1_Irritated_Mother's Open Salon Blog

A Royal Pain in the Icing

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:11:48 -0500

This is not news.

Much like her smooth and unfortunately nasty sister, Fondant ... Royal Icing does not taste good.

The transport device (i.e. cake or cookie) must carry the entire load of providing flavor and mouth appeal. How completely unfair to the poor, bland sugar cookie with his mealy texture and washed-out vanilla taste. (It is not his fault that American butter packs less flavor punch than its European counterpart.)

WAIT! HOLD THE PRESSES! OMG! THIS COOKIE TASTES GOOD.

IT TASTES GREAT.

THIS IS THE MOST SPECTACULAR ICED COOKIE I HAVE EVER TASTED. WHERE, OH WHERE, DOES SUCH A COOKIE COME FROM, you may be asking.

Cooks Illustrated, of course. The Holiday Baking Edition, to be exact.

When I read the recipe, I chuckled. I giggled. I laughed kind of hard. Seriously. You want me to combine the ingredients that way? What do you mean there are no eggs? This recipe is nothing like the one that Martha uses or the one in the Pastry Queen cookbook. But Cooks Illustrated has never led me wrong before and I am a huge fan, so I set out to make the ridiculous cookies that I knew would be nothing like what I needed to make the iced & sugared cookies that I needed to make. Oh well, it's just flour and sugar and butter and vanilla, right? Oh yhea ... and cream cheese. I know ... weird.

The first batch came out too thin. The tasted like heaven though. Crisp as a chip and buttery, like expensive shortbread, but waaaaaaaaaaaay better than shortbread.

The second batch came out exactly the way Erica Bruce (w/ Elizabeth Bomzie) said they would: "crisp, sturdy ... tasted great and were foolproof". Right on, Ladies. And to answer their question, "Absolutely nothing!"

Now - get thee to a magazine seller immediately. These cookies are unbelievable. THEY EVEN MAKE ROYAL ICING TASTE GOOD! That's right. They taste GOOD. They taste AMAZING! Even with sickly sweet and un-tasty royal icing. Now I (and you) can have PRETTY and DELICIOUS at the same time. Merry Christmas, indeed!

The little cookie box was made from a 12x12 piece of heavy scrapbook paper.

I am so into that orchid color right now!

I've Been Doing God's Work on Wisteria Lane

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:11:40 -0500

I have always wondered why people use the phrase, "Doing God’s Work". Does this imply that God is lazy? Does it mean that God is on vaca, frolicking on St. John with Giselle? (haha … get it? … St. John … hahahaha) Does it mean that said worker is a crazy, psycho, power-freak? Does it mean that maybe, just maybe, that even I have the power inside of me to summon a plague of some sort upon my neighbors to the west? (note to God ~ If there is ever an opening in the Plague Department, I am so your girl.)

Sarah Palin’s facespace "BFF’s" or (as I like to call them) "Dumbasses" think that she is doing God’s work and they say so … out loud. As far as I can tell, all she’s done is dishonor honorable men and get a huge payout for authoring a book that she didn’t write … and incite a political rage inside of me the likes of which I’d never known, but that is beside the point. Now I am all for getting paid large sums of money and getting credit for for stuff – I’m lazy that way, but I had never considered it, "doing God’s work".

With that in mind, I figured I might as well get in on the payday. Like my Daddy says, I "like to spend money like a drunk hedge fund manager on Saturday night."

I started out by sending my neighbor Jenny McCarthy a bill for closing down her pool. I didn’t actually close her pool, but I did watch PoolGuy from PoolGuy’s Pools put the cover on last week. After staring at his crack for 2 hours from my kitchen window, I am certain that I could do the job myself, without showing my ass, and thus should be compensated for my participation in this Six Sigma Blackbelt Kaison Event Extravaganza. For those of you who aren’t in the know, adding "Six Sigma" or "Kaizen Event" to anything, quadruples its value. Unfortunately for Jenny, she will also be receiving a bill from my dentist for the chipped tooth I encountered while chomping on peanut brittle while distracted by PoolGuy’s plumber butt.

I have to tell you, I didn’t think it would be that easy. It was so easy, in fact, that I decided to move right into Doing God’s Work: Phase II. By my estimate this phase involves some sort of mass, though deceptive, communication. With no time to publish an entire novel, I quickly shot off the following email:

* * * * *

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

In an unfortunate turn of events, it appears that The Fisherman and I will be moving. We have decided to live on the Party Barge and thus will not be needing all of these worldly possessions I have acquired from the Home Interiors catalog and the Hobby Lobby. On Saturday morning, beginning at 3:00 am, we will be giving everything away. Yes, that’s right friends, the sconces and all of the fake ivy, the Santas and the Snowmen must go, as well as the inventory from my failed Mary Kay Cosmetics business and the entire garage full of fishing rods and lures.

