yet more older posts....
Yet more posts from the jeffpearcemusic.com website, since I'm about to start using this page full time for all my blogging needs...
January 24, 2006
"Mom has gone organic crazy!"
The words of daughter #1 just a couple of weeks ago- and pretty accurate, from where I sit at least. Mrs. Pearce has embraced her inner granola muncher, and has taken the rest of us along with her. This is not a bad thing; as time goes by, I know that I'm getting less and less enthusiastic about food loaded with so many preservatives that the expiration date on the package reads "don't worry- you won't live long enough for this to expire". And a whole lot of the foods are really quite tasty; Mrs. Pearce has bought everything from organic veggies and organic pasta sauce, to something I didn't know existed- organic Pop Tarts. For the kids, of course.
........hey- stop looking at me like that- they really ARE for the kids!
For clarification, these aren't technically "Pop Tarts", since everyone knows the phrase "Pop Tarts" is a registered trademark of the company which makes them- Microsoft (motto: "the next version won't have bugs in it- promise!") (which is the motto for their software AND their pop tarts, which I'm almost certain they make...). These are "organic toaster pastries", and although their taste doesn't exactly hit home, just the presence of the "pop tarts" in our house takes me back to my teen years, and a culinary crime against nature that I gleefully indulged in.
What I'm about to reveal now is something that I've not revealed to another living person- not even to Mrs. Pearce: At age 17, I created my one and only truly original recipe- it was fast and easy to make. It was sinful..... . It was:
"The Peanut-Butter Pop-Tart sandwich".
Pretty easy to make:
1) get two pieces of white bread (you certainly don't want any extra fiber)
2) smear both pieces of bread with peanut butter
3) put a pop tart on one of the pieces of bread (and it had to be a FROSTED pop tart- those non-frosted ones were icky health food in comparison)
4) put the other piece of bread on top to complete the sandwich
5) sneak it out of the kitchen so: a) your mom wouldn't see what you've made and pass out from shock, or: b) your dad wouldn't see what you made and ask you to make him one
The truly frightening thing to the calorie-counting, fat-restricting, fiber loving, sugar limiting Jeff of 2006 is that for at least a few months in late 1984-early 1985, I ate one of these EVERY SCHOOL DAY for breakfast- I'd secretly make it in the kitchen, sneak it out to my car, and eat it on the way to school. Once at school, I'd buy a Coke out of the vending machine to wash it all down with. Do I even need to mention that for the rest of the day, I was REALLY REALLY GLAD TO BE IN CLASS and wanted the teacher to TEACH FASTER BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS MOVING TOO SLOWLY? Had my gym teacher asked me to, I'm pretty certain that I could have played a game of dodgeball. Against MYSELF. On the PLUS side, it was an effective study-aid (mom: Jeff, do you have any homework to do tonight? Jeff: NO, MOM! I DID IT ALL ON THE DRIVE HOME!!! Mom: Do you mean "on the RIDE home"? Jeff: YEAH, SURE- WHATEVER HELPS YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT- WHICH I HAVEN'T DONE FOR THREE WEEKS STRAIGHT!!!").
Eventually, I did a little improvisation with the recipe. For example, one time I inadvertently broke the pop tart. Thinking this could add texture, I broke the remaining pop tart into pieces and scattered them over the peanut butter. Eventually, I learned that a knife would make a cleaner cut, so I'd dice up the pop tart before laying it on the peanut butter. Emeril Lagasse I was not.
My ultimate improvisation came the morning that I went to the kitchen and saw that we were out of bread. I grabbed a pop tart, and started to head out of the kitchen. However, an otherworldly force drew me back. I grabbed another pop tart, the jar of peanut butter, and a knife.
......yeah, you know where I'm going already:
I spread the peanut butter on the non-frosted side of one pop tart, pressed the non-frosted side of the other pop tart into the peanut butter, and made the bread free peanut butter pop tart sandwich- a sandwich that had 98,056% RDA of sugar, and 0% RDA of "what the !*&^ are you thinking?!?!?!".
