Kamikaze Pancakes

Early in our relationship, Kevin introduced me to The Egg and I, a restaurant in Uptown. I opened the menu and fell madly in love and may never recover. There in black and white were the words I had always fantasized about reading: "Kamikaze Pancakes." They are made with buckwheat flour and bananas, blueberries, and walnuts are baked in. Then they are topped with more bananas, blueberries, and walnuts.

One pancake is the size of the plate and leaves you stuffed. Never being much for moderation, I always get two. Come on now - we only go there once or twice a year, and all things should be taken in moderation, including moderation itself.

Since we sometimes need a kamikaze fix in between visits, I modified an oatmeal pancake recipe to include buckwheat. If you use the 1/4 C spoon to make them they will fit nicely in the toaster the next day.

If you don't have any buckwheat or buckwheat flour, go ahead and use rolled oats instead. If you are missing some fruit or nuts just leave it out or substitute a different kind.

Kevin likes to say, "You eat one," while holding a single finger in the air to illustrate just how dense these are. If you like light fluffy pancakes, don't bother making these. They are hearty and filling. (But really I eat more than one at a time. More like 2 on the first serving, 2 for the second serving, and several bites into the second serving I realize that I might explode if I take one more bite.)

Yum. I can hardly wait to dig in.

Is there even a pancake underneath all this topping?

Kamikaze Pancakes

1/2 C whole wheat (or soft wheat) flour
1/2 C rolled oats
1/2 C buckwheat flour (or more rolled oats)
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
2 T sugar
1/3 C powdered milk
2 eggs
1 C water
2 T oil
1 mashed banana
1/2 C washed blueberries
1/8 C chopped walnuts


Mix all the dry ingredients together. Mix the wet ingredients and beat it a bit with a fork, then mix in the mashed banana. Make a well with the dry ingredients, pour the wet into it and mix until just moistened. Gently fold in the blueberries and walnuts and bake on a hot griddle. Top with more blueberries, banana slices, and walnuts, and also your favorite pancake toppings, such as applesauce or maple syrup.

Penzeys Spices

Kevin is the best husband in the world. I know, I know. You think your husband is the best, but that is simply impossible. You only think it is because you have never been married to Kevin. Let me indulge myself in a little brag session. Please try to contain your intense jealousy; it will eat you up from the inside out if you do not get a handle on it.

The moment I see Kevin when I return from a shopping trip, his face lights up and he asks if I will show him my new treasures. Then, with genuine interest, he discusses each item while I tell him what I like about it and why I chose it.

If Kevin comes shopping with me, which he loves to do, he will wait outside the dressing room with my purse. If I head towards the dressing room without handing my purse to him, he will ask if I would like him to hold it for me. Each time I come out, he will tell me how cute I am in the clothes. If, while he is waiting, someone asks about the purse he is holding, he grins and says that it matches his shoes.

The only time he got embarrassed was when he was shopping alone for lingerie and the price wasn't ringing up. He tried to say he didn't need to buy it, but the clerk insisted it was no problem and ran to check the price. She was gone a long time, leaving him with a pair of sexy women's underwear at the front of a long line of suspicious stares.

This weekend Kevin, the amazing husband extraordinaire, accompanied me to a Penzeys store. We first heard about Penzeys two weeks ago at the symphony. Kara told us that it was a fabulous spice store that sells really good spices in 1/2 cup jars for cheaper than at the grocery store. I had the urge to throw my 5 year old spices in the trash and start fresh with a whole new rack but, alas, my thrifty nature dictates that each used Ziploc bag be used two or three times, and therefore getting rid of a cabinet full of old spices is completely out of the question. Being a cheapskate is a heavy burden.

As I made my final selections, Kevin went through the store and gathered every edition of the complimentary magazine distributed by Penzeys. Then we spent the entire 45 minute ride home enduring sharp hunger pains as I leafed through the recipes [and Kevin glanced over while driving extremely safely], complete with delectable pictures. Each page we turned revealed something more appealing.

Here is a picture of our fabulous new spices in our nifty new spice rack.

And this is a picture of some of the displaced food items that were made refugees by the new spice rack. The middle shelf was 1/2 inch too short to fit a rack, so we took it out and stacked the racks, and are now seriously short on shelf space. Bye, bye old food. We don't know where you will go, but you are no longer welcome here.

