Adventures with food
by Denise Sawicki on January 7, 2008

So, Darrell is getting really into cooking lately so I got him a pasta machine and this weekend we used it for the first time.. OK I used it... and it was kinda fun! I am just happy that I managed to produce a substance that was unquestionably pasta. I thought I would mess up. Then I got an eggplant and fried some up and made some version of Eggplant Parmesan. This is the first time I've cooked in ages and it felt good. Eggplants are neat, if you manage to get them breaded and cooked right they seem kinda like meat. Which I'm sure I'd appreciate if I became a vegetarian for some reason. Of course I didn't exactly cook them all the right way, I let my bread crumbs get clumpy and then some of them were not properly coated or properly cooked and they taste very definitely like vegetables. But still edible at least. Also I went to Target to spend a gift card and I couldn't really decide on any expensive items we needed so I just wound up buying groceries. Target has really good deals on certain groceries. OK, that is boring though, when you have a gift card you are supposed to buy something nice, so I got some Frey chocolate, which was delicious. I got the cinnamon and blood orange white chocolate. Sounds weird perhaps, and a lot of people don't like white chocolate, but we loved it! It had such vibrant and delicious flavors. Kind of reminded me of when I was younger and our Swiss relatives always used to mail us a big yellow box full of Swiss chocolate for the holidays. Well, nothing in those boxes tasted of cinnamon or blood oranges but it reminded me all the same. I guess the fact that this stuff is available "exclusively at Target" makes it kind of irritatingly non-authentic but I was happy to find it and will surely try some more flavors.
Then I ended the weekend by messing up and now I feel like crap. No I can't talk about it to anyone , just felt like saying that just to be irritating.
Prayer for the Paranoid
Denise Sawicki posts whatever she feels able to post without serious consequences Read more »

American Gothic
Well, for quite a while I have had nothing to say to anyone about anything and it is getting a bit claustrophobic. So I figured I should start saying some things into the void, dumb and trivial as they might be. A while back there was a video store closing sale so we picked up a number of TV series on DVD at 75% off. Go »
The Plight of Live Music in Fargo
My husband is in a band.. the problem is it's terribly difficult to find a place to play. Every few months, a new place will start offering live music. Go »
Our dog is smart
Our sheltie, Philip, is really smart. Here is his latest Oscar-worthy film, where he shows off his ability to mimic Darrell doing the following actions: turn a circle, stretch, sneeze, lie down, roll over (partway), hop, and speak: link Philip also knows how to read a few words, kind of, though I think he gets bored with it :-). Currently he's in school for agility, which entails learning how to run around a course jumping hurdles and using tunnels and seesaws in a prescribed manner. Go »
Another Irritating Thing
The Indian episode isn't the only irritating thing that happened with The Cedars recently. A while before that, Darrell received an e-mail from someone claiming to be from MTV saying they had listened to his songs on the Jones Soda website, liked them, and wanted a CD to consider including in their show. Now this sounds like an obvious fake, but the thing is, some research showed that the person who sent the e-mail does exist and does work at MTV, the e-mail address was verifiable, the phone number led to a seemingly legitimate voice mail, and the address was an actual office at MTV. Go »
I didn't like Brokeback Mountain
I know I'm a number of years too late to be talking about this, but I finally happened to see Brokeback Mountain and I have to say I didn't like it terribly much. Yes, I realize this is an extremely unpopular opinion to the point of being just plain wrong as an objective fact. Note, I do not have a problem with gay people or gay behavior. Go »