You Can't Just Bacon Poop Anywhere

Once upon a time I went to happy hour with a friend and it was bacon night at the bar. You could order a giant plate of bacon for not much money along with your cocktail. What could be better -- bacon AND cocktails? Maybe some fried green tomatoes -- but I digress.

The point is that my friend couldn't have any bacon, because she was staying at the house of some very observant Jewish friends and they told her she couldn't bacon poop in their toilet. So she had to have salad.

This made me sad for her and utterly fascinated. I mean, it's a toilet. For what other purpose would one use a toilet except to flush things that you won't otherwise put elsewhere? I can comprehend the principle behind having separate plates and cookware for things that ought not mix. But the potty???? And really, how would they KNOW someone had bacon pooped in their toilet? For the record, being a most respectful and principle-of-the-matter girl, she declined the bacon.

Then I started wondering, how close to the house can the bacon poop get? If their neighbors stuff themselves with pork products, expel and then flush, does the pork poop whoosing into the sewer system past their house cause an issue? What if a dog has eaten bacon and poops in their yard? Do those Beggin Strips count, because I am pretty sure that isn't real bacon.

Then I started obsessing about what else one couldn't poop in their toilet.

• Definitely no cheeseburger poop.
• No shellfish poop.
• But what if you had, say, a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch and then meatloaf for supper? Would the cheese and the meat mix in your tummy and create a sacrilegious poop? (Note: This would be a terribly unhealthy diet and should be avoided.)
• Shrimp and grits would be off limits, for sure.
• No pork products at all.

The next logical step was to worry that I had inadvertently bacon pooped some where I should not have. But, really, I try not to do that sort of thing any place except at home. It's just too embarrassing and weird. I realize that I am probably unhealthily uptight about it, but that's just the way I feel.

Who hasn't been in a public restroom and been serenaded by the person next to you in a way that you wish would just stop? Work is the worst. I just don't want to share that kind of information with my colleagues or they with me. Okay, okay, I know. Everybody poops. I've read the book. BUT STILL!!!!

The mind boggles, really. It is so complicated. There is a whole world out there with rules and regulations on what you can poop where and I never knew. It makes me wonder what else I don't know about and through my ignorance am sending people to hell right and left. (Is that what happens if one is exposed to bacon poop? That is the problem -- I just don't know!)

I do hope the children's book authors are working on their next iteration entitled, "You Can't Just Bacon Poop Anywhere" and they will answer some of these questions, because I really am curious and this isn't the sort of thing you can ask just anyone.

The Bat Scared Santa's Reindeer Away

On Christmas Eve, we returned from merry-making with the neighbors -- lunch and presents with one then dinner, tree-trimming and presents with another. I had just settled on the sofa with a book and a dog in my lap when I saw the shadows of wings fluttering in the hallway. The scene was not unlike an old horror movie where the maiden is tucked into bed, sees the shadows of bat wings, thinks she must be imagining things and moments later is sucked dry by a vampire.

Luckily, I'd seen that movie and yelled to Drew that there was a bat in the house. Henry, our tiny kitten, confirmed it as he raced along the hallway, looking straight up and leaping at the bat, ready to go in for the kill if only his tiny kitten legs could catapult him to the ceiling.

Let me tell you, bats are creepy. They're all well and good in the outdoors, flying out from under the Congress Avenue bridge in Austin, off to eat their weight in mosquitos. Flying about in your house on Christmas Eve is another matter. C.R.E.E.P.Y. And wrong. And libel to scare Santa and his reindeer away.

Our first problem was that none of our rooms on the first floor have doors. It isn't that kind of house -- it flows, it has big formal rooms for entertaining. Plus, most of the windows don't open, so we couldn't just shut him up, open a window and hope for the best -- as advised by the neighbor who has had bats in her house before. Plus, who in their right mind would leave the relative warmth of indoors to go out in the frigid Pittsburgh winter temperatures? Not me. Not the bat.

Drew, a city boy through and through, was just as freaked out as I was, but because he is the boy he was called upon to vanquish the winged intruder. Drew grabs a shirt box and brandishes it as a shield to protect himself. I hand him the broom and then duck into another room laughing hysterically as Drew repeatedly hits the deck as the bat flutters by.

The bat finally settles on the ornate plaster work just above the murals in what has been dubbed "the music room," because George Gershwin played the piano there when he was in town. Naturally, it is the nicest room in the house and not one that you'd want bat guts splattered all over, so my plan of bashing him with a broom was nixed.

Drew stood there trying to reason with the bat: "Man, you really can't be here any more. This is really uncool. It's time to go. Come on man. Out you go." I pointed out that he wasn't trying to reason with stoned guy at a party and the parents were on their way home. It was a BAT. Obviously, that tactic didn't work. Instead, I thought whipping cat toys past Drew's head in the direction of the bat might get him off the wall and out of the pretty room. Alas, I didn't tell Drew that I was going to throw the cat toys, so he nearly had a heart attack thinking the bat had an aggressive friend. Oops.

