A funny dinner

Finally Half Moon Cafe opened in an old building within walking distance. I'm not positive which nationality of food they serve, but it is middle-eastern. Turkey, Greek, Israel, could be any of these.

When I go into a new restaurant I forgive a lot of things. In the first week or so I know there are a lot of bugs they are still working out. So when we had some problems, we were quick to forgive. We sat down , got our menu (singular) and looked it over. They had a few funny typos and other general silliness.

Anyway, we quickly ordered the fatoosh and the half moon special plate. I looked up fatoosh later and found out that is not what we got. What we did get was a very delicious greek salad and hummus. No pita, but we didn't really know what fatoosh was, maybe this was correct. So the hummus became like a dressing and we enjoyed the food. But we still didn't have water. We asked for some and got a couple bottles of water. No glass or ice. That wasn't that big a deal, just peculiar. Then we started waiting for the entrée.

We were having a great time and talking to each other and just kinda hanging out. The guy who I think is the owner came over to check on us a couple times and we told him we were fine. We didn't really need anything. Just waiting on our food. There was 1 point I heard a small crash in the kitchen and the owner kinda had an "oh no" expression. We saw a couple other tables come and go and we were still waiting. At that point I thought that it was very likely that our meal had just fallen and they now had to remake our dinner. But that was just speculation. After about an hour, and I had never seen the guy who took our order earlier. I finally decided humorously that we never ordered. So we flagged down the owner and asked him if our order had got to the kitchen.

"We ordered the half moon special plate". (he is nodding in agreement the entire time) "Did that get to the kitchen?"

He said, "Yes, yes, yes. What do you mean 'get to' the kitchen?" Then kinda shakes off this notion and finishes, "But I'll get it right now"

About 5 more minutes and he brings us a salad again, and hummus, just like before but this time with a big bowl of pita. It was delicious. I don't know why we got it. I assume this is just part of the service. Which makes me wonder what happened to the fatoosh earlier. But it was only about 10 more minutes and we got a huge plate full of pilaf, all kinds of meat; chicken, sausage, shwarma (it's kinda like the meat on a gyro) and all in all it was some of the most delicious food we have ever had. It was truly the high point of our day. We got stuffed and kept eating, It was amazing, I loved every piece of everything we got.

We paid, we laughed and we left thinking this was one of the funniest restaurant trips we have ever had. And planning how quickly we could go back.

Bus trip

Today we took a plain old trip to Crown Center to get in on some fun kid activities. But we decided to use public transportation to get there.

On my Google phone, I can get directions to anywhere and use public transportation to get there. I'd always wanted to try it out, and Fia is infatuated with the bus. It's a popular point in a lot of her kid shows.

So we walked the mile to the closest bus stop. Google even told me how long the walk should take, but we left a few minutes earlier. Not quite early enough. We would have been right on time, but I didn't account for her needing to stop for a potty break. So while she was in the bathroom at a gas station, I watched our bus pass right by.  50 minutes till the next bus (thanks phone for giving me that information) We took our time at the gas station, then walked to McDonald's for a snack and to wait. Finally, caught the next bus. It took us about a half a block away from our destination.

We got off, we went into Crown Center, hit up the Clifford exhibit at the children's museum, ate at Fritz's restaurant. She even passed up Panda Express, her favorite place, to go to Fritz's. Then to Kaleidescope. It was lots of fun. Then a 1 1/2 block walk back to the bus stop.

I have to say. Except for the distance between my house and the bus stop, it was actually convenient, cheap, and I didn't mind it as much as I thought I was going to. And Fia was excited to ride the bus, she liked the adventure, or as she kept saying today, "a-BEN-sure"

Let me rant

So I watched Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution last night and I really support the overall idea.  However, I have a few problems with the show.

First of all, Jamie Oliver is 100% correct to say that America should be eating healthier. And I love his approach to say that you can eat anything you want, as long as you look at what is included.  To take his point to an extreme I will tell you that recently I made polish sausages from pork shoulder, natural casing and of course a lot more.(but I knew exactly what went in there)  I also made coney sauce (chili) from scratch.  One night (actually, a lot of nights) I took those things, added mustard and buns and made my own chili dogs.  According to what Jamie Oliver preaches the unhealthiest part of this meal was the bun and mustard.  Because I made the sausage and chili myself I know that there was no high-fructose or hydrogenated anything.

No, I'm not claiming that chili dogs are healthy.  But I am stating that the worst part of chili dogs is all the unnatural ingredients that go into them.  Why would you need sugar in your hot dogs? Yet if you look at the ingredients, most hot dogs contain some sweetener.  High fructose corn syrup or whatever. Yech!

