WUMF: December Edition

Another year has ended and once again, I bring you WUMF!

I had planned on having this in on New Year's Eve, but unfortunately forces were working against me.

Guards On Slicers Not Just Suggestions
I said forces were working against me.   My wife got a new Slicer/Chopper for Christmas and decided to bust it out in order to cook up New Year's Eve dinner for midnight.  It's called a Genius chopper and apparently, we were unqualified to operate it. 

My wife said, "Well how do I get the onions to be slivers for the pierogis?"  I said, "Look, it's simple."  I added in the slicer attachment and then proceeded to slice up an onion and then a small chunk of my finger.  "Way to go, dumbass."  It was just a little bit, not even noteworthy.  So, I said, "Well, that's why you use the guard.  You stick it on the onion and slide it back and forth."

As I went into the bathroom to get a bandage for my finger I hear, "OW!" and then some four letter word.  "What happened, genius?"  Turns out, my wife couldn't stand to be showed up by me and took an even bigger chunk out of her right ring finger.  We couldn't get it to stop bleeding.  We tried everything.  At one point, I thought we were going to end up at the ER, which is typical for us around the holidays.  Most people use the holidays to get together with family and enjoy the company and the event.  We use it as an excuse to try and max out our medical deductible. 

Well, my father-in-law came over and was able to properly dress her finger, cause I left with a light bulb looking bandage which quickly soaked up a lot of blood.  After she was settled down, the festivities needed to continue, so, the second string came in to cook the food and get everything ready.  That would be me.  I should have tried harder to get out of work. 

Christmas
My kid's fourth Christmas was apparently her 14th.  This year she sat among the boxes and made two piles of gifts.  I asked her what each pile was.  She said, "One is the presents I wanted and the other is stuff I didn't want."  I asked her which was which.  She said that the one with the toys was the pile she really wanted.  She then proceeded to say, "See, Daddy.  Even when I'm bad I get presents.

Work
As I close in on a full year at my new job, it's hard to realize that it has been a full year.  I left nearly ten years of service, over three weeks of vacation and a lot of friends.  And you know what?  It was the right decision.  Even though there are challenges in my new job, some good, some bad, I know that it was time for me to go.  Not saying why, just that my later mother-in-law would have approved of the change.

WDVE shakeup
WTF?!?  Last year, Randy Baumann suddenly disappeared from the morning show.  He was brought back about a month later.  Now, Jim Krenn, who has been the long time morning show host, has disappeared from the air since December 6th.  No word on why or if he'll be back.  There isn't a contract to be negotiated and even though I only get to listen to about an hour of the show, I've noticed that Krenn hasn't been on between 6 and 7am all year.  The running gag was always that Jim only works two weeks out of the year, so speculation is only set to run wild.  

In the long run money is probably a factor here.  Money and ratings.   Regardless, if he is gone, it's a big change to morning radio for me.  I was a bit uneasy about Randy Baumann taking over for Scott Paulsen 12 years ago but I've adjusted to it.  I don't know if it will be the same here.

Free Time
For Christmas I got Uncharted 3, Dead Island, and Call of Duty MW3.  The only thing I forgot to ask Santa for was free time.  I've been playing Dead Island and it's pretty sweet and sometimes a tad unsettling.  Most of the zombies are Romero speed but the Infected, as they are called are more like Zack Snyder or Danny Boyle speed zombies.   In fact, there are a tons of pop culture nods to all things zombies and other stuff.  One sign painted on a wall says, "Don't Open.  Dead Inside"   At another point, the main character has to go look for a crashed plane from Oceanic Air, a nod to lost.    It's fun and sick and gory and I'm finding it hard to do anything else, like cook New Year's dinner because my wife sliced up her finger.  lol.

Happy New Year!

Dear Food Network, Hire Me

As much as I enjoy watching Giada De Laurentiis… cook, I can’t help but wonder if perhaps there needs to be a show for the idiot in the kitchen, like me. After all, one of my first cooking endeavors had me trying to be creative by putting some vanilla into a pot of beans and weenies. There was brown sugar in there. I thought it would be a good idea. I didn’t know one iota of cooking basics and have yet to live that incident down over the last ten years. So, for the dumb ass in the kitchen I think there needs to be a show that doesn’t take itself too seriously and has a lot of fun while being informative. Think "Tool Time" with skillets and whisks instead of power tools.