When you arrive, sign in across the street at iMom's and pay her your fifty dollar entry fee. You will be given a four digit access code that you will enter into the little number pad beside the garage door. Come on in get everything you can carry. Be quiet though, we need our rest before we embark on this new journey.

Tell everybody you know,

The Spoon

* * * * *

Just for good measure, I spraypainted, THE FISHERMAN PALS AROUND WITH ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION on the garage door … to make it easier for customers to find the keypad.

For Doing God’s Work: Phase III, I figured I better kick it up a notch as omnipotence was in order … so I: tore all the labels off the canned vegetables at the WalMart, picked up and recycled everyone’s newpapers, keyed "france iz for pussies" into all of the foreign cars, shot two llamas from the channel 6 newscopter, and field dressed The Insurance Agent out by my mailbox. And I did all that before I peed in the town water main and got Levi Johnston pregnant.

I didn’t think it would work, but I have to tell you, raking in all that cash and doing all those deeds felt totally RIGHTEOUS. Who knew doing God’s work was da shiz? I gotta say, after my first hand experience, I am a believer. Who knows, I might be doing God’s work in a local penitentiary near you any day now.

To complete Doing God's Work: Phase IV, I need you, my dear friends to give me a hand. Here is your chance to raise a fellow smartass into the upper echelons of sainthood and totally pad my ego’s resume. Please take a moment to join me, your dear BFF, in telling me how incredible I really am. Don’t be shy either, Fortitude is a gift of the spirit and I know you’ve got it. By the way, Counsel is a gift of the spirit, too, and I’m going to need that soon, so please donate to iMomPAC asap, as well.

Give early and often.

Often.

I’m waiting dammit…

Vaccines, Velveeta, & Viagra

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:11:18 -0500

The Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote. Christianity no longer supports stoning disrespectful children (though it’s not that bad of an idea). Landmark strides have been made in microchip technology and manufacturing that does not involve illegal child labor. You can get TGIFridays mozzarella sticks in the freezer section at your local WalMart.

Cars run on batteries and batteries run on lithium and oddly, so does my crazy Aunt Caroline. There’s fast food, organic food, and I’m sure that someplace there is probably fast organic food. You can run your lawnmower on doughnut grease and fly a flaming American flag behind your inverted, ergonomic bicycle while your neighbor washes his car with an eight ounce spray bottle and a ShamWow.

We’ve gone from The Beaver to The Fonz to The Mentalist; Kool & the Gang to The Sugar Hill Gang to Gang of Four … from the Green Mountain Boys to Greenpeace, Green Acres, GreenDay, and Green Tea. There’s Bob Dylan, Sheriff Matt Dillon, and Dylan from Beverly Hills 90210 (the original one, not the new one). You can call it all progress or natural progression; the generation that follows yours isn’t going to care. They will choose for themselves. Oh yhea, the times, they are a changin’. And they always have been.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I wonder who told Obama that "CHANGE" was a good slogan? CHANGE is the number one threat. It’s the opposite of everything that makes people happy. *assume Jane Austen voice: "Let’s not listen to that scary Rock-n-Roll, My Lord; go put some Tony Bennett on the victrola." (no offense to Tony Bennett who is super sexy)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Let’s say I start wearing little white day gloves and carrying a parasol (two accessories that I think are very spiffy). What would you say if you walked past me in Macy’s? Would you compliment me on my dynamic use of historical fashion or give me a weird look and cut through the sales racks?

Suppose I decide to put a smokehouse in my backyard and keep a couple of Haitians back there to tend to it.

What if I (in association with IMAX and Bill Gates) created a magic machine that turned all of the 68-inch plasma screen televisions at Buffalo Wild Wings to black & white?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

How is it that in a nation created on generational "CHANGE", we are so reluctant to accept that which is not our "own". Until that happens we will always be more divided than united and if you ask me, that’s something that REALLY needs to change.

Damn You Bill Clinton!

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:10:11 -0400

Damn you Bill Clinton!

I mean it. Damn you. You have ruined my day for the last time.

I used to love you Bill. I really did. You with your bedroom eyes and that sexy Arkansas whisper ~ let’s just say you could have had more than my vote. Don’t get me wrong here, I love Hillary too … in a girl’s-school-crush sort of way; curious, just not that curious. But those days are gone, Bill. Not only are you on my shit list, I am ready to freely admit that I fully regret impulsively dropping $25 bucks on that snoozer of yours, Giving, at an airport bookshop a few years ago.

In spite of rescuing the journalists imprisoned in North Korea and creating a bazillion dollar foundation, regardless of your influential world status and smooth talking machismo, it’s the side effect of your tryst with Monica (and I am not referring to STD's) that haunts me to this day. No disrespect to Monica, of course. She seems like a perfectly nice girl.

