Batman Wants You to Eat Your Vegetables

The husband found this book in the "collectibles" section at Half-Price Books and had to blog about it.

--The Faudie
Remember the end of the first Superman movie, when Superdude turnes back time by reversing Earth's orbit? No, it didn't make one damn lick of sense, but I'm not here to complain about that. Instead, I'd like to pretend Superman is spinning the planet backwards again...

...and now it's 1982! And this cookbook is available at your neighborhood bookstore:

Yup, it's the DC Super Heroes Super Healthy Cookbook. This no doubt well-intentioned oddity tries to get children excited about eating healthy foods such as sprouts and wheat germ (seriously, half of the recipes include wheat germ) by having the likes of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman pretend that these recipes are really, really exciting. Don't take my word for it, though. Let's examine a few select pages together.

Yeah, this is messed up. Here you have two winged superheroes, admiring a breakfast that looks like a bird...made from eggs. So enjoy the cheerful little birdie, if you can get past the creepy infanticide/cannibalism vibes it's giving off.

Remember when Batman was fun? Because this is 1982 and Frank Miller hasn't been born yet (at least, I hope he hasn't been born, as that's the only excuse I can think of for his juvenile writing), Batman is still a nice guy, dressed in baby blue and almost--almost--cracking a smile as he wastes his time investigating a plate of French toast.

The highlight of this picture is, of course, Robin's comment about "putting the banana in the Batman." Say what?!?

Okay, this one's actually kind of cool. Dig those crazy-lookin' sandwich monsters! Green Lantern spends most of the book fighting peanut butter-based antagonists. I have no idea why.

Supergirl has the same powers as Superman, but because she's female, she gets stuck making dinner. Nice. (But you do have to love these instructions: "Bake in oven for one hour at 375 degrees or cook for two minutes under heat vision if you have superpowers." If only.)

Not more bananas! William Moulton Marston would be having a field day with that illustration.

Here's the cookbook's big finale: a party to celebrate the founding of the Justice League of America, attended by everyone...everyone except the Martian Manhunter, who's mysteriously MIA. (I like to think J'onn is maybe in disguise as the punch bowl.) Again, as this is 1982, our heroes actually get to cut loose and have some fun.

If only they knew what's in store for them in the years following this party. Superman dies. Green Lantern dies. Green Arrow dies. Aquaman dies. The Elongated Man dies. Hawkman dies. Hawkgirl dies. Batman dies (or gets stranded in time, or gets lost on the way to the bathroom, or whatever). Kind of a bummer, isn't it?

Oh, well. On a more positive note, Zatanna returns to the fishnets and ditches the Count Chocula outfit.

So the DC Super Heroes Super Healthy Cookbook succeeds in making healthy eating fun, but more in the way of giving me an opportunity to snark about something than by me actually preparing any of the food. There is one recipe, though, that I may try someday if I have the time and the wheat germ. Until then, I'll return you to the year 2009. Get that globe spinning, Supes!

Happy Anniversary to Me

This happy little blog turns one year old today. Who's bringing the cake?

Sweet.

Holy Cow, Batman!

Ahh, I love the Tiny Titans!

Aw yeah, Titans!

It's a Bat-Post!

Remember my review a few weeks back about Batman, the movie made in the early 1960s? The one with the shark?

Note: This scene does not actually appear in the movie.

Remember how I observed that Adam West back in the day wasn't too bad looking?

Gentle Reader, you should see him now:

Batman Garage Sale with Adam West from Adam West

Holy Crapola, Batman! This Movie Stinks!

I might have mentioned a time or two before, Gentle Reader, that I've been a fan of the Bat since I was two or three. No, really--that long. I have photographic proof. See for yourself:

Of course, in the mid-1970s, a person couldn't run down to Blockbuster and pick up a copy of more than half a dozen different Batman movies any 'ol time you wanted. My education and experience with the Bat came from that craptastic campy '60s show from ABC that, I'm assuming, was shown in syndication on one of the local broadcast stations. I'm sorry to admit that I've never asked Mum or Dad how we watched the show, if that is indeed how I was first exposed to Batman and Robin, for I don't have any memories of watching the show when I was very young. I do recall it airing on a UHF channel when I was in the first grade or so, but I must have watched it as a toddler, for how else could I have become so enamored of it that I was gifted with Batman and Robin Mego dolls (for Christmas) and Batman coloring books and reading books?

