The Krabby Patty Incident

The girls, for the most part, groan when I cook. Because I cook awful things that I expect them to eat. You know: meat, vegetables, that sort of swill.

So a few weeks ago I thought it might be time to try something that they would have fun with. They (and I) are big Spongebob Squarepants fans, so I thought "Hey, why don't we try making Krabby Patties?!"

(For the uninitiated out there, Spongebob works as a fry cook at the fast food joint The Krusty Krab [run by my hero, the ever-so-cheap Mr Krabs], and the main item on their menu is the Krabby Patty.)

So I asked Brenna to get some crab meat -- er, some imitation crab meat (cheap cheap cheap!) -- at the grocery store, and we decided to make a family night of making our own Krabby Patties.

The girls loved the idea, and were very excited to help. Abra pestered me all week: "When are we going to make the Kraaaaaaby Paaaattttties, Dad?" So on a Friday night, all was ready.

First, we took the "crab meat" and shredded it up in the trusty mini-food-processor:


(I love that food processor, by the way. I am Mr. Lazy when it comes to chopping, so I'll put just about anything in there and hit the "chop/grind" button. Carrots, onions, chicken, etc. Absolutely love that thing. Remember the last scene out of the movie Fargo? If that movie had been about me, it would have involved a mini food processor instead of a woodchipper. But anyway...)

So after shredding up the "crab meat," we mixed the "crab meat" with lots of breadcrumbs and some egg. (Think "seafaring version of meatloaf" here...). In the portion that was destined to be Mom and Dad's Krabby Patties, I also mixed in a healthy dose of Old Bay Seasoning.

(mmm, Krabby Patty fixin's....)

Then we smushed and shaped the "crab meat" into Krabby Patties.

The ever-present food-mooching hound had been pacing around the kitchen the whole time, of course, so I took the bowl with the left-over Krabby Patty fixings and set it out for the Wackjob.

Much to my amazement, Wacko wanted nothing to do with the Krabby Patty bowl. Are you kidding me? This is a dog who has been known to dine, well, in the cats' litterboxes. And he's refusing my fine Krabby Patty fixings???

So I pushed the bowl over to Pearl, the small feline version of the food-moocher set. Surely she would eat it. Right? RIGHT???

Uh, no. She took a pass as well. For those of you versed in literature and the cinema, this is what's known as "foreshadowing." But let's continue with the story.

So the Krabby Patties went into the fry pan. Cook, patties, cook!


So with these lovely Krabby Patties made, we then brought out the fixin's: ketchup (for the girls), pickles, lettuce, tomatos. I made a side order of french fries, and slapped it all out on the supper table. Oh yeah, the girls were excited about their Krabby Patties!

(Notice the Krabby Patties being served on authentic Spongebob Squarepants placemats!)

So I'm feeling pretty darned good about things right about now. We made a dinner the girls are excited about, it bears a resemblance -- if only in the most cursory way -- to food made from shellfish, which my dear wife normally refuses to put on the menu (sigh: Kansas), and I'm actually looking forward to eating a meal that the girls are looking forward to eating. So let's do it!

I know what you're thinking now: they turned out to be awful. No! They were very tasty! I wolfed mine down, and even Miss Kansas 1983 happily ate her Krabby Patty. They were great. The girls started eating too, and, in hindsight, this is where I should have packed it in for the night.

But no, I took it too far and actually had hopes that the girls would eat, like, more than one or two microscopic bites. Crazy me.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Thalia announced that she'd rather go straight to bed than to eat her Krabby Patty. So she did. And then five minutes later, a mysterious stomach virus hit Abra and she really really had a tummy ache and just couldn't manage to "finish" her Krabby Patty. (By "finish", I of course mean "eat a second bite").

Sigh.

AND I CAN'T EVEN GIVE THE LEFTOVERS TO THE DOG.

So the great Krabby Patty experiment went down as yet another example of the failures when I cook. At that point, I stomped around and told the girls that if I was going to go to the trouble to cook meals that they refused to eat, they were going to be meals that I wanted to cook and eat, and that the days of catering to six- and four-year old tastes were coming to an end. The line in the sand is drawn here. (I think I actually started one of my outraged declaratory statements with the phrase "By god...", although I did manage to refrain from the Scarlett O'Hara-ish "As god is my witness...").

And that's the story. Except of course to note that with Brenna going out tonight, Dad is left to cook dinner for the girls. And yes, I've caved -- it's pizza on the menu tonight....

KBRA President's Day Broadcast

So we're riding in the car last night when Abra pipes up:

Abra: Hey, wanna know what? (Many of Abra's conversations begin this way...)
Brenna: What, honey?
Abra: A president was named after me.
Brenna/Me: Uhhh.....
Abra: His name was Abra something.
Me: .....Abraham Lincoln?
Abra: Yeah! Him!

Abra-ham!

Finger Dusting

So Brenna found the girls' latest artistry on the bookshelf the other day:


Uh, I guess it's time to do another round of house cleaning. At least they didn't write "Wash Me" on the bookshelf...

How I Spend My Time

So my primary jobs at home these days seem to be:

a) flushing unflushed toilets, and
b) turning off unused lights

Maybe I'll add that line to the annual report I submit each year to the Dean:

"While I only published two papers this year, I also was very successful flushing 2,351 unflushed toilets and turning off 7,437 unneeded lights."

