Monthly Archives: March 2014

Nuts on a Plane

Posted in Food: Getting It and Eating It, High Anxiety, Humor by
Photo Credit: faungg's photo via Compfight cc

Photo Credit: faungg’s photo via Compfight cc

Nuts are soothing to eat, especially on a plane, during turbulence. Next time you fly through turbulence, look around. If you see a passenger resembling a deranged beaver gnashing savagely on her peanuts,  share your own measly pack of peanuts with her. Chomping those nuts with ferocity might just calm her enough to keep her in her seat and save all of you from the sight of her running through the plane, ripping off her clothes, and screaming, “I wanna get out.”

Gnashing nuts is definitely better than being nuts. As I am quite capable of both gnashing and being nuts on a plane, I read lots of stuff about my fear of flying. Once I even spoke to a pilot about my fears of turbulence. He suggested that I think of the plane (with me in it) as a grape sitting on a bed of Jell-O (the air).

“The grape,” he said,  “might get jostled but it will never fall through the Jell-O.”

I embraced this grape comparison as a compliment because in the past, I had always been likened to a pear, particularly when buying clothes.  If given a choice of being a grape and sitting on a bed of Jell-O, or being a pear and sitting in the middle seat on an airplane, while playing the “keep my thigh from rubbing your  thigh” game with the window and aisle passengers, I’d definitely opt to be the grape.

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Photo Credit: Mez Love via Compfight cc

Let’s go back to the nuts. I used to buy a whole bag of them at the airport concession stands before I got on my flights. It was worth paying a price almost as high as my plane ticket to have my little crunchy comforts in my seat pocket. Then, hurrah!  I flew Southwest! The peanuts and snacks at Southwest are freeeeeeeeeeeee! Yippee! On my last flight, the flight attendants came through the cabin on their first pass  and they tried very hard to make eye contact when they handed us our snacks. On their second pass, however, our keepers, oops, flight attendants  tossed our snack packs at us, and some of us, so happy to be fed for free, were leaping in the air to catch our little feed packs.

It’s all good, however. Gnashing nuts is a much better way to reduce flying anxiety than being tackled by six burly passengers, and then being restrained in my seat by their neckties, belts and shoe laces.  And, remember! On Southwest, the nuts are free!

Photo Credit: N00/4775842363/”>faungg’s photo via Compfight cc

HDF’s Reality Cooking Show: Chopping Onions and Garlic

Posted in Food: Getting It and Eating It, Humor by

Chopping the Onion

  1. Start peeling the onion’s skin.
  2. Accidentally drop a piece of the onion skin on the kitchen floor.
  3. Pick up the onion skin with a paper towel, and put it in the garbage can under the counter.
  4. After touching the floor with the paper towel and sliding out your garbage can from under the counter, wash your hands with soap. Then dry your hands.
  5. Pick up the knife to resume peeling.
  6. Notice that your hands are still a bit soapy, and soap is not an ingredient in meatloaf. Wash and dry your hands again.
  7. Continue peeling and drop another piece of onion skin on the floor. Decide that you cannot stop  peeling to pick up every little thing that lands on the floor
  8. Start cutting the peeled onion by slicing it and then chopping it.
  9. Do that rocking thing with the knife that makes you feel like a real foodie.
  10. As you rock your knife, note that at least four or five pieces of onion fly off the cutting board, deposit schmutz on your clean shirt, and then land on the floor.
  11. Worry about the pieces of onion lying on the floor. If you step on them, you might fall, and have to go to the hospital, and who would be left to feed your starving family?
  12. Decide to write a letter to the cooking shows demanding that they televise what falls on the floor, behind the counter.
  13. Hear your phone ring, and worry  Continue reading →