You really, really don’t want me riding shotgun on a road trip with you. Heck, after a few hours in a car with me, you’d be looking for that shotgun to take me out of your misery.
I try, I really do, but I have a real hard time sitting still for long periods of time. With a severely defective attention span, I need something to keep me occupied. Reading is the easy answer. But when I read, I completely disengage, which rude to fellow travelers. 
But in the late fall of 2010, I knew I had to figure out an ants-in-the pants remedy. We were taking The Kid up to start college.
In Vermont.
By car.
It’s 800 miles from our front door to the front door of the New England Culinary Institute. With gas, restroom, grub breaks and traffic (DC and New York traffic is a crazy-making punishment), it translates to approximately 17 hours trapped in an automobile.
Options:
Plan A- Zone out and read for the entire drive. But I’d be giving my only baby away to higher learning in a few days, and I wanted to cherish every second we had left.
Plan B- Do nothing, allow the trip to drive me crazy, and bring the rest of the family along for the ride.
Plan C- Figure out a plan C.
One day, I was in Michael’s and walked past the yarn department. And they had some really soft, pretty yarn. The wheels started creaking.
I like love adore cozy winter scarves. I knew how to crochet. It would keep my hands occupied, but I’d still be able to interact.
So, I bought crochet hooks, a bespoke bag, and about 37 skeins of this crazy-soft yarn in shades from light aqua to deep periwinkle.
I took a glance at an online tutorial, and started work on it a few days before we left, in case I ran into any glitches. I made the initial chain which was the width of my scarf. I chose a whopping 24 inches.
The directions informed me that I should do extra chain stitches when I came to the end of each row. But I wanted this to be my own creation, without the oversight and fish eye of some online schoolmarm. 
As I was working on the third or fourth row, I realized why I was advised to do the extra chain stitches. Without them the edges curled up like a piece of fried bologna.
Whoops.
I unraveled and started over with the corrected technique.
On the road to Vermont, I got to work in earnest. Tension is how hard the yarn is pulled and tightened while being crocheted. To create a work that is consistent in size, the tension must be consistent.
Whoops.
I unraveled and started over with the corrected tension.
I dropped stitches before I learned how to gauge where the row ended.
Whoops.
I think you may see where this is all heading. Lots of whoops-es and much unraveling. In the end, it took two and a half years to produce a finished scarf.
Which I’ve never used, because it’s about thirty-eight feet long and weighs 14 pounds. It’s long enough to warm the necks of the starting line-up of Duke’s men’s basketball team, with enough left over for the entire coaching staff.
The actual, aforementioned scarf.
About the same time The Kid graduated college, I finished a second scarf. And the next year I whipped up a crocheted blanket for my little scholar for Christmas. A year later I whipped up infinity scarves for my three nieces and another afghan for some very special newlyweds.
But I still can’t be stuck in a car for more than an hour without losing my mind.
Thanks for your time.
“Where I come from, we call it bait”.
Unlike spouse and child, I’m just not a fish girl.
Recently, I decided that I would make a mature effort to give all new, unfamiliar, and potentially frightening foods a fair try.
Last month, my intrepid offspring and I were invited to a dinner at Sono Sushi (319 Fayetteville St #101, Raleigh). It’s right in the heart of downtown, only a few steps from the WTVD studios.
Our next course, Kobe Nigiri, was barely seared Kobe beef on a bite-size bed of rice. I’m pretty sure I could eat a corral full of Kobe beef. If I knew where Bossie the Kobe cow lived, I’d follow her around with a knife and fork.
There were four different choices. Each came with veggies, marinated hard-cooked eggs, and the non-vegetarian had ambrosial slices of pork loin.
Thanks for your time.
One might think, knowing me and my love of fashion, that boots and shoes are taking over my house.
It’s books.
In the fourth grade we moved to a Coast Guard base in Puerto Rico. When it was light outside, there was plenty to do—we rode bikes and horses, swam in pools and the ocean, climbed hills and trees, and just goofed around outside.