Enough tripping down Bat-memory lane, right?

Wrong!

Flash forward 31 and a half years approximately. While browsing the TV viewing guide for episodes of Monk to record to the DVR for later viewing, I happened to spy a listing for the 1966 Batman movie on AMC. (Yeah, I know--what happened to American Movie Classics? Is Wolf with Jack Nicholson or, ::shudder::, Catwoman with Halle Berry really a classic movie? Well, what happened, I think, is Turner Classic Movies. Doesn't Ted own the rights to a motherload of old movies and yanked their rights to show on a channel of his own?) Since I'd only ever seen bits and pieces of that '66 release (most memorably while at the roller rink in Ada while attending a camp for gifted and talented middle schoolers back in 1989, the fine year that brought us the Batman with Michael Keaton) and since I thought perhaps the boy might find it enjoyable as he's been on a Justice League kick for the last week or so (yes, it's a miraculous break from all things Star Wars), I figured why not add the movie to the 'ol DVR for a time when...well, when I have two and a half hours to kill?

Yes, It Really Is That Campy
Within the first 20 or so minutes of the movie, Robin has lowered Batman, in all his satin shorts glory, into the ocean off the coast of Gotham City as he was climbing down the Bat-Ladder attached to the Bat-Helicopter (or was it a Bat-Chopper? I don't remember the label--and by the FSM, the Bat Boys loved to label their stuff more than Martha Stewart!), where he has been attacked by a man-eating shark. A very tenacious man-eating shark that kept its grip on Batman's gray tights-clad leg even as Batman, clinging to the Bat-Ladder, was being lifted several feet above the water as the Bat-Helicoper climbed higher.

Oh wait, Gentle Reader. It gets better.

Robin must abandon temporarily his piloting duties to climb down the ladder to deliver unto Batman the can of shark repellent Bat-Spray. And thank the FSM Robin grabbed the right can! Batman really would have been up a creek without a paddle had Robin accidentally grabbed the can of manta ray repellent Bat-Spray or one of the other five cans of Bat-Spray to repel other marine life. But to top it off, Robin delivers the can while hanging upside-down from one of the Bat-Ladder's rungs. Good use of those circus trapeze act skills, Boy Wonder!

The shark explodes, by the way. Sorry if I ruin that for you.

The shark isn't the only marine life that gets it in a gruesome way in this flick. A porpoise takes a torpedo for the Dynamic Duo not too long after the shark becomes sashimi. Thank goodness PETA wasn't around back then.

I do have to take issue, though, with Batman's portrayal--or at least his prowess as a detective. Specifically, are we really supposed to believe that the World's Greatest Detective can't tell right away that the Soviet reporter he's attempting to seduce is Catwoman, another would-be seductee, in disguise? The leopard-print outfit she wears at the press conference in Commissioner Gordon's office when she makes her first appearance isn't a dead giveaway? Nevermind that Ms. KitKat (or whatever her nickname was) keeps saying "Purrrfectly" the exact same way Catwoman does.

Admittedly, the eyebrows might throw him....

Now I realize that men are sometimes prone to thinking with other body parts besides their brains, but really, I think Batman is typically above such things. That's why the whole Batman-Catwoman thing has been going on frickin' forever in the comics--Batdude doesn't think with his prick, therefore Catwoman doesn't get very far.

(Although admittedly in her own comics, she had bedded him a few times. And in his comics, we've seen her traipsing around the cave in one of his silk robes, I think. But that's just sex. It's nothing lasting.)

