Croc-a-doodle-doo

Maybe you like them and maybe you wear them and maybe to you they are the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I personally detest Crocs and all the ubiquitous knockoffs, pseudos and wannabes. I detest them with the heat of a thousand melted plastic injection mold forms.

But these are cute and un-Croc-ey enough that if I were to somehow acquire them, and if they didn’t gross me out in person too much, I'd find a way to remove the logo. Perhaps with a metal file and a small blowtorch, like the kind you use for creme brulee.

Here’s another reason to always pack clean underwear

Knock wood, I have (or more accurately, an airline has) lost my luggage only once. And it wasn’t really lost, it just took a later flight than I did, thanks to bad weather at my connecting airport.  I know there are some poor souls who’ve never gotten their luggage back, and stacks of luggage that never finds its way home. And while the premise makes sense, in a Goodwill/Salvation Army Thrift Store way, I am a little creeped out by the bargain-hunting that goes on at the Unclaimed Baggage Store, mostly because the goods at a charity thrift store were donated, while the merchandise at UBS is “donated” by default. The UBS site claims they have found antiques, art, expensive electronics and gemstones in lost luggage.

Admitted voyeur Luna Laboo has been buying lost luggage, photographing the contents and posting it on her Is This Your Luggage website, hoping to reunite the goods with their owners.  Most of the cases contain clothes, but one on the site includes some souvenirs and gifts from Mexico or South America or maybe just the American Southwest.

Here’s a tip to keep your luggage both off her site and out of the Unclaimed Baggage Store: use a real luggage tag, not one of those free paper ones the airline hands out at the check-in; put two business cards in your luggage – one taped to the inside bottom of the case, and one in an inside pocket of the case. And maybe a third in an outside pocket. Oh, and stop tossing your loose diamonds and emeralds in with your dirty socks, okay?

White-Trash, Trailer-Park, Ghetto Fabulous… Toffee

This super-simple, inexpensive, addictive toffee is called “Chocolate Praline Toffee Crisps” by the kids at Pampered Chef, but is better known as “White Trash Toffee”, “Trailer Park Toffee” or “Ghetto Toffee”, mostly because of its base ingredient: the humble Saltine cracker. In fact, it should be called “Crack Toffee” because it is cheap and highly addictive. I’ve made this three times now for three different parties/picnics and it gets inhaled every time. I suggest you make some for any picnics you’re going to this summer, you’ll be very popular.

Saltine Chocolate Crunch
(aka “White Trash Toffee”)

Ingredients
1 sleeve (about 24) saltines*
3/4 C. brown sugar
1 C. (2 sticks) butter
12 oz. (2 C.) chocolate chips
3/4 C. chopped nuts

Directions
Preheat oven to 400°
Line a cookie sheet or jellyroll pan with foil, spray foil very lightly with cooking spray (or use non-stick foil) and cover cookie sheet with saltines in one layer.

Boil sugar and butter in a non-stick pan until the butter is completely incorporated into the sugar, stirring constantly. This takes about 1 minute. Do not overcook or the butter solids will separate and you will end up with grease with a sugary lump in the middle. Pour over saltines and spread evenly. Bake 5 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle with chocolate chips. Let set 2 minutes, then spread melted chips with spatula. Sprinkle with nuts, then press down lightly.

When cool and chocolate is set, cut on a diagonal. You can accelerate this process by cooling to approx room temp and then putting pan in freezer for 20 minutes or in fridge for about 2 hours.

Yields approx. 30 pieces. Pieces can be frozen. Broken bits from cutting are excellent on vanilla ice cream.

*I’ve also seen recipes using graham crackers and matzo crackers. If I was making this with matzo I would add about 1/2 teaspoon of salt to the butter mixture. Or maybe skip the salt there and use salted nuts on top of the chocolate. Or maybe fancy Hawaiian salt on the chocolate. Mmmm, I might have to go experiment now……

These aren't the droids you are looking for...

Star Wars creator George Lucas is an architecture buff (who knew?). The Architects' Journal, a British mag, recently chose the top ten buildings from the Star Wars series, and lists the real-life buildings that inspired or were inspired by them.

{from Episode V, aka The Empire Strikes Back, arguably the best of the bunch, Cloud City. Part 1 of the AJ article claims it is mirrored in John Lautner’s Chemosphere House.}

{This is not the home of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars (Episode IV, my favorite) or The Phantom Menace (Episode I), but the Ksar Ouled Soltane, one of the Berber granaries of Tunisia. According to Part 2 of the AJ article, they were the inspiration for the artisanal houses of Tattoine}.

The headline for this post is a line from Episode IV. Yes, I am a geek. But only for the "real Star Wars", the ones from '77, '80 and '83. "Help me Obi-Wan, you're my only hope"

Corn: It's What's For Dinner

I both cannot wait -- yet am scared to death -- to see this documentary.



From the movie, quoted in Roger Ebert's review: "Corn, in fact, is an ingredient in 80 percent of supermarket products, including batteries and Splenda. Processing concentrates it. You couldn't eat enough corn kernels in a day to equal the number of calories in a bag of corn chips."

This is what America is all about right? Little business grows into big business. Bigger, faster, cheaper, better. But at what cost? In a nation that idolizes the thin yet is overrun with obesity, why do we make it so hard for the average family to buy good, healthy food without going broke?

More of Ebert's review here, and Ann Hornaday's review here. I don't think I'll be getting popcorn at this movie.