So, you’ve broken the rules.
You’re doing something that you’re not supposed to do. But, you’ve decided to do it anyway. As transgressions go, this one is minor; something like binge-watching The Crown instead of organizing the garage or using the printer at work to make flyers for your yard sale.
You’re prepared to face the consequences, but you’re so slick, chances are nobody will ever find out, and you’ll take this bit of lawlessness to the grave.
And then it happens.
Busted.
Your spouse, or your child, or your boss, or Nadine, the office busybody who never met a secret she could keep—somebody catches you. In addition to that cold clutch-y feeling you get in your gut, there’s something else. That the previous funny business is no longer even mildly amusing business. The mood changes from “getting away with something” glee to guilty, remorseful shame, and occurs so quickly it induces a kind of emotional whiplash.
That, Gentle Reader is the moment. The moment when you’ve been rudely jerked back into reality by the long arm of the law, authority, or just disapproving fellow humans. When the jig is up, fun is a foreign concept, and you’re convinced that not only are you an idjit, you must have been nuts to even consider doing something so dumb, and there’s no way you wouldn’t have been found out.
You also question every moment of your life that has led to this ridiculous, humiliating predicament. You should definitely not be allowed to function without a state-supplied keeper…and maybe a helmet. You are officially, a frivolous fool. 
But, don’t feel like the Lone Ranger. Everybody on this rock has had this stomach-churning moment.
The toddler caught in the bathroom with her face, hands, arms, and hair painted in all the pretty colors of Mommy’s lipsticks, gazing at her new and improved appearance in the mirror.
But it was impossible to stay mad at this face. Riker Matthews 2009-2016.
The 200-pound dog discovered in the kitchen, standing right next to where a turkey leg was before its mysterious disappearance, with nothing left but flecks of foil stuck to his nose.
As far as me, By Tuesday I’ll be on my third rude jerk of the week, but my actions are almost always embarrassing, not criminal. 
On The Kid’s last day of sophomore year in high school, I had a funny feeling. Donnie, a classmate, and my little scholar had been hanging out together lately. By themselves, neither was a bad kid. But when together, they brought out each other’s most reckless, impulsive side.
When I called school to double check after school arrangements (that was my stated reason, but as I said, I had a funny feeling), the secretary informed me that I had signed my child out after third period.
Busted.
So, Petey and I drove to a café The Kid had mentioned. In a booth that couldn’t quite be seen from outside, my errant offspring and Donnie were lounging like Roman senators waiting for the slave girl to come and peel their grapes.
I was furious. I wanted to follow in the car while the two did the walk of shame back to school to turn themselves in. But by this time school had let out, and nobody really cared if two otherwise good students played a little hooky on the last day.
But, as you might imagine, Gentle Reader, life at Chez Matthews was quite uncomfortable for one ne’er do well rising junior for a few weeks.
I’d bet though, that if you asked The Kd, the worst part was the initial discovery in the café.
Different kind of rude jerk.
Ain’t nothing got the power of the power of that rude jerk.
Thanks for your time.
Every time, and I mean every time I ask my husband Petey what he wants for supper, he gives me the same answer. You might think that he’s a picky eater with an extremely limited palate.
Petey’s response gives me complete freedom with my only limitations being price and availability. But, you know, sometimes I am completely out of ideas, and I’m truly seeking direction. Sadly, it never comes from him. Honestly, the fact that I still ask the question after 35 years of non-answers says a ton about me, and not about him.
I only learned about ten or twelve years ago that he’s crazy for coconut cake. It’s his favorite. That fact’s not something I’m proud of.
So, if the man voluntarily mentions something, or even shows an interest bordering on mild enthusiasm, I take notice. Frankly, it’s such a rare and magical occurrence, I would beg, borrow, and/or steal to produce it for him.
Of course, he said this after it was finished and the chef had moved onto something else. And of course, I hadn’t been giving it my full attention, and had no clear idea about ingredients or procedure. So, I watched an encore showing with laser-like focus, and a notebook at the ready. And in the viewing discovered the chef was awful at anything resembling details. I was effectively on my own.
4 slices thick-cut bacon, cut into ¼ inch strips
Preheat oven to 375. Cook bacon in skillet on stovetop until crispy, reserving fat. 
Serves 6.
Thanks for your time.
As I write this it is Sunday night, closing day of the State Fair. I’m a little sad it will be a year until the next one. But I truly believe I wrung every bit of fun, food, and fellowship from the fair that was humanly possible.
I wonder if any of those other Debbie’s thought those snack cakes had been made just for them?
People watching.
