The Thanksgiving Crab

I don’t remember where I’m stealing the idea behind this post from – I think I read and responded to someone talking about it in someone’s comments somewhere last week – but I was in total agreement with it.

Why couldn’t the Pilgrims have looked to the sea, instead of the land, for their Thanksgiving feast?

I know, I know – I KNOW the answer to the question and the Indians and the harvest and being thankful and land and blah blah blah and all that.  I’m just saying I really, really wish the Pilgrims had done that instead.

They were right there by the danged sea.  There must have been lakes and rivers (and heck, ponds!) nearby.    Couldn’t the Indians have taught them how to fish instead?

I am not, and never have been, a big fan of turkey.  Most of the rest of the usual Thanksgiving fare, I like just fine, but the turkey is usually the least eaten thing on my plate.  Most of my favorite Thanksgiving dinners have been the ones where there was ham as well as the turkey.

And then there’s the dark meat thing.  Put any branch of my entire family together – there was only one person who liked the dark meat.  My father – who’s been gone many years now, and really, even before that, pretty much since my parents divorced twenty years ago, and I usually spent holidays with my Mom and family – there’s nobody to eat the dark meat.  It’s useless, except to give to the cats and dogs (obviously they like that idea).

Post-Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches (with lots of mayo) are fine – for about a day, maybe two, then I’m over it.  When I was a kid, I refused to eat the after Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches at all.

The turkey was fun the one year when dinner was over, and my Dad put the carcass and scraps out on the deck for all the then-outside cats we had at the time.

A few minutes later, we were a bit shocked to see the carcass appearing to walk by itself across the yard.  The female cat who was, over the years, often referred to as “The Turkey Monster” was a great deal smaller than the carcass, so that was a pretty hilarious sight.

But turkey – for me anyway – just sucks.  I know the difference between good turkey and mediocre turkey and bad turkey – but I could almost just about eat cardboard instead, really.

On the other hand, seafood – now THAT’S a Thanksgiving feast I could love.  Lobster, crab, salmon, scallops – yum.  There’s really no seafood I don’t adore, except clams.  I’m a little picky about fish, but most fish is okay.  Heck, give me a Thanksgiving catfish or a Christmas catfish!  That would be A-OK with me.  Thanksgiving catfish, Christmas lobster, Easter salmon – oh, yes!

So, I think that one day – if I ever evolve out of extended adolescence and actually become the kind of matriarch that is the cooker of all Thanksgiving (and Christmas and Easter) feasts – I will begin the tradition of the Thanksgiving crab.

In more ways than one, I’m sure.

(Although I really would have been even happier if the Mayflower had drifted down to the Gulf of Mexico and landed in far south Texas near the border instead.  Thanksgiving fajitas, Christmas quesadillas, and Easter tamales – that’s what I’m talkin’ about!)

(And no, I don’t know why I included Easter in the above.  Every good white Anglo-Saxon Protestant knows you have ham on Easter instead of turkey.)

Dum-Dums, I Hardly Knew Ye

So I’m not going to talk about the election anymore because really, again, I’m sick to death of it.  And I’m trying to lighten up the mood around here a little, or else Mack is gonna start calling me “Debbie Downer” instead of Rachel.

So I’m going to share with you some new discoveries on one of my FAVORITE subjects today – hard candy.  And when I say hard candy, I don’t mean Sarah Palin, nope.

I haven’t had any trick-or-treaters for years, but I wasn’t about to get caught on Halloween without candy just in case there were some this year.  I almost made the mistake of picking up some nasty cheap yucky stuff I would have hated for $1 a bag, but decided to wait until the next store or two that day.  Because, you know, if I don’t have trick-or-treaters and I buy candy, it might as well be something I like that I will consume eventually.

The next store saved the day with a $2 bag of Dum-Dums – 80 of them.  Yay.

If you’ve read here much, you are well aware that while I don’t much care for chocolate and am not big on sweets as a rule, I have a serious thing for hard candy, mostly on the sour side but a few others.  Jolly Ranchers, Icebreakers Sours, those old Charms Sweet & Sour pops you can barely find anymore – those are the best.  But Dum-Dums have always come a close second.  I just like lollipops period – the Jolly Ranchers suckers are some kinda awesome.

But wow, it must have been a long time since I bought any, because I started pulling suckers out of that bag and was just amazed.  Where did all these new flavors come from?  Coconut, mango, cherry cola, bubble gum, cotton candy – I am in hard candy taste heaven!  (Except for the cherry cola.  I don’t care for that one so much.)  Mom said it sounded like they are trying to match some of the Jelly Belly flavors (which I like as well); probably so.  There along with all the old standards like root beer and tangerine and cherry, and the (slightly newer but I’d had it before) blue raspberry, were all these marvelous new flavors.

