Regardless of how little sleep you’ve had, don’t ask your co-workers what year it is. They’ll just give you a strange look and back away a step.
Mouse bread
Warning: don’t read this if you have a weak stomach.
Here’s a story that makes me want to stop eating completely. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency reports on sometimes-bizarre health violations.
– Nature’s Oven Foods Ltd., a Kelowna bakery, was fined $10,000 after pleading guilty on June 12, 2002, to preparing food for sale under unsanitary conditions. An investigation of a consumer complaint of a rodent embryo inside the wrapper of a loaf of bread found rodent droppings and insects in the area where baked goods were being prepared.
– Lilydale Co-operative Ltd. was fined $2,500 on May 28, 2002, in Abbotsford for handling 284 turkeys at the slaughterhouse in a way that caused them avoidable distress and pain — immersing them into a scalding tank while conscious. *
These are only some of the violations that have been caught. How many elude the inspection process?
(shudder)
Lembas and ale
If anyone is watching The Two Towers on video tonight, you may consider replacing the popcorn with lembas–or “waybread”.
3 eggs
1 cup honey (preferably wild honey)
1 tablespoon grated orange peel or three kumquats or one large finger of a hand of Buddha.
2 teaspoons orange flower water (optional)
3 oz blanched almonds
1/4 cup melted butter
2-1/4 cups semolina flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
Place eggs, honey, orange peel or other fruit, orange flower water, and almonds in blender. Blend on high for 3 minutes. Add 1 cup of the flour. Blend for 1 minute. Scrape into a bowl and add remaining flour and salt. Whisk or stir until well blended. Bake lembas on a pizzelle or krumkake iron 15 seconds each or until lightly brown. You may substitute a waffle iron but add a teaspoon of baking powder. The texture will not be quite accurate in a waffle iron. *
Alternatively, you could simply munch on fishessss.
False impressions
Canada is a nation of the perpetually misunderstood. Some people think Canada is a northern utopia. Samantha Bennett, a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, is one of them:
You live next door to a clean-cut, quiet guy. He never plays loud music or throws raucous parties. He doesn’t gossip over the fence, just smiles politely and offers you some tomatoes. His lawn is cared-for, his house is neat as a pin and you get the feeling he doesn’t always lock his front door. He wears Dockers. You hardly know he’s there.
And then one day you discover that he has pot in his basement, spends his weekends at peace marches and that guy you’ve seen mowing the yard is his spouse.
Allow me to introduce Canada. *
As I snowshoed to work this morning, I thought about this article, but I was interrupted by several musket-wielding trappers. They stole all of my furs, which I had planned to take to the trading post. Now I can’t afford to buy beer, Canadian bacon (which we just call “bacon”), or firewood to heat the igloo.
It’s true that nobody carries handguns, but they’re no good for hunting buffalo. And you can’t take down an attacking grizzly with a .45. You need a good, sturdy hunting knife.
It’s also true that we didn’t send the Canadian army to fight in Iraq, but that’s only because he was busy that day. Also, our planes are only equipped with skis, which don’t work very well in the sand.
Thanks, Pete, for sending me this one. I’ll send you some seal blubber.
Link to full article: post-gazette.com: It’s not just the weather that’s cooler in Canada
Monday story pitch
Kirk Murkburger, a used car salesman in Des Moines, Washington, leads a quiet life of contemplation and rusty Hondas, until a spacecraft lands on his roof. The pilot, Princess Weenie of the Purple Slime Dimension, enlists him as her Hero and they set out on a quest to win back her claim to the throne of Barflesnack.
In a pitched space battle, Kirk is reduced to a shapeless blob of jelly and taken prisoner by the Nefarious Rog of Quarnon, the evil leader of the Barnacle Army, which inhabits the underside of a rock on a beach outside the Barflesnack palace. Kirk pretends to be an expert on the intricacies of interdimensional time-space travel and sells the Nefarious Rog a ’91 Honda Civic in exchange for his freedom and a fresh Mason jar.
Once free, Kirk defeats Rog in a battle of logic and marries Princess Weenie. They live a long and happy life and together raise several little jars of raspberry jelly.