Cross-post: October KTC Event: Cuban food on Lopez Island
October 31, 2011
Read about our cooking group’s October event: Ropa vieja and other Cuban delights, courtesy of Fernando! Click through to our Kiss the Cooks blog!
Organic matters: A little girl’s potato experiment
September 5, 2011
Besides being as cute as a button, I found the content of this little girl’s video to be important. Elise decides to do an experiment to see how long it takes a sweet potato placed in a glass of water to grow vines.
Time needed to grow vines for conventionally-grown sweet potatoes, sprayed with “Bud-Nip:” Forever. No vines will grow.
Time needed to grow vines for organic sweet potatoes from the supermarket: After a full month, the potatoes yielded a few “wimpy little vines.”
Time needed to grow about a bajillion hearty vines from organic sweet potatoes from a local certified-organic market: Less than a week, and the vines that have grown are close to taking over the kitchen!
Young Elise goes on to explain that Bud-Nip is the commercial name for common herbicide Chlorpropham, and that it works systemically within the plant, so washing produce treated with Bud-Nip has very little effect on reducing the amount of this chemical that one would presumably consume. Bud-Nip is commonly used on conventionally-grown blueberries, carrots, onions, spinach, tomatoes, beets, and cranberries.
I think young Elise says it the best: “Which potato would YOU rather eat?”
Read about our cooking group’s July event: Easy, breezy, beautiful summer fare with Damian and Joyce. Click through to our KTC blog!
Verano
May 11, 2011
Saw this on someone’s FB page today, and it sounds like an excellent plan to me! The guys never cry about this stuff, do they?
“VERANO. Expirado el plazo de la “operación bikini” arrancamos con la “operación burkini”, mucho más asequible.”
Watch it wiggle
May 1, 2011
Remember those Jello commercials from way back in the day, with that memorable little song: “Watch it wiggle, see it jiggle, cool and fruity, Jello brand gelatin…?”
Today is Seattle’s second spring-like sunny day this year. As such, it required poking around to see what less-than-winter-weight clothing choices I could find in my closet. I doggedly tried on dozens of items which had been in our “summer closet” for the last 18 months or so. Afterwards, suffice it to say that my thoughts were filled with Jello.
My outlook brightened considerably, however, when I ran across this video of Jello cubes bouncing in slow motion (Thanks, @Foodista!). After all, if my jiggly belly could somehow manage to look half as graceful and mesmerizing as it bounces around as these shimmering Jello cubes do, I have no reason to view it with such disappointment, do I? I wonder if painting it a rich shade of burgundy would help…
via Foodista
Gratitude
April 29, 2011
Take 90 seconds and consider how your words shape your world. We can all use a reminder to be compassionate and to cultivate gratitude.
Reverse psychology, Bugs Bunny-style
April 21, 2011
“Bueno, no. Vamos.” I loved this! And I think the kid really thinks he won!
via Urlesque
It’s mountain beaver time!
April 4, 2011
Yes, folks, it’s that time of year again! As reported last year and the year before, the return of spring in Seattle brings the return of my furry, football-shaped friend: the mountain beaver. Ain’t he sweet?
He’s out a little earlier than usual this year, and seems to have taken up residence farther up the hill behind our house. Unless that’s some other mountain beaver, of course. I didn’t catch his name.
L.A. love story: A goose named Maria
April 1, 2011
After yesterday’s gruesome fowl-related post, today I thought it would be nice to share something more uplifting in relation to our feathered friends. La Billi shared this with me via email today. What a fun story!
How in the heck do you use a duck press?
March 31, 2011
I saw a funny tool at a kitchen store the other day. It was marked “Duck Press,” and I assumed it was some kind of old-fashioned tool used to squeeze out more fat from duck skin or something like that. Reasonable assumption, I thought.
In an effort to find the “real” answer (or maybe in part to congratulate myself for having such finely-honed deductive powers!) I did some research, and found I was grossly (emphasis on the ‘gross’ part) mistaken.
Baby ducks no match for whipping winds
March 30, 2011
Pobrecitos! Fortunately, they don’t seem to end up any worse for wear, but I’ll think of them every time I walk down Pine towards the water squinting into the strong winds coming off the Sound!
So you want to lose weight…
March 15, 2011
I’ve had this conversation myself (from both sides, I am embarrassed to admit, at some time or another!)… It’s kind of long, but hilarious! “That crap is white water!” ¡Cómo nos engañamos!