New Girl on the Job

Do you know any engineers? There is a reason they are called "geeks." They consist primarily of the kids who got beat up in high school. Their identities were founded in their intelligence because they just couldn't rely on their physical prowess.

Fast forward to the "real world" where most people look wincingly back at how they treated others in school. Most adults are very kind and certainly never intentionally humiliate anyone. That just ain't the case with most engineers. They got picked on, they didn't deserve it, and now they can retaliate by putting in place the intelectually inferior minions surrounding them.

It is worse when a group of engineers are in close proximity to each other. Like if they work together. Let the gnashing and gnarling of teeth begin. Each one wants to be the smartest engineer and being average will simple not suffice. This can create a very hostile environment and "idiot" is the word used most often by engineers.

My first year working at my job was terrible. In fact, it was worse than that. I worked with a group of 4 young engineers who, like me, were trying to prove their worth. I remember my first "code review." "Code" refers to the computer program that a software engineer writes. A code review is when a group of other engineers look at your code and makes comments on it which helps to remove all the bugs. One more thing you should know is that every software engineer thinks all other software engineers write horrible code.

When I was assigned my first project I thought it was very hard. I wasn't sure if I should even be a programmer, or if I was in the wrong field. I slaved away for weeks before I completed my program and finished testing it, and was incredibly proud of my accomplishment. As I sat basking in finally finishing, Jason walks in and sees that I am finishing my test, and he takes it upon himself to make sure I did everything correctly. When I tell him to leave, he physically rolls my chair away from my computer, pulls in his own chair, and starts looking through my code with an intensity I have not seen since.

With each line, his lip curls a bit further in disgust. My insecure self is withering with each passing second and after a few pages, he sigh and then growls, "I can't believe you wrote this s**t!" He turns to glare at me and waits for a response. What is a poor, kind girl, who would never dream of treating anyone else like this, supposed to do? I dashed for the bathroom to cry.

In the subsequent weeks and months, Jason evoked this response many times. Strangely, he would alternate between incredibly charming and downright mean. Sometimes he would be very fun for a few weeks. Then, all of a suddon, his mean side would erupt and he would spurt horrible, demeaning remarks. I was not the only victim of his lashings, but I was the newest member of the team, so I got the brunt end of his mean stick.

It was a strange time in my life. I had officially entered the adult world, and was thrilled to be supporting myself. But my job was nothing like I had imagined and every morning I would have to drag myself out of bed and force myself to face the environment that I now know is caused by insecure engineers trying to prove their self worth. In hindsight, I could have gone to HR and the abuse would have stopped. At the time I thought that it was what the "real world" was really like and that I would have to learn to handle it.

Thank goodness I am now on a team that is sarcastic but never mean spirited.

Déjà Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before

Amanda sent me an email with a bunch of puns and this one happened to stick out. It reminds me of my job.

There are three viable solutions to a problem we are trying to solve. We have discussed, in detail, the merits and limitations of each many, many times. Steve wants option #1. It will be the simplest to implement, but will require more maintenance, which we are notoriously bad at providing. Everyone on the team who lives in Iowa wants #3, which will be incredibly tricky to implement but very nice once it is finished. Kurt, Todd, and I want option #2. It is a combination of #1 and #3 and it will take a little more time to implement than #1 but less time than #3. It will also require less maintenance than #1.

*whew* Did anyone make it through all that blabbering? Several times each and every day I hear Kurt tell someone, "We just need to pick an option and go with it. None of them are perfect but any of them will work." Each time he says it he gets a little more irritated. These discussions have been happening for a couple of months.

Since Kurt is in charge, he will probably get his way. He usually does.

Oh So Very Gullible

The afternoon rush was interrupted by an urgent email:

See me in Stillwater immediately

Thanks,
Kurt

Stillwater is one of our conference rooms, and this email sounded really urgent, so I stood up, walked to the conference room, and saw that it was completely empty and the lights were out. Huh?

The moment I turned around I could see Todd and Steve standing up in their cubes watching me with huge grins plastered on their faces. Then I remembered seeing Steve sneak into Kurt's cube right before I got the email.

