Candy man

This picture shows my crazy candy purchasing from Germany from Christmastime 2001, but this year was much the same... perhaps even worse. Over $80 worth of candy. Just don't tell mama, er, don't tell my dentist!

So WHY do I bring so much chocolate back from Europe twice yearly? That's easy!

1) It's GOOD chocolate! Once you try European chocolate, you'll never go back to (ugh!) Hershey's crap.
2) It's not that expensive when you buy it in Europe. An entire pack of Hanuta (a 12'er) is $1.43 at the Walmart in Germany. That's just 12 cents per delightfully delicious chocolate wafer cookie.
3) It's a great way to make new friends ;-). Trust me, I'll have a sack-full of Hanutas when I go dancing this week, and for every charming follow I dance with, there'll be a little chocolate offering.

Regarding #3, I have experience in this area, and I've also learned an important lesson. Witness this pivotal conversation from last year:

BEAUTIFUL GIRL: Hey, I remember you! You're the one who gave me that vodka chocolate.
ME, BLURTING STUPIDLY: Uh, um... yeah, I gave that to lots of people. What's your name again?

As Homer Simpson would say... D'oh!

Eggroll, European style

When my wonderful friend that I was staying with in Venray (The Netherlands) suggested that we have eggrolls for dinner, I was a bit skeptical. Surely she knew my appetite was typically bigger than appetizer-size, especially after not eating since lunch!




But wow, those wacky Dutch! To the right you can see just what their idea of an eggroll is. When was the last time YOU saw an eggroll that fills up an entire good-sized plate?!?

Ja! I'm going to Deutschland!

I finally got my ticket ($249 roundtrip San Francisco<-->Frankfurt with a very special special!), and I'll once again be spending Christmastime with wonderful friends in Germany.

Of course, I can be a little cranky, and moan about the icky cold I'll be facing, the insane hassles of peak-time holiday air travel (in coach, no less), and so on. But aside from getting to spend time with great people, I'll also come back, once again, with a suitcase full of chocolate goodies.

Disadvantage: This makes me (literally) fat every year.
Advantage: This makes my friends fat, too, but they love me anyway.

And on a slightly deeper level, my twice-yearly trips to Europe remind me how much I miss about Europe (universally decent public transit, awesomely long and lingering meals...) and also how appreciative I am for the silly little niceties of America (like drinking fountains, non-smoking clubs, and so on).

Ah, if only there were a way to make an AdamCountry, taking the best of all the places I've visited and rolling it all up into one place that's warm but still with snow at Christmas, with delicious but non-fattening food, with people who are kind but also helpfully blunt when you have spinach in your teeth, and so on.

Yes, Christmastime is a time for dreaming, no matter what your faith, I think. :-)

Healthy onion sorta-rings!

I've learned that with a little perseverence and luck, it's possible to make VERY tasty and healthy stuff to substitute for evil FFC (Fast Food Cravings).

Tonight's strange but wonderful dinner:
- Salad with fresh greens, almonds, and raisins and lowfat ranch dressing
- Baked crispy sweet potato chips and onion petals

The salad is pretty self-explanatory.

For the baked crispy stuff, I took two small sweet onions and TRIED to cut them into petals like you see at the fancy restaurants, but that didn't quite work out. So I contented myself to just have lots of cut up "loose petals."

I sliced one sweet potato into as thin of slices as I could, and failing that at times, made some cubes out of the remainder.

I put all of the onion and potato pieces directly onto cookie sheet, which I had lightly sprayed (with a Misto sprayer) with garlic olive oil first. I then sprayed additional oil on top of the veggies, and on top of that, sprinkled some paprika and cornflake crumbs.

I baked this for 30 minutes at 425 degrees, and voila! Lightly crisp, nicely seasoned, and very yummy. The onions are of a similar taste, though not consistency, to fast food onion rings... albeit a zillion times less greasy and more healthy.

Flabby Meal

Perhaps this qualifies as a "duh!" discovery, but I think I've just gained additional insight into why Americans are so dang fat.

Our society typically treats our kids like blubbering (literally) unsophisticates at mealtimes.

Check out the "kids meals" at almost any eatery, and you'll see:
- lots and lots of fried stuff
- red (and often very fatty) meat
- sodas

I realize that young kids have may not yet have acquired a taste for asparagus tips and tofu strips, but then again, is of much what we ascribe to "kids' tastes" merely a reflection of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Translated into English: We assume young children will only eat unhealthy crap, so that's what our society advertises and puts into Happy Meals, and thus what parents end up serving their kids.

Why isn't there a "grilled chicken" Happy Meal?
Why don't kids get a bag of baked potato chips instead of greasy fried potato chips with their school lunches?
Why isn't juice (not Hawaiian Punch) usually a choice with children's specials?

And doesn't anyone out there -- corporations or parents -- feel the least bit guilty about actively pushing heart-attacks-on-a-bun on Junior?

Here'd be something interesting to figure out:
- How many kids eventually die from alcohol-related injuries or diseases?
versus
- How many kids eventually die from obesity-related injuries or diseases?

In America, we spend bazillions of dollars enforcing ridiculous (and globally often ridiculed) laws prohibiting 16 year olds from having a glass of wine with dinner or a beer at their family picnic.

But somehow it doesn't seem to bother our collective conscience that we're fattening up our kids to death... not just allowing them to eat artery-clogging junk, but actively encouraging, facilitating, and celebrating this sort of deadly diet.

Don't get me wrong... I'm not personally living on a diet of broccoli and water, nor do I begrudge anyone (including myself!) the occasional ice cream or juicy steak or any other food for that matter. Rather, I'm simply disgusted by the fact that we don't offer our kids any alternatives... in effect teaching them that hamburgers are a "Happy Meal" and that green stuff is something that they're forced to eat at home (seemingly as a punishment) before they can eat the "good stuff."

And then we wonder why our kids become Super-Sized(tm).