I am a married with family and we very rarely cook. My oven and stovetop are pretty much storage. Even the microwave holds items. It’s kind of like the equivalent of having a Nordic Rack which is a Nordic Track or other piece of exercise equipment that is utilized as a place to hang laundry on after it comes out of the wash. But, I can make some dishes. I can make spaghetti and even jazz up the sauce from a jar without resorting to vanilla extract. I can make chili from a recipe I could only get from my father-in-law after I married his daughter. I do pretty good French toast and some other baked goods, but real meals escape me or at least the motivation to make them does. I guess that I am more kitchen lazy than kitchen incompetent….hey that’s a good idea for a title.

So, here’s my unsolicited pitch. You’ve seen talk show hosts like Dave Letterman have someone on to make something and he spends more time screwing around and drinking the cooking sherry, straight from the bottle, than actually preparing something so let’s go with that idea. I would be the host of a cooking or home show that dispenses more tips on “What Not To Do.” It’s like Martha Stewart with knuckles dragging across the hand knitted rug.

Each week I would have a theme and actual chefs would come on to cook a meal and show me how to do it. Meanwhile I would bet totally inept and would make jokes or break a lot of stuff, this would not be a struggle in the acting department for me. During the cooking segments we would have two dishes being prepared, one by the pro and one by the putz, me. At the end, we compare to see what it should look like and what it probably will look like. I want truth in advertising here.

Now, there are guy type shows on The Food Network but do we really need to see Guy Fieri going for the ole 96er eating speed record. Not to mention, I don’t use product. I’m just your average idiot who doesn’t know the difference between jam, jelly, or preserves. The draw and attraction to the show would be the honesty with which I would truly screw up dishes. In fact, I expect there to be a lot of broken dishes and food splashed around so that it looks like something exploded in the kitchen. Granted, a lot of this will be done for effect. Also, I like to be able to interject a sense of Pop Culture trivia, sort of like an Alton Brown delivery with very little important information. I would love to devote entire shows to recreating recipes used in movies and television shows.

But why would anyone watch such idiocy when they could be tuning in Paula Deen and learning how to make hoecakes. Because Paula would be a guest and I’m sure her and I would have a huge amount of fun going back and forth. My only hopes would be that the guest chefs would not take themselves too seriously on my show and it would give the audience a chance to see their favorites cut it up and have fun. I expect a food fight at least once a month….maybe when Giada shows up.

Of course, I know I can never realize this pipe dream. I wouldn’t last one three minute egg’s length of time on Iron Chef. They’d have to rename it cheap ass aluminum foil chef for me. I couldn’t go onto a cooking show competition and expect to wow and dazzle anyone but wouldn’t it be funnier if the guy hosting the show was so ridiculously incompetent that he would have three fire extinguishers on the set and a fire marshal on speed dial?

Come one TFN. Why not dumb it down for those of us who think that Semi Homemade with Sandra Lee should still have a Le Cordon Bleu degree as a prerequisite. Think about it, Home Improvement was more popular because of the antics that Tim Taylor would get himself into rather than the home life. Here I would be the Bob Vila of the kitchen. Did you ever notice that they never let Bob do any dangerous work? And how can you resist having a show on the air that could or could not end in the Emergency Room every week. There should be a warning in front of the show like on Jackass. In fact, there’s an automatic drinking game built into the show from the first episode.

• Take one drink every time the host uses too much of an ingredient.
• Take one drink every time the host uses the wrong ingredient.
• Take two drinks every time the host pronounces something wrong (no lie, I was in Applebee’s once and ordered the Tuscan Chicken and called it Tucson Chicken. I thought it was a South Western dish)
• Take two drinks every time the guest has to control the host’s attention.
• Take three drinks every time the host swears and gets bleeped.
• Take four drinks every time the censors miss it.
• Finish the bottle if the paramedics or EMS is called.

So, write your congressman or go bug Rachel Ray or something. Start a petition, update your facebook status to read “If you believe my friend Mongo deserves his own cooking show because I want to see him catch on fire, at least once, add this to your status for an hour.” Do the work for me because I’m too busy leveling up my café on Facebook. Get on the ball and get me on TV. Think of the carnage and wonderful dishes we can bring to your home.

Holidazed and Confused

This past weekend was my first official Father's Day and I've been white knuckling it for the past two years when it comes to holidays. You see I don't exactly have good luck in this area. In fact, my insurance company starts to get scared when they see a little date on the calendar listed in red. Let's take a look at why I should be worried.

