Macaroni & Cheese

    I admit, sometimes I like macaroni and cheese!! What red blooded American doesn't right? But the classic Kraft stuff in a box that we all ate as kids is, well, basically it sucks. It was OK when we were kids, but as adults? I'd to think my tastes have become more refined and even though I still like Mac&Cheese from time to time, Kraft's blue box just doesn't cut it any longer.
As a single person, making real M&C from scratch is a big pain in the behind and simply not worth the effort. Stouffer's makes a great Mac&Cheese and that's what I usually buy when I have the craving. To be honest, it's also better than anything I could make from scratch.
    The last time I went grocery shopping I had a coupon for the Deluxe Kraft M&C and it was on sale so I thought I'd give it a go. For those unfamiliar with the differences between the classic blue box and the "deluxe", the noodles are true elbow macaroni and a better quality, they're still nothing compared to real fresh pasta but better than the original. Also, the cheese isn't a powder, instead the cheese is in a pouch ready to be squeezed over your cooked noodles. Still not the real thing, but better than a powder.
I had several flavor options to try and decided to give the "sharp" cheddar flavor a go, assuming it would probably have a stronger cheesy flavor too it. :( Sadly, it did not. What I wound up with was a bowl of golden yellow noodles covered in flavorless goo. Scratch that, flavorless is an over exaggeration, I actually mean no flavor. The word bland does not even cover the amount of flavor in this M&C!! I even tried a little salt, hoping that it might bring out some of that "cheddar" flavor but all I got for the trouble was a bowl of noodles covered in salty golden yellow goo.
    Where was my Cheddar? Where was the "Sharp" What happened to the flavor? Is it me? I know that as I've gotten older my taste buds have changed. It happens to us all as we get "on in years". But this was just beyond that. I know it's not me, I had a few slices of actual cheddar cheese, sliced from a block, with slices of apple for a snack earlier in the day, so I know for a fact that I haven't lost my sense of taste yet.
    No more Kraft for me, back to Stouffers. I went to the Kraft website and left a complaint, then went to Stouffers and thanked them for the best M&C on the planet! I believe in giving a company feedback. They need to know when they've let consumers down just as much as they need to know when they get it right. 
In this modern age of technology, it's easy and simple to let your feelings be known and give your feedback to these companies. I wish more people would do it.

Times, they are a changin'!

Remember the big video wars of the 80's? Beta or VHS, then there were the 10" video discs followed by dvd's and now blu-ray. It was just a few years ago that I finally got around to updating all my VHS movies to DVD copies. My movie collection is extensive, in the hundreds, I am NOT converting them all to Blu-Ray, I can't afford to!! LOL
In the past several months every video rental store in town has closed. Most people get their movies streamed right to their tv, mailed directly to their home or pick one up at these vending machine things called RedBox. Of course BlockBuster Video had to get in on that action and came out with their own version.
What's going on with books........... or the lack of books. Book stores are closing!! Closing!! Are libraries next? I'm going to miss curling up with a paperback. The smell of the paper, whether it's brand new, crisp and crinkly or old and musty with tattered cover and yellowed pages. A book like that shows it was loved and read and reread and good enough to be passed on to friends and family. I just can't see myself curling up with a cuppa joe or a margartia on the beach with a rectangular hunk of plastic technology. It's just not the same.
Some people have their entire music collection on their I-pods or other similar electronic device. What happens if you lose it, or your computer gets a virus? I don't want my music collection floating around in cyber space? I want a hard copy, something tangible that I can hold in my hands, I can't hold a megabyte or a pixel. Speaking of music, when did all my favorite bands start playing elevator music?
Here's something to think about, bar codes. I remember a time before barcodes. Now there are new codes that are turning up in magazine and newspaper ads that you can scan with your cell phone!! Which brings me to another interesting topic, what about phones? OMG, have they changed or what!! It used to be a sign of prestige to have a pager, do they even make pagers anymore? There's really no need for a home phone anymore, I mean why would anyone pay for something that's attached to your wall, when you can take a nifty little device that fits in your pocket and has internet access. As for texting, I think it's stupid, totally and completely lame. If you have something to tell someone, you call them and tell them, leave a message if they don't answer or call them back later. But you see, I still send "thank you" notes and write actual letters to people, it's called corresponding and it's fast becoming a lost art.
About those newspapers and magazines I just mentioned, those will be going by the wayside soon enough and you won't have to worry about those new fancy pixel looking codes that your phone can scan, nope, because your kindle thingy is in color now and it has internet capabilities just like a small laptop. You'll be able to get your newspaper and magazines delivered to your kindle and the ads will be there and all you'll have to do is "click". The advertisers will know exactly which ads to send you because they monitor everything you click on, what books you read, what websites you visit. It's a little thing called demographics, and it's big business to help you spend money on the stuff they wanna sell you.
Scary stuff out there boys and girls.

