It's the Blogcation that Keeps you off the Short Bus to Crazytown

If I have seemed a little absent from my pages and yours this past week, it's because I am in the midst of something of a deluge at work and personally.  It's nothing that I can't handle, but it puts the blog on the back burner.  So rather than be silently missing, I will be overtly so.

I am going to take a little blogcation.  Looks like a week, but it could be two.  It will be the break that I need to tidy things up around the home and office and to prevent me from taking a dump on my abusive and mentally unhinged co worker's desk or from being so distracted that I sear my hand on the paninni press (which, for the record, I don't look good in stripes).

We'll call it a preemptive mental health break from which I will return bright eyed and bitchy-taled, because I am sure that there will be plenty of people jumping on my last nerve while I'm gone.  As you know, it's sharing these little tales with you that keeps me off the Crazytown Express.  I can't think of a better way to keep sane.

I EAT Your Cereal!

Ever want to know what it's like to be PWNED by a cat?

That's right bitch, I EAT your cereal.

Spring Ahead Can Bite Me

How about this for a dorktastic graphic?  Thanks Climateprogress.org.

As I dragged my sorry ass out of bed this morning I was hit with a crushing sense of doom.  It wasn't, was it?   It couldn't possibly be THAT DAY?  Could it?  The day where an evil little troll king steals an hour of precious time from me and makes the Monday workday arrive one hour sooner?  But it was - Daylight Savings Time.

As I floated arount the blogosphere, anxious to find another person who dreads this day like I do, all I could find were people who were nattering on about how there would be more sunshine and it would stay light longer.  Geez, what a bunch of happy horseshit! We're one hour closer to work here people! Don't you feel it?  One hour closer to getting the hairy eyeball from my batshit crazy coworker.  One hour closer to having to attend a meeting that I would prefer dental surgery over.   One hour closer to some halfwit in the cafeteria making me a chicken sandwich and trying to grab a bun for the sandwich without changing his raw chicken juice covered gloves.   

Why am I the only person that feels utterly robbed and on this day?   I can tell you this much, along with the ever nearing work day, "Spring Ahead" day is like firing the starting pistol for another opressively humid Long Island summer. We will have maybe 20 days of gorgeous spring weather and then Mother Nature will abruptly rip the rug out from under our feet and go into full-on menopause, svitzing like a crackhead on COPS. She will pour on the heat and humidity in short order. The kind of heat and humidity where you break a sweat walking from the shower to the sink and feel like you have to shower again.  It makes me bitter.  It makes me cranky.  It makes me somewhat difficult to live with (impossible to believe, I know) .

So now it begins - the longest countdown of the year - the countdown to my favorite day of the year - Fall back.  Anybody have a time machine they can lend me?  My family would so SOOOO grateful if you did.

An Open Letter of Apology to Bobby Flay

I have spent most of this morning in a state of conflict.  Conflict over a recipe. Normally, I am not the type to hesitate before embarking on a new recipe, preferring to jump in with both feet and knives blazing, without an ounce of fear for the outcome.  As a mater of fact, I would have to say that decisiveness is one of my defining characteristics, but not this time. Nope.  This recipe finds me unable to pull the trigger.  My hesitance is not due to the complexity of the recipe or due to exotic ingredients that fall outside of my culinary comfort zone, it is simply authored by Bobby Flay.

You might ask the obvious question, "But Diary,  shouldn't that be a good thing?", and you would be right, if I were normal.  However, even more painfully obvious to any regular reader of this little blog concern, is that I am clearly not normal.   So why is my apron in a twist about this recipe?  Well, let's just call it a tasty case of the guiltburgers.


You see, as a long time watcher of Food Network (and I mean long time, like Nina Griscom and David Rosengarten long time), I was an early hater of Bobby Flay as a TV personality.   I would watch Hot Off the Grill and cringe at what seemed to be a smarmy, arrogant presentation style.  Similarly, Grillin and Chillin seemed like a lot of territorial pissing between him and his cohost, Jack McDavid and there was something condescending in the way that he treated him.  This was probably all part of the intended shtick, but it was lost on me.

Because of these early offerings, I had a bad taste in my mouth for him and his cooking.  Intellectually, I understand that his TV presentation style has nothing to do with the man's ability to cook.  I mean this guy is obviously a baller when it comes to rockin' a skillet.  There's no doubt about that.  However, as unfair as it may seem, my perception of him as arrogant and self-important, tainted my willingness to give his food a try.   However, all of that has changed for me, thanks to two things - The Borgata and Throwdown.


The Food Network has thrown shows at Bobby Flay like a conventioneer throws dollars at a Vegas stripper, and as I mentioned, not all of those offerings have been what I would call "favorites".  But with Throwdown, there is a kinder, gentler Bobby Flay, one who seems humble and not afraid to lose to what is often a less trained, less experienced cook, who does one thing REALLY WELL.  There is a sense of reverence for his opponents and what they do and a genuine good-naturedness about the process, including the losses.  This exposes Flay as something that he has probably been all along, but I missed the cues - a fan of good food.


The second thing that has me on the Bobby Flay love train is Flay Steak at the Borgata.  I would choose his
PHILADELPHIA STYLE STRIP STEAK with provolone cheese sauce, caramelized onions, along with his delectably decadent sweet potato gratin as my last meal.  Now, I'm not gonna say that being housed in my favorite casino is working against him in my gustatory gaganess, but I am pretty sure that I'd endure a sh1thole casino like the Claridge, if it housed Flay Steak.


So here I am, on the precipice of putting sugar to pan for the caramel sauce that laces Mr. Flay's Peanut Butter Caramel Brownies and despite my improved attitude toward and patronage of Mr. Flay, I hesitate.   I even bought some of his bowls from Kohls.  What gives?


I think it's just the fear looking like a hypocrite.  When I was a hater, I was a vocal hater. Now that I'm a lover,  I think it only fair that I be a vocal lover as well.  So Mr. Flay, this is my mea culpa.  My opportunity to level the playing field and show you the outward respect that you so rightly deserve.  To admit to being a judgemental bitch in your beginning days on TV and to praise your evolution as a legitimate and skillful television presenter.  Now that I have exercised my "woman's right" to change my mind and offered up my sincere aplologies, it's time to rock the sh1t outta your Caramel Peanut Butter Brownies, cause . . .DAMN!