Month: March 2017

Posted in Books, Food, Holidays, Uncategorized

7 Ways To Survive Your Kitchen

Posted on by D. Parker

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/23/7-ways-to-survive-your-kitchen/The sun set; dusk fell on the shelf, and lights began to appear along the stove. That which blends, so held, in hand or all alone, such power, to mix, to mash, to merge, to fuse, once individual, now as one, together. The upper reaches, the place of monstrous leftovers, marked ominously with a date, huddle in the brooding gloom of fridge light, mocked by the enticing garish glare of magnet cradled take-out flyers.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/23/7-ways-to-survive-your-kitchen/

 “And this,” she noted suddenly, “has to be one of the dark places of the earth.”

 In the static of their surroundings, the slightly scornful pots, pans, knives and other pointy things lurked, growled their promise, ready to play the food game.

 She doggedly tried to follow the medically suggested diet; the worst that could be said of her was she wanted to believe.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/23/7-ways-to-survive-your-kitchen/

 Food is not for the faint of heart, it beckons, it bubbles, it boils, it brews, it even burns...Food, as perplexing as the definition of fake news. My food feelings? Let’s just say, my kitchen and me, we’re officially changing our relationship status to, “It’s complicated”.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/23/7-ways-to-survive-your-kitchen/

Let’s Play – 7 Ways To Survive Your Kitchen!!!

1. Have your recipes, like blog posts and/or synopsis ready – in your head, online, or written down. Have all your ingredients out first, nothing worse than being halfway through and notice you’re not rising to the occasion.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/23/7-ways-to-survive-your-kitchen/2. Cooking is time-consuming, like blogging, like writing, like life itself, but if you clean up as you go, it’s easier. Try baking soda and vinegar – ecofriendly, frugal, and together they’re an explosive combination, seriously you can make a volcano while cleaning. Don’t forget to snap on your rubber gloves and clean that dirty, dirty oven. Maybe you’ll have naughty dreams about kitchens – hot, steamy dreams about someone else cooking/cleaning for you, oh yeees!!!

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/23/7-ways-to-survive-your-kitchen/

3. Tempted by takeaway/takeout, fast food, even processed foods? Remind yourself it’s bad for your waist and wallet. Same goes for blogging, fast and processed, you can get that anywhere, isn’t it better to go for the real thing.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/23/7-ways-to-survive-your-kitchen/

4. Easter is an egg-cellent time to dye eggs, naturally, with family, friends (even imaginary ones), and furfriends. Then you can still eat them, the eggs, not family, friends, or furfriends. Is your egg a good egg? Fill a bowl with water. Gently place “suspicious” egg in the bowl. Does the egg stay on the bottom sideways – a good egg! Does it stand up, but lean drunkenly to the side – still good, but better really a pickled egg. Stands straight up, still ok, but use, like right now. Floating? A bad egg (cue the Veruca Salt song from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory). I am the maker of merriment, the dreamer of dreams (in case you were away https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/09/heres-to-the-ones-who-dream/).

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/23/7-ways-to-survive-your-kitchen/

 5. Beware The Pointies! It seems like kitchen gadgets, utensils, tools, gizmos, appliances, etc. are designed to somehow maim, mangle, or even murder those innocently trying to cook.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/23/7-ways-to-survive-your-kitchen/

Kitchens are deathtraps. Be safe.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/23/7-ways-to-survive-your-kitchen/

6. Lettuce us celebrate cooking! Like blogging, writing, social media, friendships, relationships, work, and life in general, it can be a time-eater. Orange you glad we didn’t make a big dill about this game? Romaine calm, even if you feel like you’re playing ketchup with all the relish you can mustard. Just beet it and spaghetti out of here.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/23/7-ways-to-survive-your-kitchen/

7. Life is like a paper bag…You just never know when you need to cover, conceal, meltdown, carry, ripen (seriously easy way to ripen your avocados, bananas, apples, tomatoes, etc.), and you really never know when you’re going to need a puppet. Be ready.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/23/7-ways-to-survive-your-kitchen/

Oh life, it’s bigger
It’s bigger than you (doesn’t feel like it on a bloat day)
And you are not me (not even on a bloat day)
The lengths that I will go to,
the chocolate that adds to my thighs
Oh no, I’ve ate too much
I didn’t eat enough?

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/23/7-ways-to-survive-your-kitchen/

That’s me in the corner
That’s me in the spotlight
Losing my willpower….
I thought that I heard you baking
I thought that I heard you grill
I think I thought I saw you fry

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/23/7-ways-to-survive-your-kitchen/

Consider this
Consider this, a hint of cake and cookies
Consider this, the stroganoff
That brought me to my knees
That was just a dream
Try, cry, why try
That was just a dream
Just a food dream
Just a food dream

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/23/7-ways-to-survive-your-kitchen/

Well, dear readers, do you want to keep playing? Awesome, then tell me your: food battles, food love affairs, diets, tips, advice, recipes.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/23/7-ways-to-survive-your-kitchen/

 I’d like to thank those who inspired the game: food, Joseph Conrad, Martin Sheen, R.E.M., Liam Neeson – I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for onions or garlic, I can’t have them. But I do have are a very peculiar set of skills, skills I have acquired over years of cooking…

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/23/7-ways-to-survive-your-kitchen/

Posted in Movies

Here’s to the Ones Who Dream

Posted on by D. Parker

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/09/heres-to-the-ones-who-dream/Now this is a story about how
My life flipped-turned upside down…
I’ll even tell the story without a crown.
In Ontario, Canada born and raised
On the internet spending too much of my days
Chillin’ out maxin’ relaxin’ all cool
In a writing/life slump, not cool, fool
I begged and pleaded with myself day after day
Still I packed my mental suitcase and sent me on my way.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/09/heres-to-the-ones-who-dream/I gave me a kiss and then gave me my ticket.
I put my Walkman on and said, “I might as well kick it.”
I pulled up to yet another chapter of my life
And yelled, “Yo world smell ya later.”

