Did you know that basketball was first played with peach baskets?
Found this thanks to Kate Beaton, who is my favorite person on the internet.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Friday, December 14, 2007
Will Coffee Nog? Yes!
Nog here goes in the place of cream, making your morning coffee a thick, frothy holiday-flavored beverage. The cinnamon and nutmeg flavors complement fresh coffee, and the nog thickens the broth up, making your morning coffee-nog a hearty treat. Nothing says Christmas-themed sweaters and holiday cheer like a big steaming glass of nog in the morning.
New Feature: Will It Nog?
It's "the season" again - the season for egg nog. Dairy department employees the world over start stocking the shelves with the thick, creamy, liquid that is as mysterious as it is tasty. What the hell is it? Why does it mingle onto our supermarket shelves only in winter, to go mosey off once the Christmas trees are migrating out to their January dumpsters? It is pointless to ask these questions. They have no answer. It is simply the Rhythm of the universe, enshrined in tradition as surely as the movement of the stars or the passage of the seasons.
To celebrate the glorious winter brew I'm taking this blog out of hiatus. We'll be starting a new section: Will it nog? I'll test popular foodstuffs and ask the important question the MAINSTREAM MEDIA are afraid to ask: will it taste good with nog?
Suggestions for foodstuffs can be left in the comments.
To celebrate the glorious winter brew I'm taking this blog out of hiatus. We'll be starting a new section: Will it nog? I'll test popular foodstuffs and ask the important question the MAINSTREAM MEDIA are afraid to ask: will it taste good with nog?
Suggestions for foodstuffs can be left in the comments.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Peach # 100: Peaches in the summertime, apples in the fall.
After my dinner, I had the perfect idea for desert. It's a really simple recpie, and I haven't seen it anywhere before, so here you go, passed from generations of Mackies straight to you:
I've had really great experiences with this recipe. People always ask me for it and I tell them I can't give away my secret. But there was a problem with this night's peach. This peach sucked.
The skin felt rubbery, and when I bit in, I found a green and grainy peach, one with no flavor, edible only to the really desperate. It was par on course for the tasteless, over-priced peaches I've become used to in Minneapolis.
But this wasn't just any peach. I looked at it, a gash in the fruit from where I'd bitten, a medallion of flesh dangling from a couple threads of skin. And I felt such a surge of bother and worry, the same sort of feeling I get when my room's not clean and I know there must be something I can do to set things right, only I didn't know what to do. Here I was, my hundredth peach in hand, and it sucked, the peach of all peaches, the culmination of a summer's worth of eating.
And the feeling reminded me of how summer itself was slipping away. Now when I wake up and the mornings are gray as pencil shavings, I can't help but turn my sleepy mind towards the passing summer. And more than the heat or anything, I think about the sheer possibility in an American summer. The season whispers a promise both of laziness and growth. We get to slack off in our jobs, go on vacation, be free. But at the same time, we face a world wealthy with possibility and girls in swim suits. While we've toiled all winter, now we get to harvest, now we get to eat.
But now - it's no longer summer. Winter will soon be here, the girls will put away their camisoles and bundle themselves up. We'll forget the barbeques, the beers; we'll forget the holidays; we'll watch the snow and wait until Christmas.
And here I am, with a bad peach.
Look at the photo above. Notice how the flesh looks a bit dull. That's not a trick of the light - in real life, the peach looked almost ashen. And tasted that way. And look at my poor face! This was one bad peach.
I wanted to be angry. I wanted to be able to blame somebody. But the worst part was that I couldn't do any of that. I could only sit there, feeling like I had lost out, that I had finally gotten invited to the biggest, coolest party ever and I'd left at two or three in the morning after hanging out awkwardly on the sidelines, knowing that I was out of place - that I didn't belong.
So that's it, my hundredth peach. A success of sort.
So keep your eyes open because soon I'll be posting a little peach retrospective, and give some clues about what will happen to this blog now that the peach project is finished. And thanks for sticking with me for this long!
Ingredients
1 peachInstructions
Eat peach.I've had really great experiences with this recipe. People always ask me for it and I tell them I can't give away my secret. But there was a problem with this night's peach. This peach sucked.
The skin felt rubbery, and when I bit in, I found a green and grainy peach, one with no flavor, edible only to the really desperate. It was par on course for the tasteless, over-priced peaches I've become used to in Minneapolis.
