The Diamond Island

I’d known about O-bento sama since I studied in Japan. But I don’t think I started to really understand them until now. For those not in the know, a bento is a lunch, usually in a container of some kind. The O and sama refer to a certain amount of respect for the lunch and what it represents.

K picks up on things all the time from her communications and sensor monitoring stations. I never know what she’ll find next. In this case, she started trailing the subculture of bento preparation, and boy is there a bottomless depth to human ingenuity and presentation in this one.

At its simplest level, a bento is a container. But you can add dividers, and layers of containers. And then you start getting into shape and size. Depending on the kind of lunch need, whether it’s a single person or a family on a picnic, the containers called upon depend upon the desires of the preparer and the needs of the consumer(s).

Most bento containers are plastic, but some are wood or metal. They may come with spaces for chopsticks or other utensils, and they can be tall or wide. Many have trays within the container that act as dividers in and of themselves.

You begin to get into personalization. Some bento containers are decorated with famous bento characters and sayings. Others are just decorated with scenes of solitude or symbols representative of the preparer’s wishes. You can have a lime green garden on the bento top, with a saying such as “friendship is a treasure, let’s eat!”

There are special containers and utensils that can be added to the bento. Small plastic fish to squirt soy sauce or little molds that can be used to shape hardboiled eggs into shapes. There are small creatures that can be used to cover a small treat. There are plastic figures and accents that can be added to make a point or deliver a message.

The food items that go into the bento start to turn into decorations. You can use cutters to make messages out of cheese, or cut vegetables and fruits into handy shapes like stars or moons. Rice and meat can be colored or arranged in shapes that make a friendly face or a background for another message.

Why all this elaborate work over what should is just a lunch? Near as I can tell, the bento is an actual person or spirit that delivers well wishes from one person to another in the form of a meal. Because the bento is a “go-between”, the lunch preparer can express feelings of love, friendship, or devotion to the eater without losing face, because it is assumed that the bento is relaying the message for both parties.

I like that. You open a container as if it’s a sacred object, and you don’t just eat a meal, you are eating something that expresses someone’s feelings for you.

K and I went searching various Asian stores for bento materials. We didn’t score anything more than some basics, but it will suffice for now. We just started this thing at level 1. It’ll take us a while to get to the higher levels where our bentos to each other are like dioramas.

But even a humble bento is nice. Mister lunch has been visiting me this week, and every small touch makes the meal warm and friendly. I know someone cares enough to send me a message of caring and sharing!

Ugh, the cola wars never end! The war to make you drink carbonated sugar water and get fat, that is. It tastes so good, but it’s so bad for you. A world of addicts to a beverage that is nowhere near the original fountain drink experience of eras long past. There must be a way to fight against the unstoppable tanks armed with shells of cola cans shooting liquid health problems into your gullet.

Well, on the starship Snipe, I was a chattin’ with one of my imaginary friends. Doctor Madman, in charge of my general health and well-being. He clues me into some plot points I’ve missed over the years and the hints I haven’t taken up. So I agree, yeah I need to follow up those transmissions and see what we find. Next time, I got a tag on relevant info and it’ll happen.

K and I walk into a tea shoppe, and we realize this is what we’ve been looking for. The bonus has landed. We plop down some bucks for a nice Chinese ceramic teapot, teapot coaster, some cups, and some cupholders. Plus a supply of rooibus (pronounced roy-boss) tea in two flavors for long lasting refuels. We head to an appliance store and get a hold of a nice water kettle and bang, we’re in business.

The upgrade goes like this. Fill up the kettle with some water, heat it up. Meanwhile, spoon some measures of tea into the teapot’s metal filter. When the water is hot, pour into the teapot, and let simmer. Then, pour yourself some tea and consume together for relax time.

Yeah, yeah, drinking tea is something only those fruity “other countries” do. Real people drink real soft drinks, right? Hey, I ain’t giving up my right to drink a bottle of RC cola now and then, but I’m switching sides, man. I need to keep my water tanks filled, I need the hook up with plant particles in my system fightin’ the nasty infestoids tryin’ to carjack my body. The right tea set-up does all that, and relaxes me.  And it’s all about me!

