For the Love of Bisquick
I'm taking a break from writing a novel length post today, and going to enlighten you guys on the joys and wonders of Bisquick, if you're not enlightened already.
For those of you who don't know it, Bisquick is a baking product, and as it proclaims itself on the front package, an "original all-purpose baking mix." Basically, flour, baking soda and other good stuff mixed together. Its appeal to me is that I can fake a lot of homemade type dishes with it and they taste good and it makes it easy on me -- pancakes, empanadas, other stuff. Anyway, not to toot its horn too much, I am offering this recipe for Peach Cobbler. It's great because it taste super, super good but requires almost no effort. I got the recipe off a website, and apparently there are whole cookbooks and movements out there dedicated to Bisquick.
Bisquick Peach Cobbler
1/2 cup butter (one stick)
1 cup milk
1 cup bisquick
1 cup sugar
1 can peaches (or pineapple, mixed fruit, strawberries (fresh is great), berries)
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Melt butter in baking pan (you can nuke the butter or melt it on stovetop if your pan can take it). Mix milk, Bisquick, sugar with the butter. Add peaches (or other fruit) and bake it for 35 to 45 minutes.
This stuff is so good, it won't last the night. Great with ice cream and whipped cream too.
Anyhoo, have a great weekend!!! -Hero
Friday, September 29, 2006
Thursday, September 28, 2006
The Year of the Tooth
I just returned from the dentist, or more specifically, the periodontist. You’re probably wondering what that is. Translation: Cosmetic dentist.
Here’s the background. A small chunk of tooth is missing from the bottom of my left front tooth. Of course I notice it, but so does everyone else.
I’ve had it bonded three times, two of those times in the past six months. I have a hazy memory of breaking the tooth over two decades ago after jumping off a ladder and hitting my jaw against my knee. I have an even hazier memory of having it repaired at the dentist’s. I think I was eight or nine.
I had forgotten about it, surprising, since I like to think I have a razor sharp memory. It just didn’t seem significant to me at the time, breaking my tooth, in fact if I remember anything, it was that I was so proud of jumping the greatest number of ladder rungs to the ground of any of my friends. All kids get their teeth broken.
I started to dislike my front teeth by the time I reached my mid-twenties, only because a microscopic sized gap between them was increasing the older I got. I suspected the gap had to do with my nail biting habit that involved a repetitive rubbing motion of my thumbnail against my left front tooth, followed by nibbling, that detached the unwanted portion of thumbnail. I must have done it thousands of times. Granted, I wasn’t a voracious nail biter. For the most part, I did it when I was under stress, and never enough that it perverted the shape of my nails. It did pervert that one tooth.
Slowly, over time, the gap widened and the left tooth rotated slightly inward. I started to notice hairline fractures in the enamel. I pressed myself to give up the nail biting, and while I was successful for weeks at a time, I returned time and again to my nasty habit (I’ll have you know I haven’t bitten them since March). I assumed my teeth would hold up for time immemorial. They didn’t.
When I lazily saddled up to the bathroom mirror last March, just shy of one of my thirtysomething birthdays, I was shocked when faced with my own reflection: a hole in my tooth! I panicked, I scurried, I sobbed. I called my husband. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They can fix that.” I was pacified by his assurance. (And after watching several episodes of Extreme Makeover, I know for certain it really can be much worse, I could look like Mr. Ed, or better yet, Nanny McPhee).
I have good teeth otherwise. Dentists have always complimented me on my at-home dental hygiene; I floss everyday, and brush like it’s a religion. I suppose in some way it makes up for the damage I’ve done to them in biting my nails all those years. Did I mention I also have TMJ, also know as temporomandibular joint disorder? What this means it that I have a misaligned jaw, that I can’t eat a whole apple or sing without my jaw popping, my cheek and jaw muscles straining and sore. Nail biting. Gotta love it. Guess it’s better than smoking. Or doing crack cocaine. Or living on a diet of fried Twinkies.
So, long story short, I went to the dentist, my quirky, big-mouthed New York City dentist, aptly called Dr. Goldental pronounced “gold-en-thal.” She examined, she pondered, but true to form, she remained chatty and optimistic. “Oh, this isn’t a problem. I can bond it.” For those of you who don’t know it, bonding material is made of composite resin; it goes on wet and dries hard so that it resembles tooth enamel. The dentist shaped and molded the material over the hole in my front tooth, and when it was finished, I couldn’t tell my good tooth from the broken one.