Of course, the punch line to all this is that, despite my eating roughly 80 pounds of pure sugar every morning, my body certainly didn't LOOK like it rightfully should have. The teen-age male metabolism- one of the seven wonders of the world, in my opinion. It didn't matter how trashy the fuel was, my body would convert it into all the energy I needed to stay focused on the important things in life: girls, music, and video games.
In 2006, however, eating just ONE peanut-butter pop tart sandwich would quickly put me into the "training to be a sumo wrestler" phase of my current exercise program. Of course, I could take some of this organic sprout bread, smear it with organic peanut butter, and drop on one of these organic pop tarts. Hmmmmm.....
HEY- I NEVER FINISHED THIS ENTRY!!! WHOA- MUST HAVE BEEN DISTRACTED BY SOMETHING ELSE!!! I HAVEN'T BEEN THIS AWAKE IN YEARS!!! THANK YOU ORGANIC FOOD!!!
January 11, 2006
I hope this note finds everyone enjoying 2006 thus far.
For a bit of new year's fun, go to archive.org it's a huge "internet archive". Right there on the front page of archive.org is something called the "wayback machine"- enter a web address, and you'll see how the website developed over the years. Just yesterday, I spent more time than I should have entering every website I could think of and watching how it changed over time- including my own (note to self: it was a GOOD decision to remove my photo from the front page of the website...).
Having watched enough of "Rocky and Bullwinkle" as I child, I remember how the wayback machine was used by Mr. Peabody and his assistant Sherman, allowing them to travel through time and go sailing with Magellan, flying with the Wright brothers, and whispering in the ear of 1995-era Jennifer Aniston "don't do it- he's not worth it." . This is usually the time of the year that I wish I had my own personal wayback machine. However, this time around, here in 2006, I don't find myself wishing for a wayback machine so I could fix past mistakes of mine (they belong to me, for better or worse), but so I could, as an observer, get another perspective of things that have happened in my past.
Specifically, if I had a wayback machine, my first stop would be January 1991, at the apartment Mrs. Peace and I shared as newlyweds. I know that most people would love to travel into the past and offer pearls of wisdom to their younger selves. And if I had any to offer, I certainly would. Instead, I'd drop in on those young newlyweds and make one request of the 22 year old Mrs. Pearce:
"Make me some dinner".
Why this request? Because sometimes we need a reminder of how the good old days weren't really all that good.....
In the early days of our marriage, cooking wasn't exactly one of Mrs. Pearce's talents. In fact, all of her recipes involved pretty much the following instructions:
1) spread a bag of tater-tots on a cookie sheet
2) pre-heat oven to 8,000 degrees
3) put tater-tots in oven
4) take them out sometime next Tuesday
Needless to say, we didn't have a whole lot of dinner guests in those early days of our marriage.....
Mrs. Pearce came by her early recipes honestly- she learned to cook from her mom. Knowing this, I should be surprised that either of us made it out of our first year of marriage alive. The first Christmas after we were married, we had Christmas Eve dinner at my mom-in-law's place. The dish of the evening was spaghetti and meatballs. I don't know how she did it, but mom-in-law managed to burn spaghetti sauce- at least that's what my tongue told me, before it started tying a noose for itself out of a strand of spaghetti. Everyone else at the dinner, however, was apparently de-sensitized to the food. I, on the other hand, found myself in the in-law's bathroom two hours later thanking the gods that they had a full package of Charmin Ultra-soft.......
Mrs. Pearce, the 2006 model, is light-years from those early "kitchen malfunctions". She now has some great recipes- everything from cinnamon muffins and chocolate chip cookies to more exotic fare like naan and Caribbean shrimp. Just a week ago, she fixed salmon with a wasabi-ginger dressing, and it made me completely forget the tater-tot casserole from 1991 that was simultaneously half burnt and half frozen.
I can't speak for Mrs. Pearce, but I'm somewhat certain that if SHE could get into the wayback machine, she'd set course for this past summer, where she went to a good-bye party for a co-worker at a local pub and was carded at the door. "And the guy who carded me was REALLY young!", I can still hear her say. THAT was a good week in the Pearce household.......