Rating the Batmen
In the 80 years Batman's been around--yes, the Bat will officially be an octogenarian this May--a good number of actors (professional and otherwise) have portrayed him on some sort of screen. In a post last summer about the joys of watching Batman Begins while running at the gym, I noted that I find Christian Bale pretty easy on the eyes. I suppose Clooney has a number of fans, and of the bits and pieces of whichever Batman movie he was in that I've seen, I'll agree that he's not hideous. Val Kilmer? Yeah, he had his day. Michael Keaton? Eh, not so much. I can't say much about whoever played Batman in either serial from the 40s.

That leaves (if I haven't forgotten anyone) Adam West. The memories I have of him from childhood don't leave a very positive impression on me--hammy acting, bad '60s-era clothes, awful '60s-era hair. So imagine my surprise when I find that when he's sporting a tux as Bruce Wayne, West isn't that awful to look at. Not that I find him incredibly attractive--far from it--but he's not the awkward, ugly presence I remember. And somehow after seeing that bit, I find it plausible--although very dubious--that he was once asked to play James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service*, as West has claimed, but turned down the role on his belief that someone British ought to play the part.

As for poor Burt Ward, all I can say is this: Holy comb-over, Batman! Of course, the boy kept asking why Robin wasn't wearing any pants.

Indeed, poor Burt Ward.

*This is according to the Wiki entry for the '60s Batman TV series. In its entry for Adam West, the offer of the Bond role is for the movie Diamonds Are Forever. A mistake on Wiki editors' part, or can West not keep his story straight?

Cinematic Pay-off
Of course, what the '60s-era Batman franchise is remembered best for is the animated onomatopoeia added to the fight scenes in postproduction. Trippy fun, right?

Oh, in a bad movie filled with hammy acting, satin shorts and capes, foam rubber and Cesar Romero's pancake makeup-painted mustache, that final battle atop Penguin's surfaced submarine was made all the sweeter with its onomatopoeia! And the boy loved it--once, of course, Mommy and Daddy explained why those words were appearing on the TV.

All in all, getting to see the 1966 Batman movie in its entirety was not a total waste of two and a half hours of my life on a Sunday. I got some knitting done while I was watching, and we took advantage of commercials breaks to get the laundry done. We even saved the recording on the DVR in case the boy ever wants to see the flick from the beginning (he came in about halfway through). Or if I need to revisit those shots of West in a tux to check if I really have lost my tastes.

It's Awards Season!

Let's face it, Gentle Reader, the first few months of a new year are really, really dull. After all the hullabaloo of the end-of-the-year holidays and all the anticipation that the new year is going to be different, we more often than not find ourselves back in the same dull grind. The air is usually cold (or cooler than normal if you're here in Austin), the sky is more often than not gray, the disappointment over failing to keep a new year's resolution (i.e., the body failed to spontaneously or near-spontaneously shed 20 or 30 pounds after only a few workouts and a few days of restricted eating) is high, the sales are lackluster (do you really need to stock up on towels, Rubbermaid totes, Hanes tightie whities and other "whites" and storage "solutions" every friggin' year?) and a sort of holding pattern descends as we all sort of bide our time until spring arrives. So what can bring a little excitement, a little anticipation back to our lives?

Awards seasons!

Doesn't everybody love an awards show? Doesn't everybody now get an opportunity to get an award now that we have so damn many awards shows? I mean, when I was a kid, I remember we had the Oscars, the Tonys and the Grammys--and this peculiar thing, usually on ABC, called the American Music Awards, but that was more of a concert on TV rather than an awards show. Then, later, came the MTV awards, which multiplied faster than horny rabbits, which, I think, fulfilled some ancient prophecy that then opened some mystic door to all kinds of other awards shows.

(The People's Choice Awards? Why do I give a dilly damn what the brain-dead readers or viewers of USA Today or Parade magazine or some other low-end, lowest common denominator media outlet choose? But, hey, last night Batman cleaned up! Check out a fun play-by-play over on Newsarama.)

It seems Awards Season has extended its tentacles and ensnared local public schools as well. The boy came home yesterday with a note about his elementary school's upcoming awards assembly. Yeah, an awards assembly in January. Just what kind of awards are we giving out in the middle of the school year? Why must we now honor kids after only one semester? Hell, if this were college and kids graduated and left in December, I could understand have two awards assemblies a year, but this ain't college.