While on the subject of processed meats, that brings be back to Jamie's show.  He took 6 children and did a genius experiment with them.  He took a whole chicken, removed each piece (breasts, wings, thighs, legs) and took the carcass, with scrap meat on it and blended it up.  He took that puree and smooshed it through a sieve to separate the meat from bone and added "binders" and "flavorants" (I believe the actual ingredients were representative of the binders and flavorants) and pressed them into nugget shape and breaded and fried them.  He asked the kids who wanted to eat those nuggets. He expected the children to react to watching the 'chicken puree' ooze through the sieve and all of them being turned off, but 4, I mean, 5, I mean all of them said yes (the number changed cause I believe kids raised their hands as they saw others lead the way)

Fact is, he was shocked that the experiment failed.  But I would have raised my hand too. The biggest opposition I have to the entire process is what is in the bowls of "binders" and "flavorants" because he has just shown me that mechanically separated chicken is still chicken.

Tonight I took a whole chicken and tore it apart.  I cut off the breasts and saved them for later.  I cut off all meat from the thighs and legs and used them in a chicken fried rice and I took all the rest of the bones and skin and whatnot and turned it into chicken stock.  Are you to tell me that my chicken stock is on the same level as McDonald's McNuggets? I don't know if that's a compliment to McDonald's or an insult to my chicken stock.

I always assumed that the worst part of 'mechanically separated chicken' was the paste that came out at the end.  But Jamie Oliver showed me that paste is as natural as the boneless skinless breasts it came from. I am most scared of the binders and flavorants. But he blew by those ingredients like it was as natural as the bread crumbs for breading the nuggets.

I don't know. I seem to be torn between his point of, 'We are eating crap', and his methods of, 'You should be wasteful and not eat the less desirable cuts'. I know that is not his overall message, but that is the message he projected on this one specific point.

Let me stop now. I have chapters that I could write on this situation. I would rather keep this to a blog-posting length. So I will say good night.

Why are the called a "Medium" if they are more in tune than average people?

This is a true story.  While Fia was in the womb, a friend of Lill's came to visit with a date.  His date was a psychic.  (Ugh!)  And we were introduced, and like everyone that came into Lill's for those 9 months, Trelle mentioned how I was expecting.  After having met the psychic for all of 3 minutes, she informed me that my child was going to love music.

I still doubt her ability.  Maybe she saw me tapping to whatever was playing (I was because I wasn't interested in what she was saying) or whatever.  But she was right.

At 3 years old, Fia can sing, and does... a lot.  She likes kid songs, like Row, row, row your boat and Twinkle Twinkle.  She likes her genre like Laurie Berkner and other children artists.  And she likes my songs.  A few Beatles, an Owl City, and more.  Her favorite movie right now is Fantasia 2000.  (If anyone sees the original Fantasia, that would make an excellent gift.)

I'm not giving any credit to the psychic.  But it is memorable.  She called it.  But I knew that (I push it on her enough) and I can tell you a few other things that Fia will get into.  Reading, science, snide comments, and other things that she will pick up from me.

Fia's music

So the odd thing, is ever since I got my Facebook, I'll post whatever. But the 2 times that the post seems to have taken more space than I think I should allot in Facebook, I'll post it over here. It's almost resparked my blogging interest.

Tonights story is Fia's music. When she sleeps, we put on some music to drown out the external noise of the cars and whatever. But what we let her listen to is the situation. We haven't found a great radio station that we can just turn on and forget. So we are cool with making our own mix for her. I have enough mellow stuff to fill up a while.

Her stereo takes a USB, so we just buy a 2gig jump drive and hit 'random' and let it play.It has 20+ hours of music. So repeating isn't really an issue. But a few weeks ago, something broke. Turns out it was the jump drive. So I went onto Amazon and bought another 2 gig jump drive for about $7 total. And after WAY TOO MANY problems getting it, I finally got it today and had to fill it up.

I have about 15 gig of music on my hard drive. But not all of it is "sleeping to" music. So I went through it all tonight to fill up her jump drive with only the mellow stuff.

Wow. I never remember all the things I like from my music selection until I go through it piece by piece. In my last post, I mentioned a funny quote from a fwd I got. Same email gives me another quote that is applicable here. "I love every song in my iTunes. Until I put it on shuffle, then I love about 1 out of every 15 songs." And that's what happened tonight. Except I'm not focusing on those songs that I don't care about. I'm focusing on those 1 out of 15 songs that for whatever reason, I stopped listening to them.