So from now on, K and I do our tea filler-up when we get home, and dial down the damage. It’s part of the secure to general quarters, and the beginning of reprogram and recharge procedures. The new gas station of the future, baby. I’m pumpin my body full of fuel and puttin’ the smack down on the imbalance. All things in moderation, and that goes for vice as well as civilized behavior. I’m not going for the best, just going for what’s mine.

From now on, it’s going to be tea, not just no-tea. Watch me work now!

It’s a typical Satyrday night. I’m mixing up the medicine, a nice tangy rum punch designed to make me more receptive to the forces of the universe while I do my chores. One can easily learn the secrets of Kung Fu while scrubbing the bathtub of scrum, it’s all a matter of training. I’m also chopping up the ingredients for my yummy beef stew. K and are planning to watch some Grey’s Anatomy to a steaming bowl of stew and a glass of thick, rich milk to make a party in our tummys (so yummy, so yummy).

Cooking is an unpredictable venture. The formula of a recipe should ensure a consistent result every time, but the real world operates on a random adventure generator on a regular basis. You can’t always count on what kind of experience you are going to get out of life. So it is that as I’m mixing up the punch, it turns a brilliant red, and no matter how much I try to get it to behave, it remains red, instead of the off-orange and feathery brown it usually is. I examine my ingredients, and realize I bought a bunch of juices that have nothing to do with the original recipe. Well, it’s always dinosaur hunting when I have to go to the supermarket, and its likely that the robots in disguise had me so distracted that someone else pulled the strings when I made my juice selections. I do try to be open to outside messages, after all.

I start work on the stew, and for some reason it turns out a deep red color instead of the brown-brothy color it usually does. I look at my ingredients and I realize that instead of using my jar of home-jarred tomatoes, I used a can of Nature’s Promise tomatoes instead. I shake my head and realize I’m acting on some kind of puppet-master control field and try to get to the bottom of things. The stew and the rum punch taste excellent, it’s just they are, well this shade of red that I feel means something. You know, like in that scene from Close Encounters when the main character starts realizing there’s some meaning to what they are building with a mountain of mashed potatoes.

So I sit down and I visualize the color red in my mind, and decide to see what comes up. The image that flashes into my brain is the Blob, from the old 1972 movie Beware! The Blob, a sequel to the original movie in 1958. Whoa, that takes me back. The last thing I want to do is consume anything that reminds me of the Blob, because that thing was a deadly poison that killed and consumed you if you touched it! But here I am sucking down a ceramic cup of the good stuff and preparing a pot of stew that has a meaningful connection to that which scared the pants off me as a kid.

As a young pouchling, I watched a lot of movies on the TV. Back then independent stations were more common, and even the big networks had a creative side. The late night monster movies were a staple back then, and you could always be assured of picking up something weird past ten P.M. One movie I saw was, of course, Beware! The Blob. It made an impression on me as a kid.

At the end of the original The Blob movie, the creature known as the Blob is frozen and dumped somewhere in the north pole with the titles “The End?” showing. The intimation is that this is not the end of the matter. Beware! The Blob (also known as Son of the Blob, which I think is false, more like daughter of the Blob) picks up from that loose end.

An oil pipeline worker digs up a canister and brings it home. The canister contains, you guessed it, the Blob. It thaws out, and starts eating everything in sight. A pair of young love birds clue in to the danger while the authorities stall. The blob is a nasty, icky, bright red jelly creature that can move quickly and squeeze through any crack to reach it victims. It sticks to you like glue, and quickly engulfs you to digest your body. As it absorbs animals, insects and people (it apparently doesn’t like plants) it grows in size. The only thing that stops it is cold. If you freeze it, the blob can be stored and transported (as it was in the original movie).

In Beware! The Blob, the final showdown occurs in a skating rink, where the hero of the movie finally lures it onto the ice rink and turns on the cold, freezing the creature and saving the town. The sheriff poses in front of the creature, and the lights of the news media thaw a piece of the creature where it reaches out to grasp the guy’s boot. Again, the titles “The End?” appear as the movie ends.