The Death of the Album

First of all, this post is inspired by conversations with my buddies John and Mark. And second of all, be warned: cranky old man rantings are about to ensue...

One of the things that really bothers me about music these days -- or, I should say, the perception of music -- is the shift in focus from album to song. Using online download services, you can now pick and choose individual songs from an album you want to buy (yes, buy). So suddenly you are listening to music out of context, a mish mash of songs with no regard for how they were put together. An album is much more than a random collection of songs, it's a story in it's own right. There's often an ebb and flow, a timing to an album, that gets lost when you just pick and choose a few songs off of it.

Look at it this way: pick your favorite book. Find the most exciting chapter in it. Pull that chapter out. Throw the rest of the book away. Now look what you have -- it doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?

Think of the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers. One of my favorite songs on there is Sister Morphine. Great song; a harrowing, heartbreaking song. But it's made all the better because of the way it leads into Dead Flowers, which itself leads into the wistful, beautiful Moonlight Mile to finish off the album. Each song is great, but they belong together, in that order, at the end of the album.


Or what about Led Zeppelin? Led Zeppelin I is a completely different style of music from what is put forth in Physical Graffiti. You can't blindly mash songs from those two albums together -- I Can't Quit You Baby and Kashmir are both great songs, but they don't belong together at all. The difference between 1969 and 1975 is only six years, but in the progression of that band, it's a chasm.

That's why "Best of" albums are so soul-less. Yes, I own a bunch of them, but they are usually a pale shadow of the artist's true scope. And if they aren't, well, that's a bad sign, if you ask me....

Also, by not having the album, you lose the ability to have a band "grow on you". Take the White Stripes. My friend Sherry recommended them to me at first, and I remember upon hearing a track thinking that Jack White had a very whiney voice (never mind the fact that I listen to tons of Beastie Boys...). And so I didn't follow up. But then I got Elephant because I liked the song Seven Nation Army, and as I started listening to the rest of the album, I realized how much other amazing stuff they had done. The Hardest Button to Button? Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine? I would have never known these songs if I hadn't listened to the whole album.


Growing up, two of the biggest album releases I can remember were Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti and Pink Floyd's The Wall. I can't imagine either of those albums as simply a collection of songs. Now obviously The Wall wasn't -- it was a story told through an album, much like Tommy or Quadrophenia. But people were wild about the albums, not just the songs. The design of an album itself is artistic, above and beyond the artistry that goes into the individual songs. Am I crazy here? How can you pick, say, three songs off of The Wall and toss the rest of the album away?

Having said all that, I do listen to my music on random play much of the time at work (and if you follow my last.fm log here on the blog, or on my last.fm profile, you'll know this). But what often happens is when a song comes on that particularly resonates with me, I'll toggle over and listen to the whole album. And then you have context, texture, transition, a whole suite of music which just gets lost when you randomly listen to a set of tracks cobbled together with disregard for their history and connection.

I worry now that the album is a dying concept -- that music is now perceived more and more as isolated tracks, disjointed and disconnected from one another. Just a pile of 98 cent tracks downloaded onto an iPod and then swapped like a cheap pack of smokes. And that makes me sad.

OK, so tell me people: is my focus on "the album" simply me being an old fuddy-duddy, or am I right? I'm particularly interested in what the younger generation has to say -- the one growing up on iTunes, mp3s, and, ahem, bittorrent (I won't tell...)

Unintended Consequences

Weekday mornings around our house can sometimes be a challenge to get the girls up, dressed, fed, and to the busstop in time. There is a good amount of dawdling going on, particularly by (no surprise here) Abra.

To get things moving, I tried something new and told the girls that the first one to get up and dressed each morning would get carried from their bedroom downstairs to the breakfast table. This little contest worked smashingly, as both girls were getting up and racing to get dressed quickly (and without complaints!) all week.

So this morning -- a Saturday morning, mind you -- my perfect plan backfired, as Abra woke me up in complete darkness at 6:05am to announce that she was awake and dressed and ready for her ride downstairs.

Too much TV??

So Abra's class drew pictures of things they would do on their winter vacation. Yes, the mind harkens back to those Norman Rockwell images of wintertimes past: cold snowy days bundled up in coats and hats, playing with the dog in the snow, sledding, having snowball fights, drinking hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire --- or, er, this:


Egads. Gotta unplug these girls....

When the kid's right, she's right.

So yesterday, Abra was playing outside in the cold, and rang the doorbell to come back inside. We then had an exchange that went something like this:

Ding dong!
Me: Who is it?
Abra: It's me!
Me: Me who?
Abra: Me, Abra!
Me: How can I help you?
Abra: I want to come in!
Me: WHAT?
Abra: I want to come in!
Me: What's the password?
Abra: The what?
Me: The PASSWORD!
Abra: oh -- "PLEASE"!
Me: Nope, not this time
Abra: ????
Me: "Dad is...."
Abra: ????
Me: "Dad is...." (OK, clearly here I am fishing for "smart", "nice", "good-looking", etc)
Abra: CHEAP!

OK, she pretty much nailed it on that one. So she got inside.