The (usually young) (usually) female dressed in a symphony of inappropriate clothing; short, tight skirt or dress and gravity-defying shoes that would be uncomfortable to stand in, let alone walk miles in on varying terrain.
And conversely, the guy that can not, will not, admit summer is over and shows up in shorts and flip-flops no matter how frigid the temperature may be.
The family consisting of two ferociously exhausted parents and their brood of multiple children under the age of five. Each child will want to go somewhere and eat something different and they want it, NOW! Mom and Dad would just like a nap.
That kid with that noise-making toy that sounds like all of the cats on the planet are screaming at once with a couple of faulty bag pipes thrown in. If the toy is silenced, the sound is immediately replaced by the unearthly shrieking of a furious, empty-handed toddler.
Thanks for your time.
I just wrapped up my third year of working with Lisa Prince of the state ag department, WRAL’s Local Dish, and Flavor NC on PBS. At the State Fair I help judge some of the specialty contests. These are the competitions sponsored by entities such as King Arthur flour, SPAM, and the North Carolina Pecan Growers.
There are folks that have been doing this for years and have judged 20-30 contests. I’ve only done nine, but have learned a few things. About entering cooking competitions, and a few other random truths. I’ll start with those unrelated, incidental lessons.
Traffic and parking: However long it takes to get from your house to the fairgrounds on the odd, non-fair Tuesday, quintuple it. For weekend fair days, multiply it by six or seven. For opening or closing day, just spend the night before out in the parking lot.
If you plan to enter any type of cooking contests, I have a few tips. They may not give you the win, but sometimes the difference between placing and being an also ran is quite narrow, and this advice may give you a few extra points.
Acid is your friend. Dishes should have balance. Rich, fatty foods need something to break them up, and the best way is by adding the acid of citrus juice, vinegar, or tangy dairy such as yogurt, sour cream, and buttermilk. It will make your dish stand out in what can be a sea of mouth-coating, stomach-churning, heaviness.
Make your dish at home, over and over, tweaking the recipe as needed. Get your most brutally honest friends and family to give you feedback. The girlfriend that doesn’t want to hurt your feelings is doing you no favors if she will not tell you the truth. On your end, if you can’t take criticism and comments, contest cooking is probably not for you.
If you don’t like the theme ingredient, pick another competition. In the SPAM contest, the kids made their entries all about the SPAM. Many of the adults tried to hide it. Bad idea. You must embrace the food and celebrate it. This isn’t a game of, “How to get the kids to eat liver without realizing it”. It’s to elevate and showcase the chosen ingredient.
Thanks for your time.
Effusive adjective (as defined by Google)
I looked forward all week to sitting in front of the TV watching Saturday morning cartoons and eating Lucky Charms with my brother Homer. I loved the Sundays when I’d go along with him on his paper route and then we’d hit Hardees. We left before sunup, it was so early Elizabeth City was deserted and belonged only to us. Eating a Hardees roast beef sandwich at 8AM feels to an eight-year-old like delicious rule-breaking. Sometimes we’d even go fishing after eating.
In elementary school in Puerto Rico, there was an annual event that I eagerly anticipated, but which my parents dreaded and feared—the arrival of the Scholastic book catalog. We’d get the brochure early for browsing and for our parents to write a check. For me, it was the catalyst to week-long negotiations with my own parental check writers. I always got less than I wanted, and they always spent more than they’d planned.
In junior high in San Diego, I loved our twice-yearly trips to Disneyland. And this Greek diner, Troy’s near our house. It’s where I had my first patty melt; cheesy, grilled ambrosia, and liver; a horrible, horrible practical joke played on my taste buds.
I loved that library. It was small, quiet, and had a great young adult section. But best of all, the library had one of my very favorite things. I mean it’s up there with potato salad and new boots. It’s a nook. A little semi-private corner somewhere, preferably a padded window seat, made for curling up, reading and daydreaming. 
I think my personality was pretty much finished cooking by junior high. Looking over my list, all that stuff still makes me happy—even Lucky Charms, and the clumsy Sesame Street pastry chef. Although, now I’d add Petey and The Kid, and walking in the woods with my dog, oh, and mowing the lawn, and lattes, and the State Fair, and Costco, and my Hunter wellies, and new sweats, and…well, you can probably sense my enthusiasm.
Thanks for your time.
One would think, to hear me whine week after week about too spicy this, and hellishly hot that, that my favorite cuisine might be something famously bland.
But I still have the heat tolerance of a snow angel, so I’ve learned some self-protective hacks.
And while some folks prove this doable on a daily basis, I’m the cheapest of cheap drunks who would be swinging from the chandelier or napping under a table after three or four swigs.
