snack attack

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Wordy Wednesday Wandering

June was a whirlwind, wasn’t it? I am still trying to wrap my mind around how it can possibly be July already. The past few days alone included: picking up my child from sleepaway camp, observing a belated Father’s Day with my husband, buying a new car, getting a new air conditioner installed, and celebrating my daughter’s birthday. For those of you who have been around since I was on the fence about having kids: THE KID IS NOW THIRTEEN.

I could only find the “birthday” portion of the “happy birthday” banner, which I think it more of an indication of my current level of discombobulation than lack of delight at my kiddo becoming a teenager.

I have been doing SO MUCH laundry, and there is stuff (camp stuff, gift detritus, air conditioner replacement debris) everywhere, and I cannot stay on top of the mess.

This looks much neater and tidier than it FEELS. It FEELS like being slowly suffocated on all sides by Stuff.

(Alert, alert: Lisa and Nicole, you may want to skip the next two paragraphs and the photo between them.)

The air conditioner replacement was a fun surprise. I scheduled a simple clean-and-check with my HVAC company, and the technician discovered that all the wiring had been devastated by mice. In fact, the only thing that was preventing the wires from being exposed completely was a giant mouse nest. I think you know how I feel about this, which is burn it all down.

How can something so small and kind of cute be so destructive?!?!

We’d already spent a pretty penny to deal with previous mouse-related air conditioning carnage, back in April of 2024, and it was one of those deals where we could shell out a bunch of money to repair the old unit, which could of course die at any moment and has already proved much too welcoming to rodents… or shell out more money for a new, slightly-more-mouse-resistant unit. Considering this week is in the 90s (30s C), we went with the latter option.

The air conditioner is not doing a whole lot for the top floor yet. Carla slept with her camp fan clipped to her bedframe last night. It really does a great job of cooling. (We got it for camp because it is one of the few options that requires only batteries, and not some sort of USB charger to keep it powered on.) Several of the stores we’ve been to recently have been selling fans, which makes me feel like I need more fans. But Carla and I plan to spend as much time in or near the pool as possible, as a heat-beating measure. She has a new turtle pool float and I have pool hammocks to lounge in and copious amounts of sunscreen.

REAL FEEL ONE-OH-FIVE. No thank you.

I have been exploring all the delicious options for hot-weather meals that involve no cooking whatsoever; we had chickpea salad sandwiches last night, on homemade sourdough bread that my husband’s colleague sent home with him. I am planning on making a cold noodle salad later this week, or a Mediterranean platter, or possibly another round of sandwiches, this time with this version of chickpea salad.

Interrupting my husband’s day seeing patients with really crucial discussions.

Carla and I spent the afternoon of her birthday shopping, which was delightful and exhausting. She wanted to go into every tchotchke / novelty items boutique within a ten mile radius. Our adventure included Five Below, Home Goods, Michaels, Hobby Lobby, Target, and the Dollar Store. We also went to Pet Smart, to look at the kitties.

During our expedition, we passed a new international foods store and had to check it out. They had a variety of snacks and treats from different countries. I snagged a bag of coriander flavored Doritos which are my new favorite thing. They taste just like cilantro and are SO GOOD.

Yummmmmm.

Carla was more interested to learn that this store sold squishies and fidgets that are currently all the rage. She persuaded her father to buy her a NeeDoh Fuzz Ball, but then when we got home, she noticed that it doesn’t have the NeeDoh logo on it. We got squishy scammed, y’all. My thought is that this store had no idea they were selling counterfeit NeeDohs, and so I am hoping we can go back and inform them about the problem, maybe get our money back, and definitely get some more coriander chips.  

If you live in the U.S., are you celebrating Independence Day? I dislike this holiday because of the fireworks. They are loud and dangerous and it seems like a lot of people take the expansive view that the entire month of July is for setting off firecrackers in their yards at all hours of the day and night. I get very Grumpy Old Lady about the whole thing, and my husband and I typically prefer to spend the holiday holed up in our basement, grumbling about our neighbors (him) and fretting that a rogue firework will set our home ablaze (me). (Last year, we woke up on July 5 to find our driveway littered with spent firework shells.)

Art by Sina Simburger, @sin.xline

My in laws sent my whole family holiday apparel. This was a very kind gesture, and 250 years is a momentous anniversary. For all its flaws, I love my country. We have freedoms and opportunities here that I try not to take for granted. It is exciting and remarkable that we have reached this semiquincentennial milestone. And… I kind of feel that expressing any kind of patriotism gives an inaccurate impression of my beliefs and politics. I’ve driven past a lot of houses over the past month or so that have cheerful American flag bunting on their fences, or little American flags planted in their yards, or patriotic signs trumpeting their enthusiasm for the anniversary, and part of me feels a little lift of festive joy… and another part of me feels like I have an immediate – and quite possibly biased and wrong! – insight into what kind of people they might be and what kind of beliefs they may hold. UGH. By the way: I am not saying that people more conservative than I am are “bad;” I know many people across the political spectrum who are good, kind, loving people… who simply have different views on some topics than I do. I don’t know. It’s kind of unfair, is what I’m saying, that a symbol of unity should instead carry with it the weight of judgment. As usual, I am not the first or the most articulate person to note this; but it’s particularly noteworthy to me as we inch closer to the Fourth of July.

