A Fibbing Friday With Connections

Pensitivity101’s theme was song connections this past week.  As usual, I’m a week late, and a joke short.

1. Who recorded Mouldy Old Dough?

It was a lament by Scrooge McDuck, until he managed to get his money vault climate controlled, and the deterioration stopped.  In today’s electronic banking age, all his little digital ones and zeros are spiffy clean and shiny.

2. What colour icing was on the cake in MacArthur Park?
   

If it was in MacArthur Park, it would have been tartan.  It slid sideways in the picnic basket, and touched some of the other food.  That’s how we got Green Eggs and Ham.

3. Who sang they were made out of Gingerbread?

Whoever they were, they were likely British of some flavour.  North Americans are so addicted to sugar that we put it in our breads.  USA Americans purchase so much sweet pastries that they can’t even spell Krispy Kreme correctly.  Canadians are a bit better, but our national coffee shop chain, Tim Horton’s, singlehandedly supports the honey industry.

4. Who sang Tutti Frutti?

The 1910 Fruitgum Company??

5. Who recorded Green Onions?

Booker T (Jones) and the M.G. – which stands/stood for Memphis Group.  The hypercorrect incorrect lie was that it was MGs, and referred to hot-damned MG cars, because it was released at the peak of surfer/hot-rod rock.

6. Who had a boy lollipop?

A lot of people!  The girl lollipops don’t have that long stick.  Just think what you’ve been grasping, all these years.

7. What is a Tangerine Dream?

That’s the witness protection alias of a Dutch international banking and financial institution.  They came to North America as ING, and confused lots of people.  (That’s a low bar to clear)  Folks wondered, Are they lyING?  Are they borING?  Are they gougING? So they became ING Direct.  The fog only became thicker, so they suddenly became Tangerine, and the confusion all cleared up.

8. Sugar Sugar or Honey Honey?

Yes please!  But on alternate mornings.  My incipient diabetes can only take so much.

9. Who sang Sugar Pie Honey Bunch?

Kellogg’s Cereals, and Post Cereals, did for years, until consumer protection groups and pediatric nutrition organizations forced them to reformulate their breakfast foods out of psyllium fiber and bran powder, making the boxes more appetizing and nutritious.

10. Do you need Hot Butter for Popcorn?

Not always.  Sometimes I like mine sprinkled with Tex-Mex flavor powder, but only if it’s prepared by the Muppets’ Swedish Chef.

Jack Fell Down

Jack fell down and broke his crown, and bureaucracy damn near killed him.

Actually, it was the wife who fell down.  She was just pulling up her pants after using the main-floor washroom, when her tinnitus, and other inner ear disorders upset her balance, and she keeled over backward, smacking her head against the door, and the floor.  Then followed five minutes of painful wriggling to move far enough so that the son and I could get the door open and help her up.

With COVID distancing mandates, it was three days before she even got a telephone interview with her doctor.  The doctor called at 2:00 PM.  When she heard of headaches, sleeping for 12/14 hours, and slurred speech, she suddenly insisted that we attend her clinic, immediately.

At 3:00 o’clock, she found bruising, and a droopy eye.  What we took to be a mild concussion, might be internal cranial bleeding.  She needs to know ASAP!  The city has two hospitals, but only one, shared, MRI machine.  A scheduled appointment could take weeks – too long.  She apologized, but said that, the only way to ensure an MRI today, is to go and sit in Emergency for seven hours.  Eventually, it will get done.

At 4:00 o’clock, we got the wife registered at Emerge.  It seemed simple.  Take the doctor’s work order out of the fax machine, and do the test as soon as a tech could be scheduled.  First, we waited twenty minutes to see a triage nurse.  She checked blood pressure, heart rate, blood-oxygen percentage and temperature, and directed us to the dreaded waiting room.  After another twenty minutes, another nurse showed up with a small cart, and took a blood sample for testing, and warned of a later urine sample requirement, and the need to see the on-call doctor before anything is done.

Then we settled in for the siege.  It is not first come – first served!  We know that she will be seen after the guy who slashed his fingers in a DIY accident, the woman with a bloody nose running down her face, and the young man knocked off his bicycle in traffic.  If we have to wait (and wait, and wait), at least we could enjoy the floor show.  Stupidity and larceny are in plentiful supply.

A chubby street hooker, with more ink than the New York Times, but no obvious distress, showed up.  A young homeless (?) woman, with a giant backpack and two stuffed shopping bags, managed to find a seat in the crowded room, to get out of the rain.  A young, female addict, who survived a minor overdose, stormed out and across the parking lot, still wearing the hospital’s blanket, and screaming, “Get away from me!  I don’t want to have anything to do with you!” at a boyfriend who has had enough, and is already half a block away.