I dunno, Gentle Reader. Call me...crazy? Sane? I just don't understand why we need an awards assembly after only one semester. Do we really think that kids' egos are that fragile and need constant boosting with meaningless awards--that accompany so much of the meaningless work they're required to do to meet meaningless metrics? (But hey, once these kids are adults, they'll be all ready to be drones in the workplace, where doing meaningless work to achieve meaningless metrics in the hopes of winning meaningless awards is de rigueur). And don't give me any B.S. about self-esteem.

Sheesh, and they wonder why Millennials have a raging sense of entitlement....

Everybody Loves a Cliché!

By the way, if you really want a laugh or love when popular movies--particular of the type featuring beloved characters from Batman--collide with real-world stuff, check out another entry from this particular video collage maker person.

Batty Friday

It's been a screwy week here at Chez Boeckman-Walker, and while I'm struggling to grasp the concept that today really is Friday, not Wednesday or Thursday as I keep thinking it is, I'm pleased as punch that the weekend is just hours away.

Target Finds
For those of you unable to drive a few miles to a Target, I really do feel sorry for ya. I speak true, for I grew up without Target. In fact, I didn't really become a regular Target shopper until 1998 or so, which was a good two years after I'd moved to a city with plentiful Targets.

A Target can be much like Half-Price Books: Ya never know what kind of treasures you're going to find. And today was a great treasure find. "Why?" you asked, Gentle Reader? To put it quite simply...

Halloween Is Coming!
Yup, I'm one of those overgrown children who just enjoys the hell outta Halloween. It's so much better than the end-of-the-year glut of holidays (yes, I'm talking largely about that king of emotional baggage-laden holidays, Christmas), plus the color scheme fits. Every year I look forward to the clearancing of school supplies to make way for cheap costumes, gaudy decorations, garish animatronics and other fun, ghoulish stuff. At last, that time has arrived.

And I scored me my first Halloween buy of the year: a reusable tote featuring Domo, which Wiki tells me isn't just a cute little anime-ish monster but the mascot of Japan's NHK TV station. What the mascot of a Japanese TV station is doing on American Halloween-themed reusable grocery totes just...makes perfect sense to me in my world. Really. I'm not shitting you here, Gentle Reader.

(And now that I read a little more into Domo's entry in Wiki, I see that the little guy has appeared in animated shorts that started running on Nick in early 2008. So he's not schilling Japanese TV. He's just another crappy kiddy cartoon product placement. Boy, I feel so used now.)

While I'm a huge fan of misshapen monsters, ya gotta love the marshmallow puff bats that are chasing poor Domo:

On the other side of the bag, poor put-upon Domo is tormented by misshapen spiders:

Edvard Munch meets Uglydolls--that's fantastic stuff, Gentle Reader!
In addition to the nifty graphics on both sides of the bag, it folds up to the side of a large wallet. Even better, the way to fold it up correctly to get it to stay folded up is obvious, unlike the folding required for the RuMe bags I have (which I love nevertheless). See for yourself, Gentle Reader, how collapsible this bag is:



The folding of this tote is so obvious even brain-damaged cats such as
Mr. P, seen here inspecting his work, can do it!
In addition to the nifty tote whose virtues I'm finished extolling, I scored some cheap AA batteries (a pair for 70 cents!), some cheap index cards for the pile of recipes I need to write down, a five-pack of notebooks (only 35 cents!) and, best of all, some magnetic to-do lists emblazoned with Batman. I loves me some cheap Bat stuff from the Dollar Spot! Okay, we don't love so much the ballpoint Bat pens we bought from the first spate of Bat buck stuff that write only occasionally; those we here at Chez Boeckman-Walker have dubbed "Bruce Wayne's cheap-ass pens" and avoid using even though all those little Bat symbols are kinda nifty.