Halloween 2006

We live in a neighborhood that is bustling with young children. Each year, we manage to get around 50 or so trick or treaters. My Sister-in-law brings her daughter over and we make an evening of it with hot dogs and sauerkraut. Because of the amount of people that we tend to have eating dinner, my wife usually relies on her Mother to help her manage the cooking.

This particular year was different. As hordes and hordes of kids depleted our candy stock, my wife was getting overwhelmed in the kitchen when the call came. Her grandmother, who lives in an assisted living facility had fallen and needed to be taken to the hospital. My wife's Mother just happens to be the only one of the kids that takes care of her. She left to g0 to the hospital, leaving my wife with a boiling pot of sauerkraut.

We managed to get through the evening but it was rough. I shouldn't complain since I was sitting at a table eating hot dogs while an 84 year old woman was lying in a hospital with a broken leg.

Thanksgiving 2006

By this point I had a lot to give thanks for. My wife and I had just found out we were pregnant and we're excited for the holidays. Just after the holiday, my in-laws were on their way to a Christmas party when they got another call from the nursing home. The grandmother had been just out of the hospital with the broken leg and was under orders not to try and get herself out of a chair and into bed. Of course, she disobeyed them and attempted to hoist herself into bed falling again and taking the metal cover from a wall heater with her in the process.

They leave the party after just arriving and spend the evening in the hospital with the grandmother.

Christmas 2006

Christmas is a special time in my wife's life. Her parents' house gets all decorated and so does ours for that matter. It's like a Yule tide floods the house. On Christmas Eve, her parents have a huge party with tons of food and it really helps put a capper on the season of weight gain. While we were there, my wife began complaining of an itchy watery eye. The next morning she still had an itchy eye and feared a it was pink eye. Usually, we go to her parents' for breakfast to open up gifts and then on to my parents' for dinner. We never made it out of the house. Turns out another call from the nursing home sent her mother back to the hospital. My wife's grandmother began throwing up what looked like coffee grounds that morning. I've been told that this is a tell tale sign of liver failure. We missed out on breakfast because her mom was at the hospital all evening and we missed out on dinner because the chance she did have pink eye.

The next day we got some good and bad news. My wife did have conjunctivitis but her grandmother didn't have liver failure. She had a bleeding ulcer around a hiatal hernia. She went back to the home the next day. The day after that, we were all set to go to my parents' house for my Dad's birthday. My sister misses it because of a horrible bout of flu which in turn my nephew got it. My mother comes down with it next. We are afraid to go anywhere near my parents' because my wife is two months pregnant.

New Year's Eve 2006

We spend all of that Friday, most of Saturday, and part of Sunday cooking, cleaning, prepping for a big party at our house. Midnight dinner on New Year's has become a tradition at our house and both my wife's parents look forward to it. At 11:20 that evening, my Father-in-law decides to bend over to pet our cat and hears a 'POP.' He pulls his artificial hip out of place. Next thing you know, there's an ambulance at our house and by midnight every one is leaving.

We, then, proceed to the emergency room to be with her Mom. We end up staying until 5:00 AM hospital with him. If you ever want to see the downside to partying on New Year's Eve, go hang around an emergency room after midnight. Various drunks and wackos permeate the place and you get to see the effects from idiots drinking and driving.

We left and made it home with just enough time for about two hours of sleep before we had to reset the entire house for dinner with both of our families that evening.

Since then, we have dreaded holidays. In fact, my daughter's due date was July, 7th, 2007. Now, normally, I would think that to be a very lucky number, but with our history, I was ready to get Vegas odds on whether my wife would go into labor on the 4th during a cookout.

Our luck did change and my wife, her grandmother, and every other relative we have stayed out of the emergency room past Independence Day.

For someone who feels so superstitious about holidays, you would think the last thing I would want to do is add any more to my life. However, Father's Day is one of those holidays that mark a milestone like an anniversary or birthday. Granted, the banks and post offices aren't going to close business on November 5th just because I got married. I celebrate with my wife and that's a holiday in my book. With Father's Day I get to celebrate the event that marked a change in my life. One for the better, I might add. Fatherhood has taught me many things. One of which is that you take whatever accolades you can get. Another is that for every bad fish tie and horrible pair of socks you get the joy of knowing that you have someone who loves you enough to bother. It also means that there is a girl or boy who calls you "Daddy" and that is worth more than any seasonal meal undisturbed by a family member's accident or illness.

Just to let you know, my wife and daughter got me a new gas grill for Father's Day. It's better than socks.....but then again, when it comes time for the fourth of July cookout, a pair of socks never landed anyone in the emergency room. I'll still take those odds.