The Lone Drone

I’ve always known that accidentally swapping baking soda for baking powder is at the top of many a baker’s worst nightmare playlist, but now I know why – by an unfortunate personal experience.

Mom had planned a food-filled barbeque dinner at her house Sunday afternoon. Never wanting to arrive empty handed, I decided that morning to make a quick batch of cornbread muffins.

I used the recipe from my handy-dandy Betty Crocker cookbook (encyclopedia of all American cooking basics), and I should note that this was a recipe I had used a few times before this fateful day.

So, as the story goes… I mixed up the batter (double batch), filled my muffin tins, popped the little suckers in the oven and waited the 15-min baking time.

It only took one bite to know something was wrong. Or, maybe it was just me? I gave one to the mister just to make sure. No, it wasn’t just me. Those things were crap.

Baking soda vs. baking powder = PAY ATTENTION TO THE RECIPE DUMMY!

And now I know…

How do you know when it’s safe to eat something you dropped on the floor? Yes, the five-second rule is a great start, but I’ve found something better.

Ask yourself some simple questions using the chart below and you’ll know if what you dropped on the floor is safe to eat.

Do you eat it? (via FlowingData)

This salad always reminds me of the holidays. Because it’s light and sweet, it can be a great side to any Thanksgiving or Christmas feast.

If I were making it for anytime other than the holidays, during a time when I’m less likely to fall prey to the perils of holiday eating (aka. stuffing my face), I would definitely modify the dressing and cut back on all the sugar. Even though it does make the salad almost like dessert, I think you could let the strawberries be the sweetest part of the salad.

With or without all the sugar, it sure is fantastic. Give this recipe a try and let me know how it goes.

Spinach salad with strawberries and poppy seed dressing

Dressing:
1/4 – 1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 1/2 tsp chopped onion
1/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp Worcestershire
1/2 cup oil (your choice)
1 tbsp poppy seeds

Salad:
2 packages fresh baby spinach
1 qt. strawberries, sliced
2 – 4 oz. sliced almonds, toasted

Combine the first five ingredients in a blender. Blend, scraping the sides of the pitcher (is that what you call the top part of the blender?).

Add oil gradually to the combined ingredients. Blend until smooth. Add poppy seeds last.

It’s that simple.

Office potlucks – just one of many things you don’t have to worry about when you’re working from home. But then again, it’s also just another fun thing you miss out on when you’re away from the office.

Now that I’m an office newbie again, I’m a little stressed about it. What do I bring? Will everyone like it? How much time do I have to put into my dish? How much is it going to cost? Oy.

So, what did I do? Googled it, of course.

What I found was a fantastic diagram on “How to Determine What To Bring To A Holiday Potluck.” Though the diagram is entertaining, it wasn’t much help.

Holiday Potluck diagram

Then I took the most logical method to determine what to bring to an office potluck – I called Mom.

With her fantastic help, I decided to bring a not-so-traditional holiday favorite, a spinach salad with strawberries, almonds and a homemade poppy seed dressing. Yum.

I’m still a little stressed about whether everyone is going to like it as much as I do, but at least I decided on something. You gotta start somewhere, right?

What’s your favorite dish to bring to office potlucks? Have any horror stories of some scary dishes you’ve witnessed at a potluck?

You know, nothing says happy Thanksgiving like getting smacked in the face with a ham…

It’s almost as good as her losing her pants at the Miami Wine & Food Festival, almost. I heart Paula Deen.

Last month I started a great new job at a large nonprofit in Miami. This is only my second job out of college, but my first time working for a non-profit organization.

I’m enjoying the work and think the company is moving in an exciting direction online. To make it even better, it seems like everyone in the organization is behind the new online strategy.

There’s something new to learn about the company everyday I walk through the doors, from coworker’s names to how to get the most out of our email platform. It’s a little stressful trying to get it all straight, but I’ll get it down soon enough.

The one thing I do know – it’s nice to know you’re working for an organization whose number one goal is to do good in the community.

Ok, not so much… but my picture was featured on The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks today. Exciting stuff, right?

