Bibliomama

I generally make it a habit of grabbing my apron from the hook and putting it on on my way into the kitchen no matter what I'm going in there for. I am not a neat and graceful person and I don't enjoy changing clothes several times a day. This was amply vindicated just now when, without an apron, I turned around from the counter and decided to take the lid off the slow-cooker to check the pulled pork and got splattered with hot meat juice, burning a tiny spot on my chest and leaving brown spots on my pink tank top (sorry if this made you gag a little, Nicole). This was annoying, but the pulled pork smelled delicious, which is a not bad little microcosm of this whole day. Angus talked quite a bit with his guidance counsellor last year when he was offered a spot on the Team Canada's roster for the Oklahoma Junior Sunbelt Tournament, which meant he would be missing a week of school right before exams. The guidance counsellor liaised with his teachers and everybody was quite

I'm going out with a group of friends to a comedy club for my friend Janet's birthday tonight. I'm having vexatious, near-paralyzing intrusive thoughts, and my hair, in the run-up to my haircut appointment this week, is nearing Medusa-like proportions. Basically, I'm a mess from the neck up. I'm hoping to laugh my troubles away tonight, and/or soak them off in a hot tub , with an option on burying them under an extremely jury-rigged coconut raspberry layer cake. See you tomorrow.

I was prepared to rough it in the bush food-wise - Collette told me "just forget trying to eat healthy - it's easiest if you just buy crap." I went to Loblaws and crowded my cart with club pack boxes of every processed snack available, and filled in the spaces with chips and cookies. I only bought meat that had enough nitrates in it to last three weeks without refrigeration. I bought CHEEZ FREAKING WHIZ. I had not reckoned on my husband, "Hibachi Man". We had a Coleman stove, but I don't think he used it at all. He used a little Hibachi and the grate over the campfire. He also brought actual meat. He made hamburgers. He made steak and potatoes. And lit candles.  He made french toast and bacon.  He warmed up cinnamon buns in a cast iron pan over the fire.  Then there was the parade of giant hunks of meat, courtesy of Mark and Dan and Auspit . This is pork. This is beef.  ...wrapped in bacon.  It was fou

So my friend Collette is notoriously cheap -- really, she likes being called cheap, if we try to tone it down to 'frugal' or 'sensible with money' she gets offended. At one Christmas craft show we went to, they had citrus almonds for sale, which we sampled. They were delicious, but she refused to pay five dollars for a tiny little bag of them (even though it was fetchingly wrapped in sparkly gold snowflake-printed cellophane and tied with an adorable ribbon). I, of course, bought the five-dollar bag of almonds, brought it home and stuck it in the cupboard waiting for an occasion auspicious enough to warrant hideously expensive almonds, until they went stale and I had to throw them out. I'm not sure what the word for me is, but it's even less complimentary than 'cheap'. Can you believe that there is no recipe for citrus almonds online? Well, okay, I'm by far no computer whiz, but I've googled dozens, nay, hundreds of recipes from 'chocolate