How to Make a Lovely Holiday Wreath

You, too, can make this lovely Christmas wreath all by yourself. First, go to work and earn approximately 5€. This should take the average person less time than it takes to read about last night's game in the newspaper which is probably the first thing you do at work anyway. Then take the money and go to one of the millions of Chinese variety stores in Valencia. Buy the wreath for approximately 5€. You just saved yourself about eight hours of work and frustration by letting someone in a factory in the northern Chinese province of Hebei make the stupid wreath for you. Don't you feel relieved?

Tomorrow I’ll show you how to make a tasteful nativity scene using only empty beer cans, cigarette butts, and spent lotto tickets.

Merry Christmas and you're welcome.

Absolute Last Resort in Parenting Advice

WHEN SIMPLY IGNORING KIDS ISN’T ENOUGH

Although I don’t have any fancy degrees I did take an introductory psychology class Pass/Fail before being expelled from college. Pass/Fail? You’d think that my odds were at least 50/50, a coin toss, but I came up short on that little wager. Anyway, I didn’t let a botched academic career and two felony convictions get in the way of becoming a world-renowned child behavior analyst and talk show host. Today I’m here to answer questions about your little—and often extremely violent—balls of joy. I may not have kids of my own but at least I’m not helping to raise tomorrow’s prison population which makes me practically a hero in today’s America.

Dear Absolute Last Resort in Parenting Advice,

My 12 year old boy is a completely squirrely, anti-social moron who suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder and a host of other mental issues even though I allow him to watch at least eleven hours of television a day.  He is also permitted unlimited and unsupervised use of video games. What am I doing wrong?

Sincerely, Exasperated in Eau Claire

Dear EiEC,

Keep doing what you’re doing. I can’t imagine your parenting habits have anything to do with your child’s creepiness. Blame his teachers.

Dear ALRiPA,

For Christmas I bought my daughter a Nokia Lumia cell phone for Windows. When she opened it on Christmas morning she burst into tears and hurled the unwanted gift in my face. I took the phone back that same day and replaced it with the iPhone she wanted. My question is this: Do you think that I have already done irreparable damage to my daughter’s self-esteem by suggesting with the original gift that she didn’t deserve the iPhone?

Yours Truly, Chipped Tooth Mom in Chattanooga

Dear CTMiC,

What kind of monster would buy their child anything but a Blackberry or an iPhone? I would say that you are worse than Hitler except that Hitler had the sense not to have children. You need to accept the fact that your daughter will one day be a serial killer…if you’re lucky. If you aren’t she could grow up to work on Fox News.

Dear ALRiPA,

When my seven year old child gets upset he often strikes me either with his bare fists or with whatever toy he happens to be playing with at the time of the outburst. I’m afraid that if I try to block the blows I may hurt my little angel. Any suggestions?

Regards, Worried and Bruised in Bakersfield

Dear Worried and Bruised,

Although a seven year old can indeed inflict some serious damage they usually don’t have the stamina or heart to go the full 12 rounds. Simply allow him to get in his licks and eventually he will tire himself out. Remember to keep a bag of frozen peas around to reduce swelling in his knuckles. I'd also suggest that you do nothing to rile him when he's playing baseball...at least when he's at bat.

Beyond the Gastronomic Universe as We Know It

We are witnessing the Big Bang of culinary television.  Emerging out of the primordial soup of early broadcasting, the rise of popular food culture was geologically sluggish at first.  It started with recipes read over the radio, and then came television with Julia Child's horrible, pterodactyl-like squawking in black and white on public stations which was even less appealing than staring at the radio. With the advent of cable the evolutionary pace quickened and soon after there was an entire network devoted to eating.  Then there were two. Americans have advanced from eating partially-frozen chicken pot pies and Hostess® products to getting into fist-fights over whether or not a garnish is conceptually relevant to the dish.

It won’t be long before television will be nothing but stuff about cooking and eating and everything related to those tasks.  There’s even a new series where people sit around in the kitchen cooking and watching food shows in M.C. Escher fashion (if there isn’t a show like that there should be).  It makes you dizzy just thinking about it, dizzy and hungry.  What’s next?

Who needs schools when we could teach kids everything they need to know through cooking videos? About all this economy is producing are food service jobs so this sort of programming seems perfect. What better way to learn Spanish than a tutorial on paella or Italian taught via the fine art of making gnocchi?  If you don’t know a single word of a language—like Norwegian or Canadian—it’s probably because you’ve never seen anything from those places on the Food Channel. Teenagers only mock sex education as it's currently taught in schools so there’s no reason to spend good money on life-like human models when there are lots of fruits and vegetables that can serve the same purpose.

Perhaps our promised 15 minutes of fame will be on our own cooking show. If this is the case then the shortened, quarter of an hour format will mean that either the appetizer or the dessert has to go.  The truth is that I can’t even think of a main course I can pull off in 15 minutes. Great, my one chance at stardom and I have to microwave a bag of popcorn. Can anyone suggest a good wine pairing?

Or maybe heaven will be a cooking show for each and every one of us, sort of like a dreamy, fluffy cloud but with more appliances and 20 different kinds of pasta.  But what good is that? If everyone is busy with their own program there won’t be anyone to watch. I think it’s safe to say that an eternity of bad ratings isn’t anyone’s idea of nirvana and hardly an adequate reward for a life on earth spent adhering faithfully to God’s unimaginative recipes. I need to start sinning more…immediately. And by sin I mean fun stuff like coveting wives and goods and not sins that don’t seem fun at all like killing and having a false god. One god seems more trouble than he’s worth most of the time so why would anyone want two? That’s like going to the driver’s license bureau twice. 

Or even worse, hell could be a food show but without the luxuries we all take for granted, like self-cleaning ovens and expensive French cookware. A program where all you make are grilled cheese sandwiches and soup from cans and most of the time is dedicated to washing the dishes by hand . If this is Dante’s inferno then I think I’ve already been there.  It sounds suspiciously like the America of my childhood.  Just because I lived through this once before doesn’t mean it’ll be any easier the second time around. They don't even have extra virgin olive oil. Who would have guessed hell would be this awful? Note to self: stop sinning immediately, or maybe wait until after tonight's dinner party that I’m hoping will break out into an orgy, although at a certain age unbridled bacchanalia is more likely to burst into a heated discussion about recipes.

Tortilla de Setas con Queso

Primero vamos a freír las setas con cebolla en aceite de oliva y mantequilla que da un toque francés a la receta. Lo importante—por lo menos para mí—es freír las setas muy bien para que quedan muy tiernos…a mí no me gusta que sean al dente. Cuando están cocidas las añadimos en un bol con los huevos batidos. Luego añadimos un poco de queso tierno y sal. Echamos esta mezcla en una sartén a fuego muy lento…siempre con los huevos a fuego lento. Damos la vuelta a la tortilla y la cocinamos un rato más y ya está. El color debería ser amarillo, no quemado.

Tomates Raf

Two ripe raf tomatoes ready for the slaughter. These are winter tomatoes and they are at their best right now.