But even at half a buck, we couldn’t go to the movies every day—they ran for two weeks, and there aren’t many films I can think of that I’d wanna see for 14 days straight.
If you want to know if you or someone you love has grown up to be a bookworm, there are some tells.
3.)A reader has occasionally bought a book twice because although they already own it, it’s so far down in the “to be read” stack that the original purchase has been forgotten.
Thanks for your time.
When that cookie’s fate rests upon it not being a dessert, but a snack.
I argued as valiantly as Perry Mason in a death penalty case. But it became moot when enough foods were sampled that were ranked higher by the judges. and were not desserts.
1 cup butter, softened
I have a couple of thoughts about the recipe and directions.
One of the things I liked best about the cookie was the crispy/chewy texture. And, they were flat-out delicious.
She deserves it; and I hope it came with a big, fat check.
Some takeaways: who knew sweet potatoes make such a delicious quiche? A sweet potato pie is not fully dressed without a crunchy pecan streusel on top. Sweet potato puree is a genius eggnog emulsifier and sweetener. 
A quarter cup mayonnaise and a quarter cup barbecue sauce mixed with three-quarters of a cup of Greek yogurt makes a dressing for sweet potato salad that has the perfect mix of sweet/salty/smoky/acid, and tastes amazing.
No matter how delicious it is, it’s folly to eat more than three bites of any one entry. And with a belly full of sweet potatoes even Al’s French fries aren’t very appealing.
La Farm has a terrific setup just inside gate one, with baked goods, sweet treats, and sandwiches. They have my favorite, Carolina Gold Sourdough bread, but they sell out quick. Although, if you manage to score a loaf, they’ll hold it for you until you’re on the way out.
Anne’s Dumplings is at the Kerr Scott building with plenty of her ambrosial One Dressing. If you buy two bottles, they’ll give you a cookbook written by their founder, Anne. And that’s also where you’ll find D’Vine Food with their refreshing, addictive Muscadine Cider Slushie.
And as usual, there are crazy things for sale.
Because, Gentle Reader, they have invented a twerking machine. Oh sure, they may say it’s for exercise and call it a whole-body vibration machine. But if you stand on that puppy, you’ll be involuntarily twerking harder than Miley Cyrus in a teddy bear one-piece. 
And if you don’t feel like dancing, the view you’ll have standing behind the twerker will either send you into paroxysms of hilarity, or deeply traumatize you, requiring hundreds of hours of therapy, or possibly even institutionalizing.
At any one time, approximately 90% of fairgoers are eating. My estimate is the combined total of calories consumed by everyone on the grounds in one hour is at least 40 thousand bajillion and twelve.
It’s not just for bruises, it’s also the term for ultra-rare steak—quickly seared on the outside, and practically raw on the inside.
But, I developed a taste for severely rare beef, which I passed on to The Kid./cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/53461435/shutterstock_11482531.0.jpg)
But then I saw online and on TV that this cut could make a nice roast beef. But because it’s a pretty lean piece of beef, it could only be cooked until it reached 125-130 degrees, max. Every extra second in the oven makes it tougher and drier.
1-3 pound eye of round roast, frozen solid
Place probe thermometer into the center of the meat set to 123 degrees. Place skillet with beef fat side up into oven and cook until temp is reached. Take out of skillet and place on a cooling rack over a shallow sided pan. 
Slice very thinly and serve hot with horseradish cream. Serves four. Leftovers make killer sandwiches. Stir remaining horseradish cream into some mayo for the perfect sandwich dressing.
In addition to a beautiful, inexpensive roast beef, I leave you with this advice. Try very hard not to infect children with your own fears and prejudices, in the kitchen or out.
Overcooked steak.
Fall is absolutely my very favorite time of year, and not just ‘cause of the State Fair.
And NYFW, LFW, PFW, and MFW. For the uninitiated or uninterested, it’s the FW which excites—Fashion Week. These are autumnal weeks in various cities (New York, London, Paris, and Milan) where designers show next year’s spring/summer collections.