My problem with you is bigger than your little cover-up lie about “having sex with that woman”. My problem with you is bigger than a stained dress. It’s bigger than pervasive cheating or money laundering or hiring a hit man and/or whatever else the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy folks have in their dossier. It’s personal, Bill … and as recently as this past Saturday, I have had to suffer the humiliation of your philandering.

You have taken away my personal liberty. You have infringed on my freedom as an American. I don’t think there’s a specific amendment in the Bill of Rights that fully encompasses what you’ve done, but I bet that someplace in the annals of Vogue there is. That’s right, Bill Clinton, you have crossed into territory where no straight man has the right to tread. You have violated my right to fashion. You destroyed a classic, the essence of chic.

Yes – I am talking about the beret.

You ruined the right of every woman, everywhere, to accessorize at will. I have a theory that Karl Lagerfeld and Ralph Lauren actually hired and handsomely rewarded Ken Star for his work on this issue of maintaining the dignity of this timeless chapeau. Unfortunately that did not work out. They should have sent Elton John.

Obviously, the shame of sporting the beret lies only with women, as it does not appear that the US Army Special Forces have felt the need to alter their uniforms or the spiffy, well known moniker, The Green Berets. I bet nobody would ever walk up to John Wayne and say, “Hey Duke, Monica called and she wants her hat back.” No sir, I do not see that happening. In light of that fact, I suspect that not only are you all those other things, you are also sexist. Not sexy (well, not anymore), but sexIST. It is worth mentioning that I do not believe that Prince has suffered at all.

However, I will not go down without a fight, you ~~sexy~~ sexist ~~man~~ pig. Last weekend, I found the cutest most fabulous black felted beret with the cutest embellishments ever and though I let the words of others dissuade me from wearing it on Saturday, I am taking a stand. I WILL wear my beret and I will wear it with pride. Like Rosa Parks and Jim Morrison, I will not let The Man keep me down. I am going to wear that hat this weekend. I’m going to wear the shit out of it and I can promise you that the first person who mentions Monica Lewinsky is going to have a stain problem as well, but this time, it’s going to be blood.

So, Goodbye Bill Clinton ... as we part, I have but one request ~ please, please stay away from Ben Affleck. My headwear wardrobe can’t take another hit.

Political Baseball

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:10:41 -0400

This morning I was watching Mike & Mike on ESPN and Greeny (Mike Greenberg) was practically glowing as he reported on Yankee, Alex Rodriguez’s recent comments after playing an excellent series against the Minnesota Twins. Greeny was praising A Rod for his Full LaLouche after the sweep.

A Rod is well known for thinking quite a lot of himself, despite a record of poor playoff performance and has never hidden that fact from the press. Of course, he finds it hard to hide anything from the press, including, but not limited to Kabballah-ing with Madonna, hanging out with Canadian strippers, and taking performance-enhancing drugs.

Suddenly, after this series, A Rod has had a change of ~~ego~~ heart, and has suddenly realized that there is no ‘I’ in "team" and much to the delight of sports reporters everywhere. His transformation rivals that of "Nuke" LaLouche from the movie Bull Durham, the kid with the "million dollar arm and a five cent head" who learns to talk the talk from veteran catcher Crash Davis. A Rod has learned the lesson exceptionally well it seems, praising his team and especially team captain and all around gentleman, Derek Jeter, whom he’s struggled to share the spotlight with since arriving in New York.

I find Jeter and Rodriguez both to be very pretty, but I am on the fence regarding the canned comments. After almost a decade of hearing A Rod tell us how great he is and blaming his failures on others, I don’t really buy it. I have images of him in the locker room reading little index cards before the game, eyes towards the sky, sub-verbalized whisper in the air – "Jeter … Jeter played great. Derek and the other guys … yhea … team, team, team."

Whatever. I guess it is what it is. Even though I find it hard to believe that a lot of these uber-driven, super-athlete- types would ever really want to say how great their teammates are after saving one game with a two-run homer and hitting another one in the very next game. That’s just me though. However, I think if the Full LaLouche is going to be the standard in sports, it should translate to politics as well.

Instead of "YOU LIE!", Joe Wilson might have shouted out, "I’m just here to help the team defeat healthcare and the good Lord willing, things will work out!"

Instead of facebooking about the notorious liberal death panels, Sarah Palin would have said, "Sometimes you win. Sometimes there’s extermination. Sometimes … it rains."

Instead of putting Nancy Pelosi in her place, the NRCC statement would have read something like, "It’s a beautiful day for sexism in America."

Sean Hannity would be confined to any of the following:

"He’s in a slump."

"You can’t steal first base."

"He chased a bad pitch."

"In any other ballpark, that’s a homerun."

Also, those lovely cliches would never be followed up by Bob Uecker saying, "BUT, did you know he’s an African Nazi trying to destroy America."

So maybe there is something to this political correctness in baseball. Now we just need a little in politics.

*photo from weblogs.cltv.com