Sadly, while eating a chicken wrap at the Mall in May, the resin fell out and I swallowed it. Since we had moved farther away from the city in March, I choose to change dentists to one in central New Jersey, at a clinic called the Smile Center (auspicious, right?), run by a non-nonsense bordering on bitchy, although competent, Russian. She filled in the hole, fusing the bonding material over a greater swatch of the upper tooth, in hopes that would help to keep the patch in place over time. She did a great job, albeit the color of the resin was a tiny bit darker than the color of my teeth, so upon close observation, it appeared stained. A small price to pay I figure, we had good insurance. I was just glad to get it fixed. I was also glad that the dentist took the time to explain to me that it was nearly impossible to keep a bond on the lower tooth in. She recommended that ultimately, I would instead need veneers, rather porcelain overlays.
At least this time I expected it to fall out. We ate crab legs on Tuesday night, and I greedily gnawed on the arachnid’s limbs, dipping the meat in butter. In my frenzy, I must have jimmied the bond out of place. It was probably already on its way out. The tooth felt off-kilter by the time I got home Tuesday night, and by Wednesday morning, I had devoured the bond bit with my bowl of cereal. So, again, I look more like Alfalfa than I do myself.
So I went to the periodontist today. Dr. C, a jovial guy. He says I can’t have veneers, that because of the damage done to my tooth in childhood, too much of the tooth is missing. I’m going to get a crown put in; I made the appointment for next month. I’ll have to make do with the broken tooth until them.
I just returned from the dentist, or more specifically, the periodontist. You’re probably wondering what that is. Translation: Cosmetic dentist.
Here’s the background. A small chunk of tooth is missing from the bottom of my left front tooth. Of course I notice it, but so does everyone else.
I’ve had it bonded three times, two of those times in the past six months. I have a hazy memory of breaking the tooth over two decades ago after jumping off a ladder and hitting my jaw against my knee. I have an even hazier memory of having it repaired at the dentist’s. I think I was eight or nine.
I had forgotten about it, surprising, since I like to think I have a razor sharp memory. It just didn’t seem significant to me at the time, breaking my tooth, in fact if I remember anything, it was that I was so proud of jumping the greatest number of ladder rungs to the ground of any of my friends. All kids get their teeth broken.
I started to dislike my front teeth by the time I reached my mid-twenties, only because a microscopic sized gap between them was increasing the older I got. I suspected the gap had to do with my nail biting habit that involved a repetitive rubbing motion of my thumbnail against my left front tooth, followed by nibbling, that detached the unwanted portion of thumbnail. I must have done it thousands of times. Granted, I wasn’t a voracious nail biter. For the most part, I did it when I was under stress, and never enough that it perverted the shape of my nails. It did pervert that one tooth.
Slowly, over time, the gap widened and the left tooth rotated slightly inward. I started to notice hairline fractures in the enamel. I pressed myself to give up the nail biting, and while I was successful for weeks at a time, I returned time and again to my nasty habit (I’ll have you know I haven’t bitten them since March). I assumed my teeth would hold up for time immemorial. They didn’t.
When I lazily saddled up to the bathroom mirror last March, just shy of one of my thirtysomething birthdays, I was shocked when faced with my own reflection: a hole in my tooth! I panicked, I scurried, I sobbed. I called my husband. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They can fix that.” I was pacified by his assurance. (And after watching several episodes of Extreme Makeover, I know for certain it really can be much worse, I could look like Mr. Ed, or better yet, Nanny McPhee).
I have good teeth otherwise. Dentists have always complimented me on my at-home dental hygiene; I floss everyday, and brush like it’s a religion. I suppose in some way it makes up for the damage I’ve done to them in biting my nails all those years. Did I mention I also have TMJ, also know as temporomandibular joint disorder? What this means it that I have a misaligned jaw, that I can’t eat a whole apple or sing without my jaw popping, my cheek and jaw muscles straining and sore. Nail biting. Gotta love it. Guess it’s better than smoking. Or doing crack cocaine. Or living on a diet of fried Twinkies.
So, long story short, I went to the dentist, my quirky, big-mouthed New York City dentist, aptly called Dr. Goldental pronounced “gold-en-thal.” She examined, she pondered, but true to form, she remained chatty and optimistic. “Oh, this isn’t a problem. I can bond it.” For those of you who don’t know it, bonding material is made of composite resin; it goes on wet and dries hard so that it resembles tooth enamel. The dentist shaped and molded the material over the hole in my front tooth, and when it was finished, I couldn’t tell my good tooth from the broken one.