Spaghetti Sauce & Toilet Paper

There are 2 very different schools of thought concerning these two things. There's really only 2 ways to either of them. There's the right way and the wrong way of course. With spaghetti sauce it's either sweet or it's not and with T.P, it's either over or under. It all depends on where you were raised and by whom as to which side you're on.

Spaghetti Sauce. I'm talking about your classic red tomato sauce that most people in America consider spaghetti sauce. Not white sauce, like alfredo, or a butter sauce, yuck. No, I'm talking about good old American red pasta sauce. Back when I was a kid we made it from scratch and I think this is where the division started because there's one big secret to making spaghetti sauce from scratch. You DO NOT use sugar!! What? I swear, it's the truth. It seems that people put sugar in their spaghetti sauce to cover up the tartness and acidity of the tomatoes. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret that most mechanics know, baking soda neutralizes acid. So..... don't put sugar in your pasta sauce. Drop a teaspoon or so of baking soda in there and it neutralizes the acid in the tomatoes. You'll see a tell tale foam on top of your sauce so you know it's working. Some people get indigestion from homemade sauce, if you try this technique, you nip it in the bud because it's the acid in the tomatoes that's causing the problems!! There are generations of people out there that think red pasta sauce is supposed to be sickeningly sweet, I feel sorry for you cause you're really missing out on the way it's supposed to be. It's OK though, it's what you're used to and you don't know any beter ;)

Toilet Paper There's no secrets here, it's just one of those things. Do you take your TP from the top? Or reach under and grab it from the back? I've seen people nearly come to blows over this argument. I know that it was always a source of irritation in my family when I was growing up. In fact, there was a running joke that my father started. The Italian side of the family, that would be myself, my brother and him, did it the right way, which would be from the top; where as the Polish side of the family, being my sister and mother, did it the wrong way, from the back. It wasn't until years later that I found out mom wasn't Polish and that dad was just being a doofus. But it stuck and still to this day it irkes me if the TP roll is "wrong". I have even gone so far as to change the roll at work and hotels etc. Call it an OCD thing.

So what about you? Do you like your spaghetti sauce sweet or not? How about your TP? From the top or the back? Remember, no fights!!

Things I Learned Livin' in the South

I've lived in southern Florida for most of life. I was born in Cleveland and lived there long enough to remember what it was like but I consider myself a "southerner". Don't mistake being "southern" with being a redneck, two totally different things and I'll save that for another post. I got the following list via e-mail from my dad and it pretty much sums up what being "southern" is all about. Enjoy.

A possum is a flat animal that sleeps in the middle of the road.
There are 5,000 types of snakes, and 4,998 of them live in the South.
There are 10,000 types of spiders. All 10,000 of them live in the South, plus a couple no one's seen before.
If it grows, it'll stick ya. If it crawls, it'll bite cha.
Onced and Twiced are words.
It is not a shopping cart, it is a buggy!
Jaw-P? means Did y'all go to the bathroom?
People actually grow and eat okra.
Fixinto is one word. It means I'm preparing to do that.
Iced tea is appropriate for all meals and you start drinking it when you're two. We do like a little tea with our sugar.
Backwards 'n forwards means I know everything about you.
The word jeet is actually a phrase meaning "Did you eat?"
You don't have to wear a watch, because it doesn't matter what time it is, you work until you're done or it's too dark to see.
You don't PUSH buttons, you MASH em.
No, Jew? is a common response to the question, Did you bring any beer?
You measure distance in minutes.
You switch from heat to A/C in the same day.
All the festivals across the state are named after a fruit, vegetable, grain, insect, or animal.
You know what a DAWG is.
You carry jumper cables in your car - for your OWN car.
You only own five spices: salt, pepper, Tonys, Tabasco and ketchup.
The local papers cover national and international news on one page, but require 6 pages for local high school sports and motor sports, and gossip.
You think that the first day of deer season is a national holiday.
You find 100 degrees Fahrenheit a bit warm.
You know all four seasons: Almost summer, summer, still summer, and Christmas.
Going to Wal-Mart is a favorite pastime known as goin' Wal-Martin or off to Wally World.
You describe the first cool snap (below 70 degrees) as good chicken stew weather.
Fried catfish is the other white meat.
We don't need no dang Driver's Ed. If our mama says we can drive, we can drive dag-nabbit.

