Mr. Bento Porn

It’s just a Flickr group. Calm down.

Upon receiving an invitation to dine out for an Indian lunch, I tried to recall the name of the tradition in India where lunch food is prepared at home or by street vendors and then delivered in small metal boxes to people’s places of work. Dabbawala or Tiffin Wallah was the term that escaped me. I’m not sure if my memory has been jogged properly and that could be the wrong term. The thought process, faulty or not, lead me to discover something more useful than knowledge…a cool gadget.

The tool you saw if you clicked on the Flickr group link is Mr. Bento. It strikes me as a better way to quarantine edible glutenfull items while traveling in mixed company. The mix of folks being those who are tolerant of wheat and those who are intolerant - of wheat. As a bonus prize which will serve to entertain me all afternoon, I found Mr. Bento and his cult. See the pretty snapshots …

Medieval Career Advice

Every personality test and career profile I’ve ever taken tells me I am compassionate and creative — as well as inefficient and unrealistic. Even in ye olde times, I would have been too idealistic for the real world. The test that I linked to below tells you where you’d fit (in very broad strokes) professionally had you been living over half a millennium earlier in human history. I’m not certain I would have had a choice about my vocation way back when but it appears I’d make a good jester, musician, philosopher, priest or puppeteer.

The test

My results

Atom Age Vampire

And then there was Atom Age Vampire Animation! MST3K Style

Part One

Banana Republic

No one’s going to make a movie starring Daniel Day Lewis that details in haunting fashion the rise of a fruit magnate in the the early 1900s. But a journalist who writes for Popular Science might draft a book about how banana plantations have shaped our modern political and economic structures using many of the same ruthless methods for which oil companies are famous. Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, by Dan Koeppel is my favorite idea for a book that I haven’t yet read.

Were I an illustrator, I’d draw an image of the topless Chiquita banana girl but with many limbs, reaching out across an antique map of the West Indies, Central and South America. You’ll just have to imagine.

We’re Having an Earth…

Quake. In the words of Al Michaels from the 1989 World Series broadcast booth in Candlestick Park. Early this morning, I felt the bed tremble. Figures that the epicenter was from Illinois. The earthquake probably either got drunk on Water Street, bought a half million dollar condo for quiet weekends or complained about how all the stores close so early in Milwaukee when it arrived at 4:30 this morning.

This was the second quake I’ve felt since moving to Southeastern Wisconsin. Once again, my mind went to the most logical source of the tremor when it woke me up in the dark of night: poltergeists. Just ask Lane. I said it out loud. I think there are poltergeists downstairs. I was mostly not kidding. Now I feel dumb. Again.

The embarrassment and distress I felt during my second encounter with plate tectonics, leads me to desire this t-shirt even more. Just reinforces the need to think globally and act locally to stop continental drift. It affects us land-locked folks too.

Memory Velcro

One of Salon’s bloggers posted this article about a piece of software that can recognize words and phrases within photographs and convert those words and phrases into searchable tags within a database. The database could contain images of movie tickets, the daily specials board at your favorite greasy spoon, the list of hymns for Sunday’s church service — even the handwritten grocery list you composed while attending church last week. They suggest using the software for wine bottles. Better than using a cocktail napkin to jot down the name of the wine you drank half a bottle of…

Generally unbelievable in its claims is the software. It’s called Evernote and is available for your mobile or home computer. The logo for the company is a clever little elephant head. If it truly acts like a backup for my brain, I’ll be in touch. Send me a note if you want to try it out yourself. I’ll forward you an invitation.

Equatorial Hot Pockets

I should qualify: equatorial in a geographic (not mathematical) sense.

Hot Pockets were never in my parent’s freezer as a kid yet I can still hear the TV jingle in my head so they must have sold a few dozen boxes. Frozen pastry stuffed with molten filling. Mmm. Warmed inside of chemical dough, the barbecued magma waiting for a row of teeth to crack open the pie’s crust, bursting forth, spraying steam and sauce, raining upon the lips of it’s hungry consumer. Haht Pah-ckets!

Pudgie pies, the campfire version of Hot Pockets, are just as dangerous by the way. If you’re cozy-camping with a bunch of people from Michigan or Wisconsin, don’t let them convince you otherwise. They will tempt you with cherry compote filled tarts — or maybe marshmallows and milk chocolate between two butter-and-fire-fused slices of Wonder. Ho no! Sweet viscous hell will flow over your tongue, leaving you with no taste buds remaining to enjoy the weekend supply of Milwaukee’s Best Light and Seagram’s Kiwi Wine Coolers. To quell your flaming lips, you might be better off licking one of the cans or bottles floating in an ice water slurry along with food particles and mustard plugs inside the plastic cooler upon which your acquaintance’s cheese curd enhanced buttocks rest.

But I’m not taking your time to write about Hot Pockets or Pudgie Pies or make inflammatory statements about fat Midwesterners (I just did, actually). Number one, I’m a fat Midwesterner myself. Number two, I’m interested in the Equadorian equivalent of these scalding, stuffed pastries. Pupusas.

If your friends and family can’t eat gluten, real corn masa is a good friend. When made into a dough, it gives a satisfying texture that stands up to your teeth and leaves a carbolicious weight in your belly. My recipe for pupusas called for a whole pound of masa. It was totally wrong and I barely rescued any semblance of a real pupusa, but that’s the Food Network’s problem for posting an imprecise recipe.

Learn about making pupusas from people who know what they’re doing, not a TV channel. Or start here. Or here. I filled mine with black beans and queso blanco. They were mediocre at best. Without condiments or the standard coleslaw accompaniment, curtido, he little corn cakes are dry and chewy. Once I find something useful to report regarding successful pupusa making, I’ll report back.

The one true corporate representation of tree-borne fruit

So Apple is suing someone else. Seriously, the logos do look quite alike. See the hub-bub and compare them for yourself. If greenNYC just lost the leaf, it wouldn’t be so obvious that they’re recycling the images that bombard us every day. But uninspired design is what really offends me.

Apple shouldn’t sue, they should just harrumph at NYC’s lack of creative vision. The infinity apple logo is like free advertising for an imaginary eco-friendly, verdant, hempen Macbook that has a self-regenerating battery that operates of 1.21 gigawatts of atmospheric power. I’d camp out to buy that laptop.

And in case you missed it, the title of this post is an actual quote from Apple. Although I’m still searching for a source to verify this. Because I can be of no more use, I filed this complaint with Apple, Inc. I’ll let you know if they respond.

Glory Hallelujah, Teff Saves!

Ethiopian injera is fabulous. It’s a flat, spongy bread made of teff, a tiny grain that you could process yourself with a mortar and pestle or food processor. Or just buy it from Bob’s Red Mill or your local natural foods store.

See a recipe and a bit of history on injera. This one calls for all purpose wheat flour, which you obviously shouldn’t use if you’re making non-wheat bread. Either substitute buckwheat flour for AP flour, use a multipurpose GF blend or just use all teff flour and all will be well.

Earl Endear nee Senna Blur

Plus me.

She did spectacularly well on her first trip to Pinewood Estates. I was the last one to find my Easter basket. We didn’t go to church. We celebrated the earth’s rebirth and imminent abundance the secular humanist way. With chocolate eggs. Jellybeans taste best when you have to work for them. You wouldn’t think 30somethings would tolerate foraging for a cellophane-wrapped straw basket full of sweets but there were no complaints. We’re so domestic.