Let’s turn to a less controversial topic, which is my cat. Poor Lenny was shut away in my room for SIX HOURS while the new air conditioner was being installed, because the HVAC people kept going in and out of the house. He bore the injustice of his imprisonment with dignity. But he did develop a winky eye, which of course made me worry that he had something seriously wrong with him. Carla and I took multiple videos and photos of him, and examined his winky eye in various lights from various angles. I envisioned eye drop prescriptions and Rachel Green-style interactions and surgical intervention and loss of the eye. I called the vet and asked their opinion; their opinion is always “bring him in.” I scheduled the first available appointment, forgetting that there were five (5) strangers meandering in and out of my house for the foreseeable future. I called the vet back and got a later appointment. I fretted as the appointment approached because the HVAC people were STILL THERE. Finally, with about forty minutes to spare, the HVAC people left. I released the cat from my room so he could use the litter box. When he reappeared, his winky eye had resolved completely.

I had texted my husband earlier in the day to alert him to the cat’s almost certain blindness. His response was “Maybe an eggshell.” This requires some backstory, which is that my husband’s colleague sent him home with some fresh eggs the other day, from her chickens. She’d packaged the eggs in a little clear egg carton and had included some instructions with them that said they should be stored on the counter. Well. Lenny was obsessed with the eggs. He must have been able to smell chicken on them? He didn’t bother them until there were only two left. At which point, I came home from Carla’s birthday shopping extravaganza to find the carton overturned on the floor, one egg completely unharmed, and the other broken. I cleaned everything up, returned the surviving egg to the carton, and put a package of insect repellent refills on top of it to make it more difficult to bat off the counter. Not difficult enough, it turns out. The next morning, we came into the kitchen to find the eggshell I’d rinsed and left on the counter to dry once again on the floor, the makeshift carton weight on the counter, and the egg carton on the floor. The remaining egg was still intact. Hence my husband’s assumption that eggshell was the source of Lenny’s winky eye.

Screenshot

I made crème brûlée for Carla’s birthday dessert, per her request. The recipe called for five egg yolks, and I saved the shells because I read that they can deter slugs. Which I think are destroying both my coleus plants and one of my hydrangea trees. I love how pretty the eggshells are, or were before I baked them and crushed them. I hope they help my coleus plants! This is the third year I’ve planted coleus in the same location, and the first time that I’ve had an issue.

What’s up with you this Wednesday? How hot is it where you are? What are you making to eat when you don’t want to turn on the oven?

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Ants on a Log

Once in a while, my kid goes through an “ants on a log” kick. In our house, “ants on a log” refers to a banana slathered with peanut butter and liberally sprinkled with chocolate chips.

I am willing to overlook the sugar in the chocolate chips in favor the protein and fat in the peanut butter and whatever nutrients a banana has; all I’m coming up with is potassium. (A deficiency in potassium, so I’ve heard all my life from potentially questionable sources, is the reason I sometimes get leg cramps. Let me tell you, I would rather wake up screaming in pain than eat a banana. My husband may feel differently, but so far he’s never smashed a banana into my shriek hole, so I think we’re okay.)

The hardest part of making my version of ants on a log is getting the peanut butter to adhere to the banana. That’s the main reason I switched from cutting the banana lengthwise down the center (which is also difficult; bananas tend to snap around their waistline) to cutting them into disks. Much easier to dollop peanut butter than to spread it, when you’re dealing with a sticky paste and a slippery fruit surface.

It’s also difficult to determine how many chocolate chips is The Right Amount. My daughter and I have wildly differing views on chocolate chip quantity. I would like to say that one chip per disk is enough; Carla would disagree. Did you know that there are approximately 2.5 million ants per human on the earth? That fact makes it sound like a couple million ants are born every time a human appears in a delivery room, but you get the idea. Anyway, my daughter would appreciate that kind of ant-to-human ratio for her ants on a log. Whether we’re talking about insects or chocolate chips, that’s way too many ants.

When I was a kid, “ants on a log” was a horrific combination of celery, peanut butter, and raisins. I do like celery, but I don’t like peanut butter and I abhor raisins, nearly as much as I abhor bananas. Also, if I stop to think about it for more than two seconds, it’s pretty gross to offer children “ants on a log” as a snack. Who wants to eat a log, whether or not it has delicious ants crawling all over it? I mean, xylophages, but as far as I know humans are not xylophagous.