Speaking 'o the Bat....
As I've noted before, I find Christian Bale to be pretty easy on the eyes, especially when I'm putting in seven miles on a treadmill. While his performance in The Dark Knight--or at least his vocal performance (which the studio has admitted was digitally futzed with) as Batdude--has become the butt of many jokes and derided by more than a few folks, I don't think Christian Bale is that horrible an actor. I can think of many, many other actors I'd rank well below him in terms of watchable performances. But, hey, that's just me.

But if you find Mr. Bale laughable or ya just need a good laugh on this first Friday of September, check out one intrepid blogger's visual report on the uncanny resemblance in acting talent betwixt Mr. Bale and a certain beloved frog. Trust me, this report will either have you laughing your arse off or convinced that the frog and the Welshman are one and the same.

Happy Friday, Gentle Reader! Have a rockin' weekend!

Movie Review Schmovie Review

Batman commands you to go see his movie. Who cares what other people who've seen it thought. Batman commands you to go see his movie.

And who are you to argue with a guy in a bat suit who could probably take you down just by blinking in your direction?

But if you won't take Batman's command, take my recommendation--go see The Dark Knight. Check that. Empty your bladder first, then go see The Dark Knight. It's two and a half hours of your life well spent.

Another Fun Saturday at the Gym

Evidently I need to print my "Gym Nuisances" essay and post it Martin Luther-style on the doors of my local cathedral of sweat because I observed something today that just...well, reminded me why we have road rage and other rages.

As I was heading over to the adductor/abductor machine, I noticed it was currently occupied by a woman. Hey, no biggie, I told myself, I'll just go knock out my abs routine then hit the inner thighs before heading up to run. Then I noticed the woman had a cell phone glued to the side of her face. Oh joy.

The woman with the cell phone glued to the side of her face was there almost the entire time I was doing my abs thing, which takes at least 10 minutes. I was almost finished when I saw her getting up to leave. Well, that's great timing! I thought.

But oh no. I was thwarted from overexerting my adductors (I don't work abductors since they're already strong enough and tend to crank on my SI when I do) with 115 pounds of resistance by a second woman with a cell phone glued to the side of her face. This woman had been on the squat machine (more like a weighted Lazy Boy it reclines so much) yammering away while the first woman with the cell phone affliction had been yammering away while hogging in the thigh press machine.

Knowing damn good and well anyone with a cell phone glued to his or her face while occupying weight equipment will not finish his or her routine expediently to allow a fellow gym member to use the machine, I did a quick urdhva dhanurasana counterpose to all the ab work I'd done then popped up to put away the 25-pound weight plate I'd been using for resistance. By that time, the husband had joined me in the abs corner and asked what was wrong (evidently I was wearing quite the "pissed off wet cat" look). I tersely summarized the situation. I felt better getting the chance to vent.

I've said it once and I'll say it again:

Hang Up and Work Out!
Don't make me get all Martin Luther on your ass.

Batman, You Rock My World
So we all know Dark Knight is coming out on July 18, right? Been kind of hard to miss the commercials on TV--and I don't even watch that much TV. Or else the human adults of Chez Boeckman-Walker watch the channels most watched by the movie's target audience (y'know, those golden man-boys ages 18 to 35 who give sales, advert and marketing folks the best wet dreams). But believe it or not, I had no idea there was a new Batman movie coming out when Batman Begins hit theaters in 2005, and that was a total treat. I enjoyed the movie by and large then (that third act is still overly long and has way too much Katie Holmes in it, but she got hers, didn't she?), I've continued to by and large enjoy it since becoming a regular reader of comics (ahh, there's a nasty disease) and I continue to enjoy it when it's playing in the gym's cardio cinema. Here's why:

• Despite the mole (which the husband actually had to point out and now, of course, never strays too far from my awareness), Christian Bale's pretty easy on the eyes, and I find that with each viewing, he's looking less like the George Clooney/Noah Wylie frapped in a blender product the husband and I assessed him to be back when the movie first came out and more just like an older Noah Wylie after his indenture on E.R. was up and switched to a few contractual guest spots every season.
• The story flows fairly well (not that there weren't some script flaws), so it doesn't tax your attention span, letting you devote most of your attention to your stride and pace and breath, which is far healthier than letting yourself get absorbed in some distraction and letting your body's movement go to hell.
• There's enough action to, well, motivate me to keep running, as damnedably cliched as that sounds.

