists and know there ain't no way the yowling kids are going to eat, willingly, this particular green food (since it doesn't say "Shrek" on it), so the prep-chant goes: "Screw their nutrition. More for us!"

Your next step will be therapeutic, as there is snapping involved--from tempers to stalks. Pick up each stalk and, as you did as a child with your Barbies (when witnessing adults would mutter, "Hem, er, Dahmer. Jeffrey Dahmer?"), hold each stalk by its "legs" and then, at the natural breaking point, snap off its "head." Remember when you decapitated your Skipper doll and never again found her noggin? That's what I'm talkin' about. Indeed, each stalk can be gently and steadily bent--violent movements are not actually necessary--until it hits the point of breakage. A man named Peter did just such work on my heart when I was in my early 30's. The stalk, or the Jocelyn, hardly needs to realized what's happening to it, until the moment of irrevocable and devastating impact.

Okay, now it's Artistic Expression time. Discard the tough ends that you've just broken off (if you have an enemy, perhaps named Peter, put them in his pillowcase while he's away on a trip to Vegas for two weeks) and then artfully arrange the lovely asparagus heads/bodies on the baking sheet. I sometimes do a hatchmark dealie, wherein I line up four spears and then lay a fifth across it diagonally; this also helps Groom and me keep a running tally of how many spears there are, so fisticuffs don't ensue at mealtime. But you go crazy; get creative; make a portrait of your grandmother riding a unicycle out of the stuff.

Somewhere in the middle of all this fun, you can turn on the oven to, honest to Emeril, 500 bangin' degrees. If you have a smoke detector in the house, this would be a good time to go take the batteries out. I'll wait.

No, seriously. Go do it. The smoke is going to be hack-worthy.

Okay. So you've got them babies on the pan. Now you need to take out some of your really expensive ultra-extra-non-Paris-Hilton-but-rather-still-a-virgin olive oil and, placing a finger over the opening (there are more, really crude, Paris Hilton jokes here, but I'll spare you. Just think "finger" and "opening." Yes, my work here is done), drizzle it over all the spears. Or you can just use your cheap, years-old streetwalker olive oil. Whatever you've got.

Now comes the philosophical section of the recipe: what is life without spice? Life, and food, are significantly diminished without it, all the less for their bleak, uninterrupted sameness. Translation: add some salt and pepper. If you have any character at all, make it freshly-ground pepper, not just pre-ground flakes from a can. Splurge, honey, and buy some peppercorns. You are so worth it.

Hang on. We're ready to rock. Open the oven, slam in the pan of goodies, close the oven, lean back against the kitchen counter, and pick up your beer again. If you use a timer, set it for five minutes. If you don't use a timer, then sing the "ABC" song about 7 times. Or once through the extended dance remix of "Tainted Love" would work.

After five minutes, put on a big ole silicon oven mitt and a gas mask (or, at the least, safety goggles) and open up the oven. Reach in like the hero you are and shake that baking sheet--hokey pokey all those stalks so that their left feet and right arms are in a big tangle. I watched my kids play Twister the other day, and it was pretty much the same--limbs everywhere; all I know is that this step involves some sort of analogy to a kids' game. So go ahead and liken this process to, em, Clue Junior, and then close the door and back away slowly, reaching around blindly for your beer as you wipe the smoke out of your eyes.

Set the timer for another five minutes, or sing "Stairway to Heaven" while musing about how poorly all those formerly-hot classic rock stars have aged. Ah, Robert Plant, we hardly know ye.

After the final chorus, or when the beeper goes off, put on all your gear again, and head in to the inferno one final time for The Extraction.

Toss the pan onto the countertop or the burners of your stove. Head to the fridge and take out some feta cheese. There are no substitutions here, so don't even try to sprinkle some cheddar on the Holy Stalks. Jesus Marimba, could you not plan ahead for once in your life and have actually bought the feta? Presuming you want to stay on my good side, you'll just have the damn feta and won't dither about in front of the cheese drawer, trying to find something to fool me with. And this is no time to get distracted by those old tupperware containers on the back of the shelf. Yes, that is mold you see; yes, those are the refried beans you opened when Clinton was still in the White--and the dog--house. But there's piping asparagus awaiting you, so hop to!

Plate your half of the spears, angling for one or two extra when your friend/spouse/partner isn't looking ("Hey, check out that, er, UPS truck backing up to the neighbors' garage! Why are they filling it with all their electronic equipment? Could it be a heist? Maybe you need to do something..."). Crumble the feta, liberally (always the best approach, in cooking, morals, and politics), all over your spears.

Set the timer again, this time for two minutes. Or hum "Hit Me, Baby, One More Time." See if you can beat my record and eat your entire plateful in that time.

By the way, asparagus fangs hanging out at the buzzer DO still qualify as "eaten."

I've also heard of people eating their food in a leisurely fashion. Suit yourself, ya delicate little poncey poodle. The rest of us will just sink our heads into the feedbag and make some indelicate chomping noises for awhile here.