There are the truly chic. These are the people who exude style either effortlessly through their DNA, or by hard work (which must still look effortless). They make the rest of us feel like we’re wearing the ill-fitting knock-off of a generic potato sack.
Moody florals. Textiles that evoke half-dead funeral flowers which are made into long, shapeless dresses. Why are the world’s fashion designers trying to dress women like a couch on the back porch of a down-at-the-heels frat house?
Pajamas as streetwear. Yeah, I know jammies are comfy cozy. But cut it out. Wearing pajamas out don’t look edgy and chic. It looks like you’ve slipped away from the laughing academy, and you’re only a few steps ahead of the guys with the butterfly nets.
Asymmetric, ill-fitting, ripped-looking duds that are buttoned wrong or tied together. It looks like your house was on fire and you put on every garment you owned, keeping it together with a shower curtain wrapped around your waist/ neck/ left thigh.
Maybe it’s not the aesthetics, but the unfamiliarity of the trends with which I have a problem. I mean, for the longest time I thought selling jeans that come already ripped was an ugly racket perpetrated by clothing manufacturers, but now my favorite pair of jeans are “distressed”.
Thanks for your time.
On a related note, I’m also full of about 27 pounds of fair food.
Neomonde Bakery and Deli has a tent every year for baked goods and demos near the chapel. But they also serve hot food at a spot near Dorton Arena. And that’s where you can get their lamb burger. It has fresh mixed greens, caramelized onions, and a harissa yogurt sauce all on their freshly baked brioche bun. It’s pretty darn tasty.
This year La Farm introduced a hand pie. This particular hand pie might remind you of a particular rectangular pastry tart from your youth that comes from the grocery store. My mom never bought them, so I never developed a taste for them, but Petey was raised on them, and still occasionally indulges.
My very own grown-up kid may never eat those mass market, cardboard things again. He loved Chef Lionel’s pies filled with fresh strawberries and Nutella. The chocolate/rye pastry was perfect. It was flaky and delicious, drizzled with chocolate ganache and sprinkled with big sugar crystals.
After downing all this crazy fair grub, we get to vote on the best new food at the fair. The winner this year, Steve Troxler, Agriculture Commissioner informed us, won by a landslide.
2017 is the 150th NC State Fair, and if you go on Thursday (10/12), you can get in for $1.50. Food vendors will be selling $1.50 portions, and state fair staff will be handing out free rides and other prizes to attendees wearing commemorative buttons handed out to the first 15,000 folks through the gates when they open at 3:00PM that day.
Thanks for your time.
Sitting on a bench was a little boy, about eight-years-old. It looked like he’d gotten separated from his family, and he was having a meltdown. But I’d never seen a meltdown like this; he had his arms wrapped around himself, and was rocking back and forth, and making a sound that sounded like something halfway between a moan and a wail.
Then I noticed Carolyn. She kneeled in front of the distraught child, and without touching him, she began speaking to him, slowly and calmly. She looked over her shoulder at me.
Carolyn informed me that autism is a disorder where information isn’t collected, processed, and responded to in the same way as most people. Change and the unexpected can cause them to shut down. My friend was able to stop the emotional escalation, and even begin calming him.
Last Saturday I learned something shocking about my own child. Although not a make-up wearer, The Kid can draw cat eyeliner on others perfectly, and in the blink of a gorgeous, dramatic eye. It’s a skill picked up in theater classes.
Petey hasn’t done it in years, and even then not often, and he’d probably deny it, but the man is a really good dancer. And as a bonus, he does a spot-on impression of Eddie Murphy’s version of Gumby, “I’m Gumby, damn it!”.
Thanks for your time.
“Debbie, where did you try this? Unless it’s been well-prepared, by somebody who knows what they’re doing, you can’t know if you like it or not. So, knock it off.”
But I liked it. It was cooked perfectly. And the flavor was pleasant, and not fishy in the slightest.
And you can make the cream yourself. Flavor it however you want, and beat it to soft tender peaks. Serve it on fish, chicken, veggies, or if you want me to move in with you, soft-boiled eggs. I’m serious; please give this stuff a try.
bull city mom 