When I realized that Steve had sent me an email from Kurt's computer a hot flush rushed to my face, and I walked back to the Pentagram of Trust. No words could possibly account for such behavior except, "I'm so gullible!"

A Rose By Any Other Name

Why do certain people constantly attract nicknames and others get called strictly by their real names? I love nicknames. I dream of being called a multitude of nicknames. Like Megalicious. Or Megan the Maniac. But hardly anyone ever calls me by a nickname. Aunt Linnie calls me "Meglet". Dallas Edeler called me "maggot" in 5th grade because he said I was round and pale just like a real maggot. A college boyfriend called me "Little Weirdo." And that's my entire list of nicknames.

In a strange twist of normalcy, I have recently acquired a few nicknames, and all of them have been from coworkers:

1) Smiley
Wayne calls me "Smiley" every time we pass in the hall. I can't explain this one.

2) Megasaurous Wrecks

Todd and Steve like to tape cut-up pieces of Post-It notes to our name tags so that our names can transform into a multitude of variants. I like to put a blank piece over the "T" in Todd's name making him simply "odd." It seems to fit. One of his favorites for me started as Megasaurous, and soon morphed into Megasaurous Rex. Then I broke a piece of equipment and the name became Megasaurous Wrecks. It has a fun wring to it.

3) Eye Candy
Susie, a very attractive, single, 26 year old has been in our group for about a year. We like to go on a walk together every afternoon. Stacy is a 32 year old single guy who sits one aisle over. He is good friends with Kevin S, both of whom like to join us on our walks. Just to make sure there is no confusion, "Kevin S." is my coworker and "Kevin H" is my husband. I am continually recruiting more walkers, but for whatever reason most people don't want to take the time to walk around the outside of the building.

Sometimes our walks end up being just the 4 of us, and one time last summer, Stacy and Kevin S. were ready for the walk but Susie wasn't sitting at her desk. Stacy raised one eyebrow and stated that he wanted to wait until his 'eye candy' was there.

Dumbfounded that he would say such a thing right in the middle of the hallway, I asked what he meant, and he said that Susie was very attractive. He thought she was eye candy. Kevin S. responded that his was already there.

Being particularly slow, I asked if he thought she was cute, too. He responded, "No. I meant that you were already here so I am ready to go." Ummm....that makes it awkward. To make it even more awkward, Stacy jumped in and called me "Eye Candy" in front of one of our administrative assistants AND in front of our HR representative.

Susie doesn't know that Stacy refers to her as eye candy and he is embarrassed that she might find out about it someday.

White Chicken Chili

We've got beans. Bunches and bunches of them. Right before Christmas we ran out of beans in the freezer. We usually cook up a couple of pounds and freeze them in sandwich sized bags. I went downstairs to the food storage closet and *GASP* there were no more black beans. How could this be? Immediately I called Amanda, my sister-in-law, and told her that I absolutely needed some beans. Would she pick them up from the bean mill for me? I wasn't playing games - I needed 50 pounds of white beans, 50 pounds of red beans, and 100 pounds of black beans. Now we have our year's supply of beans, and now we are in dire need of some recipes to actually use them.

As it turns out, the black beans weren't ready so we still don't have them. It makes me tear up a little. *sniff*

I have been wanting to try a white chicken chili for awhile. We were both leery of it because chili just isn't chili if it doesn't have any chili powder. Alas, we had to leave our preconceived notions behind and take a leap of faith in our bean-using adventure.

This is a simple recipe. Basically, you throw all the spices together, let it simmer, and then throw in the beans and chicken. One bite and we realized that it is really very good. Really really. The cumin, which I usually don't like, gives it a familiar chili flavor, and it is very filling.

Here is the original recipe.

White Chicken Chili

1 small handful food storage onions, or 1 small onion
1 can chopped green chili peppers
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
3 cups chicken broth

2 cooked chicken breasts
3-4 cups cooked white beans (or 3 cans)
1/3 cup shredded white cheese (I used mozzarella)

1/8 cup parmesan cheese

Bring a pot of water to a boil and throw in the frozen chicken breasts. You do not need to thaw them first. Let them boil for a few minutes, until they are white all the way through. Then chop them into bite sized cubes.