Sadly, while eating a chicken wrap at the Mall in May, the resin fell out and I swallowed it. Since we had moved farther away from the city in March, I choose to change dentists to one in central New Jersey, at a clinic called the Smile Center (auspicious, right?), run by a non-nonsense bordering on bitchy, although competent, Russian. She filled in the hole, fusing the bonding material over a greater swatch of the upper tooth, in hopes that would help to keep the patch in place over time. She did a great job, albeit the color of the resin was a tiny bit darker than the color of my teeth, so upon close observation, it appeared stained. A small price to pay I figure, we had good insurance. I was just glad to get it fixed. I was also glad that the dentist took the time to explain to me that it was nearly impossible to keep a bond on the lower tooth in. She recommended that ultimately, I would instead need veneers, rather porcelain overlays.
At least this time I expected it to fall out. We ate crab legs on Tuesday night, and I greedily gnawed on the arachnid’s limbs, dipping the meat in butter. In my frenzy, I must have jimmied the bond out of place. It was probably already on its way out. The tooth felt off-kilter by the time I got home Tuesday night, and by Wednesday morning, I had devoured the bond bit with my bowl of cereal. So, again, I look more like Alfalfa than I do myself.
So I went to the periodontist today. Dr. C, a jovial guy. He says I can’t have veneers, that because of the damage done to my tooth in childhood, too much of the tooth is missing. I’m going to get a crown put in; I made the appointment for next month. I’ll have to make do with the broken tooth until them.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
On Poetry and Suffering
I recently watched the movie Sylvia starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig, who play Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. I’ve never been a big Sylvia Plath fan. Actually, I don’t even like most poetry. There are some exceptions.
Let me say that it’s a decent movie, if simplistic, and to an extent, sugar coated. I read somewhere once that Ted Hughes was a philistine, jealous of his wife’s talent, terribly unfaithful to her, a chauvinist. But Plath was no cakewalk. If she were of age today, she would be jacked up on Paxil or some anti-depressant. She was brilliant but messed up.
I watched the movie not because I like Paltrow – I find her to be a great actress but removed and patronizing – but because I like Daniel Craig, and frankly, I’m running out of stuff to rent. Is that happening to anyone else? It’s like I’ve gone through all the movies.
But anyway, the film got me thinking (to anyone who doesn’t know it, Plath did herself in). First, would she had written the poetry she had, garnered that acclaim and respect, considered a great American poet, had she not been depressed? I can hardly stand to read her dark stuff, but would she written it had she been happier? I would have preferred a different ending. I don’t care about the poetry. We could have lived without the poetry. But this brings me to a consideration: How necessary is suffering? And is the loss of suffering or the quest for an end of suffering ultimately detrimental to individuals or society? Rather, is suffering a requisite part of life?
For me, I have to answer yes. The wholeness and functioning of the human body and mind depends on the ability to feel pain. I think of those poor kids who have that disease – called congenital insensitivity or some such – and who ultimately perish not because of lack of pain or the disease itself, but because in feeling no pain, they cannot prevent perpetual and chronic injury to themselves. This fatally compromises their bodies so that they died of these composite external and internal injuries by the time they are young adults. The kind of suffering I’m talking about is more mental than physical, but we can still apply the metaphor of “congenital insensitivity.”
What can we assume about children, people, who feel no pain? I’ve met them. I’ve even dated a few. These types don’t seem to feel any normal amount of regret, guilt, anguish, sorrow or grief, in regards to their own actions towards others, albeit they can sure get angry when other people cross them. I’m talking about (in children) attachment disorders and (in adults) socio-pathological behavior. These are people who at their worst commit heinous crimes with no sense of remorse: think OJ Simpson or Scott Peterson (if they are indeed guilty, I think so). Children who have some sort of attachment disorder, if not treated, become these adults. I’ve read about cases in the news of kids adopted from orphanages in third world countries that when brought back by otherwise normal adoptive parents, become violent and asocial, due to the traumas they’ve endured.
What does this tell us? That in short, pain and suffering are necessary not only to protect us from bodily injury but also from mental injury to others as well as ourselves. The ability to experience mental anguish is a moral and social barometer needed for a person to be competent and well-adapted in their lives.
But that being said, we don’t want overkill either, we don’t need an army of Sylvia Plaths (one brilliant and martyred poet will do). In fact, I think that Plath’s depression was insidious but not completely involuntary. Sure, she had a mental illness, but her intense focus on herself that is reflected in her poetry and in the choices she made – a philandering mate, a self-indulgent, instable and many times thankless career – only acerbated her condition. It guaranteed that her suffering, otherwise necessary as that moral and social barometer, would be too great for her or anyone else to manage.