But today I was in for a special treat, courtesy my iPod. It decided to provide an alternate soundtrack to that turgid third act of Batman Begins, and I discovered that the James Bond theme works very well for Bats. The Oakenfold's version of the theme did work a bit better than Moby's rendering (don't ask me which one of his renderings it is), but they both synced well with the action.

The surprise standout in my impromptu alternate soundtrack was "Sakura Saku," the theme to Love Hina. It's crazy-ass J-pop, but the craziness synced nearly seamlessly with the sequence on the subway. Forget syncing Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz; instead, pop your iPod onto its library shuffle option, start up your favorite movie and see how well your iPod can read the vibe of the movie.

Anywho, big thanks to Bats for getting me through the run today. I clock 7.25 miles and a little over 1,025 calories (or somewhere there abouts) in 64:30, which is damn good. I think my average pace was 6.4, and yes, I had it on the 3.0 incline. I never thought of myself as a fast runner, but a 6.4 pace feels right. Nice!

I'm So Confused....

All righty, comics fans (not that there are any of you among my readers save the husband), can someone please explain to me just what the hell happened in Batman 678? Was that neurotic little Robin with the scruffy hair scarfing down fast food then being chased by escapees from some third-rate European circus in the first few pages, or was that 'wing Thing? But that was 'wing Thing foaming at the mouth and all strapped in for a good long stay at the funny farm on page 26, yes? And what's with the grungy flannel, Batdude? Is "Zur-en-arrh" some kind of code for "Seattle of the 1990s"?

I totally get it that ever since that misogynist Frank Miller did his little Bat books, portraying Bats as a little south of insane is, like, de rigueur. And I totally get that Grant Morrison is trying to tie everything he's ever done in the Bat books (and probably ever friggin' DC comic he's written) in with a crapload of Silver Age silliness or whatever. But, for the love of comics, people, when you write something so disjointed and esoteric that only the "real fans" (i.e., you and your overinflated ego) can even minorly grasp what's going on, it royally pisses the rest of us off. Too many damn times comics fans shell out good money each month to buy the next installment of some ongoing story in hopes that ooh! maybe this latest issues things'll start making sense. But too often of late, we buy the story, wait through all those months of seemingly random crap happening and nothing ever makes sense. Rereading the whole story once it's published doesn't even help.

And it really doesn't help when you can't tell who's who from the art. Every male member of the frickin' Bat family, including that little puke Damian, all frickin' look alike. For the love of the FSM, give us just a small break!

Oh my achin' cranium!

As the husband said, "If this all ties in with some issue from the 50s, I'm just...."

I don't recall how he finished that statement, but he's got a point. While it's all good and fun that some of these comics have been going on for ages and ages, does every major story have to pay tribute to the glorious past--even when that past was goofy crap? Are there really that many comics readers out there who give a rat's patoot about the things happening in today's comics being related to what happened when they were reading 'em as kids?

Perhaps the husband should have finished his statement by saying, "...going to start my own comics publishing house that publishes titles that maintain continuity but don't hit the reset button every two or three years, don't bring blown-to-smithereens characters back from the dead [I'm looking at you, Jason Todd and ::shudder:: Spoiler, ye of the Even Numbered Robins Society] and don't have trumped up 'crises' every two or three years that promise to radically shift the paradigms of characters and readers but are only thinly disguised ploys for readers to fork over more money."

And, yeah, bully for me for continuing to fork over more money when I damn well know better. But, dammit, I have to know how this all ends!

