It's the Little Things In Life

You love sardines? Great. Me, too. 

What’s that? Can’t abide ’em?  No problem. There is never a shortage of other things to read. Come back in time for dessert.

You say the coast is clear? It’s just us sardine-lovers now? Okay, great. You have to try this.   

Yesterday I was walking down the street, or maybe up the street, and realized that sardines + kalamata olive oil + borage (no, not borax, silly, borage, the herb) = pate from heaven. I looked online today. Found a couple of interesting entries. Here’s my version:

Pate A la Sunday

1 can water-packed sardines
Pinch fresh borage (or use oregano)
Pinch Italian (flat-leaf) parsley
1 tablespoon walnuts
1 green onion
1 lemon or 2 Meyer lemons
2 tablespoons Amoretti kalamata olive oil (or use your favorite olive oil and chop a couple of kalamata olives and add them)
1 tablespoon butter
Pinch smoked paprika (or use cracked red pepper and regular paprika)
Pinch salt
Pinch freshly-ground black pepper

Toast walnuts and chop them. Mince onion. Juice and zest lemon or Meyer lemons. Place all ingredients in food processor. Taste and correct seasonings as necessary.

Spread on some whole-grain bread, on a cracker, on some leftover matzo, on your sweetheart’s arm--it is straight heaven. (No, not your sweetheart’s arm, the pate. Yes, I know your sweetheart is wonderful.  Well, I don’t know for sure, but I’ll take your word for it.)

©2013 Laynie Tzena.

In Other News, Toothpaste Is Applied With A Brush

My new dental floss comes with an instruction manual. Okay, it’s just one page. Okay, it’s a little piece of paper that sits behind the floss in the container. It says, “Tips for use.” Maybe they hide it behind the floss in the package so it doesn’t scare you.  “Uh-oh. This could be difficult.”

But I thought I’d better read it. I usually take that approach. I read people’s t-shirts while we’re waiting in line. 

The one-page, “We’re too cheap to pay to print something impressive” manual—which is the way my mother pronounces the name of the guy they just hired—

“No, Mom, you don’t say, ‘Man-u-el.’ It’s ‘Mon-well,’” I explain.

 “Uh-huh."

Anyway, there’s a little picture of someone playing  “Cat’s Cradle,” then a closeup of somebody’s teeth, which someone else is giving a thumbs-up—

What? That’s how you floss? You thread the ribbon between your teeth? And all this time I’ve been winding it around the doorknob and hoping for the best. (On the plus side, we now have a cat. He took a look and said, “Hey, my kind of people!”)

The piece of paper is not done talking. The next thing it says is, “Why Should I Floss?” 

Now, here’s where I got stuck. No, not stuck on what those words mean in English. My reading skills are right up there with yours (or else you’re not reading this, so who needs you?). But the question stopped me.

Because last I checked, no one makes you buy dental floss. No one comes up to you while you’re reading about how embarrassed Gwyneth Paltrow was that when she went au naturel under that dress there was just a little too much nature showing and says, “You don’t _have_ to buy the floss, of course, but Freddie here thinks it would be a really good idea.”

No. It’s just there, in its various forms, including the ones without mint that people buy for some reason. If you’re going to have to floss, you might as well have some flavor, is my view. 

It says, “You want me? Fine. You don’t want me.  Fine.” If the floss were human, while you looked it over it would be doing its nails.

So wouldn’t you think that by the time you're—you should excuse the expression—forking over your seventeen dollars for the small package, you would have made the commitment? You would be among those who didn’t need to be told why flossing might be a good idea?

Unless it’s like those other products they assume one person is buying for another?

Life is so confusing these days.

©2013 Laynie Tzena.

Hold That Thought, Where Exactly Is W. Kamau Bell When You Need Him, or GOAPS Has It All

Today I made an excursion to GOAPS (“Grooviest Of All Possible Stores”). Everything went smoothly, and I got out of there quickly, with no annoyance at anything whatsoever.  It was sheer bliss, and I am now a better person.  I might even be groovy.

Of course, I had help.  I was trying to decide whether the organic almond butter was really worth it (“How thick is the almond shell?” I wondered, forgetting that RadioLab program on “Choices” I had listened to yesterday, not to mention the shorthand I’d learned years ago from my friend Bob:  “Analysis, paralysis”). While I was considering the alternatives so I would make the perfect choice, a crisply dressed, slender man maybe ten years my senior (I am, like Jack Benny, “39-and-holding”) pushed my cart away.

This proved not to be a red herring (which GOAPS wouldn't have any truck with, anyway), as he went on to tell me why television is horrible (I told him I didn’t watch much), and also that the Federal Reserve is evil and the Kennedys had been trying to do something about it and that’s why—never mind.  

I said that I was sorry to hear that.  He then wanted me to forget the almond butter and 
buy hazelnut.

“Okay,” he said. “Ignore the studies.”

“My only problem is that you keep telling me what to think,” I said. (By “think,” I meant, 
“think about politics.”  I don't have a whole lot of opinions about nut butter.  I'm in favor of
all of them.)

“I'm all ears,” he said.

Since nothing we said was likely to help the Kennedy brothers, rest in peace, or have much of an impact on the Federal Reserve, I said I’d pass.  

He was not pleased.  He was soon counseling someone else about the best choices for her. 

W. Kamau Bell told  a rather eager audience member at a recent New Parish show, “I'm going to put you on ‘Pause.’”   

Perfect! Except that I just remembered it now.  So I just said, “I think we can agree on TV” (and instantly made a decision to watch more of it).  

After he had moved on I decided to go with the regular almond butter, which the GOAPS representative had told me was their best seller, assuring me that GOAPS wouldn’t ever carry anything sprayed into oblivion or otherwise icky. 

At least, I think that’s what he said.  So far, so good: it tastes fine, and I haven’t grown another arm—though some days that might come in handy.

©2013, 2014, 2015 Laynie Tzena.