This movie terrified me as a kid. The Blob could appear anywhere and strike quickly. Once it got a hold of you, there was no escape. You would live long enough to be absorbed into the creature and turned into liquid lunch. In one scene, a guy gets a haircut, and as he’s getting a shampoo from the barber, the blob squeezes out of the sink drain and snags the guy by the head. I absolutely refuse to get my hair shampooed at a hair cut establishment to this day because of that scene.

In the movie, the presence of the creature is always accompanied by a spooky sound tone. That musical tone has lodged itself in my brain, and I always jump when I hear that exact tone of music played somewhere. The Blob ain’t gunna get me! Although, where could you run? Your only hope would be to splash it with cold water or throw ice cubes at it.

The memory is not quite as fierce or terrifying as it used to be. I’ve had to go about my business despite the fear that at any time that sound might begin, and I find myself washing my hands while a red slime oozes out the drain and tries to get a hold of me. But I haven’t forgotten that primal terror, the fear that would keep me from going to sleep at night, because the light in the hall was making that same dull hum as the Blob.

As I’m stirring the pot, and mixing the punch bowl, I realize in a sense I’m consuming the Blob at this very moment! You can’t escape the Blob, only postpone the inevitable. The creature always thaws out and comes at humanity again and again. The test of survival never ends. Of course, in the movies, consuming the Blob is always fatal (the guy who drinks it from his beer can dies horribly as it consumes him from within). The Blob comes from outer space (the deep unconscious), and needs to eat everything in sight (to what end?). The idea of anyone consuming the Blob and surviving is as preposterous as the existence of the Blob itself.

The thought strikes me that the Blob is an archetype of feminine power, engulfing everything and devouring all in its path, growing larger and stronger. I’m cool with that, as long as I don’t lose my own individuality in the process. It’s the hero/heroine pair up in the movie that always defeats the Blob, or more accurately, puts it on hold until next time. So perhaps the individuation of certain characters is what moves the plot along. The Blob is too strong for any one person to take on, and yet, it’s the individual response to the reality of the growing Blob’s power that determines the outcome.

I’m thinking that the Blob represents nothing less than the fear of girl power. That nasty contamination by women that always wrecks things and makes life more difficult. What does the Blob want? It must be looking for a connection of some kind, and anyone who doesn’t measure up to the requirement gets eaten alive. The people who are smart enough to flee or avoid contact with the Blob might be the very people the Blob is trying to contact. The Blob comes from outer space (the heavens), maybe it’s trying to make contact, and the outer space girl power needs to hear a message from the right person to move things forward.

The Blob keeps getting put off, because we love the fear of running from the gross girl germs that might give us cooties. The movies keep coming. But maybe it is way past time the process moved to the next level. Humanity has to grow up eventually, or be stuck in a never-never land of childish dependence. I hear the message, I’m not a kid anymore, and I’m letting the Blob get inside of me!

Now that the holiday madness has past, I’ve been able to take stock of the post-santa-claws damage.  My car’s engine mount succumbed to the forces of doom and collapsed, just in time for my yearly inspection.  So I’m socked with a repair cost and delays during the nebulous holiday spirit that means every mechanic is doing the total dodge.  As if that weren’t enough, Frankie caught a lite sneeze, and needed a vet visit to get the kitty drug hook-up.  Sometimes, if you really try, you can feel the jackup gnomes with their vacuum in your wallet.  I must have landed on the square in my personal board game where I have to lose 2 turns.

My friend Liephus gave me a minor linkdump, which gave me a chuckle.  He’s all about the funny, and I think that’s a good a life goal as any.  First off, he sent me a link where a group of video game “experts” do a “scientific” study.  They show a compelling correlation between the time it takes for a game avatar to encounter a “crate” and how good the video game is.  See, it’s a staple in video games that there are crates everywhere.  They conceal “powerups”, “heals”, and “ammunition”.  They are often used as scenery or obstacles to liven up what are otherwise boring environments.  Some games start you out staring at a crate (and therefore are traumatic, horrible games to play), while others take half an hour before you encounter a crate (you have just found gameplay better than any vice you can imagine).

Second, he introduced me to Korean professional StarCraft matches on YouTube.  I think StarCraft is one of the greatest computer games ever made, and a heck of a lot of fun to play, either solo or against other folks.  In the matches, video game players fight to the death on-screen for fabulous glory and prizes.  The Korean announcers lose their marbles following the ebb and flow of play, which is pretty funny.  Some folks dub over them with English (such as DiggitySC), and give it that understated, but deeply satisfying humorous edge.  It’s all about the funny!  Just one more match, and I’ll head off to bed, I swear.