Te borro del Feisbuh! (o sea, ‘te borro de Facebook’)
March 10, 2011
Or, for the English-only crowd, “I’ll erase you (unfriend you) from Facebook.”
Me parto de la risaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!
Text message coincidence?
February 11, 2011
I was cooking dinner this evening, and my phone buzzed–I’d received a text message. No big deal, I thought. I’m sure it’s my gym partner C, squaring away plans for tomorrow’s workout. I got my veggies into the oven, and checked the message. To my surprise, I found this message from an unknown number:
Supp broski!!!!!!!!!!??
It was from a local number. I showed it to Fernando, thinking that someone had sent him a message to my phone by mistake. After all, I didn’t think anyone I knew would call me “broski.” He checked the number and said he didn’t have the person in his contacts, either.
It seemed doubtful that a friend of ours had changed their number, but I couldn’t be sure. So I responded, in a most non-committal manner:
Not much, who’s asking?
In no time, a response:
Haha dis is kayla………. >< ___
Trouble is, I don’t know anyone named Kayla. I was sure this was some teenager texting the wrong number. I double-checked with F that he didn’t know any Kayla, either, and decided to let the poor girl down gently:
Sorry, don’t know a Kayla-think u got the wrong #
Several minutes pass. I just figured that she thought, “Oh, crap!” before checking again and then texting the correct number, and that she was already in deep conversation with the recipient, telephonic misstep long forgotten.
Buzz. I look again.
Isn’t dis sean?!?!
Whoa. Now admittedly, she didn’t spell it right, but that mistake is surprisingly common. I was stumped – who on earth was Kayla? And how did she know me? Good thing Fernando had an idea, because I was more than a little troubled that someone would send me 9pm text messages with such abysmal spelling. Upon Fernando’s ever-wise counsel, I replied:
r u looking for a boy Sean or a girl Sean?
Kayla’s fast reply:
Boy…….lol
Whew! It WAS just a mistake after all! The Shawn-Sean coincidence was still creepy, but what the heck, stranger things have happened, right?
Relieved, I texted her back:
That’s funny, cuz my name is actually “Shawn” – but I’m a thirty-something lady! Think you got the wrong #, dear : )
If you think the most bizarre and head-scratching part of the the story is over, well, you’re wrong. Kayla replied:
Oh, srry. I seen this number On tv, sayin that call Or txt 2 get waka ticketss or somein and then my boy gave me dis number……..
Um…..Wha…..?
21 degrees out there
November 24, 2010
Eek. Our traffic woes when the weather gets like this are awful – between the steep hills and slick layer of ice you can be sure is beneath any snow that falls, it gets dicey out there. Here’s a compilation of videoed traffic mayhem that displays how dicey, even with snow chains and salted roads:
*Stick with it until at least 3:00 – although it will be tough to tear your eyes away from any of it!
Climactic Armageddon! Still snowing in Seattle…
November 22, 2010
This is a radio ad for a local insurance company, Pemco, that profiles local “types” found in the Pacific Northwest. The spot about First Snowflake Freakout Lady makes me grin each and every time I hear it.
Don’t you understand? I LIVE ON A HILL!!
Grandmas + Photo Booth + the Black Eyed Peas = LULZ
November 11, 2010
These two grannies are super cute, and I especially love how they giggle like little kids. Makes me grin and miss my own grandma, she would have gotten a kick out of this.
via Urlesque
T-Mobile Welcome Back
November 10, 2010
This has been flying all over the interwebz for days, but it makes me grin each and every time. And the sheer celebratory energy in all those harmonized voices makes me tear up, too. Well, only a little.
Bonus: Reactions from the public. I want to be an International Flight-Greeter! Think they are hiring at Sea-Tac?
via AdFreak
Donald Duck meets Glenn Beck
November 10, 2010
I thought this was quite funny, and brilliantly done–I watched it twice! Especially chuckle-worthy is the premise of the video’s context alongside the fact that Glenn Beck reportedly earned 32 million dollars last year. Yep, $32,000,000.00. “Do you feel like you’re working harder and harder these days just to stay financially afloat while fat cats are getting richer and richer? Well, it’s not just a feeling, and you’re not alone…” Heh.
The readers’ comments on the blog post where I found the video are also interesting and insightful. For example, did you know that Glenn Beck is a year younger than Johnny Depp?
via Sociological Images from Rebellious Pixels
From Rednecklandia to the Emerald City 