Greatest Hits, or That Time I Fed Someone Off-Brand Denture Cleaner

You know those stories that are so funny that you still find yourself telling them years after the fact? I think that intro is my fancy way of saying "Sorry if you've heard this one before, but it's high time I put it in writing somewhere. Also, sorry if most of these stories are gross. Turns out 27 years is not long enough to outgrow potty humor. Maybe 28 will be?"

So my freshman year at BYU, my roommate and I had this epic home teacher (fellow congregation member who visits you regularly to make sure you're doing okay and help out with any big projects you're working on). He was from rural Montana, dressed entirely in Army Surplus attire, and is the only person I know who's bested the gallon challenge.

One night he called our room from the lobby phone (that's right, I went to college before texting was invented) to let us know he & his companion were here for a visit and to ask if we would bring 5 cups or bowls down to the lobby with us. The roommie and I, expecting some variation of the food coloring and bleach object lesson, grabbed the requested ceramics and headed down. I should pause here to remind you that for two girls living in a dorm room with a mini-fridge, a meal plan, and a Sharon, those 5 mugs comprised our entire dish collection. And since we were expecting chemical reactions, we didn't exactly bother to wash them out. Two were actually clean, two were clean under a thin layer of accumulated dust, and one was used daily to soak my retainer in denture cleaner.

The twist? Three mugs, one from each category, were identical except for Sharpie initials on the underside. Imagine our surprise when food coloring and bleach turned out to be a half gallon of strawberry ice cream and a box of plastic spoons. A good hostess is quick on her feet (never mind the washes her dishes bit), so I figured I could just hold on to the retainer soaker, play with my food so it looked like I ate it, and no one would be the wiser.

Except that somewhere in the dishing up ice cream process, I ended up with the wrong identical mug. Realizing the mistake, I tried to surreptitiously peak at the bottoms of everyone else's mugs (just imagine that for some visual comedy), hoping against hope that roommie ended up with it and I could, you know, send her a warning look. But no. I found it just in time to see army home teacher scraping the sides. And then he started licking the sides. What was I supposed to do at that point? Tell him? It seemed a little late for that. Luckily my poker face lasted just long enough to get back into the stairwell before I busted up laughing.

And so, dear army home teacher (if you're reading this), I'm ever so sorry I mildly poisoned you with a residue of denture cleaner and plaque. And to all my other friends, I swear I've never fed you anything disgusting like that... unless you appear in the next episode of Greatest Hits.

Vitamin Nicotine

I was making chocolate milk in Germany one day when I happened to glance down at the ingredients on the nutrition label and see the word "Nicotinamid." Vitamin nicotine what? No wonder their kids start smoking so young! No wonder I love this chocolate milk so much!

The next time we were at the store I checked the ingredients labels on several brands of kids chocolate milk, and sure enough, they were all nicotine fortified. I decided to check my translation of the word "Nicotinamid" against my trusty dictionary and was surprised to find that it actually translates to Niacinamide, Vitamin B3.

Well, I went home and forgot all about this incident, until this morning when I once again encountered Nicotinamide, on the ingredients of my generic Life cereal. Two minutes with wikipedia later, I can now inform you that Niacin is a made up word for NIcotinic ACid vitamIN. Turns out the first niacin was isolated by treating nicotine with nitric acid, but once its nutritional value came to light, the powers that be thought it best not to actually name it vitamin nicotine. They thought it might stress people out to think there was nicotine in their cereal and vitamins in their cigarettes :).

Becoming Jane: Days 3, 4, and 5

The last few days the kids and I have settled into a bit of a rhythm, which is good, because it leaves me lots of free energy to freak out about the two year old having diarrhea (and sharing the tummy ache love with yours truly), but it's bad because it also means I've embraced my inner soccer mom. At least that's what I told myself I'd say to Stacy and Clinton if they caught me in Albertson's with clean but not brushed hair, an over-sized sweatshirt, and lime green crocs. This also gives me lots of time to knock on wood and hope no one shares germs with the four year old, because this whole situation would be so much grosser in big girl panties.

We've had adventures in violin lessons (when the teacher forgot to show up), adventures in glassware (how many pieces can you make out of just one cup?), adventures in raising SEVEN pets (oh let's just talk about those later, shall we?), adventures in broken toilets (how many times should you have to tell a four year old not to keep pooping in it?), and just about every other kind of adventure you can imagine. Here are just a few of them:

Fun with bubbles!
Fun with photoshop!

Fun with fauxhawks!

And last but not least, it turns out that homeschooling is actually really fun! ... when you're not concerned with how much they actually learn, that is...

Out of the Mouths of Freshman

So my new roommate (not room roommate, but saying housemate makes me feel like I'm on the Real World Provo, or something) is a freshman out of the inland empire in California. She's very sweet and incredibly timid, and it's been an adventure remembering just how much you don't know when you're a freshman. Today she decided to make snickerdoodles (green ones!) for a Troll 2 party our house was throwing, and here were some of the highlights of the conversation:

Her: "So, what time should I start making them?"
Me: "Well, how long do they take to make?"
Her: "The recipe says bake for 11 minutes... so if the party starts at 8, I should probably mix them up at 7:45"
Me: "Don't snickerdoodles have to refrigerate for awhile? Also, you're probably going to have to bake more than one batch."
Her: "No. The recipe just says bake."
Me: "Check out right here where it says 'refrigerate 1 hour.'"

Her: "Do we have any cream of tartar?"
Me: "Probably not"
Her: "What am I supposed to do then? Do you want me to go buy it or something?"
Me: pretended that was a rhetorical question and kept vacuuming.
Her: "What about flour, sugar, and vanilla? Oh, and eggs, butter, and crisco? Where are those?"
Mental Me: "At the store, with the cream of tartar."
Verbal Me: "There might be some in the communal baking cabinet. Just make sure to replace whatever you use the last or almost last of."

Her, while staring at the finished dough: "So when do I add the food coloring? Now? or after I bake them?"

Oh the joys of leaving home for the first time!

EPIC Kitchen Failure!

This past Sunday a friend and I decided it would be a great idea to go up on campus and pick some fresh plums to make a plum tart. This especially seemed like a great idea because I did it last summer with some friends from the campus tree crew, and it was possibly the most beautiful dessert I have ever created. And it tasted okay, too.

So this time we picked the plums from the very same trees, and made the tart using the very same recipe, but there were some significant circumstantial differences, the first being that my current abode is about 30 degrees hotter inside than last summer's. We first noticed something was amuck when the pie crust was roughly the consistency of chocolate chip cookie dough, most likely owing to the fact that the Crisco was more than half way to melted in that sweltering kitchen. This made it impossible to make the tart walls stand up properly, so we decided that plum cobbler would be a better idea. Just throw the pastry dough on the top, and it's a whole different dessert! Right?

My neighbor suggested that since we switched desserts at the last minute, we should call it Plum Surprise, and boy was I surprised to see that plum dessert coming right back up the hatch on Monday morning! and afternoon! and evening! I'm pretty sure the plum cobbler is to blame because it is the only thing I ate between Sunday lunch and Monday surprise. Luckily, the friend who helped me make it was also the only other person who ate it, so only two of us spent our Mondays wallowing in the misery that is epic kitchen failure.