K and I have been watching Grey’s Anatomy, Seasons 1 and 2.  I think House is by far a better “medical” drama, but I like the premise and many of the characters of Grey’s Anatomy.  I loathe the main character, Meredith Grey, however, and her One True Couple counterpart Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd.  She’s very much an example of “The Beautiful Lady without Mercy”, making it all about herself and caring not a whit for what happens to other people.  I sense a post of some kind coming out of this in the future.

My Pa noticed the work I was doing on my rum punch recipe, and gave it the enthusiastic thumbs-up.  Then he passed along to me some vital ingredients.  It appears that I have yet some kung fu techniques to work on, and will likely have to modify my alchemical concoction.  Or perhaps do an addendum post on the matter.  But it’s very encouraging to have my efforts be recognized and have the parental unit pass along another part of the secret recipe down.  On K’s end, she’s been fiddling with crepes, trying to duplicate her Ma’s baffling ability to create rolled-up sugar crepes of smooth munching satisfaction.  She got a pair of really cool cookbooks from the holiday loot-fest, and has been readying to level up her baking skills.  Which reminds me, I have to summon the Cookie Aphid and go back to basics – the Chocolate Chip Cookie of Doom.  I’ve been experimentin’ a little too much, and need to return to solid ground.

Plans for the garden this year are already being made.  The entire garden gang got together the other day and drew up preliminary plans as to what will be planted, and how it will be harvested and stored this year.  There’s some fence work, sod-busting, and composting in my future I fear.  The ground is cold and damp, and the planting many months off.  But this year will be a new level with more hit points and better rolls, I can feel it.

I’m not a big fan of the Washington Post, or the “Court Circular” as some call it.  Well, I’m not a fan of corporate media period as a lot of its product is junk.  But as they say even a blind cat catches a bird now and then.  One of their features had a focus on cookies, and since I’m always on the lookout for additional recipes, I gave it a sensor sweep of the peepers.  Several items came up on the ol’ mental viewscreen for testing out, but one in particular really caught my eye.  The Anzac Biscuits have that euphonious sound quality that rolls over the tongue, so I decided to try it, even though I hate coconut.

I had to scramble to get a hold of the syrup, which turns out to be the cornerstone of the recipe, but I manage to manufacture a batch and give them a try.  K and I both agree the cookies are uncommonly delicious.  We scarf them down and have to make another batch.  And I think we have a winner!  A good combination of sweet and base flavors, and it really sticks to your ribs.  Even Frankie wanted some!  Something about the smell of the Anzac biscuits that got her watching us from her perch on the refrigerator with curiosity.  Her detectors must have been reading the heavy concentration of food regeneratives coming from the discovery of ancient food technology!

The recipe has some interesting history behind it.  The biscuits were put into care packages for soldiers from Australia and New Zealand during World War I.  The ingredients were chosen to allow for the long transportation times without refrigeration, and were packed in tins to maintain crispy freshness for as long as possible.  Church groups of wives, mothers and girlfriends spent enormous amounts of time manufacturing these biscuits for as many soldiers as possible, and so it became something of an institution.  In Australia the biscuit is a part of national identity.  Who knew?

I tell you, there are treasures of knowledge and tasty chompin’ goodness all over the place.  K and I just got the pump up.

Feasting on food and fine victuals while celebrating with loved ones. Thanks for the sacrifice, Turkey With No Name.

Talk about doomsville city at the garden. We had a frost finally in late October, after having a record hot month. The majority of plants left all seem to have taken a major blow. Even the weeds are getting nervous. The bees are gone, and the general insect population seems to have cleared out. The birds are still around, but not to the degree they were a month ago. K and I were busy scavenging up what we could in the way of herbs, but hoo boy it was brutal out there in the trenches.