We opened the door in the music room. Turned on all the lights, thinking the bat wouldn't flap into really well lit rooms and I went to the garage to get the net I bought when I had to fish the dead fish out of the pond. After 5 minutes or so of Drew trying to screw up the courage to put the net over the bat and repeated laments of "he's looking at me! He's looking at me with his beady, creepy bat eyes!" Drew did it. Then the bat just started walking along the wall, trying to get out from underneath the net. I'm screaming "poke him with a stick! poke him with a stick!"

Eventually, Drew did poke him with a stick and the bat fell into the net, Drew rushed outside, shut the door and then worked to release the little invader from the net, so he didn't get stuck and die. Me, I operate under the take no prisoners theory of: If something comes in my house and it shouldn't be there, I get to kill it. Guess that's the Texan in me.

Standards of Beauty

My guilty TV secret is I love to watch "America's Next Top Model." It is fascinating to me, because modeling is something I have zero interest in and a world that I find rather horrifying and shallow, yet it has a real influence on how women and girls feel about themselves. It is so destructive to girls' self-images, promoting an obsession with being too thin, giant breasts and an unobtainable beauty. More often than not, being beautiful means white or at the very least having light skin.

Last night, the girl who won was a dark-skinned African American from a tiny town down south. Perhaps Arkansas, but I'm not sure. It actually brought me to tears. She cried and cried, saying that growing up she never felt pretty, because there were no examples of women who looked like her in the media. She wants to model, because she wants to be a role model for dark-skinned black girls who don't know that they can be lovely, because the fashion industry tells us that beauty does not include them.

I always expected it would be difficult to raise girls to be healthy young ladies with strong self-esteem given all the images they see in popular culture. Now that women seem only too happy to exploit themselves, it has to be even worse. Add to that skin color and it makes my stomach hurt to think of what women of color must go through to find a confident, healthy, self-identity. It is sickening that black women, who are so very beautiful, feel invalidated because whites have controlled the images for so long. I am glad it is changing.

Whether we like it or not, the images we see in the media and popular culture affect how we feel about ourselves. While I dismiss the fashion industry as shallow and silly, it influences how women feel about themselves. Tyra Banks and "America's Next Top Model" are actually doing a positive service for the self-image of young ladies. The contestants represent all races, some plus-size (although not terribly plus) and even the non-winners go on to successful careers. They are telling girls of all skin color and backgrounds that they can be beautiful and that is important.

Whether it is important to be beautiful should be up for debate, but the truth is that it matters in our society. I wish intelligence or talent or something else would be the most important factor. And some times those characteristics can be paramount. Yet studies repeatedly say that people react better to beauty. At the very least, these silly reality-TV shows are trying to redefine and expand what qualifies as beautiful. Perhaps it isn't so shallow after all.

I Love Soup

Soup is the easiest, most satisfying thing to make for dinner, especially on a cold night. Even though it is getting warmer out, the nights are chilly and I still turn to soup for a quick meal.

I had a delicious corn chowder at Cafe Deluxe in DC one afternoon and then went on a research expedition to find the perfect corn soup. Twenty cookbooks and several online sites later and I found Creamy Corn Soup with Red Bell Pepper on Epicurious. It is from Bon Appetit's March 2001 issue and is a recipe from the Double Rainbow II in Albuquerque. I made it for Easter last year and it was extremely popular. I have made it several times since and we never tire of it.

The beauty of it is the corn does not have to be in season -- you use cream-style corn and frozen corn. In fact, I think it would be a waste of fresh, in-season corn to use in this soup. I've got a salmon chowder recipe that just cries out for fresh corn. But that is another blog. You could even make your own cream-style corn, but that seems like a waste of time. Just use the cans and have delicious soup in about a half hour. Add more or less canned chipotle chilies depending on your tolerance of spice. Me, I like lots.

Now on to the recipe. Makes 4 main-course or 6 first-course servings

2 TBSP butter or olive oil

1 large red bell pepper, chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 14 1/2 oz. can diced tomatoes in juice

2 cups (or more) water

2 TBSP chopped, canned chipotle chilies

2 14 3/4 oz. cans cream-style corn

1 16-oz. package frozen corn

1 c. whipping cream (or milk)

1 tsp. dried oregano

Melt butter (or heat olive oil) in heavy, large pot over medium-high heat. Add bell pepper, onion and garlic; saute until onion is tender, about 5 minutes. Add tomatoes with juices to pot; cook 2 minutes. Combine 2 cups water and chipotle chilies in blender and puree. Mix puree and cream-style corn into pot. Bring soup to boil. Reduce heat to medium and simmer 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add frozen corn, cream and oregano; simmer 5 minutes.