Other important ants-on-a-log questions: What in nature is the peanut butter supposed to represent in this scenario? Who decided this would be a great name for a snack? Whether or not it’s appealing or depicts nature in an accurate way, it’s sure managed to insert itself into American culture.

Now I’m curious about my non-American friends, and whether ants on a log is a thing in your neck of the woods. If not, is there a similar snack food? And, if so, what is it called?

If I’m eating celery – and I do enjoy a celery snack – I’m eating it with ranch dressing or cottage cheese. NOT peanut butter. My mom likes to make “rabbit food” every afternoon around three, which is some combination of celery, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumber, and bell peppers with a little ranch on the side. I don’t know that rabbits eat celery in the wild, but I do delight in envisioning myself as a little bunny nibbling my way through a garden, rather than as a middle-aged human using sliced veggies as a conveyance for absurd quantities of ranch dressing.

While I enjoy the rabbit food, and have tried with middling success to incorporate it into my own home routine, I have fond memories of an altogether different pre-dinner snack when I was growing up. My mother would melt cubes of Velveeta together with some salsa until it was a creamy, spicy puddle, and then we’d use tortilla chips to scrape up every last molten morsel. She called this “chips and dip.” Occasionally since reaching adulthood, I have tried to recreate this snack. I have found that Velveeta is its creamy, delicious best in my memory.

Some snacks are so delicious that they transcend time. Some even appear, fully formed, in the mind of a child without her mother ever mentioning them to her. Specifically, my teenage obsession with microwaved pepperoni. There was nothing like crispy pepperoni, still sizzling in a sheen of its own fat, dipped into yellow mustard. My own child discovered this delicacy on her own – sans mustard – and only my husband’s dismay at a microwave and kitchen smelling like fried pepperoni keeps her from eating this snack on the regular.

She does, once in a while, crisp up some pepperoni and add it to her scrambled eggs. In which case, I overlook all the concerning aspects of delicious, delicious pepperoni and focus only on the high protein goodness of scrambled eggs and the joy of a child who can make herself food.

If ants are going to make a log more delicious, let’s add some ants.

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Weekend Report, Snack Suggestion, Dinners This Week

I drafted this post earlier today, and it clocked in at a lean, mean 137 words. That’s… too few words, even though I don’t have a whole lot to say. 

I mean, the weekend with my friend was GREAT. It was just like no time had passed, and her children are delightful, and everyone had a great time together. Even though we had three whole extra people in our house, they were so easy. Also: I COOKED NOTHING. The only meals we ate at home were breakfasts. The only appliances I operated were the stick blender (smoothie), toaster (toast), and microwave (hot chocolate). My friend made eggs for herself and her kids, my kid and husband made their own breakfasts. The only time my oven was even on was during the afternoon when my kid and my friend’s younger kid had a cookie baking competition. During which my friend and I went for a leisurely four mile walk and returned to a completely clean kitchen and two kinds of cookies. We spent most of our time enjoying the gorgeous high-seventies weather at various outdoor spots. 

Let’s see. What else can I tell you? Oh! I recently visited a South Asian market with Carla. She and I wandered the aisles, loading our arms with things to buy. Sweets for her, hot sauce for me. My husband would have loved this place, so we picked out a few snacky things for him to try. It was so hard! The selection was enormous, and I have ZERO reference points for South Asian food brands, which made the choosing a little overwhelming. I told myself I couldn’t go wrong and grabbed things at random. 

My husband shared his snacks with me and two of them were So Good. I got this one because it came in an appealing green chutney flavor, and it was spicy and tangy and crunchy and I need more immediately. I got this one because it had a variety of shapes and textures, and because it said “sweet and spicy” on the package rather than simply “spicy.” It was, to be fair, more spicy than sweet, but it was so flavorful and crunchy and delicious. If you like spicy, flavorful, crunchy snacks, I highly recommend either of these. I could shovel bag after bag into my gob all day long. 

Okay, that’s all I’ve got for you, which means…

…it’s that special time again: time to frown perplexedly into the middle distance, trying vainly to remember what, if anything, I have ever prepared or eaten for dinner. 

Dinners for the Week of September 29-October 5

I am also in the mood to make fall-y muffins, so if I have some time I may whip up a batch of these.

What’s your favorite savory snack food? Do you have a South Asian grocery store near you? 

Growing up, my small rural hometown had no specialty groceries at all. Just two regular old American supermarkets. In fact, the only restaurants that served anything besides burgers, steak, or pizza were a couple of fast-food taco joints and a single Chinese restaurant. One of the things I love best about living near a mid-sized city is the variety of food options. It is so fun to be able to eat foods from all over the world without traveling more than an hour from my house, and to pop into a specialty grocery store whenever I want.