But this wasn't just any peach. I looked at it, a gash in the fruit from where I'd bitten, a medallion of flesh dangling from a couple threads of skin. And I felt such a surge of bother and worry, the same sort of feeling I get when my room's not clean and I know there must be something I can do to set things right, only I didn't know what to do. Here I was, my hundredth peach in hand, and it sucked, the peach of all peaches, the culmination of a summer's worth of eating.
And the feeling reminded me of how summer itself was slipping away. Now when I wake up and the mornings are gray as pencil shavings, I can't help but turn my sleepy mind towards the passing summer. And more than the heat or anything, I think about the sheer possibility in an American summer. The season whispers a promise both of laziness and growth. We get to slack off in our jobs, go on vacation, be free. But at the same time, we face a world wealthy with possibility and girls in swim suits. While we've toiled all winter, now we get to harvest, now we get to eat.
But now - it's no longer summer. Winter will soon be here, the girls will put away their camisoles and bundle themselves up. We'll forget the barbeques, the beers; we'll forget the holidays; we'll watch the snow and wait until Christmas.
And here I am, with a bad peach.
Look at the photo above. Notice how the flesh looks a bit dull. That's not a trick of the light - in real life, the peach looked almost ashen. And tasted that way. And look at my poor face! This was one bad peach.
I wanted to be angry. I wanted to be able to blame somebody. But the worst part was that I couldn't do any of that. I could only sit there, feeling like I had lost out, that I had finally gotten invited to the biggest, coolest party ever and I'd left at two or three in the morning after hanging out awkwardly on the sidelines, knowing that I was out of place - that I didn't belong.
So that's it, my hundredth peach. A success of sort.
So keep your eyes open because soon I'll be posting a little peach retrospective, and give some clues about what will happen to this blog now that the peach project is finished. And thanks for sticking with me for this long!
Monday, September 17, 2007
Peach # 100: Preview?
Is this Peach 100? I don't know. I thought it might be. It sat in its paper bag for a day, two days, and today I reached in to touch it. The flesh felt almost elastic, the skin had a couple unsightly discolorations to it - and worst of all - the peach had no smell. I've found that fragrence is the most reliable measure of quality in a peach. A peach that you can't smell when you stick your nose right up to the skin usually isn't a good peach. So now I'm worried. I don't want this peach to be horrible. I want it to be a good peach. So maybe tonight, after work, I'll go to the produce asile and search for a new peach. Or maybe I'll bit the bullet and realize, hey I'm trying to get peaches in mid-September. Of course they'll suck. Even if it is the ultimate peach, the crowning piece of stone-fruit in my peach-blogging empire.
Monday, September 10, 2007
The Wedge: Alright In My Books
If you've been following this blog closely, you'll have noticed that I've been molested by some really truly bad peaches recently. The past two batches - both bought from the same supermarket - turned out brown, mealy, and just about as rancid as you could imagine, every single one of them. I ate a lot of bad peaches, which for me - well, really puts me in a bad mood. It's like I've been on bad date after bad date after bad date - so many that I now don't know what a good date, or, er, a good peach looks like! (Got tangled up in metaphors for a second there, sorry!)
So I went down to the offending supermarket today, the Wedge. The Wedge is an upscale hippy-de-doo-dah place abou a block away from my house. I approached the customer service desk with a bit of hesitation, but once I told them my story, they were really nice and understanding - they said they'd gotten a lot of similar complaints and had changed supplier. They weighed up the number of peaches we I'd bought and gave me a full refund. Which is nice. I mean, it sure as hell doesn't make up for the awful peaches I forced into my gastric system, but it's something. I picked up some victuals and a block of chocolate for my roomie, because sometimes it's just nice to have chocholate given to you at inopportune times.
I nearly bought a new batch of peaches, too - but I stopped myself. The next peach I eat will be that special number 100. And while the people at the Wedge assured me that they'd switched suppliers, I'm not going to run the risk of eating another bad peach. Not again.
So I went down to the offending supermarket today, the Wedge. The Wedge is an upscale hippy-de-doo-dah place abou a block away from my house. I approached the customer service desk with a bit of hesitation, but once I told them my story, they were really nice and understanding - they said they'd gotten a lot of similar complaints and had changed supplier. They weighed up the number of peaches we I'd bought and gave me a full refund. Which is nice. I mean, it sure as hell doesn't make up for the awful peaches I forced into my gastric system, but it's something. I picked up some victuals and a block of chocolate for my roomie, because sometimes it's just nice to have chocholate given to you at inopportune times.
I nearly bought a new batch of peaches, too - but I stopped myself. The next peach I eat will be that special number 100. And while the people at the Wedge assured me that they'd switched suppliers, I'm not going to run the risk of eating another bad peach. Not again.
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