If you are using a fresh onion, saute it in a little oil. Otherwise, put the food storage onions, green chilies, cumin, oregano, cayenne pepper and chicken broth in a soup pot and let it boil a few minutes. Throw in the beans, chicken, and cheese and stir it up. Heat everything thoroughly then take it off the burner. Alternately, you can add cheese to just your own bowl.

Keep Your Filthy Latin Grammar Rules to Yourself

Finally! An expert grammarian is sick of all the self-righteous correcting of other people's grammar.


The book on CD, A way with words. III : understanding grammar for powerful communication by Michael Drout, is a book for those of us who aren't always quite sure if we are using correct grammar. He is unmercifully hilarious while explaining every minute detail about correct grammar and the history of how it became a rule. If you have never heard anyone get really, really excited about grammar, this book is worth listening to just for the novelty.


His premise is that all people should know the rules of grammar, and then they should be free to break them whenever they want.


Even his mascot (a red panda) is a jab at traditional grammar books, which generally use a panda on the cover. The red panda is actually a small animal. The author spent hours waiting to see a red panda at the zoo, only to realize it was more like a raccoon than a huge bear. His friend made a very loud, very kid unfriendly comment when she realized they had waited for such a measly little animal. So he picked it for his book cover - the renegade panda and the renegade grammarian get together.


I love every section, but the one I love most is on prepositions. Why is it that ending a sentence with a preposition is one of the worst sins someone could commit with the English language? A preposition links nouns, pronouns and phrases to other words in a sentence. "Pre" means "before" and it came from Latin. You can't end something with the beginning, so in Latin you can not end a sentence with a preposition.


Drout thinks you should be aware that if you are in a place where you want to look really smart, you shouldn't end your sentence with a preposition. But technically, it is a rule that is a leftover from Latin and should never have been in the English language. Therefore, if someone corrects you when you end your sentence with a preposition, take Drout's advice and sneer at them, "Keep your filthy Latin grammar rules to yourself." That'll give them something to chew on.


Here's his blog: http://wormtalk.blogspot.com/

Both of My Guys

Harper and Kevin like to curl up on the couch together for a Sunday afternoon nap. Aren't they the cutest guys you've ever seen? Harper will nap wherever it is warm and cozy. His favorite spot is in front of the space heater, but he will settle for under a blanket or in the crook of your knee.

You made a mistake. You trusted him

Chris made a typo in a document that ultimately got sent to the customer. This mistake created a lot of extra work for Darlene, our configuration management expert, who came over to talk to Chris about it. She told him what needed to change and the process he should follow to get it sent to the customer correctly.

Chris sits 2 cubes away from me so I overheard the entire conversation. After a long, drawn out discussion, I popped up my head and stated, "It's OK, Darlene. You just made one small mistake. You trusted him." Darlene's hearty belly laugh echoed through the halls before she made it clear that she wouldn't be making that mistake again.

Apparently, this joke was originally on Animal House, which I have never had the misfortune of watching. It never gets old and our team uses it constantly. Did a test fail when Todd had claimed that it was finished? I'll take credit for the mistake - I shouldn't have trusted him. Does one of my tests fail? Kurt will take credit this time - never in a million years should he have trusted me.

Just for good measure, Steve offers us one more quote of the day - "Watching Someone Else Suffer is Almost as Fun as Having a Good Time Yourself."

It Doesn't Make You a Bad Cook

It happens to the best of cooks. Don't ask me why I think I have any expertise on the subject.

Something needs to come to a boil and after turning up the heat you run and quickly check your email. Then browse to see if any interesting news is on news.yahoo.com. Then you surf over to amazon.com to see if anything in your wish list is on sale. Before long, your nose perks up and you start to wonder where that smoky smell is coming from.

Dang it, the burner is on high and the oatmeal is burned. I suppose this pot should go out on the deck before the smoke alarms go off.

As luck would have it, just such a scenario transpired last weekend in our home. Early in our marriage Kevin once mentioned that it had been a while since I had burned anything. I think he was insinuating that I wasn't a good cook, but in reality being a good cook is wildly different from having EVERYTHING you cook turn out perfectly EVERY TIME. Who could possibly be held to that standard?

Also, the longer I fiddle with new recipes the more I realize that the most significant part of being a good cook is finding good recipes. It has nothing to do with raw talent.