January 24, 2006
"Mom has gone organic crazy!"
The words of daughter #1 just a couple of weeks ago- and pretty accurate, from where I sit at least. Mrs. Pearce has embraced her inner granola muncher, and has taken the rest of us along with her. This is not a bad thing; as time goes by, I know that I'm getting less and less enthusiastic about food loaded with so many preservatives that the expiration date on the package reads "don't worry- you won't live long enough for this to expire". And a whole lot of the foods are really quite tasty; Mrs. Pearce has bought everything from organic veggies and organic pasta sauce, to something I didn't know existed- organic Pop Tarts. For the kids, of course.
........hey- stop looking at me like that- they really ARE for the kids!
For clarification, these aren't technically "Pop Tarts", since everyone knows the phrase "Pop Tarts" is a registered trademark of the company which makes them- Microsoft (motto: "the next version won't have bugs in it- promise!") (which is the motto for their software AND their pop tarts, which I'm almost certain they make...). These are "organic toaster pastries", and although their taste doesn't exactly hit home, just the presence of the "pop tarts" in our house takes me back to my teen years, and a culinary crime against nature that I gleefully indulged in.
What I'm about to reveal now is something that I've not revealed to another living person- not even to Mrs. Pearce: At age 17, I created my one and only truly original recipe- it was fast and easy to make. It was sinful..... . It was:
"The Peanut-Butter Pop-Tart sandwich".
Pretty easy to make:
1) get two pieces of white bread (you certainly don't want any extra fiber)
2) smear both pieces of bread with peanut butter
3) put a pop tart on one of the pieces of bread (and it had to be a FROSTED pop tart- those non-frosted ones were icky health food in comparison)
4) put the other piece of bread on top to complete the sandwich
5) sneak it out of the kitchen so: a) your mom wouldn't see what you've made and pass out from shock, or: b) your dad wouldn't see what you made and ask you to make him one
The truly frightening thing to the calorie-counting, fat-restricting, fiber loving, sugar limiting Jeff of 2006 is that for at least a few months in late 1984-early 1985, I ate one of these EVERY SCHOOL DAY for breakfast- I'd secretly make it in the kitchen, sneak it out to my car, and eat it on the way to school. Once at school, I'd buy a Coke out of the vending machine to wash it all down with. Do I even need to mention that for the rest of the day, I was REALLY REALLY GLAD TO BE IN CLASS and wanted the teacher to TEACH FASTER BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS MOVING TOO SLOWLY? Had my gym teacher asked me to, I'm pretty certain that I could have played a game of dodgeball. Against MYSELF. On the PLUS side, it was an effective study-aid (mom: Jeff, do you have any homework to do tonight? Jeff: NO, MOM! I DID IT ALL ON THE DRIVE HOME!!! Mom: Do you mean "on the RIDE home"? Jeff: YEAH, SURE- WHATEVER HELPS YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT- WHICH I HAVEN'T DONE FOR THREE WEEKS STRAIGHT!!!").
Eventually, I did a little improvisation with the recipe. For example, one time I inadvertently broke the pop tart. Thinking this could add texture, I broke the remaining pop tart into pieces and scattered them over the peanut butter. Eventually, I learned that a knife would make a cleaner cut, so I'd dice up the pop tart before laying it on the peanut butter. Emeril Lagasse I was not.
My ultimate improvisation came the morning that I went to the kitchen and saw that we were out of bread. I grabbed a pop tart, and started to head out of the kitchen. However, an otherworldly force drew me back. I grabbed another pop tart, the jar of peanut butter, and a knife.
......yeah, you know where I'm going already:
I spread the peanut butter on the non-frosted side of one pop tart, pressed the non-frosted side of the other pop tart into the peanut butter, and made the bread free peanut butter pop tart sandwich- a sandwich that had 98,056% RDA of sugar, and 0% RDA of "what the !*&^ are you thinking?!?!?!".