Green is usually (but not always, not by a long shot) milder than red. Green sauces normally contain tomatillos, a sour fruit that looks like a green tomato, and brings no heat to the party. And of course there is my very good, very green friend; avocado who feels to me like it cools thing down a bit.
1-8 ½ oz. package Jiffy corn muffin mix
Preheat oven to 400. Spray 13X9 pan with cooking spray.
Makes 8 servings.
Thanks for your time.
If you’re ever out shopping and you see a crazy lady filling her cart with Brach’s pumpkins, Boo Berry and Franken Berry cereal, singing, “It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”, and looking more like a demented Disney princess and less like a serious journalist, that’ll be me.
And the very best of all, the high holy days of the fall, is the North Carolina State Fair. I love it like a diva loves drama. I look forward to it all year long.
The Kid and I have begun working with Flavor NC host Lisa Prince in judging specialty cooking contests. And as a writer, I’ve been invited to attend the State Fair media luncheon, the Monday before opening day.
Today was that red-letter day.
This year they invented the arepa burger. They filled the arepa with a moist tasty burger, tomato, onion, and those little potato sticks. Then dress them with two sauces; a pink aioli, and a cilantro chimichurri-like concoction. This was the item that intrigued The Kid most, and I was requested to make sure I try.
Pastry chef, Lionel Vatinet, owns the astonishing bakery La Farm, in Cary. Almost everything he makes is the best of its kind I’ve ever eaten. His Carolina Gold rice bread is my absolute favorite bread. His desserts are the stuff of dreams. He makes his own potato chips, for cripe’s sake.
This year, he made s’mores. But these are not the s’mores of camping trips of yore. The crazy Frenchman makes the Graham crackers and marshmallows from scratch. Then he made chocolate ganache for dunking, and before it dried, sprinkled on candied bacon.
But of course Chef Lionel’s treat was so good it transcended any gelatin weirdness. I took one bite out of politeness, and Could.Not.Stop.Eating. I foresee more s’mores in my future, and probably a few road trips to Cary after the fair.
Thanks for your time.
I don’t normally keep up with new bands and new songs these days. But occasionally, a TV commercial will play some music that I like. Then I’ll go to the google and find out what it is and who created it.
A few years back there was a Coke advert which showcased this really fun, peppy music. It was a genre I’d never heard of before; electro swing. They take old school jazz and swing music, and remix it with a dance beat. It’s the only music I mow the lawn to anymore.
In the process of learning about and listening to electro swing, I made a musical discovery that has become very important to me and very close to my heart. It’s an odd little British category from a strange, tea-drenched musical corner called Chap Hop. It’s rap but written and performed by eccentric British gentlemen.
Chap Hop is what might happen if Steampunk and Gilbert and Sullivan’s modern major general had a loony love child.
From the biography he wrote of himself on the Tea Sea Record Shop website:
1.) He has an orangutan butler named Geoffrey.
Ah, to me questions like this are the very essence of scientific enquiry. That’s how I ended up with my flock of vampire kittens and the goat with all those extra knees. Usually the simplest way is to create both creatures and then have them fight to the death. It’s still the method used to settle scientific debate in 90% of British laboratories.
I am very much a believer that any day can be perfect if you have enough caffeine, cake and access to potentially dangerous equipment. For me, a day answering the questions of a mysterious yet alluring American journalist is about as good as it gets {debbie here: He means me!}.
It’s located just outside Rhyl in Wales, the only surviving business on the once thriving seafront. It opens for exactly one afternoon a year and if you are still inside when the doors shut, you will have to wait the full year to be released.
4.) If I were to ask the Queen, “Professor Elemental?” what might she say?
Gosh, I have a soft spot for both of them really. They represent both sides of the American dream- that one day you could get famous for doing something you love and marry a prince, or alternatively that you could get famous for just being awful.
Every single Sunday is Thanksgiving to us. EVERY SUNDAY. Yes we vary the meat, whether roast chicken, lamb, beef or badger, but the basics remain the same. We never tire of it. Never. Basically, we don’t like change in Britain and fear things we don’t understand. That’s why we only got the internet last month and still watch comedy programmes from the 1970s every Christmas day.
I listen to all of the American rap, well apart from all that mumbling nonsense. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince were my gateway into the world of Hip Hop and I love everyone from Pete Rock to Joey Bada$$, from De La Soul to Black Thought. There are a few chaps over here that your readers should check out too. Have a look for Dr Syntax, Dizraeli, Ocean Wisdom and Longusto for a slice of British Hip Hop pie.