Existentialism on Prom Night by Straylight Run is 1 song that I forgot ever existed. The hook of the song is, "Sing like you think no one's listening" and I like how those lyrics and that message is played out. It made me think of another song about how awesome singing is. Sing, by The Dresden Dolls is all about how, whatever the circumstance, "just sing". Both those songs came out at about the same time. And I liked the message of both of them. But I haven't thought about either song in years. But I bet you tomorrow at work, I'm singing about singing. Not sure which song. But it'll happen.

General thoughts about Dr Seuss and Childrens books

So I've been reading every night to Fia for about 2 solid years, and we have gone through a lot of books. The 'No More' series by Peony Lewis was her favorite for a while. The "Oakey" series was her favorite. Right now she likes "Charlie and Lola" and to be honest, Lynette and I like it too. But we have always included those stories that we read, or had read to us when we were children.

Slight tangent. I saw a collection of humorous thoughts, and one of them was, "Sometimes I'll watch a movie when I was younger and realize I had no idea what was going on when I first watched it." Specifically this rang true with Indiana Jones. When the 4th movie came out recently, I rewatched the previous 3 and realized that I don't like the movies. I could have sworn I did. I remember liking them. But I guess I was wrong. Cause all 3 never sparked true interest. Just mild nostalgia.

But back on point. That same theory can be adapted to books. Before I had a kid, I would have told you, and beat into your head, that I liked Dr Seuss. When Fia was young we read a select few of them as I thought was necessary. And we read and enjoyed books like, "The Cat in the Hat" and "I saw it all on Mulberry Street" but then when we expanded our horizons, I found that Dr Seuss made no sense.

Has anyone read "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish in the last 10 years? It starts out like you expect, with fish. Then less than 10 pages into it, the fish story translates back to land. "From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere." and that's the last line that makes sense to any plot. Any random page contains a short, meaningless story that makes no sense. Let me flip randomly and paraphrase a page. A lady calls Ned. She asks how things are in his bed. He replies by saying that he is not having fun and a cow, a dog, a cat and mouse are all in his bed with him. And the page prior and following have totally different stories. The entire book is like that. I firmly believe that Dr Seuss was heavily on drugs when writing this book. That would make sense. When Dr Seuss says, "Whoa, dude. What if this lady calls Ned. And Ned is in his bed. Duuuuuude. That'll be awesome."

I mean, some stories are cool. Cat in the Hat mostly makes sense. And I actually liked, I Saw it all on Mulberry Street. But we have read our fair share of Dr Seuss, and for better or worse, about half of his stories revert into a page-by-page mini-stories that are just there for the sake of rhymes and a string of 2-paragraph sub plots.

Hop of Pop seems to split the difference. It is that same page-by-page mini-story that is neither here nor there. But it is redeemed in the fact that every word is the very basics of speech that the beginning reader can latch onto.

And let me finish by saying that there are a list of stories that are very well written, have a good story, a great moral and are just straight-out entertaining for me and my daughter. Yertle the Turtle. Gertrude McFuzz. And others provide wonderful stories and great morals. I like those.

But those aren't the books that I remembered loving. I liked The Cat in the Hat, and even worse, One Fish Two Fish. It was horrible.

Happy Birthday Fia

Our little girl is 3 now. It doesn't seem possible. She is growing up so fast. This year we decided to go low key and just spent the day focusing on her. We went to lunch with Grandma and Papa Cobb at 5 guys (or in Fia talk the place with burgers and peanuts) and had cake and presents. Then we took her swimming. It was a good day. She kept on telling us it was "the best birthday ever". I wanted to share a few photos and a cute video of her with her birthday cake.

She helped make the cake. You can guess what happened next...

I love baseball game

Kaufman stadium, home of the Kansas City Royals, is just opening up after a $250 million renovation. I like baseball, and I was really interested in all the upgrades that happened to the stadium. Let me say, it is amazing. They took the fountain that has become the main feature of the stadium and made it better, the crown shaped scoreboard has become the biggest jumbotron that I have ever seen. If you want to go digging 2 years ago, I have a post of what it was when we went to a Royals game a long time ago. But I didn't actually take a picture of the new scoreboard.

I was also impressed with our little girl. I have been talking to her before naps. I'll try to bargain with her to go to bed for me, and with great success. I will tell her how she needs to go to sleep, cause when she wakes up we can: Go get Mommy, See Grandma and Grandpa, Go to get hot dogs. Whatever is true. I talk to her for a while, I ask her if it's time for bed and she says, "No, not yet." then soon after a bit more talking she says, "Time for bed" and i don't see her till morning. It worked so well that one night I bargained with her by saying that she needed to go to sleep so that she can wake up tomorrow, nothing more than that. And she did it.