Of course, the punch line to all this is that, despite my eating roughly 80 pounds of pure sugar every morning, my body certainly didn't LOOK like it rightfully should have. The teen-age male metabolism- one of the seven wonders of the world, in my opinion. It didn't matter how trashy the fuel was, my body would convert it into all the energy I needed to stay focused on the important things in life: girls, music, and video games.
In 2006, however, eating just ONE peanut-butter pop tart sandwich would quickly put me into the "training to be a sumo wrestler" phase of my current exercise program. Of course, I could take some of this organic sprout bread, smear it with organic peanut butter, and drop on one of these organic pop tarts. Hmmmmm.....
HEY- I NEVER FINISHED THIS ENTRY!!! WHOA- MUST HAVE BEEN DISTRACTED BY SOMETHING ELSE!!! I HAVEN'T BEEN THIS AWAKE IN YEARS!!! THANK YOU ORGANIC FOOD!!!
January 11, 2006
I hope this note finds everyone enjoying 2006 thus far.
For a bit of new year's fun, go to archive.org it's a huge "internet archive". Right there on the front page of archive.org is something called the "wayback machine"- enter a web address, and you'll see how the website developed over the years. Just yesterday, I spent more time than I should have entering every website I could think of and watching how it changed over time- including my own (note to self: it was a GOOD decision to remove my photo from the front page of the website...).
Having watched enough of "Rocky and Bullwinkle" as I child, I remember how the wayback machine was used by Mr. Peabody and his assistant Sherman, allowing them to travel through time and go sailing with Magellan, flying with the Wright brothers, and whispering in the ear of 1995-era Jennifer Aniston "don't do it- he's not worth it." . This is usually the time of the year that I wish I had my own personal wayback machine. However, this time around, here in 2006, I don't find myself wishing for a wayback machine so I could fix past mistakes of mine (they belong to me, for better or worse), but so I could, as an observer, get another perspective of things that have happened in my past.
Specifically, if I had a wayback machine, my first stop would be January 1991, at the apartment Mrs. Peace and I shared as newlyweds. I know that most people would love to travel into the past and offer pearls of wisdom to their younger selves. And if I had any to offer, I certainly would. Instead, I'd drop in on those young newlyweds and make one request of the 22 year old Mrs. Pearce:
"Make me some dinner".
Why this request? Because sometimes we need a reminder of how the good old days weren't really all that good.....
In the early days of our marriage, cooking wasn't exactly one of Mrs. Pearce's talents. In fact, all of her recipes involved pretty much the following instructions:
1) spread a bag of tater-tots on a cookie sheet
2) pre-heat oven to 8,000 degrees
3) put tater-tots in oven
4) take them out sometime next Tuesday
Needless to say, we didn't have a whole lot of dinner guests in those early days of our marriage.....
Mrs. Pearce came by her early recipes honestly- she learned to cook from her mom. Knowing this, I should be surprised that either of us made it out of our first year of marriage alive. The first Christmas after we were married, we had Christmas Eve dinner at my mom-in-law's place. The dish of the evening was spaghetti and meatballs. I don't know how she did it, but mom-in-law managed to burn spaghetti sauce- at least that's what my tongue told me, before it started tying a noose for itself out of a strand of spaghetti. Everyone else at the dinner, however, was apparently de-sensitized to the food. I, on the other hand, found myself in the in-law's bathroom two hours later thanking the gods that they had a full package of Charmin Ultra-soft.......
Mrs. Pearce, the 2006 model, is light-years from those early "kitchen malfunctions". She now has some great recipes- everything from cinnamon muffins and chocolate chip cookies to more exotic fare like naan and Caribbean shrimp. Just a week ago, she fixed salmon with a wasabi-ginger dressing, and it made me completely forget the tater-tot casserole from 1991 that was simultaneously half burnt and half frozen.
I can't speak for Mrs. Pearce, but I'm somewhat certain that if SHE could get into the wayback machine, she'd set course for this past summer, where she went to a good-bye party for a co-worker at a local pub and was carded at the door. "And the guy who carded me was REALLY young!", I can still hear her say. THAT was a good week in the Pearce household.......
posted by Jeff Pearce | 3:50 PM
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