A Very Important Question

I've wondered about this for a long time.  Whenever someone wants me to try something like rattlesnake, or alligator, or another varmint not usually seen on the menu of a restaurant with even one Michelin star, they always say the same thing: "It tastes just like chicken."

Really?  Then why not eat chicken?  Consider the benefits: it's less dangerous to catch, you're not going to get hurt waiting around the interstate for someone to hit one with a moving vehicle, and you don't have to talk anyone into eating it using suspect chicken similies.  Everybody wins, even the snake.

Well, the chicken doesn't win, but there is always sorrow in this imperfect world.

Burrito Baby

It's GRRRRRREAT!

Somebody get me Battle Creek, Michigan on the line, pronto!

Like a Lobster

A friend recently told me that when a lobster outgrows its shell, it moults and then hides until the new shell forms because it's soft and vulnerable.

So for my gentle readers who are wondering why I haven't been updating much lately, the answer is this: I'm not unhappy, I'm not bored, I'm not even out of ideas. I'm moulting. Some of this has entailed going places and seeing new things. Some it has been about doing research and taking on new information. And some of the time, I'm doing what looks like a lot of nothing much -- sitting in the yard listening to the birds, reading, and drawing the yellowjackets that land on me.

I don't yet know what shape my new shell will be once it grows. But I do know this: if I have to take on the shape of a beleaguered office worker again, I'd frankly prefer to be devoured by a codfish.

Thyme After Thyme

You may have noticed, gentle readers, that I am a person who is sometimes gripped by a sudden and strong enthusiasm. It might take the form of reading obsessively on a particular topic. I might become enamored with a word and feel the need to use it as often as possible. A few years back it was stir-frying whatever was in my kitchen, which resulted in some very strange flavor combinations.


Lately, I've had an obsession with thyme. Specifically, with adding it to any dish I possibly can. Thyme has an aromatic quality I really like. It does wonderful things for meat and poultry. It's a natural with mushrooms. It adds a little something extra to homemade pasta sauce. I even threw a pinch in some spinach pesto I made the other day.


As obsessions go, this one is fairly benign. It's just that sometimes I wonder what is going on in my head. Come to think of it, I'd be willing to bet that a lot of the time you do too.

How Foodtoons Happen

Friends sometimes ask where I get my cartoon ideas - particularly the Team Maria President, who is undoubtedly wondering if his will ever become a paid postion. I thought about it, and created a handy Venn diagram to explain how the magic happens. I'm sure that you, my gentle readers, being highly intelligent one and all, can quickly figure out that when I'm not in the Foodtoons sweet spot, I am probably slogging through either fatigue, anxiety, or irritation because the sets are constantly interacting to some degree. Now you know the real reason Van Gogh cut off his ear.

Spaghettification: Definition 2

I totally made that up.

For Spaghettification: Definition One, click here. 

Surf's Up!

As a matter of fact, I did fall on my head as a child. Why do you ask?

Informed Consumer

It turns out you can know too much about the food you eat.

Cinderella's Coach

These are the things I think about when I'm stopped at a traffic light behind a huge SUV plastered with bumper stickers. Now you know.

Vegan?

Mmmmmmm, dinosaur. My favorite.

*** It has been brought to my attention since I posted this drawing that people are not getting it. One person even suggested I was trying to post quantity and not quality (his name shall remain anonymous, but it rhymes with Dude Who Works Across The Hall Who Is Dead To Me Now).

There is a logic:

1. Vegan is a DIET, yet I keep seeing ads for (expensive) vegan shoes
2. Nobody would eat shoes, especially if they are not made of leather
3. If vegan shoes are made from plastic, are they really vegan if they are essentially made of melted dinosaur?

Welcome to my brain - basically a haunted house: a lot of empty rooms and cobwebs, with scary things that go bump in the night.

Chicken

I recently heard about some people who bought a dozen baby chicks last spring and were raising them with a view to butchering and having chicken in the freezer all winter. I like a bargain as much as the next gal, but this is a plan that would never work for me. I’d buy a dozen baby chicks, and I’d end up naming them and singing songs to them while I fed them. The next year, I’d have 30 chickens – the original dozen and their offspring – and the year after that I’d have 75, and so on until I am arrested for keeping too many chickens within the city limits.