I was about to get upset there for a few minutes, though – and was concerned they had stopped making it – but finally fished a cream soda Dum-Dum out of the bag.  Yay!

So there ya go.  I might be basically penniless and destitute and barely able to afford to buy real groceries in the current economy of this Presidential election year, but if I can manage to keep a $2 bag of Dum-Dums on hand, I won’t really even notice if I’m starving.  Ha!  OK, I AM Debbie Downer, sue me – I don’t have anything anyway!

Anorexia Jetsonia

I haven’t really been in a blogging mood, which I guess has been kind of obvious.  And I hate that, because I have let something slip by on the music blog I absolutely did not mean to, but maybe I can get myself sort of re-motivated into things next week.

Anyway, no, I haven’t really been in a blogging mood, and apparently I’m not in an eating mood either.  Which is kind of bad when you only eat maybe once a day and sometimes not anyway, which is kind of good when you’re almost too poor to eat anyway, but I know it’s not good and healthy to only eat maybe once a day and possibly even not.

I DO get hungry.  It’s just that there’s nothing I want to eat, and if there is, after two bites I’m over it.  Stuff I have eaten and liked my entire life – I don’t want it and/or it doesn’t taste good.  Everything is just totally blah.  In a way it’s a good thing that I don’t eat much when I eat anyway, but it’s just kind of disturbing to get two or three bites into something and just be like totally unable to finish.

The only things I really want to eat are breakfast food or Mexican food.  But the way things are going – even though I’m too destitute to be able to go out to eat – if I COULD go eat at Cafe Ole every night this week, I’m afraid by night #2 I would be over that too and not want that either.   Or Waffle House.  Which is totally unimaginable to me that I could go in either and not feel like eating anything on the menu, but there ya go.

I was kind of jonesing for some Pancho’s today and like I said, Mexican food is one of the few things that sounds good these days.  So since I had to go to the grocery store anyway, I picked up fixings for nachos and grabbed some Pancho’s dressing too and that pretty much satisfied the craving AND I did actually eat and it was good.  Except I ate so little and there’s so much left that I could probably eat for the next week… and now I’m a little afraid I’m going to lose my appetite for the one thing I always have an appetite for.  Plus I ate so little, but so way much more than I usually do, so now I’m stuffed and miserable.

I bought some bananas today because they looked good and appealing – which I’m sure I will eat.  I like fruit, I just don’t buy much because normally most would wind up going to waste.  Maybe I should just buy fruit for a while.  But what if I start not wanting to eat fruit either?

Weren’t things supposed to be like The Jetsons by now anyway, where you just took a pill and bam, that was an entire meal, and we all fly our cars around instead of driving them and – right?

Double the Horror, Double the Poverty

Last night was depressing.  I went to the grocery store.

Back in the spring, I mentioned that I had noticed a lot of the things I pretty much HAVE to buy on a regular basis had gone up relatively significantly.  Well, now (in just the past week or two), they’ve gone up AGAIN.

40 lb. bag of (store brand) dog food – up from $7.99-8.99 in April 2008 to $13.99.

20-ish lb. bag of (commercial) cat food – up for around $11 to $15.

Box of (store brand) dog treats – used to be two for $2, now $4 ($6 somewhere else for something similar).

Kitty litter – I always buy cheap kinds and store brands because my cats simply usually prefer them.  The store brand cat litter at my usual grocery stores is now costing what Tidy Cats, Fresh Step, etc. USED to.

All totaled, well over $15, possibly even up to an additional $20 a month or so if you’re a pet owner.

So yes, that is all pet stuff and I suppose some people would scoff that pets are a luxury (even though they’re the only “kids” I have).  So let’s look at stuff for ME.

Nearly all the food and personal items I buy for myself are, these days, generic and store brands.  Nearly all of THEM have increased in cost similarly.  Thank goodness I don’t habitually eat very much or often – which is bad, I know – but the simple fact is right now I couldn’t afford to eat TWO meals a day, much less three, so right now my borderline eating disorder is a blessing.

One of my preferred easy quick cheap meals is not so cheap anymore.  Formerly 89 cents, I discovered just over the weekend the price had gone up to $1.09.  And now it’s gone up to $1.29 SINCE the weekend.

Here was the real shocker for me, though.  I actually noticed this at another store last week, but thought maybe it was just one of those things, since I was at a retail drugstore where things sometimes are higher than they are at, say, Kroger or Wal-Mart.