Exactly as you’d hope, but more so. It took place in a grand British club in Mayfair and featured some of the most beautifully odd people you have ever met in your life. The whole thing was a wonderful window into a whole other world. I rather liked it.
100% Umbrage Free
1.) The first song of yours I ever heard was, “All in Together”. Would you mind talking about it?
2.) Do you care to speak about Brexit, and do you believe Europe and nations to the west *ahem, ahem* have demonstrated what others have categorized as a romance with the far right, and a flirtation with fascism?
Watching the likes of Trump or Farrage break the delicate strands of civility that hold our society together means that we have to be much more outspoken in our positivity. We need to straddle that fine line between standing up for what we believe in and not stooping to the level of the opposition.
If the idea of an increasingly divided world seems overwhelming, then I take the opinion that you should try to help the people around you: do good deeds for strangers, say nice things to people you respect on the internet, volunteer with people who need it. You might not be able to change the whole world, but you can change your world.
That was my favourite song on our last ‘Menagerie’ album (a non-professor hip hop group featuring Dr Syntax, Nick Maxwell and Tom Caruana). Austerity did untold damage to the most vulnerable people in our society- hundreds of libraries closed, benefits to the disabled were savagely cut, school budgets were cut to the bone. Sadly, that divide grows ever wider too, I was just with a friend who works with young people and a teenager client of his killed himself after counselling sessions were cut. The human cost of all this is terrifying. Political Hip Hop might not change things in and of itself, but it can take a snapshot of where we are and how we got here.
6.) Famousbirthdays.com calls Professor Elemental a comical musician, similar to Weird Al Yankovic. Although I’m a Weird Al fan, I take extreme umbrage to this description on your behalf. Prof is a creation of Shakespearian complexity and is the W. C. Handy of chap hop. Please speak of the creation process, and tell our readers whether you harbor any amount of umbrage on your own behalf?
I am completely umbrage-free. Like most creative people who manage to make a living out of it, I am incredibly lucky. The Professor came on the scene just as Steampunk was taking off, without Steampunk, there’s no way this would have been a career. Thanks for the nice compliments, if anything the Professor owes an awful lot to comedy archetypes before him from Chuck Jone’s Daffy Duck to Toad of Toad Hall. There’s a lot of Vivian Stanshall in there too.
I was just starting to lose my way as a middle aged, white, middle class rapper. I continually made bad choices in front of a regular rap crowd (wearing an easter bonnet or doing a show in drag) The Professor took me away from the over-serious UK rap scene towards a tribe of like-minded weirdos to party with.
9.) What do Brits get wrong about Americans?
10.) Might you share one piece of advice for Donald Trump, and one for Elizabeth Windsor?
Anne Burrell is kind of a big deal at Food Network.
But as a baker, she has really blond hair. And, as a baker, she loves spending time in upstate New York with her family. And, as a baker, Chef Burrell studied cooking in Italy. All this witty bush beating is my way of saying that her baking muscles are either undeveloped or atrophied.
Remember, these contestants are folks who show up and make their signature dish of mole marinara spaghetti studded with peanut M&M’s or matzo ball gummy bear gazpacho. They believe that eggplants are some sort of purple bird egg and corned beef is both a meat (beef) and a vegetable (corn).
When it’s all said and done, baking is science. It’s chemistry. If you can read, follow directions and learn a few terms and techniques, you can be a successful baker. You may not be an inspired pastry chef, but you can turn out after school treats, bake sale cupcakes, and pie for Thanksgiving dinner without blowing anything up or killing anybody.
My English teacher, Mrs. Flood told me something that I’ve come to believe is true in most endeavors: first you have to learn the rules, then and only then can you bend and/or break them. She was talking grammar, but it applies to baking. Thus, when teaching novices, it’s imperative that they are taught best practices.
I let out an involuntary shriek and got angry on behalf of all the attentive students, both on the show, and at home watching.
Secondly, you never dump egg from shell straight to bowl. An eggshell shard that has escaped along with the egg will be impossible to find and remove amongst the other contents. Nothing quells my appetite faster than eating an egg dish and feeling that crunch of doom as you bite down on an errant shell. 
And what if something is wrong with the egg? Do you want a bunch of blood in your white cake? Or what if it’s rotten? Yuck. You’ve just wasted every other ingredient that made it into your bowl before the eggs. And what if you don’t have enough on hand to recreate the recipe? You have to run to the store or abandon the project.
So, the grasshopper must be taught diligently, paying strict attention to proper procedure. Then when the educated cook chooses to cut corners, they take an informed risk. And if/when it gets screwed up, then I know I have only myself to blame.
Hi,
bull city mom 