Have you had a cronut?

Posted by random olio

I am intrigued. A colleague at work told me the other day about cronuts. They are a cross between croissants and doughnuts, or more specifically croissant dough fried like a doughnut. I do not have a sweet tooth. If there is such a thing as a salt tooth, that would be me. However, the cronut interests me. I would at least like to see if the craze is worth all the hype.

On different blogs and news sites, I found that they are selling for $5 a piece and Dominique Ansel Bakery in New York City is limiting the amount they can sell per customer. Another site says that Craigslist is selling them on the black market for 8 times the value – can you believe it? $40 a cronut. Dominique Ansel is now on the map as a bakery. I am sure they cannot keep up with the business they have acquired through their new invention. They will be what Magnolia Bakery was to cupcakes.

I even found that this blogger has come up with a recipe that takes Trader Joe’s croissants or chocolate croissants and turns them into a cronut at home concoction. While Dominique Ansel has only been selling them since May 10, if you do an Internet search you will see there is quite a bit of excitement in just the few weeks since they launched. There is even a website dedicated to cronuts.

I do not have plans to go to New York City anytime soon (although I would love to) so if anyone is going that way and then immediately coming back to Portland bring some back for me. Yum!

Cheating on our DVR

Posted by random olio

We have been cheating on our DVR this past month.

Not all DVRs are created equal. Some let you record a certain number of hours of television shows. If you decide you have to watch that show in high-definition then that means fewer hours available for other shows. Our current DVR allows us to record two shows at the same time, while also watching an already recorded show. What that means for us? We often have missed out on a good series and did not even know it because we were consistently addicted to season [fill in the number] of [fill in the show name].

Many of you may be fans of Netflix. We have not yet ventured into that avenue of endless hours of shows and movies. We might one day. I tell Chris that when we catch up on our DVR, we can think about Netflix. What is the second best thing to our DVR, and those of your that are Netflix fans? My local library. Call me a dork, but who cares! They are free, and all I have to do is be patient. The time I waited has finally come to fruition, as we have spent the last month watching season One and Two of: The Good Wife. How did I ever miss out on such a great show?

There were times growing up and after college when I thought I would go to law school. Somehow it never happened and I often think I would have been doomed if I forked over the cash, mostly because I hate reading fine print. So law school would have been like the hell of a privacy policy. I wanted to be a lawyer to help, but there was a small part of me that wanted to be a lawyer to duke it out in the courtroom. Which is why I really enjoy The Good Wife. Such good story lines, great courtroom, lawyer, and judge interactions, with a little romance to top it off. I actually think I like watching the episodes back-to-back rather than having to wait a week to find out what happens. Oh, and who does not like watching Chris Noth. (I am a Mr. Big fan).

While waiting for Season Three of The Good Wife to be available at the library, we started watching: The New Girl (Season One). I am not really a Zooey Deschanel fan, so I thought this show would be cheesy. I was wrong. The show is quirky, funny, and clever. I am a fan. I wish I had known about it earlier, as I saw yesterday that Season Two just finished. Guess I will have to wait a while to see it.

We will stop cheating on our DVR…soon.

Making sense of the world

Posted by random olio

We tell the stories of our lives to remember, laugh, and ponder where we have been and where we are going. We learn from each other, grow, and try not to make the same mistakes. Stories enrich us. We hear how someone else moves about the world, how they interact with their family and friends, and how they endure the good times and the bad. We laugh with them, we cry with them, and we relate in ways we sometimes cannot imagine.

I just finished reading: “If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother” by Julia Sweeney. If you are not familiar with Julia, she was “It’s Pat” on Saturday Night Live. Her book is a memoir and heavily focuses on her experience adopting a daughter from China. She is a blunt and humorous writer. I appreciated reading her book. It is just raw, real, and to the point. Her comments about telling stories resonated with me:

“I think my urge to perform, and specifically to perform true stories from my own life, is my way of coping. Just like alcohol is for some people. But the storytelling urge is not particular to the Irish. It’s in everyone. In fact it’s how our brains, every single one of our brains–not particular to any ethnicity–makes sense of the world. We tell ourselves how it all went, how this happened and how that happened and how it could happen in the future.” page 238

Is that what storytelling is for each of us? A litany of events, dates, and experiences that we tell as we make sense of the world? Yes, and so much more. I often write to make sense of my world. As the words come out of my fingertips I often connect thoughts and ideas and have aha moments. I realize what bothers me, find solutions to problems, and feel gratitude for the good parts of my day.

For me looking back at my past, at the stories of my life, help me to better understand myself and how I tick. Since both of my parents have passed on, and my grandparents are gone, I am on my own to put the pieces of my past together. I have asked my sister or brother how they remember an event, and yet their memory is much different from my memory of a specific event. That makes sense, as we each look out from our own perspectives. Since I cannot call my mom up and ask her about my first words, or how I handled a specific event in my life, I have to rely on my own memories. They may be flawed or off from the actual details but in the end, it is still the story I remember that has molded me into who I am today. As biased as my perspective might be, the feelings I had in each experience shaped how I handled future events.

Our story, our view on the world, is how we make sense and process who we are. Keep telling your story.

Make their day, make my day…

Posted by random olio

Have you ever thought about starting your day by thinking about how you might make someone else’s day? We go through our day going from meeting to meeting, or down a checklist of the many items we need to accomplish. Often we do not have time to think about getting lunch, let alone think about someone else and the full day we have ahead of us.

What would it look like, feel like, be like if you thought about how you might make another individual you encounter have a better day? What would you do? Instead of jumping right into your computer, emails, and meetings, might you ask a co-worker about their weekend? I often think that we get to work and start out on a hamster wheel, only to get out at 5, get into our car and drive home. Other days we might actually get out of our hamster wheel and truly focus and interact with others. On the days we get out of the hamster wheel, break routine, and engage and connect with those we see everyday we might just find that we see a glimmer of how we can be present for others.

I wonder if we started our day thinking of others, if the mood and focus would be different. We might rush less, breathe more, and appreciate our surroundings that much more. We could find that by thinking of others more, they think of us more. Like a boomerang effect of good will.

Are you with me?

A hot, sticky mess

Posted by random olio

We awoke to many loud popping sounds, almost like gunshots going off. It was the middle of the night. I sat up in bed, my heart pounding. What happened?

My parents, sister, brother, and I ran out of our bedrooms, down the hall, and into the kitchen to find out what had happened. We were shocked. The paneled walls in our dining room, the flowered border wallpaper, the olive green refrigerator, and the painted walls were covered in grape jelly.

A few days prior, we had visited my grandma’s house, and spent an afternoon picking grapes off the grapevines in her backyard. We did it every year. Our fingers purple hued with grape juice. I rarely popped one in my mouth as the tart taste was not my favorite. What I loved is what we would do when we brought our bounty home. Our kitchen turned into grape central. Massive pots brewing and stewing grapes and the counter lined with Ball jars ready for the final product. My mom mostly made grape jelly. Maybe there were other concoctions of grape canning or cooking, but I only remember the jelly. I loved and hated it all at once. It was a lot of work, but the result? Yummy grape jelly (my favorite) for breakfast!

So the grape covered walls? My mom had been canning the grape jelly and had not waited long enough for the grape jelly to cool before sealing the lids on top of the jars. In the middle of the night, the heat inside the jars had made them explode, leaving our kitchen and dining room splattered with grape jelly. It was a bit of a shock and funny all at the same time. The bummer part? My sister, brother, and I had to clean up the hot, sticky mess.

I think of it every time I smear grape jelly on my toast.