But no.  Angel Soft toilet tissue, usually acquired for $1 or less per four-roll package many places – now pushing $2, at $1.85.  This isn’t Northern, this isn’t Charmin, this isn’t Kleenex – it’s ANGEL SOFT, for goodness’ sakes.  Granted, even if I had lots of money I’d probably buy it anyway instead of the others.  I like it just fine, think it’s great anyway, and after what a plumber once told one of my best friends after a thousands-of-dollars plumbing repair job, I probably will buy it forever (well, if I can afford to).

And I have long lamented the high cost of feminine hygiene/protection products for years, as that is something most women HAVE to have on hand and cannot do without, yet even the store brands are often horrifically expensive.  I have always considered that one of those things that’s just simply not fair and borderline sexist.  Fortunately I stocked up on that stuff a few months ago with the generous gift of a kind friend of a Wal-Mart gift card.  I am NOT looking forward to seeing what that stuff costs when I’ve depleted my current stock.

But seriously – do you see what I’m getting at here?  This is GROCERIES, people.  This is generic and store brand people food, as well as pet food.  This is “lesser brand” TOILET TISSUE, for Pete’s sake.

And most of it’s nearly DOUBLED in cost in just the last four months.  100% inflation, folks.

Gasoline prices were bad enough, and I realize they have decreased somewhat (at least temporarily).  It still sucks that I have a compact car and it costs over $50 to make a two and a half hour trip to my hometown there and back, and that I’m 42 years old and my mom has to send me the money if I want to come home for the weekend.

But this – this is groceries – and TOILET TISSUE, for crying out loud – doubling in cost.  What happens next year?  Tripling?  Quadrupling?

I can’t afford any of it, and my income is tentative enough as it is.  What really sucks is that I’ll still be owing taxes next year on what pitiful, way below average “poverty level”, amount of income I have actually earned this year.

All I’ve been hearing about lately is people getting laid off, hundreds here, a few there, hundreds more over there.  I suspect few of you reading right now could tell me you’ve gotten a raise this year that’s helping to offset this incredible rise in not only cost of just living, but cost of necessities.

I know I’m sounding like a broken record here lately.  I don’t know how many times I’ve asked this in the last five or six months, and I’m getting kind of tired of asking it and wondering about it at this point, but anyway…

Where does it stop?  When does it end?

You want my vote in the Presidential election?  Then tell me it is going to stop, and where it’s going to stop, and when it’s going to end, AND make it happen.

Preferably before we’re all homeless and out on the street, starving, and having to tear up family Bibles and dictionaries and encyclopedias because we can’t afford to buy four rolls of toilet paper.

Back Yard Burger Retraction

I have to take back the mean things I said the other day about Back Yard Burger’s new (fairly new) Loaded Potato Skins. I complained that if they were going to call them “loaded”, they should have something besides just cheese & bacon bits tossed on ‘em. Like sour cream, and/or chives, etc.

Well, when I went to the mailbox today, the usual weekly advertising circulars were stuffed in there and included a page full of coupons for Back Yard Burger. Including a coupon for their Loaded Potato Skins.

I glanced at the accompanying photo and immediately noted… the cup of sour cream. On the side.

Which someone obviously forgot to stick in my bag the other day.

Mountain Dew Revolution – From F to A in 5 Minutes

I was at the store late last night and needing a cold drink, and there was no orange soda in the refrigerated soda case, so I was looking around and noticed something I had never seen or heard of – the new Mountain Dew Revolution, with wild berry flavor and ginseng.  It’s blue, which is usually a tipoff that it’s either really bad or really good.

So I get home and take a swig and immediately hated it.  Seriously was grading it a big fat F, not even a D.  It tasted like carbonated cough syrup.  But I didn’t have anything else cold to drink in the house, so I was going to finish it anyway.

Then a funny thing happened about 1/4th the way into the bottle.  Suddenly, it started tasting good.

I don’t know.  It would certainly never be a favorite, but it’s all right (after the initial couple of swigs anyway).  It’s sort of similar to some of those energy drinks I don’t really like all that much but there’s something about them that tastes both good and not so good.

So if you haven’t tried it and want to give it a shot, be forewarned, but stick with it past two or three drinks.  The carbonated cough syrup effect kind of goes away.

PS: New music blog here.  (LOL, yes, I’m going to keep repeating that for at least a week or two.)

O Onion Rings, O Onion Rings (and a Note About Back Yard Burger)

Speaking of Buchanan, Tennessee – and to lighten up the mood in here a little bit, much needed after that last post – I am really just about to die for a plateful of Bull Durham’s onion rings. I haven’t one in my mouth in about 35 or so years, I guess, because it’s been gone about that long.

