Mmmm.... food.....

Okay, so I read a few local foodie blogs here in Cincinnati and recently, the "Top 100" lists have been making the rounds. Julie over at Wine Me, Dine Me put up her Carnivore's 100.

Thanks to B and K, aka the Westside Foodie Wannabes, I now have a Sweet Tooth's 100 to think about. Here's the deal: You bold the ones you've tried and cross out the ones you would never, ever eat. That simple, right?

So here's mine, with lots and lots of bold. (Parenthesis added)

1. buckeye candy
2. german gummi bears (I guess regular gummi bears don't count?)
3. chocolate covered cranberries
4. flourless chocolate cake
5. butter pecan ice cream
6. oreos
7. oatmeal cream pies
8. key lime pie
9. hostess chocolate cupcake
10. bubble tea
11. creamy whip with jimmies (aka soft serve with sprinkles - for you non-Ohioans)
12. creme brulee
13. eggcream
14. orange julius
15. opera cream chocolates
16. chocolate covered pretzels
17. strawberry shortcake
18. ganache
19. liqueur chocolates (These are GROSS!!)
20. a turtle made from something other than pecans
21. bananas foster (I've had a bananas foster egg roll, so I'm counting it.)
22. caramel apple
23. reese's peanut butter easter eggs
24. cracker jacks
25. brownies
26. guinness chocolate cake
27. s'mores
28. mounds bar
29. wendy's frosty
30. black forest cake
31. cajeta
32. german chocolate cake
33. meringue pie
34. pumpkin pie with homemade whipped cream
35. ben and jerry's
36. ice cream soda (the old fashioned kind)
37. buche de noel
38. peanut brittle
39. malted milk balls
40. springerle
41. angel food cake
42. cheese danish
43. rainbow sherbet
44. marzipan
45. tiramisu
46. a real big swirly lollipop
47. cream cheese and jelly sandwich (for breakfast, occasionally)
48. licorice (black, not twizzlers)
49. sugar-coated nuts, warm, from a street vendor
50. tuiles
51. cotton candy
52. vanilla (ice) cream soda float (root beer only, though I've also had with cream soda)
53. fruitcake
54. torrone (aka nougat - and I think it counts if you've had a nougat candy bar)
55. fig bars
56. new york style cheesecake
57. boston cream pie
58. fluffernutter sandwich
59. odd flavored jelly beans: popcorn, jalapeno, earthworm
60. moon pie
61. chocolate on beef
62. ginger snaps
63. pineapple upside down cake (!!!)
64. chipwich/chipwheelie (chocolate chip cookie/ice cream sandwich)
65. rice krispie treat
66. flan (one word: consistency)
67. pixie sticks
68. baklava
69. bazooka joe gum
70. syrup on bacon or goetta
71. fudge
72. homemade caramels
73. macaroons
74. candy cane
75. huckleberry pie
76. lemon bars
77. creamed honey
78. treacle tart
79. kinder surprise/kinder egg
80. lorna doones
81. almond granita
82. red velvet cake
83. tapioca (again... consistency)
84. turkish delight
85. orange marmalade
86. mango lassi
87. chocolate souffle
88. poached pears
89. gelato
90. eggnog
91. french chew
92. sticky toffee pudding
93. panna cotta
94. icee
95. manner hazelnut wafers
96. wonka bar
97. cannoli
98. trifle
99. pez
100. fortune cookie

Clarity (not the John Mayer song)

Okay, so you all know that I don't really dip my toe into politics on this blog.... though you can probably guess where I stand. I can't take credit for any of the following; I received it as a forward and it didn't give credit to a source. But, I loved the points made and thought other people should hear the message. Enjoy:

• If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
• Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.
  
• If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
• Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.
  
• Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
• Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.
  
• If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
• If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.
  
• If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
• If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.
  
• If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
• If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible.
  
• If your wife is a Harvard graduate laywer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.
• If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Why?

Why do you have to refrigerate things like salad dressing AFTER you open it, but not before?

Oh, the destruction!