We live in the real world, and part of that reality is sometimes running a pot outside while smoke billows into the house. The splendid imperfections of everyday life are what make it so precious.

One Burger Murdered

With the vain hope of grossing out someone [i.e. everyone] at work, I brought my burgers in this morning. I was so proud of myself that I was already boasting to Todd as I dug them out of the bag. Then I realized that disaster had struck. *Gasp* *Whimper* *Sob*

Yes, it is true. Although my November 23rd burger did not have a speck of rot on it, it had gotten knocked around in my bag and parts of the bun had broken off. Todd said that it wasn't going to work to keep it for show if the bun was falling apart.

Desperately, I pleaded with the burger I bought on December 18th. Would it consider taking the lead role in "how long will a fast food burger last?" Since I like to come up with really creative names, we're going to call him "December 18th."

Luckily, December 18th gladly rose to the occasion and is now the lead star in the drama of the fast food burger.

Move over, November 23rd! December 18th is the new star of the show.

In other news, I haven't eaten a burger at McDonald's or Burger King since November....Can you believe that these burgers and the buns are still looking so good? They are dried out but otherwise in pristine condition. Food should rot. Bread should grow mold. Is it pumped full of preservatives or is it made of something besides food?

Barely Used

Used can be as good as new. You save a little money and nothing goes to the landfill. A used car can cost thousands less than a new one and run just as well. A used pair of pants are already faded so you know the color will stay after several washes. As a kid we once went to the dump with Dad and found a teddy bear. Mom wouldn't let it into the house, which was utterly baffling because it was the best thing I had seen in a long time, and of top of that, it was free.

But the "why buy new when slightly used will do" rule just doesn't hold true when it comes to chap stick. This morning I walked into my cube to find a present. During the bitter cold Minnesota winter, a little lip balm may soften my parched lips, but it absolutely will NOT be anything that has already been used by anyone but me. Or maybe Kevin. In fact, having it used just one time is enough to make it completely off limits.

Gingerly, I picked up the offending tube and pranced it into Steve's cube. "Is this yours?" It wasn't his. Was it Kurt's? Nope. Was Todd the offender? Not him, either. It would be a shock to my system if it ended up being someone outside of the "Pentagram of Trust" so I sat back down in a perplexed stupor.

Finally, Steve fessed up to the surprise offering. He had found it in the lab coat of a visitor after he had left. He did not have any open sores on his lips, or in any other publicly obvious place, so Steve figured it would be a wonderful surprise for me. Just to make sure I knew it was only one hair shy of being brand new, he labeled it with the "Barely Used" note.

A closer inspection of the tube reveals that someone had once viciously ripped into the security wrapping in a dire effort to access the soothing relief that only chap stick can provide. Could I ever really trust a tube that broadcasts a history of abuse by such an obviously desperate man?

The Pentagram of Trust

The Circle of Evil

The 9 Layers of Hell

The 23rd Psalm

Here is a picture of the Gates of Hell by Rodin. The area between our cubes is much less artistic but just as scary.

What first comes to mind when you walk past the area in between the cubes of Steve, Todd, Kurt, and me? Often people will walk by and shudder. Steve calls this area the "Pentagram of Trust." Why does he call it that? We obviously don't really trust each other. It is because we all trust that no one in that area will turn anyone else in to HR for a blatantly obvious violation of personal boundaries or offensive behavior. There are a couple of reasons for this:

1) We haven't so far

2) Each of us has enough information on the others that none of us could possibly take it to HR without risking our own job in the process

If someone steps over the line one day and involves management in our fiascoes, all hell really will break loose. Hopefully the economy recovers before that happens.

Roger walked by today, shuddered, and then found a picture of the gates of hell so he could accurately provide a comparison to the feeling he got as he passed.

Manhattan Clam Chowder

The first time I ate clam chowder I had the misfortune of getting some dirt in my bowl. It was from the cafeteria at work, and I was already leery of that food. Then it happened again - and again - and again. EVERY time I somehow ended up with a little bit of dirt in my bowl. Granted, I grew up in a home where we ate red meat, so I wasn't used to a lot of meaty flavors or textures. In fact, the first time I cooked chicken (in middle school) I completely freaked out when it started to turn white. Luckily, Kristin's boyfriend was there to tell us it was just starting to cook. *WHEW* That was a disaster barely averted.