Two security guards have an office with security monitors, just inside the entrance.  We caught a glimpse of them rushing outside, and chasing someone around the building.  Two male, and one female, Police officers patrol in and around the Emergency ward.  I looked for Tasers, but in tight quarters they might get grabbed.  At 6:00, I got her a coffee, and me a hot chocolate from the in-house Tim Hortons outlet, upstairs.  At 7:00 I got her a buttered tea-biscuit, and me a crème-cheese bagel.  It’s going to be a long night, and her diabetes needs to be fed.

At 8:00 a patrol-car cop brings in a young, female shoplifter.  He’s wearing a Taser, and she’s wearing handcuffs in front of her.  The wife later said that, around midnight, two cops brought in three young males involved in a bar fight, not only handcuffed behind, but also connected to ankle shackles.  One of them wailed that, He was just being paraded around, and everybody was going to know!

I had to reluctantly leave her alone at 8:30.  Our two little dogs have been locked in a cage for six hours.  The son needs the car to get to work at 10:30.  I was going to drive him across town, pick her up when she called, and drive back out to pick him up at 7:30 AM.  Already under work-stress, when he heard what was (not) happening, he took the night off, and ordered a pizza, because none of us was eating properly.

At 3:00 AM, she called to say that the (next-shift) doctor had examined her, and she was on her way to Nuclear Medicine.  At 3:45 she called to be picked up.  She entered the hospital at four PM, and finally got out at four AM.  The threatened seven-hour wait had stretched to twelve hours, for a five-minute test.  Thankfully, we now know that all is well.  Without any visible blood or injury, she still could have collapsed out of her chair at any moment.

Do you have a hospital horror story that you’d like to recount?  I will listen patiently, and commiserate.

’21 A To Z Challenge – S

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This week, on the Cooking With Archon Show, we will be featuring a comfort food recipe.  This is one that was taught to me by my Father, although, with typical 1940s/50s male entitlement, he made sure that it was my Mother who prepared it.  Ladies and gentlemen, we’re talking about that comfort in a cup – or mug, or bowl, or even on a plate.

SLUMGULLION

Now the term slumgullion actually has a rash of related meanings.
a stew of meat, vegetables, potatoes, etc.
a beverage made weak or thin, as watery tea, coffee, or the like.
the refuse from processing whale carcasses.
a reddish, muddy deposit in mining sluices.

But it’s that delicious, nutritious dish….  Who are we kidding?  Often there was barely enough food value to keep body and soul together.

The word started as an 1840s-50s Americanism, coined by poor Scottish/Irish immigrants.  It took the Celtic term gullion – a quagmire, or cesspool, and added the term slum, which was where it was common.  The first definition says that it was a stew with meat, but there was often little or no meat.

It was one short step up from stone soup, a warm, filling, often vegetable, stew.  There is no “recipe.”  My Dad referred to it as an empty the fridge meal.  Boil a beef bone for stock if you have one, and chop up and add all the leftovers.  Serve with a piece of bread if you have some, to sop up the last drops.

I recently viewed a video where, for the first time ever, I heard someone actually use the word ‘kludge.’ This is a kludge dish!  It ain’t pretty.  It ain’t fancy.  It ain’t gourmet.  It’s just jammed together from whatever is on hand – but it works.  I’ll probably still be licking my spoon when you return in a few days for the next course.

What A Buzz

You Know You’re Drinking Too Much Coffee When…

1. Juan Valdez names his donkey after you.
2. You grind your coffee beans in your mouth.
3. The only time you’re standing still is during an earthquake.
4. You can take a picture of yourself from ten feet away without using
   the timer.
5. You lick your coffeepot clean.
6. You spend every vacation visiting “Maxwell House.”
7. You’re the employee of the month at the local Starbucks and you
   don’t even work there.
8. Your eyes stay open when you sneeze.
9. You’re so jittery that people use your hands to blend their
   margaritas.
10. You can jump-start your car without cables.
11. All your kids are named “Joe.”
12. Your only source of nutrition comes from “Sweet & Low.”
13. You go to AA meetings just for the free coffee.
14. You’ve built a miniature city out of little plastic stirrers.
15. People get dizzy just watching you.
16. When you find a penny, you say, “Find a penny, pick it up.
    Sixty-three more, I’ll have a cup.”
17. The Taster’s Choice couple wants to adopt you.
18. Starbucks owns the mortgage on your house.
19. You’re so wired, you pick up FM radio.
20. Your life’s goal is to “amount to a hill of beans.”
21. Instant coffee takes too long.
22. When someone says. “How are you?”, you say, “Good to the last drop.”
23. You want to be cremated just so you can spend the rest of eternity
    in a coffee can.
24. You go to sleep just so you can wake up and smell the coffee.
25. You’re offended when people use the word “brew” to mean beer.
26. You name your cats “Cream” and “Sugar.”
27. You get drunk just so you can sober up.
28. Your lips are permanently stuck in the sipping position.
29. You can outlast the Energizer bunny.
30. You don’t even wait for the water to boil anymore.
31. You think being called a “drip” is a compliment.
32. You don’t tan, you roast.
33. You can’t even remember your second cup.
34. You introduce your spouse as your “Coffeemate.”
35. You think CPR stands for “Coffee Provides Resuscitation.”
36. You have too much blood in your caffeine system.
37. The barista asks you how you take your coffee, and you reply, “Very, very seriously!”
38. You find sleep a weak substitute for coffee.

