Corbin's True Love

Many of you may think that I am Corbin's true love. However, you are all wrong. Corbin's first love is chocolate soufflé. Now most of you are thinking, "Understandable. It's ok for Alice to be Corbin's second love." But I am not even his second love; cream puffs are his second love. I do come in third...I think.

Tonight Corbin made cream puffs. I played with the cat.

I think when we have kids, I will not read them the story of the little red hen. No use teaching them an ideal that I won't ever live by to teach them by example. Yes, I was the lazy cat who watched as the little red hen (Corbin) slaved away in the kitchen. Unlike the story, the little red hen in my house offered me a cream puff when they were done. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't in the kitchen while he filled my cream puff. Without being the wiser, I took a bite into a cream puff wherein the delicious filling exploded onto my face, into my hand, and luckily some of it managed to get into my mouth.

Corbin's cream puffs truly were divine. The recipe is compliments of Martha Stewart. As we admired Corbin's handiwork, we noticed we had a cream puff that resembled a living creature in our house. No, not Corbin. It was Papel! We should try to sell it on eBay with a tag line of "Replica of the Virgin Mother's Cat." I bet we could get a fortune.

NEXT PROJECT: Piñata filled with jalapeño slices

I am now the proud owner of more jalapeño slices than can be consumed in one lifetime. Thank you, Costco.

I was lured into buying the 1 gallon jar of jalapeño slices by the incredibly low price of $4. Truthfully, they were for a youth activity which involved nachos and dodge ball. [Note: Separating the two activities in either time or space greatly decreases clean up time.] Somehow, I thought thirteen year old girls would eat at least 12-16 oz. of jalapeños each. I was sorely mistaken.

In fact, the jalapeños seemed to be blessed in much the same manner as the loaves and fishes of New Testament fame. We had dished out some of the jalapeños into a bowl for easier serving. At the end of the night I went to return the remaining few jalapeños back to the vat from whence they came and, Glory glory!, they wouldn't all fit! I put the lid on and some of the juices leaked out because the barrel was too full. I was sure I had witnessed the multiplication of the jalapeños. So I started calling them Holypeños.

But it may have turned out to be more of a curse. Perhaps the Great Señor Carlos in the sky sensed Alice's ingratitude at having to take home a full hog's head of pickled peppers. Whatever the cause, peppery vinegar leaked out on the ride home and the noisome juice must have seeped into the trunk carpet. Alice now fights nausea every time the trunk is opened.

Meanwhile, I have to find something to do with the blessed Holypeños before they contaminate our fridge. I'm expecting the 'Either the Holypeños go, or I go!' speech from my usually passive wife sometime in the near future. But I have a hard time throwing things away. Especially divine mexican condiments.

So I think I may have found a solution: Deep Fried Holypeño Slices. I can't wait to try these things out. I'm gonna glut myself on pickled peppers made gloriously golden through the magic of deep frying. Oh, FryDaddy! Is there anything you cannot fix? These bite-size beauts are very versatile. Dip them in processed cheese and surgically insert them directly into your arteries. Or sprinkle them on your yogurt and eat them for breakfast. Pure delish.

If you don't hear from me for a while, I'm either still gorging myself on delectably fiery deep fried Holypeños, or I'm in the hospital recovering from a colon transplant. Either way, it's going to be a great weekend.

The eminent decline of American education

As depressing as it is, American youth are not preforming good in many standard school subjects. We all remember the valiaum crusader for geographical education, the indeflatable Miss Teen South Carolina. Here is a glimpse of one of the misdirected youth that caused such a strong, yet completely warranted response from the beauty queen.

The young person in this film doesn't even know where Paraguay is. Or Jabooty (sp?), for that matter. If that is in fact a real country (which I highly doubt), our kids need to know where it is. We are all on the fast track to economic ruin if we can't teach our kids to do better than this.



P.S. I'd like to see this kid point out the different countries in real life, not just on a map. While flying over them in an airplane, for instance. Not so easy without borders or color coding, is it?

Winter came early to SoCal - HUGE STORM!

This past weekend we had a horrendous storm pass over the usually blue skies of San Diego. Luckily we were prepared, thanks to numerous and early warnings from the news media and meteorologists. Apparently, a large cold front made it's way down from Canada and swept along the coast, leaving a wake of destruction. It terrorized Californians all the way from San Francisco to San Diego.

The odd thing about this storm is that we don't usually get storms this early. Winter will sometimes bring the occasional storm, but not usually until well into November. This year, Motha' Naytcha' was pissed, and she took out her anger on the peace loving Sunshine State. (I've decided Florida doesn't deserve that nickname so I'm taking it back for California. Besides 'Golden State' fits Florida much better, as most of its inhabitants are in their golden years.)

Alice and I braced ourselves for the worst, and we are glad to still be alive and blogging. I will recount some of the more harrowing details of the fateful storm.

Driving home Friday, the radio news program warns of the impending storm. Alice and I stop by the grocery store on the way home to pick up bread and other staples in case we have to huddle under our bed for a few days.

Friday night we try to distract ourselves by watching Survivor online. If there is a city wide blackout, we want to get our media fix to tide us over through the outage.

We stay awake until the wee hours of 11pm in order to witness the raw power of the approaching apocalypse. We contemplate unplugging all electronic devices and boarding up our windows, but we are too lazy.

We fall asleep, huddled together in our bed, unsure if society will still be there when we wake up, or if anarchy will have taken over in the aftermath of the storm of the century. The temperature plummets in the night to a frigid 60 degrees, giving me cause to consider shutting our bedroom window. But I shrug off the concern and pull the light blanket back over my body and go back to sleep.

We wake up and take in the devastation. All around us, everything is covered in a thin layer of water! The streets, the cars, even the deck furniture by the pool. The devastation is unbelievable. We check the lights to see if we still have power. I was sure that all that water must have shorted out the power lines, and even electrocuted anybody unlucky or foolish enough to step in the dangerous puddles that dotted the ground here and there. (Water can not only drown a person, but it also conducts electricity very well, making it even that much more dangerous in a city full of electricity.) Miracle of miracles! The power is still on.


We turn on the radio to get a full estimate of the damage. Sure enough, the news reports are rife with warnings and cautions. 'Be careful driving out there! The roads are WET!' 'Spotty rain is slowing down the traffic on 'the five' all the way from Del Mar to La Jolla!' 'Reports of light to very light rain have been coming in from ALL OVER the county!'

Needless to say, it was a very stressful weekend. I'm glad that storm is over and we're back to our 77 degree weather. I just hope we can make it through this winter if that's the kind of storm global warming will make a regular occurrence.

Survivor China - It's getting Hot Soup in here

We got together with some of our friends to kick off the Survivor season. This year they are in China. We have a little Survivor tradition going where we each pick three people and depending on how long they last, you get points. Whoever has the most points at the end of the season gets a prize.

After picking our Survivors, a lively debate sprung up regarding two of the females on the show. Matt Weed said that Jaime was much hotter than Amanda, while EVERYONE else thought the opposite. I mean, every single other person in the whole entire group thought Matt was crazy. But he wouldn't back down. So we are widening the vote to you, our readers. Please vote for who you think is better looking in the poll to the right.