Bull Durham’s was a restaurant down at Kentucky Lake that was pretty much your regular steak and seafood kinda place, but the onion rings – oh, the onion rings. They just, literally, MELTED in your mouth. They weren’t all packed with breading like the ones you get at Sonic; just lightly battered and browned, and yeah, they just melted in your mouth.

Back Yard Burger just started carrying onion rings a little while back and they are very, very close. In fact, I just had some for lunch, but while they’re close, they’re just not like Bull Durham’s real deal was. Ah, some days I would just about kill for Bull Durham’s onion rings and a dish of Pagliacci’s lasagna, another Paris restaurant that has been gone just about that long.

Speaking of Back Yard Burger – I don’t know how long they’ve been on the menu, but don’t bother with the “loaded” potato skins if you like your potato skins loaded, ‘cos they’re not. I don’t know who came up with the brilliant idea that loaded potato skins means just slap some cheese and bacon bits on ‘em, but they are sadly missing a key ingredient that would truly make them “loaded” (i.e., sour cream), and some chives would be nice too, but I’m not that picky.

Ladies Who Lunch

So today I met up with KathyT, her sister, and her youngest daughter for Huey Burgers (except Melissa had the Huey’s Club, the rest of us had the original Huey Burgers) and just had a fabulous time visiting with them. It’s always great to see Kathy, and her sister Karen is just delightful and funny as well. Melissa’s a really cool kid and is going home with a huge trophy – and is also getting her braces off soon, I hear. (Man, I remember that was one of the best days of my life, getting those things off for good after three long years.)

They had thought about going to Graceland but had decided not to, but they wanted to go to Mississippi since Karen and Melissa had never been, so that was a sort of easily solved two birds killed with one stone. I hopped into the van with them after lunch and we took off down Bellevue, which becomes Elvis Presley Blvd. and then becomes just plain old Highway 51 at the Tennessee-Mississippi state line. (Well, I guess it’s always Highway 51 anyway, but you know what I mean.)

So yeah, we went to Southaven and then even on down into Horn Lake, where Kathy bought a new headlight and the cute guy at Advance Auto Parts installed it for her even though he really didn’t want to.

Then we came back to Memphis, having driven past Graceland on the way down, but since it’s on that side of the road coming back – yeah, we pulled into the pull-off and got out and walked around the wall and gates a bit. Karen took a picture of me and Kathy and Melissa under the National Register of Historic Places sign that I hope will be so bad (because it no doubt will be of me, they always are) that Kathy won’t put it up on her blog. (Haha, just kidding… I think.) And Kathy took a bunch of pics of some of the graffiti on the wall.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun hanging out with them and thanks once again to Kathy for lunch & the company, I had a great time. And my dogs thank her profusely since virtually none of us finished our entire burger/sandwich or fries (I almost ate my whole Huey Burger but not quite), so Kathy sent me home with a literal doggie bag LOADED with french fries and what probably amounted to almost one entire Huey Burger or almost. It was a feeding frenzy the likes of which you usually only see in the wild on the Discovery Channel, Dobie almost took one or two of my fingers off.

What was really funny, though, was Daisy was the only one smart enough to figure out what I’d brought home in the box I was holding when I walked in the door. The boys were completely clueless (*rolls eyes*).

It was a gorgeous day in Memphis today, and since I was in the neighborhood I drove by my buddy Joey’s house thinking if they were outside I’d stop and say hey. But they weren’t, so I just headed on home after a stop off for needed Krogering.

By the way, I actually have a piece of Graceland in my possession – a piece of rock/stone that I think came from a walkway, I don’t think it came from the wall. My mom wound up with it when she was down here in college, I think a friend of hers actually did the actual deed, but yeah, it’s a piece of Graceland circa around 1961-63. Heh.

Ouch!

So I got one of the new Fruitista Freezes at Taco Hell today because it’s like a million degrees outside in Memphis today. I got the just Strawberry instead of the Strawberry Mango, ‘cos sometimes mango doesn’t taste too good to me.

I give it a pretty enthusiastic thumbs up, even with the half dozen ice cream headaches that came with it.

The Squirrel Queen claims that one can relieve brain freeze by pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth, adding that it warms the nerve endings there that cause the ache. And Rachel agreed with her. But I dunno about that, that sounds awfully weird to me. I’ll try it next time tho.

Yummy

You can have your home baked bread and other foodie fineries. In MY version of heaven, there is always the smell of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls baking.

And West Tennessee BBQ cooking. And my dad’s hamburgers on the grill.

There is also a never-empty casserole dish of my mom’s asparagus casserole. And billions of my grandmother’s pecan pies, and it’s perfectly okay if I eat all the pecans off the top if I want to.