This gem of bad punctuation use was spotted on our last day in Anchorage, AK. We were getting the Jeep weighed at the Anchorage dump and that’s when I saw it – PLEASE NO “SMOKING” NO “SPITTING” THANK YOU!!

I couldn’t grab the camera fast enough…

No "Smoking"

Bad punctuation, gotta love it.

P.S. Anchorage is full of quotation mark-lovers, I found this sign for “G” street downtown last year.

Corn Dog casserole via Thisiswhyyourefat.com

I don’t have kids yet, so my opinion on America’s growing fat kid problem is primarily based on my own childhood that by no means was void of deliciously unhealthy treats. At the same time, you don’t have to be a parent in order to be worried about the bulging waistlines of our country’s kids.

Our kids are fat, plain and simple.

But it’s not just the fat, it’s the diabetes, the lowered life expectancy, high obesity and all of the horrible health issues that go along with it that concern me even more.

Why are they so fat?

They’re eating crap – at home, at school and out with their parents in popular restaurants. Turns out that restaurants, unsurprisingly, are the worst of the three. Just check out the list of “20 worst kids’ foods in America” recently published at MSNBC.com.

“Restaurants are no more kind to our children’s health and well-being than they are to our own: The typical burger, soda, and fries that you and I ate as kids contains an average of 214 more calories today than that same meal did in the 1970s — enough to add at least 3 pounds of weight a year to your child’s body, even if he or she ate that fast-food meal just once a week.”

“As a result, childhood obesity rates in America have tripled since 1980 — today, 16 percent of children between the ages of 6 and 19 are overweight or obese. An additional 15 percent of kids are “at risk of becoming overweight or obese.”

If you are what you eat, I don’t want to be a grilled cheese sandwich with a saturated fat count equal to an entire package of cooked bacon.

But even without kids, I’ve been working to emulate the kind of cooking eating habits I was taught in my house growing up. It’s simple – you eat a meal that was prepared with real ingredients, only a small fraction of it being pre-packaged, and you eat together, sitting down at a table.

Sounds crazy, right?

The downsides are few – you have to prepare the meal, which involves a trip to the grocery store, food preparation and cooking. And, you have to clean it all up yourself.

The major upside to making a meal at home - you know what’s in it. You know how much butter, oil and salt you use and you can control the portion sizes your preparing.

When I was growing up we ate 90% of the time at home with the other 10% coming from the occasional pizza, Wings City visit or fast food stop. But, eating out wasn’t an everyday. Instead it was somehting special, even if it was just a nasty box of Chicken Nuggets (with Sweet & Sour, please).

I’m not going to say that stopping our growing fat kid problem is easy. But, we can get ourselves off to a great start by getting back to the basics. Cook your own food, keep a Fruit Loop-free kitchen and get moving. Mmk? Thanks.

My sister thinks I’m crazy. She’s graduating from college in a few months and my job-related advice to her is to consider the military, specifically the Air Force. She’ll be getting a building construction degree, but with the way the building industry is moving down here, work can be scarce.

She thought I was completely bullshitting her when I told her about joining the Air Force, saying “Yeah right! Like you would really join the Air Force.” I said, “Of course!”

So, here’s the short list of reasons why I think jobless college-grads (and other unemployed Gen Yers) should consider the military:

Travel – When else in your adult life are you going to be able to travel around the world on someone else’s dime? Unless mom and pops are cool with footing the bill, or you land a crazy awesome job, the answer is probably somewhere close to never.

Financial security – You have a job, a good job. Period.

Housing security – Wherever you’re sent, you’re set up with a place to live and/or they give you a monthly allotment for living expenses.

Awesome benefits – Yeah, it’s run by the government, but you’ll have health care. They’ll help you out if you want to continue going to school. Depending on how long you’re in for, the retirement benefits can be awesome.

If I were in a complete *&%# sandwich (e.g. jobless, drowning in debt) I would seriously consider joining the Air Force. Just sayin’, think about it.

Embedded within an even more inspiring blog post on surviving 9/11, Penelope Trunk wrote one line that really hit home with me:

“… the greatest joy in life is simply watching the lives of people you love unfold in their very own way.”

I love it – had to go back and read it twice. The entire post is even better, but this one line stopped me in my tracks.