Tomatoes go bye-bye. The only thing left is the lettuce, which we harvested gratefully and had a small salad with our dinner, hooray! Pretty soon it’ll be time to dig up the horseradish, I can’t wait! Unfortunately, half my seeds haven’t dried out right, and have grown horrible molds. Still, not bad for my first try. I harvested the last of the basil, and some oregano for a Pizza of Doom I’m making for work. But it looks like the garden goodies have hit the bed and are passing out of time and space until next time folks.

Since it’s Halloweenie, I need my costume. I dug into my enormous bookshelf of tricks and pulled out a 1976 copy of Make-Up Monsters by Marcia Lynn Cox. Oh, I gots ideas galore thanks to this book. Hopefully, with the make-up stuff I have acquired, things will come out neat. Some of these, I haven’t tried out since I went trick or treating with my cousins or my elementary school friends. Oh yes, and I scored a pumpkin, though I’m guessing I’ll be my usual unskilled self and create a rather mundane jack-o-lantern. I don’t know. I just haven’t got the right touch for doing a pumpkin right. Maybe I need a kung fu master to show me what I’m missing. And of course the bowl is filled with candy for the screaming brats. Hopefully K won’t eat all the Mr. Goodbars.

My friend, Dr. C, called me up the other day and we rapped about what he’s been up to. I’m totally psyched for him to be doing what he’s doing. He’s been busting his buns through med school and his residency, and now he’s finally at the point where the powering up starts. Basically, he’s getting to write his own ticket for the hospital he’s going to be working at, and he’ll be living in a fabulous area for his family (and dog). I’m very happy for him, because there were some times where his life was pretty bleak and I was very worried for him.

That brings up another old friend from way back, someone whom I haven’t spoken with in a long time and only hear of through the astrosending, but I was thinking about a lot in the last week. Mainly in the terms of some spiritual connections we made back in the day, which still resonate with me now. Looks like she’ll be getting a website soon, which I’ll shamelessly plug here, but it’s not up yet. So get kraken, Xtine!

Going even further in the wayback machine on YouTube, I found someone posted a copy of The Frog Prince, with Kermit the Frog and Robin the Brave, plus Sweetums the Ogre before he was made safe for work consumption. Oh, wow, this takes me back a ways. I had this on vinyl, along with many other records, and played it often as a kid. But now it’s unavailable on DVD, and only rarely can you catch it on cable (when I was still mooching off my folks). That’s a shame, because the musical numbers are fantastic, and the story itself is both charming and wholesome. I still have the record, but it’s in rough shape. I’d love to get my paws on this one. Still, to see it on YouTube brings me to a deep place inside full of happy feelings and warm thoughts.

This weekend Lush came out with some new products, so K hinted that we ought to go to the nearest store and check them out. Since I was out of bath bombs and shampoo bars, I thought today is the day we replenish our ammunition or perish. Pricey luxury stuff, but its on my top list of bath goodies so we had to go. I stocked up on my usual array of nice things and she got herself some hair treatment prizes. K then proceeded to cut her hair, change it into a nice cerise color, and pamper it with wonderful hair-treatment goodness. Me, I’m set for the next alchemical treatment. I started using a new flavor of shampoo bar and so far its got good value. I was getting annoyed with the generic soup du jour of shampoo you can get at any supermarket, anywhere in crumbsville.

And I worked on my book. I finally decided on a teaser page to show you all. One that doesn’t reveal too much, but gives some good thoughts on what I’m about. I just have to turn it into a PDF and post it, which given the Halloweenie whackiness, might be a few days. I’m 70% through the revisions, so I’m getting closer to my current goal. I’ve accumulated a list of things that will have to be addressed in the polish stage, but I think most of it is minor work. It may be that my work will have only just begun after I finish my revisions, but it’s a major goal just the same. I’m still considering my cover. What color it will be, what the picture and text will consist of, and the spine. I’m not satisfied with my notes, so I predict I’ll have to spend more time on this when I’m not distracted.

I hung out with my gamer friends, and it was a blast. We watched the unimaginably horrible Universal Soldier: The Return and had a lot of fun mocking it. The game we played was a nice little gem called Arkham Horror, which is based on the H.P. Lovecraft Cthulhu mythos. In a nutshell, it’s the 1930s, and alien horrors are coming into the town of Arkham as precursors to the outright monster apocalypse of a randomly generated Elder God of Evil. Players take the part of archetypes from the era (Flapper, Gangster, Archaeologist, etc.) and try to gain the knowledge and power to kill the monsters and defeat the ultimate bad monster before the town is destroyed.