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/09/heres-to-the-ones-who-dream/

I understood completely, in La La Land, when Ryan Gosling/Sebastian explains he’s letting life hit him on the head, over and over, until life exhausts itself. How many of us feel beaten down by life, chasing a dream, and sometimes looking at our feet when we dance (physically and metaphorically)?

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/09/heres-to-the-ones-who-dream/
In all seriousness, as I watched La La Land  I wanted to dance and I cried as Emma Stone/Mia sang, “Here’s to the ones who dream. Foolish, as they may seem. Here’s to the hearts that ache. Here’s to the mess we make….So bring on the rebels. The ripples from pebbles…” – I can’t help myself, I’m one of those who dream, foolish as it may seem – as the movie ended I wanted to watch it again and again.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/09/heres-to-the-ones-who-dream/

But we can’t live our lives in theaters, on our phones, on vacation, online, pretending to be safe. Life can be terrifying; we’re not in control. How can we feel safe when we lose loved ones, when cancer viciously attacks, when money and power trump logic and reason, when affordable housing is scarce, when the ruling class lacks class and common sense, when people worship that ruling class and celebrities, when crime and terrorism are more lucrative that real jobs, when your own brain (cotton-headed ninnymuggin hypothalamus) turns on you…and so on and so on.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/09/heres-to-the-ones-who-dream/

1. Some folks are upset that Disney’s live action version of Beauty and the Beast starring Emma Watson (Harry Potter), Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey https://yadadarcyyada.com/2014/11/20/i-want-a-round-home-or-the-staff-of-downton-abbey/), Emma Thompson (Sense and Sensibility, Nanny McPhee, Harry Potter, Love Actually), Luke Evans (The Hobbit), Josh Gad (Frozen https://yadadarcyyada.com/2014/08/23/frozen-in-summer/), Ewan McGregor (Star Wars, Trainspotting, Big Fish https://yadadarcyyada.com/2014/04/24/big-fish/) has an openly gay character, whatever that means, there’s way more stuff with openly heterosexual characters, are gay people upset by that? Whatever.
A) The candlestick, Lumière was on my gaydar, in the original, I mean, he was on fire.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/09/heres-to-the-ones-who-dream/
B) Who cares/why do people care/it’s about time.
C) Is no one worried about the more disturbing aspects of Belle and The Beast’s relationship, you know, the enslavement, the furry love, etc.?

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/09/heres-to-the-ones-who-dream/
Personally I was more worried the remake of Beauty and The Beast  would be Donald and Melania Trump story. Gross.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/09/heres-to-the-ones-who-dream/

2. Mystified by the real world, I escaped into the fake.
Lovely to see Agatha Raisin join Miss Marple, Jessica Fletcher, Miss Fisher, Nancy Drew, Hannah Swensen and more onscreen https://yadadarcyyada.com/2016/05/25/crapathy/ with hilarious results, ok, murder shouldn’t be funny, but it’s not real, right? On the page M.C. Beaton makes Agatha’s life sassy, silly, and killy , but onscreen Ashley Jensen really brings Agatha to life.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/09/heres-to-the-ones-who-dream/
Finally saw The Accidental Husband, a kooky romcom starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Colin Firth, Uma Thurman, Isabella Rossellini, and Sam Shepard. Got to be honest, after watching Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan in Season 7 of The Walking Dead, I struggled to see him as a romantic leading man again, I keep expecting him to whip out his, er…Lucille. I got over it.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/09/heres-to-the-ones-who-dream/
3. I get it, people lie.
House (Hugh Laurie) would tell you “Everybody lies”.
Maybe we all do, in a way.
People have been lying to me all my life:
“I’ll always be here.”
“You’ll use Trigonometry.”
“You can never have too many friends.”
“If the rich make money it will trickle down.”
“Everything will be ok.”
No.
Never.
Yes, you can, have you been in Facebook?
No, it won’t.
Depends what you mean by ok.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/09/heres-to-the-ones-who-dream/

4. When someone begins a sentence:
“Let me be clear…”
“At the end of the day…”
“No offence…”
“Believe me….”
hmmm, that sentence will be about as realistic as Riverdale (teen angst Twin Peaks meets Archie comics complete with Josie and the Pussycats
https://yadadarcyyada.com/2016/06/10/cant-you-just-pretend-to-be-nice/
https://yadadarcyyada.com/2014/08/09/i-miss-saturday-morning-cartoons/). I really do miss Saturday morning cartoons…

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/09/heres-to-the-ones-who-dream/

5. Finding Dory reminded me:
A) In this mixed-up world, kindness and compassion are still important
https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/01/06/im-not-inclined-to-resign-to-maturity/
https://yadadarcyyada.com/2015/02/20/compassion-never-goes-out-of-style/

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/09/heres-to-the-ones-who-dream/

B) People with disabilities can be vulnerable, be kind.
C) Disabilities aren’t the end of the world, you can still be happy, it’s just a matter of finding your way.
D) Always remember, home and family are wherever your heart is, really.https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/09/heres-to-the-ones-who-dream/

Sorry I’ve been gone so long, I’m trying to jump out of my slump, until then, I’m not the Fresh anything of anything, but here’s to the ones who dream (for St. Patrick’s Day https://yadadarcyyada.com/2015/03/14/go-ahead-make-my-st-patricks-day/ here’s to the ones who dream in green)…it’s never as foolish as it may seem.

https://yadadarcyyada.com/2017/03/09/heres-to-the-ones-who-dream/