YUM.

Simple Things for a Healthy Diet

Michelle Obama is the most amazing woman. Besides the shallow reasons for thinking she is fabulous such as her beauty, her fabulous arm muscles and her marvelous sense of style, I admire her for her incredible intellect, her interest in things that I think matter such as healthy eating habits and her most recent job of working on the task force to combat childhood obesity.

This post is a bit late since the announcement was early last week, but I keep thinking about the interview I saw on the PBS Newshour where she made ever so much sense. The thing that resonated most was her no nonsense approach to changing the eating habits of her girls when a doctor's visit found that their BMI was not what it should be. This happened when Mrs. Obama was a working mother in Chicago with her husband away in Washington, D.C., when President Obama was a Senator. She had to juggle the responsibilities that a single mother would -- getting the kids up, fed and to school, herself to work and then dinner for herself and the children. It is so easy to rely on prepared foods and unhealthy snacks, because who has time to be the mother of two, the wife of a U.S. Senator, have a career and to make three well-balanced meals a day. Mrs. Obama said that with very simple changes -- and that is the key, because major, life-altering changes are so daunting -- she was able to make major changes in her daughters' health. No juice boxes in their lunches, desserts being offered only on weekends, etc.

The acknowledgement that parents are busy and major changes generally are a nonstarter is a necessary ingredient for success. Involving the agriculture department and other organizations responsible for feeding children is so important. New York City and San Francisco have some really interesting school lunch programs that involve fresh foods and local farms. I hope the White House looks to leaders in school lunch who say no to cardboard pizza and sodas and yes to homemade foods from local farms. Alice Waters and her Edible Schoolyard project is also inspirational in getting kids involved in growing vegetables, understanding where their food comes from and then cooking it. Not all kids will be into that, but many will. Anything that can get people thinking about what they put into their bodies is a big deal as far as I am concerned. It matters for overall health and it matters for the planet. Take your pick -- be inspired for reasons of self or broader global reasons. Whatever works.

The interview with Mrs. Obama really resonated with me, because the things she said are things that I found work for me. Any time I decide I need to go on a diet, I immediately begin feeling like I am starving and I crave pizza. I simply can't handle the mental idea of depriving myself. Being naturally oppositional, if I am told "no" -- even when I tell myself -- I rebel. So now when I notice my weight sneaking up and that my eating habits have been less than impressive -- 3 oatmeal cookies and two individual-serving bags of Cheetos in one day, for example -- I realize it is time to get myself in hand. Instead of going on a diet, I go on a cooking spree.

So after that theoretical cookie/Cheeto binge, I made a big pot of white beans with herbs and garlic. I have breakfast tacos in the morning with the beans, corn tortillas, perhaps some scrambled egg whites or some low-fat roasted potatoes and salsa. I might add a small grating of cheese for flavor. My goal is to eat a high protein breakfast with more calories in the morning and taper off at night.

I made a curried lentil stew with carrots, onion, garlic, curry, Swiss chard and homemade vegetable stock. Add some wild rice and you've got protein, vegetables, whole grains and something warm in your stomach on a cold winter afternoon. That serves as lunch.

Snacks are almonds, oranges, grapefruit or some oatmeal.

Dinner is yogurt, fruit and granola. I wake up really hungry, but don't get hungry throughout the day and very shortly the weight starts to drop off. If I have a craving for something sweet, I have a bar of bittersweet dark chocolate in the pantry and it will take me at least three months to polish it off one little square at a time. Although, I admit sweets are not my downfall and salty treats are, so I hardly ever buy those kinds of things. You will not find prepared foods, chips, etc. in my house. Not because I am such a health nut or so superior, but because I will eat the whole damn bag in one sitting. So I just don't tempt myself. I swear the corn chips call to me, begging to be liberated from the pantry and being so kind-hearted, I must stop the suffering. There have been times when I swear I can feel my legs getting fatter after one of those missions to free the chips and it is disturbing. So I just don't buy those things that will cause my thighs to turn to jello before my eyes.

I also have to make sure I get up off the couch and move, which is pretty difficult some days when the snow is falling and I have a sweet dog snoring away in my lap. It is much more enticing to stay under the blanket and dog and watch old movies. Even just mopping the first floor and cleaning the upstairs bathrooms is a start. But I really need to make it a priority to work in some cardio and weight training. I am never going to get those Michelle Obama arm muscles unless I pick up those weights and get my heart rate up.

So while I toil away at my flabby arms, I will also be keeping an eye on this White House and new task force. I have high hopes that with the combined intelligence of the folks on that panel and with Mrs. Obama at the helm, we're going to see some really interesting and doable proposals.