Culinary Misadventures With the Kiddo, Day 3

I was only peripherally involved in today's culinary misadventure since the kiddo is a seasoned veteran at making mac and cheese at the rip old age of 5 and a half. I let him use my "good" Farberware 3-quart sauce pan instead of the crappy old Mirro with the spinning handle, so that was a special treat for him. Plus I still worked in a few lessons about how to really make mac and cheese from a box. For example:

Me (upon observing the boy grabbing his cup from breakfast and starting to pour water into it): Thirsty?
Boy: No, I have to add water.
Me (incredulously): Excuse me? You add water?
Boy: Yeah, Daddy does it.
Me (skeptically but somehow not terribly surprised): He does?
Boy: Yeah, after we add the butter we put in the water.
Me (firmly): Not today and not with me. We actually have milk.

I confronted the husband about the water issue, and he denied it. He said he often prefers not to drain the cooked mac until their bone dry since we rarely have milk. (At least the white variety, for I always have a carton of Quick fat-free in the fridge--and yes, I refuse to call it NesQuick because he'll always be the Quick bunny and it'll always be Nestle Quick to me, by the marinara goodness of the FSM!) Ahh, how things get turned and skewed in the mind of five year olds....

The kiddo is developing quite the stirring skills. His strokes are becoming more fluid and smooth (and if you're not inserting your own off-color humor here, than I'm disappointed in you). He by and large can make mac and cheese like a pro, so he's all set for college. Better send him off now before tuition really gets ridiculous.

The rest of our day was spent (after gym time, of course) sorting a big cannister of change and then counting and wrapping pennies. We managed to bag $11 worth of pennies, and we still have large mounds of quarters, nickels and dimes to tackle tomorrow. The kiddo is sure he'll get to spend all the money we roll and exchange for paper currency, but he's got another thing coming. After all, he wasn't the one who squirreled away all that change over the years.

Speaking of change and money, I now have a job. It's only a temporary gig, mind you, but it's money. I'll be editing the revised and reformatted drug monographs for the U.S. Pharmacopeia, which contracted a third-party firm to code 'em in XML and do the actual revising and whatnot. I get paid by the monograph, and the work looks pretty straightforward. Yes, I will be working from home, setting my own hours and everything. (Yes, I know, that'll spoil me even worse.) I'm just thrilled to be earning money again, even if it is only until early or mid-September.

By the way, fascinating coincidence: One of the last songs on my iPod while I was running (only six miles today--not stretching well Monday and Tuesday have taken their toll) was REO Speedwagon's "Roll With the Changes," my little theme song, if you will, for this latest transition. Was it a sign? Perhaps. Crystal Water's "100% Pure Love" used to work in a similar fashion once upon a time: I'd hear it on the radio and something good always came my way later that day. (I'd go into more detail, but some things are best left private. And yes, I realize that statement is fuel for the perverted imagination, but it wasn't really anything like that.) But I'll just chalk my latest theme's playing on my iPod (the first time for that to happen, actually) and my landing a new (albeit temporary) job as just a happy coincidence.

I'll leave you with the latest Bat-tableau from my spice cabinet. These three showed up in the cabinet in what the husband originally called a family vacation.


Man, don't you hate it when family vacations go awry?


Methinks Batwoman is having way too much fun. Then again, given that grin on Batzarro's face (which is the same one the kiddo wears in one of today's photos, I swear), maybe he's the one having all the fun. Like I always say, you can't keep a good freak down....

The Tandoor Saga, Part 1

Since Tuesday's Acapulco chicken threw the proverbial monkey wrench into the supper schedule at Chez Boeckman-Walker, the husband and I decided to move Pizza Tuesday to Friday and to try our hand at making tandoori chicken for Indian Feast Thursday.

Before I went overboard with the Indian cooking stuff, I'd written down a pretty simple tandoori chicken recipe from one of my Weight Watchers magazine-sized cookbooks. There was only one thing that kept us from trying it: It required the chicken be broiled five minutes after being baked for 20 minutes--and our ancient oven's broiler was a cesspool of filth and missing its broiling tray. Well, that second part we solved on our second trip to a Tuesday Morning, and I eventually got around to cleaning out the cesspool shortly after returning to unemployment. (Rescued countless milk jug rings and twisties--placed there courtesy Muffin and Bucket--along with one of the kiddo's Hot Wheels.)