Yesterday, 50-mph winds ripped through Cincinnati, causing all kind of destruction throughout the city and its suburbs. My apartment was the victim of a power outage that resulted from approximately eleventy billion trees that fell down onto power lines.

One particularly huge tree fell in the front yard of my apartment building, but luckily it didn't hit anyone's apartment and no one appeared to be hurt. I'll try to post pictures of it if it is still in the front yard when I get home from work. The windows in my sunroom were blown open but that was about it.

Power was restored to my apartment shortly after midnight. A mile away, power came on around 2:30 a.m. A mile and a half away, they are still without power. Weird, huh?

Anyway, that's all for now. Pictures if I can get them later!

Food

Here's what I had for dinner the other day, during Cincinnati's Restaurant Week. I got all three for the special price of $28.08.

First Course: Scallop, spinach, tomato, potato, topped with lobster hollandaise

Second Course: Chateaubriand, aka medium rare beef tenderloin, Boursin whipped potatoes, asparagus with Bernaise sauce

Third Course: Chocolate peanut butter brownie, peanut butter sauce, peanut brittle, vanilla ice cream.

Results: Delicious

Interesting little experiment

I tend to steal things from other blogs that I like. The other day, I stole a survey from Sarah's blog and posted my own answers over on Cingle in the City. Today, I'm stealing from Scaramouche Jones' blog.

Aaaaanyway, 'Mouche has a post up about his surname and the various countries around the world in which other 'Mouches live. It is an interesting little experiment and I did it for myself.

Alls you do is type your surname into this little search engine and it will pop up all the countries where other people with your surname live. You can break it down by region of that country, too. For example, there is a large population of people with my surname living in Texas... where I have lots and lots of first cousins, so go figure.

You can check out the Web site here: http://www.publicprofiler.org/worldnames/

Here's where I live, in order of surname population density:

Ireland
Australia
Canada
UK
New Zealand
US
Luxembourg
Switzerland
Argentina
Spain (Ole!)

Insomnia

I have had a particularly vicious case of insomnia this week. It's not an overly important or stressful week at work, so maybe I'm not as exhausted as I am used to being. Maybe my body has gotten so used to the fast pace I've been keeping all summer that having a "downtime" week is throwing it off. Either way, this is the third night in a row where I've laid in bed, my mind unable to stop moving, my body refusing to relax and my eyes feeling increasingly like sand paper.

I hate this.

Ugh.

Back to my roots

One of the reasons that I went into public relations was because of the writing part. I used to love sitting down with one of those black and white composition notebooks and spinning out a story. In high school, I entered my writing samples into all kinds of award competitions and independently published magazines. At one point, I was actually asked whether one of the stories I turned in had been plagiarized. (This was in the 7th grade, so I understood. And nope, it was all my own work.)

I was reminded of my passion for creative writing when I moved recently. I found a bunch of papers that I'd written for various high school writing classes. I'm going to use them as inspiration to sit down and write the types of things that I used to love, instead of just writing the things I have to write.

Here's one that I can remember enjoying writing, and that made me think of my childhood when reading it.

Grape Juice Symphony

Summer sun, beating down
Upon my brow, sweat trickles.
I'm melting from the heat.
I feel like a puddle has started to form
Under me, on the cement,
A little Lauren puddle.
guess that is what it is like now, at 17.
When the heat gets turned up
We go inside, eager to sit on the AC vent,
Feeling the cold air rush up to cool us off.
But what about summers past,
Diving into the pool
Which was always cold because of the oak trees.
We'd play "basketball" in the front yard.
There was no hoop, only the house trim,
Which was white, and scuffed from our ball.
We'd play house too.
The flower bed was our house, remember?
The neighbors' boat was our sink, where the trailer
Hitch came through our fence.
The pipes for the pool was our back stoop.
Daddy said not to play on them,
But we did anyway.
The heat didn't bother us.
It could be 98 degrees outside,
And we would still be playing in our fort
With the kids down the street.
Now it is 98 degrees outside,
And we sit inside.
We have a basketball hoop now,
But it only swings when the wind blows.
We never play house anymore,
Because it is too hot to play outside.