So to take this back to baseball, I have been mentioning at bedtime last night and naps today that we were going to see a baseball game. She was excited at whatever that was. And by the time we were in the car to Kaufman, she was saying, "Baseball game! Let's go to baseball game!" We got there, we played at the new playground in the pavillion that is behind the fountain, we sat in our seats and Fia was glued to the game for about a half hour. She even said, "I love baseball game" and when everyone else clapped, she did too. She really got into it. I try to talk baseball with my friend Mike, but he isn't interested. His eyes glaze over like Lynettes eyes glaze over. So I guess if you can't have a baseball friend, you have to make one. Not in the introducing style, in the creating style.

It was retro-pricing night at "The K" and we got our seats for $5 each and parking for the same price. So I thought this would be a perfect night to see if Fia would enjoy watching baseball with me. I figured that if this works, we can go see 10+ games this year, just the 2 of us and we would have a great time. What I didn't figure was the weather to be drizzly, and 40 degrees or less. It was cold, she was bundled, and we were HIGH up there.

We ended up leaving the game at the top of the 2nd inning. (in my defense, it was a very long 1st inning) I wasn't too dissappointed. We went home to watch the rest of the game from the comfort of the couch. And the main reason for going was the if we did leave early, I wouldn't feel too bad for wasting tickets cause they were so cheap.

Last part of the story is the set up for these pictures. Lynette likes the 'smile shot' feature on our camera cause it takes 3 pictures back to back to back with 1 click. That way, you can choose which shot is best. Well, we didn't see it coming, but while playing in the playground I mentioned before, Fia fell down the slide, I caught her and Lynette had captured it all on film. I was really impressed with my reaction time, and Lynette didn't even think that she was taking a picture at the time. She hit the button, but when Fia lost her balance, she stopped thinking about photography.

Sophia sings the pre-school blues

You asked for it, you wanted it. Here you go. Sophia half-sings all of her songs on this video right here. Watch it again and again. You know you want to. One viewing is not enough. Act now and you and be entered to win an iPod. Certain restrictions apply, actually, nothing. Just watch the video. Stop reading all of this small print and just enjoy the video. She's cute enough, it's she? Well, isn't she?

I am sorry that we are so bad about posting new stuff on our blog. I have been meaning to but it seems that I never remember when I have free time. I wanted to share a couple of pics and a video of our "tree". We stole Jae's idea from a couple of years ago. We have said since Thanksgiving that we were going to buy a real tree this year since our old one bit the dust last year but we never found time that we were both home to go pick one out.... so now we have a paper tree. Fia and I had a good time putting "ornaments" on it this morning.




I also wanted to share a couple of cute pictures of our little Eskimo. It has snowed the last couple of days here and Fia has loved it. I opened the blinds yesterday when she got up so she could see it and she exclaimed "SNOW!" I have never known a child who likes to be outdoors as much as she does and it doesn't matter what the weather is.


These were both taken on Monday when we only got a dusting. We got a couple of inches on Tuesday but it was bitterly cold so we didn't take her out in it, though she desperately wanted to go out in it.

halloween

Many of you have been begging for pictures of Halloween so here they are... Sorry there aren't many, as most of you know my parents took her trick or treating because Ken and I both had to work that night. They tried to take her picture but she wasn't cooperating very well. They did tell me a few stories of the night.... we had tried to teach her to say trick or treat before she went over there which came out more tritree but it was close enough. Anyway they showed her what to do as far as ringing the doorbell and saying trick or treat when they answered the door. She wasn't shy when it came to ringing the doorbell, but she never quite got the hang of saying trick or treat when they answered the door. She would say it over and over until they answered the door and she would stop saying it as soon as the door opened.

Another cute story: At one house they stopped, the lights were all on and it appeared as though someone was home but for some reason they didn't come to the door. She desperately wanted them to answer the door and give her candy that she tried to ring the doorbell again. When my dad stopped her and told her that they were going to move on to the next house she got really upset and yelled "NO! Trick or Treat".

I added this second picture because she looks so grown up serving herself popcorn at my grandparents house after trick or treating.

Monkey

This is Monkey. I don't remember exactly when this happened, but Fia decided that this is her favorite toy. We have such great friends that they have expanded her monkeys to many stuffed animals and even some awesome clothes. (Apparently this Small Paul thing is popular, but I don't know it past Fia's wardrobe)

A few weeks ago Sophie and I were running a bunch of errands. We went to about 10 places. She had monkey at the first place and didn't have him at the last place. No clue where he went. Uh oh. Oh No!