The BBC did a story last spring regarding a recent medical report published in Great Britain. Studies on pregnant women (I don’t really want to think about how this test was conducted, ok…) demonstrated that the average fetus feels no actual pain until the 29th week of its development. That means that until babies are seven months in the womb, practically born, they have no capability to suffer from physical pain. The study didn’t gauge mental pain but I’m going to assume because the brain is not yet fully formed, fetuses have a pass on that too. In short, we are not full and total human beings until we have obtained an apparatus of pain, otherwise known as the nervous system.
C.S. Lewis has written a beautiful piece, a short book, called “The Problem of Pain,” that takes a religious, spiritual perspective on this subject.
I recently watched the movie Sylvia starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig, who play Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. I’ve never been a big Sylvia Plath fan. Actually, I don’t even like most poetry. There are some exceptions.
Let me say that it’s a decent movie, if simplistic, and to an extent, sugar coated. I read somewhere once that Ted Hughes was a philistine, jealous of his wife’s talent, terribly unfaithful to her, a chauvinist. But Plath was no cakewalk. If she were of age today, she would be jacked up on Paxil or some anti-depressant. She was brilliant but messed up.
I watched the movie not because I like Paltrow – I find her to be a great actress but removed and patronizing – but because I like Daniel Craig, and frankly, I’m running out of stuff to rent. Is that happening to anyone else? It’s like I’ve gone through all the movies.
But anyway, the film got me thinking (to anyone who doesn’t know it, Plath did herself in). First, would she had written the poetry she had, garnered that acclaim and respect, considered a great American poet, had she not been depressed? I can hardly stand to read her dark stuff, but would she written it had she been happier? I would have preferred a different ending. I don’t care about the poetry. We could have lived without the poetry. But this brings me to a consideration: How necessary is suffering? And is the loss of suffering or the quest for an end of suffering ultimately detrimental to individuals or society? Rather, is suffering a requisite part of life?
For me, I have to answer yes. The wholeness and functioning of the human body and mind depends on the ability to feel pain. I think of those poor kids who have that disease – called congenital insensitivity or some such – and who ultimately perish not because of lack of pain or the disease itself, but because in feeling no pain, they cannot prevent perpetual and chronic injury to themselves. This fatally compromises their bodies so that they died of these composite external and internal injuries by the time they are young adults. The kind of suffering I’m talking about is more mental than physical, but we can still apply the metaphor of “congenital insensitivity.”
What can we assume about children, people, who feel no pain? I’ve met them. I’ve even dated a few. These types don’t seem to feel any normal amount of regret, guilt, anguish, sorrow or grief, in regards to their own actions towards others, albeit they can sure get angry when other people cross them. I’m talking about (in children) attachment disorders and (in adults) socio-pathological behavior. These are people who at their worst commit heinous crimes with no sense of remorse: think OJ Simpson or Scott Peterson (if they are indeed guilty, I think so). Children who have some sort of attachment disorder, if not treated, become these adults. I’ve read about cases in the news of kids adopted from orphanages in third world countries that when brought back by otherwise normal adoptive parents, become violent and asocial, due to the traumas they’ve endured.
What does this tell us? That in short, pain and suffering are necessary not only to protect us from bodily injury but also from mental injury to others as well as ourselves. The ability to experience mental anguish is a moral and social barometer needed for a person to be competent and well-adapted in their lives.
But that being said, we don’t want overkill either, we don’t need an army of Sylvia Plaths (one brilliant and martyred poet will do). In fact, I think that Plath’s depression was insidious but not completely involuntary. Sure, she had a mental illness, but her intense focus on herself that is reflected in her poetry and in the choices she made – a philandering mate, a self-indulgent, instable and many times thankless career – only acerbated her condition. It guaranteed that her suffering, otherwise necessary as that moral and social barometer, would be too great for her or anyone else to manage.
The BBC did a story last spring regarding a recent medical report published in Great Britain. Studies on pregnant women (I don’t really want to think about how this test was conducted, ok…) demonstrated that the average fetus feels no actual pain until the 29th week of its development. That means that until babies are seven months in the womb, practically born, they have no capability to suffer from physical pain. The study didn’t gauge mental pain but I’m going to assume because the brain is not yet fully formed, fetuses have a pass on that too. In short, we are not full and total human beings until we have obtained an apparatus of pain, otherwise known as the nervous system.
C.S. Lewis has written a beautiful piece, a short book, called “The Problem of Pain,” that takes a religious, spiritual perspective on this subject.
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