Cooking with the Vosses

So, I've been a really busy bee this weekend, what with all the jewelry order fulfilling, family time spending, laundry washing and folding and putting away-ing, etc. etc. In the midst of all of this crazy-time, I managed to cook (yes cook!) a great meal yesterday: buffalo chicken salad, which we ended up eating for lunch and dinner. For some reason, I always feel like cooking one nice meal like that should get me off of the hook for cooking subsequent meals for at least a week, but it's not so. I'm not complaining about my husband (yet), he actually does a lot of the cooking and he does it quite well, and I also like to cook ok, it's just that it gets in the way of other stuff that I am doing that I do better. And for some reason, I get really frustrated with lots of things cooking-related. Anyway, after working away on a wedding order all day today and filling a bunch of other orders, the last thing I felt like doing was cooking a whole 'nother meal, but apparently my family expects to eat several times daily. So, I went to the kitchen and started cheffing it up (which almost turned into effing it up since I toasted the almonds until they were blackened dust...oops.) And here is where my frustration starts: my husband comes in (ever the nosy backseat chef) and, after waving the broom wildly under the smoke detector to shut it up after the almond tragedy, he starts micromanaging my cooking ordeal. Seriously, this gets on my nerves like none other. First of all, he thinks that any and all foods/spices/condiments, etc. that are even remotely similar (or start with the same letter, or rhyme, or he's seen near each other in the grocery store...) can be used as substitutes for each other. This is maddening. I mean, I'm no gourmet chef, but I know that butter can't be substituted for cheese just b/c they are both dairy products. So, he starts going through the pantry and offering me all kinds of unsolicited advice, which is a huge pet peeve of mine anyway. He hands me pine nuts and says "here use these." No, dear, I can't use those. "Well, here use these peanuts." OMG! Freaking PEANUTS are not a good substitute for TOASTED ALMONDS!!!!! This was almost as bad as the other night when he wanted me to fry up some french fries in butter b/c we didn't have oil or solid shortening. I'm not kidding people, these are the cooking ideas that he has. And he stands by them. Staunchly.

Almost as much as that drives me crazy are the sooooo helpful substitutions offered in cook books and online: a few weeks ago I went to make drunken apples, which is a favorite dish of mine. Despite the name, I wasn't thinking that this would require me to have some liquor on-hand, but it did, and our sober selves didn't have any. Neither did our neighbors (I discovered this after dragging myself next door in my pajamas at 4 in the afternoon, banging on their door and asking feverishly "do you have any rum? I reeeeeaaaaally need some," since I was in a big ol' hurry b/c I had planned poorly and the apples were already all a'boil.) I'm pretty sure they called CPS on me, but they didn't have any rum. Of course my next step is to Google "substitutions for rum" and do you know what the first several results suggested?! *Rum extract!* Wow, who would've thought that you can use the extract of the VERY SAME ingredient you are missing instead of that ingredient itself?! Genius! I NEVER would have thought of that myself! I wanted to spit at someone. I mean, seriously, if I had rum extract I would either also have rum or would've figured out to use the damn extract. I have run into this problem several times when cooking or baking: I'm look for a substitute for dried thyme and fresh thyme is suggested (really?!) or I look for a replacement for some basic pantry staple and am offered, as a substitution, a complex recipe with multiple obscure ingredients. If I don't have a basic pantry item like baking powder then the chances are pretty good that I don't have *both* cream of tartar and baking soda. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr. And, I really do enjoy the back of one of my cookbooks which titles their "ingredients in a pinch" list as "Emergency Substitutions." Really? I mean, are we calling these emergencies now? Because I was kind of thinking the real emergency in a kitchen is catching fire to your hair or slicing off a finger with your Ginsu, but apparently also not having any molasses on hand ranks right up there, who knew?

Ahhhhh, the joy of cooking...

Meth : Mouth :: Midwest : Midriff

So, when I moved to the midwest I saw these horrific "Faces of Meth" billboards that show the befores and afters of meth users, and let me tell you, it ain't pretty. I don't know if they are effective for thwarting meth use but I will say that they are successful in making me want to puke when I see them. Take a look for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5xBjDg_RPY (and try to ignore that one of those dude's faces seemed to clear up in his after...they should've photoshopped some open sores on his face or something, lest a bunch of acne-riddled teens will be on OxyMeth.)

Anyway, a large focus of the "transformation" of these folks is the characteristic "meth mouth," hence the analogy in my blog title. Meth really is to the mouth what the midwest has been to my midriff. You know how the camera adds 10 pounds? Well, Minnesota adds a lot more than that.** I even had a doctor tell me, after I told her I gained weight since I moved here, that "that's just what the midwest does to people." What?!?! How come no one told me that before I moved here? How come my new driver's license didn't come with a warning sticker: "CAUTION: permanently changing your address from VA to MN may cause increased appetite & weight gain." How come no one told me that in order to stay warm in the brutal winters I would hunker down with doughnuts and candy and only leave the comfort of my warm home for mandatory evacuations, which don't happen? So, speaking of driver's licenses, this is exactly what spurred this blog post: I keep a copy of my VA license in my wallet (is that legal?) just to reminisce. I tell everyone it's b/c I'm homesick (partially true) but I'm not gonna lie, it's more b/c I look damn good in that picture. But, the juxtaposition of the VA & MN DLs is making me crazy. A few people have seen it when I pull out my MN one, and sure they say all the "nice" things "you're just not as tan in the MN one," and "you're not smiling in the MN one," to which I say, I'm not tan b/c I haven't left the house in 4 months, and I'm not smiling b/c I had frostbite. And besides, who knew being pale and melancholy made you look fat? But, the uncomfortable, somewhat sad pity-look on their faces says it all "damn girl, you got fat!" And while I'm exaggerating and overdramatizing a little bit (I have to leave the house everyday, dammit and I *did* birth two babies in a pretty short span of time) it still sucks.

And so, looking back, I should have noticed the signs of the east coast vs. the midwest weight situation (even cigarettes at home are called Virginia SLIMS) but I let my love for my husband blind me and I moved here and got all fat and happy. Damn the love, damn the donuts, damn the blizzards (the snowy kind and the Dairy Queen ones, which share equal amounts of culpability for this situation) and damn the Midwest Midriff.

**Please note, if you live in MN and are reading this and are mad at me, I'm not calling you fat. You natives have evolved to be able to handle the midwest without adding extra layers of padding for warmth and protection. I am specifically referring to a group of us who have moved here from a warmer climate and have experienced Midwest Midriff, a medical condition which causes one to be cold when Minnesota natives are wearing shorts, and hibernate when the temperature reaches Too Cold Degrees Farenheit.**

My Name Is Kathy Voss...

...and I'm apparently blogging. For my first act, I'd like to explain my blog title: I am going to be blogging about lots of things and since I almost started crying when I tried to decide between all of the blog subjects I wanted to cover, I decided on a combo. I then realized that there were still too many things, and I ended up in the fetal position rocking in the corner. I then heard a voice calling me out from the darkness: it was saying "choose 3, choose 3" but then I realized I was in the KFC drive thru being encouraged to select my 3 side dishes to go with my family sized bucket o' chicken. Then my brother had to take the bull by the horns and decide for me, thus a blog title was born of three passions of mine: comedy, often in the form of puns, ("Punny")+ my jewelry business/jewelry making ("Rings") + opinion/editorial ("True") = Punny Rings True.

So, I hope by combining these three topics I'm not going to deter potential business customers from buying from me b/c of a horrible joke I've told, pun I've made, or opinion I've ranted about, but I guess I'm just going to have to roll those dice for the sake of comedy. Let the fun begin...