So then began the search for a new monkey. I already knew, what I thought would be enough to find it with a quick google search. It was made by Hallmark and the bananas say, "love ya a bunch"

Hallmark.com? Nope, not there. google search, "Hallmark monkey 'love ya a bunch'" Nope. every variation on the words "stuffed" "monkey" Hallmark" etc. Nothing. I was shocked that it wasn't just that easy. Not on ebay, not on google, not on anything.

So I was telling friends the story of lost monkey. And as it turns out, a friend of a friend works at Hallmark, in the toy department. He asked around, found the toy and yup, it's discontinued. So he went down the hallway to the toy designer and Monkey's designer said, "I got a few of those that I used as samples. Just grab one from over there."

And voila. We have a new Monkey. What are the odds that we live in the same city that headquarters here and I was only a very quick 3 degrees of seperation for the guy that designed this toy. Amazing.

Bedding: Plants and people

So I mostly wanted to post some pictures. This year we took some pots that Mom and Dad left with us before their move and actually filled them with plants. tomato plant (tomatiI got allo to be specific) serrano pepper, mint, thyme, marjoram, and some flowers. I'm getting some blooms and with any luck, it'll be a couple weeks and I will have my first tomatillo. Here is what they look like so far and the blossom is from the tomatillo plant.

This is just Fia being silly. She has a changing table that we use as a dresser. She had cleared off the bottom shef of all her shoes and used that as a bed. But the other day, she went up a bunk. Just because she can.

Sophia's first haircut

So, it wasn't so much a haircut as it was just a trim. But it was a much needed trim to cut away the dead ends and even up the length a little- there wasn't even enough cut off that I could keep it for her baby book. Anyway, she did great! We were afraid she would squirm and cry but she had a great time and I think Kit did too. (Kit is the lady who cut it.) I promised pictures so here they are....
Before...................................................During................................................................................................













............After..............

A non-Sophia post

OK, so first of all, I have a small rant.

I hate when online companies tell you that your username / password do not fall into their "safety parameters" On my sprint account, for example, not only did they tell me that my password was too simple, but my username had to contain at least 1 number. It's my account, why don't you let me select how secure it is. If you feel an obligation to, then tell me that I shouldn't use my social security number or phone number as my password, but don't tell me you won't allow me to. It's my security, let me decide.

Now, the reason I started this post in the first place. This is the funniest thing I have seen in a harvest moon, or longer. Maybe because I am a chef. Maybe because I love seeing complex situations brought down to their simplistic roots. Maybe because I like the idea that Vietnam is a spring roll and the US is a hamburger. I hope you enjoy it half as much as I did.



So the perfect video was not available. This is the next to perfect video. You may need the Cheat sheet.

Easter

After not really doing anything for the last few holidays we decided that we needed to start. I was a little skeptical that she would enjoy it. She is still too young to really take direction. But if we don't start now, when will we start.

It was exciting for me. We bought the eggs, dye, basket, candy, etc and waited until last night.


Then she went to bed and I had to clean up. Hiding eggs in plain sight doesn't work too well if she has thrown all her toys over the floor. But we got picked up, Lynette woke up and hid the eggs while I changed Fia's diaper and got her ready to search. As you can see, she took to it wuick. We had watched Dora the Explorer and Max and Ruby find eggs. Fia had called out "Egg" every time Dora passed one. But I was still surprised to see her find every last egg.



By the way, in the background you can see our new loveseat. Sometime eventually we will replace all our furniture.

Sophia being cute

Sophia is cute everyday. But today she did her normal cuteness and I caught it on camera. I had something to do on the computer sitting by the bed, I walk into the room and she follows me. I sit on the bed and she asks up. I help her up and she immediately lays on the pillow and pulls the covers up over her so she can watch The Backyardigans on her PSP.

I get smart and take a few pictures, then I switch to video mode and she changes from the PSP to taking care of some of her moms sudoku.

Just a clip from our Christmas in Joplin

We finally made it to Joplin and this small clip is something that Lynette took. It's too cute.



Mike named it perfectly.

I just wanted to show Tracy how she may not be able to post her videos, but I can.





Ha Ha! I win!

Christmas morning 2007

Here's our Christmas. Sophia's been a little under the weather so we actually woke up before her (I mentioned to Lynette how it was wrong that the parents woke up before the kid)

But I made a Fletcher tradition. Breakfast casserole. It was tasty and we ate it all. I hope we are hungry by lunch. I'm making our own Christmas dinner with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and rolls. Just the essentials of a Thanksgiving (or Christmas)

When Sophia finally did get up we gathered by the tree and as you can see, she loved getting her presents (oddly enough she seemed to know which ones were hers) but she still didn't understand that she was tearing open the present to get what was inside. She just tore it cause tearing stuff up is fun.