Anyway, back to the clam chowder. In 1939 the good people of Maine were so upset when they heard of a tomato based clam chowder that they proposed a bill to outlaw tomatoes in clam chowder. When I heard that, the rebel in me perked up her ears, and here we are - making Manhattan Clam Chowder. It is my first time eating the Manhattan version, so I am not sure how it compares to other recipes, but this one is pretty darn good. It comes from Dr. Mirkin's website. . .

This is really more like clam stew. It doesn't sound as good as the word "chowder" but when I hear "chowder" I think of a thick, creamy soup. This is beef stew where all the beef has been usurped by clams.

Don't they look funny in the can? I had one can of chopped and one can of minced and upon close inspection, I can't tell the difference. If you don't like the grainy texture of clams, give them a few taste tests. They grow on you until you feel sad when you don't get a grainy bite.

Manhattan Clam Chowder

3 C chicken or fish bouillon

2 carrots, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

1 C potato, chopped

2 cans of stewed tomatoes

1 t oregano

pinch cayenne

1/2 C barley, cooked

2 cans green beans

2 cans chopped clams and their juice

Combine the bouillon, carrots, celery, potato, tomatoes, oregano, cayenne and barley and simmer until the vegetables are tender. Add the green beans and the clams with their juice and heat about 5 minutes until warm. Revel in the knowledge that you are a wild, crazy rebel as you savor each bite. Then hope you get to travel to Maine someday to eat the blueberries. Make a mental note to not mention MANHATTAN clam chowder when you are there.

Just Like I Never Left

The craziest feeling swept over me as I drove into work yesterday. I had been gone for 2 weeks and had barely thought of anything work related. Would I remember how to do my job? Would I get back and try to step in only to find that someone far more qualified had taken over all my tasks?

Well.... 30 minutes after walking in the door and I felt like I had never left. Sheesh....I need a vacation.

The Year of Embracing Simplicity

What is your New Year's Resolution this year? Anonymous comments are now allowed, so all you lurkers can finally chime in. You can no longer pretend that you don't stop by because I just added a counter a couple of weeks ago and it is already at 245, and it will only counts each person once. I know because I tried to artificially inflate the count by hitting "refresh" over and over.


The book "This Year I Will...: How to Finally Change a Habit, Keep a Resolution, or Make a Dream Come True " suggested naming your year after your resolution to make it easier to change something in your life. Last year our resolution was to fully fund our Roth IRA's and we were wildly successful (which means we squeaked it out at the end of December.) It was wonderful to have a challenging goal that we actually reached, but it just doesn't have that special ring to say "I am funding my Roth IRA this year."

Initially, my resolution was going to be implementing the "One In, One Out" policy, which means that every time I buy something new, I have to get rid of something I already have. But I couldn't think of a way to name it, so I decided that the spirit of my resolution was to enjoy the simple things, and not look for fancy new things. Sipping chocolate milk and reading a book under a cozy blanket is going to be how I spend my free time this year - not shopping for another shirt. (The one in, one out policy will be part of it.) Hopefully we will end the year with less clutter and more peace.

Here is Katie enjoying the simple goodness of a glass of chocolate milk. It is in the not so simple glass that Aunt Louise gave me. Isn't it wonderful? She said I was the fanciest cook she knows, which I find very hard to believe. But they are beautiful and I am thrilled to have them, so I didn't put up too much of a fight. Katie kept saying how pretty they are. She was so happy to be able to drink her milk out of one. Thanks, Aunt Louise! She gave me them in the final days of 2008, so they don't count toward the "one in, one out" rule. That rule didn't start until today.

Chocolate Milk in 5 Minutes

1 pint heavy cream

4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips

Heat the cream on medium and then throw in the chocolate chips. Whisk until the chocolate is melted and smooth. Put it into a small empty ketchup bottle in the fridge. It will get really thick as it sits in the fridge. It lasts for about a week. Or more if you are adventurous.

When you are ready for your milk, add a few tablespoons of the syrup to a glass of skim milk and stir it up; there will be yummy pieces of chocolate in your milk. Sit back and smile as you enjoy the chocolaty goodness.