Autoprompt – What’s In Your Fridge?

PROLOGUE

When I saw the above autoprompt, I wondered, “Who would want to know what’s in my fridge?” Then I remembered, if we go to a party at someone else’s house and use the washroom, we always nose through the medicine cabinet. Hmm, Rogaine and hemorrhoid cream – he’s got problems at both ends. So yeah, you know you wanna know.

It is said that, the poor eat calories, the middle class eat nutrition, and the rich eat presentation.

Even when I worked in offices after we were first married, we were still only one short half-step up from being living-under-a-bridge poor, so calories were important. I always wanted to eat – well. Later, when I took off the shirt and tie, and donned the blue-collar to work in manufacturing plants, calories were important. The wife watched a lot of TV cooking shows, and bought and read a lot of cookbooks.

The wife of a couple down the street often complained about her husband’s food wants – meat and potatoes, meat and potatoes, seven nights a week. At our house, it was homemade pizza, perogies and potato pancakes, soups, stews and spaghetti, Chinese food, tacos, stroganoff, goulash, tourtière, schnitzel. One time we had menus for seven weeks in advance, with no duplicates.

To make this dizzying array of global dishes requires quite a varied supply of raw materials. This need explains the wife’s 36 place spice rack, and the 24 spot herb rack, with more in the cupboard, and a few growing fresh, on the back deck. Almost everything we have, because of personal preference, allergies and cooking options, we have multiple versions of.

Starting above the stove is a cupboard full of cooking alcohol – red wine for pasta sauce, white for chicken and turkey dishes, Chinese cooking wine, sake for a couple of Japanese recipes, and brandy to soak Christmas cake in. The only stuff that I drink is the occasional bit of Crème de Menthe on crushed ice, when I’ve overindulged in rich food.

Come the apocalypse, the basement storeroom will feed us for three months. Aside from cookies, crackers and canned goods, we have 12 sizes and shapes of pasta and noodles, 2 brands of tomato sauce, plus marinara and Alfredo sauce.

There are usually about 36 two-liter(2-quart) bottles of Pepsi, and ten or twelve 710ml(20 oz.) six-packs. We keep a 30-pack of bottled water ahead, to replace the one in use under the cats’ feeding stand upstairs, and one or two gallons of distilled, as well as a dozen cans of ginger ale.

There are 4 types of rice – long grain for plain white rice, Basmati rice for body, Jasmine rice for sticky rice dishes, and instant Minute Rice. We have all-purpose flour, cake & pastry flour, bread flour, specially-fine-ground blending flour for thickening soups, sauces and gravy, rye flour for making pumpernickel rolls, and spelt flour, which like rye, is not wheat-based, and suitable for the allergic grandson.

Currently there are 20 pounds of Superior, white potatoes for boiled and mashed, 20 pounds of Russets, which make great French fries and potato salad, and 5 pounds of new baby whites in the ‘beer fridge’ for suet roasting and skin-on salad.

Onions include, cooking, Spanish, sweet white, occasionally a red onion, a bag of perishable Vidalias in the fridge, shallots, which like leeks aren’t quite onions, and green onions, in the upstairs fridge, which I’ll get to next post, after we’ve had dinner.

Poor overworked, under-appreciated beer fridge! No actual beer in it, so BrainRants better give me at least 24 hours warning of any surprise visit. Instead, it has 4 varieties of soft drinks, several flavors of coffee creamers and salad dressings there’s no room for upstairs, three dozen eggs, two more dozen pickled, extra bags and blocks of cheeses, and sour cream and margarine, so we don’t run out upstairs.

Besides the onions and baby potatoes, there’s a cabbage and a half, a large broccoli, an extra lettuce and a multi-pack of romaine. It contains the son’s individual yogurts and rice puddings for work meals – and leftovers….Yum! Yum!

A Yankee society doyenne imperiously informed her Georgia plantation-owning host that, “Up north, we think breeding is everything.” He replied, “We like it down here too, but we got other hobbies.” I’ve never run into another home which revolves quite as much around food as ours does. It has to. It can’t escape the gravity well. We read – a lot. We watch some television, and we allow computers to suck our time and insult our intelligence.

If we’re not shopping for food, or storing food away, or cooking food, or eating food, we’re concealing evidence tucking leftover food away, often in the fridge upstairs. Come back next time, when I finally get around to describing its interior, and explain why we had to reinforce the kitchen floor.   🙄

#488