Red Lentil Soup

For years now I have followed Heidi Swanson at www.101cookbooks.com. I relate to her obsession with collecting cookbooks and recently counted mine. I come in at just under 100. Ninety eight to be exact. I’ve identified a couple that I never use, but otherwise I use them all. When I want to cook anything, I cross reference the recipe until I find one that sounds the best or cobble together elements from various recipes that I think will work.

Part of that collection includes Heidi’s “Supernatural Cooking,” an extremely healthy collection of vegetarian recipes. I like the book and the recipes are good, but they often include ingredients that are difficult to find and it becomes discouraging. As a devote of Julia Child, I try to follow her advice and not to be daunted by a lack of ingredient and just forge ahead without it or find what seems like an adequate substitution. For example, she has a recipe for chocolate chip cookies with mesquite flour. I've never found the mesquite flour and don't feel like sending away for a bag of it just for these cookies. A substitute of whole wheat flour just has to suffice. The cookies get rave reviews, so I guess they aren't suffering too much from the missing ingredient.

Heidi recently announced that she is working on a new cookbook and I can hardly wait until it comes out. The recipes are going to be quick, weeknight recipes. While I firmly believe the best food involves time and attention, I don’t always have hours to cook dinner and having some quick, healthy recipes at my fingertips will be welcome.

As if the extensive collection of cookbooks and cooking magazines weren't enough, I continually go to 101cookbooks to check out Heidi's new recipes and find something for dinner. I recently made her red lentil soup and it was unbelievably fantastic. Of course, I modified it because I love spice. The original merely called for a bit of red pepper flakes, but I found that an addition of curry powder and a hint of garam masala was just the ticket. The brown rice adds body to the soup, which is much needed as red lentils can be a bit weak.

This soup takes very little time to make and is the perfect thing for a cold winter night.

Red Lentil Soup

extra virgin olive oil


1 onion or shallot, chopped


2 garlic cloves, crushed

1/2 teaspoon red-pepper flakes

1 tsp. curry powder

dash of garam masala

6 cups good-tasting vegetable stock (or water)


1 1/3 cup red lentils, picked over and rinsed


1/2 cup brown rice, picked over and rinsed


salt as needed

In a big soup pot, over medium heat, combine the olive oil, onion, garlic and red pepper flakes. Let them brown, and caramelize a bit, stirring occasionally.

Stir in the broth, bring to a boil, then stir in the lentils and rice. Simmer for about 30 minutes or until the rice is very tender. This may take longer depending on the type of rice you have. By this time, the lentils will have collapsed. If you need to add more water/broth at any point, do so a splash at a time, until the soup thins out to the point you prefer.

Salt the soup until it no longer tastes flat.

Serves 4 - 6.

Cornmeal Date Scones

When I worked at CakeLove, the owner made the most amazing scones filled with dates, ginger and a bit of cornmeal. He whipped them together for a general manager's meeting and didn't have a recipe. Believe me, I asked. I obsessed about them for weeks afterward and way more than a year later I still think about them.

With no formal recipe and my faulty memory, the best I can do is try to create something delicious and I think I succeeded this AM. I used buttermilk since I always have buttermilk in the frig. Cream would make them richer and could be substituted. Or milk.

Not liking things too sweet, especially breakfast food, I didn't fill up the 1/4 cup measuring scoop with sugar because it looked like A LOT of sugar vis-a-vie the amount of flour. I could have used the full 1/4 c. of sugar, but when the measuring scoop was about 3/4 full, I tossed it in. That was just the right amount for me, but feel free to add full 1/4 cup if you like sweeter scones.

I could have used more dates, although the occasional bite of chewy fruit is adequate. The six I chopped up looked like a lot, but I love dates and it never hurts to have more fruit than less.

1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour

3/4 c. fine yellow cornmeal

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

scant 1/4 c. sugar (maybe about 3/4 full)

1 stick (1/2 c.) unsalted butter

1 c. buttermilk or milk or cream

6 pieces of crystallized or candied ginger, chopped

6 to 8 dried dates, pitted and chopped

Preheat oven to 375. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper; set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar. Using a pastry blender, cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse meal with larger clumps. Add the chopped dates and ginger. Toss with your hands to combine.

Pour in the buttermilk (or other liquid). Using a rubber spatula, fold buttermilk into the dough, working in all directions and incorporating crumbs at the bottom of the bowl until the dough just comes together. If you need to add a splash more liquid to bring the dough together, go right ahead. The dough will be slightly sticky. Do not overmix.

Drop mounds of dough (about 1/3 c. each) about 1 1/2 inches apart on prepared baking sheet. You can use your hands or two spoons.

Bake until the scones are golden, 15 to 20 minutes.