This morning I tracked down the tandoori recipes from Jaffrey's Step-by-Step Cooking and Vaswani's Easy Indian Cooking and compared them to the Weight Watchers version. Needless to say, the WW version on paper seemed flavorless. Plus there's that whole broiling issue, which I have zilcho experience with. Even though the broiler is clean and we have a brand-new tray for it, I don't trust my ancient Lady Kenmore to broil and not burn down the house.

Ladies and Gents, Start Your Cuisinarts
I opted to use Jaffrey's recipe instead of trying to meld the two acceptable ones; I just didn't have that much desire to experiment. And that's fine because I had to whip out the food processor! Woohoo! Any recipe that requires multiple kitchen appliances is fine by me. What's even better is this time I got to make paste from onions on purpose.

Of course, I failed to follow the instructions and steps precisely. (The FSM forbid I do such a thing as follow the instructions!) I used ready-made garlic paste and ginger paste in lieu of the six garlic cloves and 1.5 inch peeled ginger root piece I was supposed to combine with the onions and three tablespoons of lemon juice to create a paste. No, I just paste-ified the onions, then threw in a tablespoon of ginger paste (a total guess) and two tablespoons of garlic paste (totally overcompensating I'm sure, given that half a teaspoon of minced garlic equals one garlic clove). And then I remembered the bit about adding the lemon juice; it went in after I'd already added the cup of fat-free yogurt. But that didn't appear to muck things up.

Crankin' It Up With the Spice Weasel
After the gooey stuff was in and relatively mixed, I got to add the spices!


Doesn't that look yummy?

I did have one substitution: Since I have no mace (and opted not to stop into Gandhi Bazaar this evening on the comics run to pick some up), I bopped over to Cook's Thesaurus and discovered my multitude of mace substitution options. I picked up allspice since I just recently acquired some for the oatmeal fruit no-bake cookies I made a few weeks back.

Both Jaffrey and Vaswani include the option of adding orange food coloring to the marinade to give the final product a more authentic look. While I don't have orange food coloring (which is difficult to believe since I love using that color for the boy; he has orange walls and a purple ceiling in his bedroom, after all), I do have reds and yellows. So after I made sure all the spices were stirred into the yogurt-onion-garlic-ginger-lemon juice paste and saw the...not entirely appetizing mustardy color of the marinade, I decided to throw caution to the wind and try out some food color.


Looks pretty edible, right? Pretty amazing what six drops of McCormick's red and two drops of its yellow coloring will do.

Once the marinade was ready, it was showtime for the chicken breasts. As my husband said while I was prepping the chicky boobs, dressed in the short satin halter nightie I wear post-shower, "There's nothing quite as sexy as a woman who wears a skimpy bit of satin while cutting fat from raw chicken meat." Ahh, thanks, honey!

Unlike the other two recipes we'd considered, Jaffrey recommended making diagonal slashes in the meat and rubbing marinade into those slashes to make sure the meat really absorbs the spices and flavor. Since I'd already thrown caution to the wind with the food color, I slashes and rubbed (using the spoon-shaped rubber scraper--my nails were funky after cleaning out the junk drawer today and spilling Crazy Glue on them while attempting to readhese the magnetic disc to Greg's Vader head magnet), then dunked those chicky boobs into their yogurt bath in the fridge for the night.


Nighty night, chicky boobs! Marinate well! I'll see you tomorrow evening for some fun in the oven!

Speaking of the Bam!-Meister....
By the way, my usual audience/sous-chef, Nickelbucket, was kept from his perch atop the stove (yes, I know, not incredibly sanitary) by the husband, so instead my audience was a family of bats.


Batzarro and Batman live in the spice/drug cabinet. Greg's job is to surprise me with some lewd/crude/bizarre arrangement of the two, often with special guests from the shelves of the Star Wars room/study. They're fun. And with Batwoman in tow, I felt just like Emeril cooking with this fun family in the audience.

Stay tuned for "The Tandoor Sage, Part 2," which I should have up tomorrow evening (after supper, obviously). Trust me, there's still ample opportunity to muck this up.