It’s one of those games with tokens for every single thing in the game, and it’s a long game, but the mechanics seemed solid and the setting was hard not to get into. Everyone cooperates to stop the monsters instead of competing against each other. And the artwork and production values are very high. It was a blast walking around with my researcher and checking out all the various spooky places for clues and fighting off ghouls and alien fungi with my pistols.

I’ve been trying to record my dreams this October, but something about them has not wanted to be put down on paper. The messages from the unconscious haven’t wanted any photographs taken at their press conference, I suppose. As the Celtic New Year draws to a close, I’ve got a lot to ruminate on from this last year. A lot has happened, both in the external world and the internal.

The family gathering was pulled off with a minimum of fuss.  Charcoal-grilled Nature’s Promise hamburgers, homemade peach cobbler, and plenty of generic chips, freezer-thawed french fries, and garden vegetable salad with mom’s homemade dressing.  Nothing beats a fresh slice of garden grown tomato on your burger, whoo-eee!  Then, crack out the Labor Day punch and talk family business to candlelight in the backyard.  Yeah, the Slack bonus points were a-cumulatin’ in the Slor that day I can tell you.

The book revisions have reached the 55% mark, which is awesome.  I got more done this weekend than I did my week long vacation to sit and write, even though I am sick with a sore throat and a clogged ear.  I can’t explain the discrepancy in the space-time continuum, though I believe it has to do with hitting a stretch where the writing didn’t need as much work, and the fact that the revisions are gaining momentum on the remaining pages.  Still need to do that polish stage, and complete my artwork for the cover, but I’m happy.  The revised material is much better than the first draft stuff.

K has been watching the first season of the Highlander television series, and I keep getting drawn in to watch.  We finished the first season this weekend, and all I can say is Darius!  I still think the first movie is the only one that counts, the others being pretty lame.  Part of that is nostalgia, and part of that is revulsion at the franchising effect on the story.  If you forget the movies, the television series is actually pretty good action, with some nice camp and an attempt to tell a story in exploration of the alternate universe.

The tomatoes from the garden have totally defeated us; we’re just giving them away now.  The weeds have gotten out of control, and the groundhog roams at will.  The sunflowers have pretty much bitten the dust, but there isn’t a seed left on them, so at least they are dying satisfied, so to speak.  We planted some fresh basil, which ought to produce for us some nice pesto in the next few weeks before autumn forces our hand to garden mark two.  We have a lizard now!  About seven inches, black with brown and ochre markings, living in our pile of unused wood.  We threw him some baby tomatoes and the next day we were rewarded with a pile of skins.  Yea!  Feed the animal bonus points!

Even the legendary pizza of doom has a beginning. In Athens, Ohio there used to be this pizza joint called “Big Red’s Pizza”. The railroad used to go through the college town; past a train depot that is now only a run down old building (if it even is still there at all). When the folks and me were in town, we would stop there, get a pizza, and eat down at the depot on the concrete steps near the tracks. Sometimes, a train would pass through and we’d eat in the rumble of the cars and shout out, “box car”, “tank car”, and “flat car” while we munched on pizza and drank RC Cola straight from the glass bottle. If the train car had a Chessie System emblem on it, with the tell tale kitten doing a lie down on the pillow, we’d call out “Chessie System” as an override.

The guy who ran the joint, “Big Red” as I remember him, made what must be the greatest pizza I have ever had the pleasure of eating. I’ve eaten good pizza, I’ve eaten pizza that sent you to other universes of ecstasy, but nobody could do it like this guy. His Kung Fu was beyond any comprehension. The Spartan layout, the smell of his goods cooking in the ovens, every morsel of detail about his pizza, the guy’s unassuming and plain demeanor; these things are imprinted on my brain like a stain that won’t come out. One thing I remember was a large cardboard, full-color poster of a man in a top hat, with an umbrella in a suit. His torso was a huge red beefsteak tomato.

