Fire Safety Stickers With Your Pets' Faces

If you're anything like me (but let's hope you're all a little more well balanced than that), you breath a sigh of relief every time you pull up to your home and affirm that it has not burned to the ground in your absence. 

Seriously. Ever since we adopted our two cats, I'm paranoid about a fire breaking out. Away from home, I wonder if I unplugged the toaster, left the dryer on, or accidentally dropped the kitchen towel on the stovetop and even though the stove was off when I left, one of the cats could jump up there and knock the front burner to the "on" position, igniting the towel, and POOF! The whole house will go up in flames.

(For the record, I blame my mother for these neurotic tendencies.)

So I was SUPER excited to learn about personalized fire safety stickers for pets. Want to make sure the fire department knows to look for a gray cat named Simon? Or that you have 3 pets total? It's all on the sticker. 

Don't wait. There is a toaster in every home, waiting to do us all in. Order today!

I Have Offended the Kitchen Gods

The kitchen is not my friend. Not this week, anyway. I'm batting... well, I don't follow baseball and have no idea what a bad batting average is, but I know this: mine ain't good. 

Sunday afternoon: I make oatmeal-raisin cookies, the healthy version from my E2 cookbook. Only I don't have pastry flour so I use regular flour and the recipe calls for "rolled oats" and I'm not really sure what those are  but how different can they be from what's in the Quaker Instant Oats cylinder in our pantry? The recipe calls for an an Ener-G egg replacer and I use a different brand but so what. The result are cookies that taste unbaked and a lot of them. I insist on eating two of them anyway with a cup of hot tea because that's why I made the damn cookies in the first place, but I'm not fooling anyone. They're gross. 

Sunday night: I don't know what made me think an onion and carrot quiche would hit the spot. I think I was just excited that I had all the ingredients on hand. It wasn't bad, but any main dish recipe based on "3 large onions" is going to have repercussions.

Monday night: I never make dessert, but I feel the need to redeem myself after the oatmeal-raisin cookie debacle. I make a Blueberry mousse that ends up looking (and tasting) like a pureed Barney the Dinosaur. 

I've got a new recipe for Pad Thai scheduled for tonight that involves rice noodles. I'm scared.

I obviously need to appease the cooking gods. To that end, I'm going to light some candles around a spatula, sprinkle dried herbs around the kitchen, and offer up some extra-firm tofu. See if that helps.

Here's a recent New Yorker humor column that COMPLETELY captures my kitchen personality in just the first two opening paragraphs: "The Cursing Mommy Cooks Italian."

The Married Life: Using "Blair" As A Verb

Talking with my best friend today, she updated me on a potentially bad situation. 

"We'll just have to Blair it," I said. "You know, make the best of it."

"Did you just verb your husband?" she asked.

Mm. I guess I did. I can't be faulted. Look up the words "optimistic," "buoynant" or "cheerful" and chances are you will find "Blair Harris" listed as a viable synonym.

I'm just bringing it mainstream.