Independence Day

Today we celebrate our Independence!!
The legal seperation of our original 13 colonies from the Kingdom of Great Britain. We actually "declared" our independence on July 2nd, however, Congress had to get in there and muck about. It took Congress another 2 days to revise and finally approve the Declaration of Independence, making it official on July 4th. There are still some debates as to when it was signed, historians believe that it was signed on August 2nd, nearly a month later. No one knows for sure, but sign it they did and Free we are!!! So grab a hotdog or a burger, a nice chilly beverage, watch a parade and some fireworks and above all else........... be grateful that you live in America. If you don't like it here, that's ok, being free means that you're free to LEAVE at any time. So don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Long Live LOST

Well, it's over!! Six years and a writer's strike later and it's all over. No more waiting all summer long to find out what happened, or worse, having to wait until January or February. No more counting down the day to the beginning of the next season. I'd like to say that there are no more questions, that all our questions got answered but that would be a lie. For the most part, the biggest and most imprtant questions got answered. There were far to many little things that had to be left to the imagination, something that alot of viewers forgot about.

I watched LOST alomost from the beginning. My dear brother-in-law got me hooked after the first couple episodes. While my best friend ensured that I continue watch, often times calling me after an episode to dicuss the show in depth. We all watched religiously since then, never missing a show, ok fine, sometimes I had to tape it. My point being is that while we all watched the entire series. While we may have been watching the same show it's very odd how the three of us came away from it with a completely different perspective. He doesn't get it, I do and she still has a million questions.

I think there are 3 catagories of people who watched LOST. There are people like him, who just watched the show and enjoyed it for what it was. There are people like me, I watched the show but I also got into all the background stories and the symbology and the history of the Island. And then there are people like my best friend. She watched the show too and she got into the whole Island stuff, but she also read all the blogs and visited the websites etc. So you have the casual viewer, the avid watcher and the fanatic (love you girl, you know who you are). I'm the only one that still doesn't have questions. Ha ha.

There were a few things that bugged me about the show, little things they did that weren't possible. The biggest would be the whole blowing up the submarine while you're on it and escaping. First of all, the sub was in a lagoon!! But supposedly they "dove" right away, how is this possible? They would have to get pretty far out before they would even be able to think about diving, at least past the breakwater. Yet somehow, they're diving in a lagoon. Ok, so we get past that. Now it blows up, well it doesn't actually blow up, but a big ol' hole gets blown in the side. Yet, somehow, despite all the water rushing in and the ensuing chaos, a few people make it out. Pretty damn amazing!! And oh, yeah, they make it to shore, to be as deep as we were lead to believe they would have one hell of a swim to shore and yet they made it. An intersting note here, because it happened several times on the show, you can't swim in a pair of jeans. Go ahead, try it? Once they're wet, they weigh about 40 pounds, that's gonna wear you out in about 2 minutes. And yet, somehow on LOST, people are able to swim great distances wearing jeans, sometimes even with backpacks full of C-4.

You can't knit pick about these things, because like I said to my beloved brother-in-law, it's TV, it's not real!!! The writers have to be allowed a certain amount of "artistic license" in able to tell their story. I'm not going to knit pick. What I am going to do is rewatch all 6 seasons again, and again. There has never been a show as groundbreaking as LOST and there won't be another for a long time to come. In a way, I'm glad it's over, this is what the writers wanted. If the execs had their way they would have made the writers stretch it out forever until the viewers were so sick of filler episodes like Nikki & Palo, that eventually the ratings would fail. If that had been the case it may have ended abruptly leaving us no closing. Goodbye LOST, you will be missed.