One day, making the best pizza in my reality came to be too great a burden, and Big Red left the business to get into computers, and I never saw him again. The joint closed, and was empty for a while, but has since reopened as something else. But before he left, he passed on a few secrets to my folks, and when I was old enough, they trained me in the ways of Pizza Kung Fu. Since then, I have strived to meet the challenge and find the secret formula for myself. I’ve come close, at times, either to the crust or the sauce, but never in enough combinations to match the flawless, complete, bountiful flavor, texture and ineffable magic that radiated from Big Red’s effortless gifts. While it is perhaps my greatest recipe in my bag of tricks, and is indeed legendary, with the power to cure minor ailments of moodiness and depression, still it is not “the one”.

So I raise a toast to Big Red, wherever he may be. To the inspiration of my quest, and the creator of unforgettable experiences.

Coming up is K’s birthday, and that means valuable cards and prizes for her. In true game show fashion, she opened a catalog, pointed at the object of her desire, and said, “this!” Whatever you say drill sergeant! “This” turned out to be a yogurt maker from a health food catalog specializing in juicers. The ordering experience was friendly, but odd. It’s in the catalog, but not available yet. You can have a confirmation number, but call back tomorrow to get it. I guess that’s to be expected from a catalog where wheatgrass juice is considered a tonic equivalent to a Potion of Healing. Might very well be, but let me be the judge of that!

Yogurt making sounds fun, so why not? Healthy, probiotic stuff! You heat up some milk, throw in some culture powder, fill the nifty containers, put on the lid, and turn on the machine. Well, okay, not quite. The instructions that came with the maker, and the ones on the label of the culture container were both wrong, and we got a bunch of milk that smelled like yogurt, but that’s it. After some research on the internet for formulas, and the use of coffee filters to filter out the whey, yes we now have yogurt. Fresh is good. Much better than store bought. But the hoops are a little more than was advertised.

My legendary pizza of doom recepie continues to gain daily in power. We ordered a pizza from Pizza King and it was way good. Me, ever the pizza master, always examine a pizza to see how it was manufactured, and wow! Secret kung fu trick discovery! They curl the pizza crust inwards to get the edge crust, so I give it a try on my next pizza training bout. Most cool. Sauce drip and overpuff of edge crust eliminated, plus new handy curl makes grasping easier for muncheroo destruction! Overall, a nicer, more appealing look of pizza, and I achieve 100% toppings containment with less handling time. The only drawback is the technique is slippery, and the edge crust cooks very hot, and becomes a little too crunchy. Clearly, there is an additional kung fu maneuver in there to be mastered, but baby steps, I tell myself, baby steps to world pizza domination.

The rum punch alchemy experiments are drawing to a close, to the satisfaction of pirates and barbarian raiders everywhere. My secret orc investors should see a nice return on their brain-bashing, party vertical initial public offering, thanks to my frankenstein efforts. I still have some finalizing to do, but the basic recipe goes like this:

A big glass punch bowl
2 Grapefruits
4 Valencia Oranges
8 ounces of Water
9 ounces of Appleton White Rum
14 ounces of Appleton Rum (The regular, amber colored stuff)
15 ounces Myer’s Dark Rum
30 ounces of fresh squeezed orange juice
64 ounces of Nature’s Promise Pomegranate Juice

I use a grater to grate the skin of the grapefruits and oranges into the bowl, then squeeze the juice in. I don’t go ape with the grating, you’re looking for the citrus tang, not necessarily volume. I leave the pomegranate juice for last, since you’re going to have to add until you get the taste you want. I usually end up having to add the whole thing anyway, and make any difference up with more orange juice. You want the tingle of the alcohol, without the bite or the flavor, so you won’t know you’ve gone too far until it’s too late.

For drinking containers, every fiesty plunderer ought to use the pirate mugs from Archee McPhee! These things are solid construction, have got character out the wazoo, and fit nicely in your hand for easy access.

The blackberry/cherry/orange rum punch was a success, but the work involved in straining the juice was a little too hard core to justify the result. I’ll tag that one for a furture development project down the line. You’ve got to be cutting edge when you’re a pirate, ahrrr!

Edit 02-04-2008:  It should be noted that the fresh squeezed orange juice is in addition to the Valencia Oranges.  You are squeezing the Valencia Oranges into the mixture for the fresh tang of citrus, but you will also be adding orange juice from a container.