If you do ever make it to Corvallis, we definitely need to meet. Just think of the trouble we could cause! 😉

It’s great to see the 24hour following here! Always something going on! Go, Aussie!

Yeah that was me that pointed that out to Oracle… that dumbarse doesn’t understand context I don’t think.

Ditto, no way that swine is getting my hubby’s money…
:p

I managed to get a very similar post to thisoff to Marty directly before he banned me. So he knows…

That evaluation just gave me the chills… *shudder*

Welcome, Cloud… so glad you decided to take the leap into posting. It feels good to have your say and inject your opinion into the conversations.

This Aussie has the third shift covered… well, most days… lol

Note: what follows is unsolicited advice, written for my other writing.

That’s the difference between a man and a woman, to be sexist about it. I’ll explain that theory later below.

First, realize that people can taste things differently on the biological level. Look up PTC taste. I’ve generalized it with a personal theory that genetically people taste things differently. Brussel sprouts have a VERY distinctive taste to me. You can disguise them with anything you want, and I’ll still taste them. I don’t dislike them, but I only cook them very occasionally, and I don’t cook them for someone else. I didn’t like spinach as a child. It had a sharp, bitter taste that I didn’t like then. As an adult, I like it. Possibly, your kids might like a spinach quiche.

If I’m going to cook spinach, I use the frozen kind. It’s cheaper. In a salad, of course, I use fresh. It also tastes more to me like lettuce.

Liver and onions are not weird to me. It’s just not a favorite. The only way I’ll eat liver is if someone happens to cook it for dinner or in liverwurst.

The way my mother cooked eggplant, I really disliked. (One of the few things she didn’t cook well). She boiled the hell out of it so it had no flavor or texture. Once I had eggplant parmesan, I found I loved it. I’ve baked and barbecued eggplant. Olive oil, salt, and garlic are the keys. Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top when serving it can add to the flavor.

Some people just don’t like certain textures. That’s one reason they don’t like the soft texture of lutefisk, eggplant, or properly ripened persimmons. (I’m not talking about the Japanese varieties, which can be eaten while still firm). The same goes for tofu. BTW, because of an academic who devised the Yale method of phonetically speaking Chinese and screwed it up, the proper pronunciation is dofu. Same for Tao. It’s pronounced dow. It’s also the reason that the Chinese changed the English spelling of Peking to Beijing, which is much closer to the Chinese phonetically.

Spinach brownies? Are you fucking kidding me? I’ll pass, unless to try them once at your place. I disliked spinach as a kid, because it had a sharp taste. As an adult, I love it, especially with salt, lemon, and butter, or in quiche, but brownies?

What’s this thing about no frying? Is that just deep frying? What about stir frying? The Chinese have been doing it for thousands of years. That’s how they cook vegetables quickly, because oil carries a much higher temperature to the items cooked.

Were you brought up in the 60s when all sorts of weird food theories were promulgated? Yes, deep frying stuff can really be unhealthy, but IMO, occasionally doing it is O.K., and the little oil used in stir-frying spreads the heat around at a higher temperature than steaming or boiling.

Because my mother, as an R.N., saw a lot of deficiency diseases in China, she was careful about our diets. Also,because she was raised on a farm and we had lived in China where they didn’t have meat inspection in either place, all meats were well done. I didn’t mind, because she made fantastic gravy. You’ll find a lot of Midwesterners cook their meat that way because of the farm heritage passed down.

O.K. here’s the difference between man and women. Women are usually peacemakers, which is good. Kids take advantage of that and learn to raise a stink and wear their mothers down, because women tend to have a lot more empathy. That also goes for fathers, but women, are, I believe, more susceptible. Us men usually don’t know how we are feeling, or can’t express it, until we explode.

I have empathy, too, but if a child whines or keeps pestering me, I tell them that the answer is no because of the way they approached me. I’ll also tell them that I’ll discuss it with them in 5 or 10 minutes or some other period of time, and if they bug me about it before that, the answer will still be no, and the countdown starts all over. I warn them that the ultimate answer may still be no, but as long as they whine or bug me about it, the answer is no.

I did offer alternatives to my kids to eat, but it would be more of another vegetable that I fixed for the meal,or something like a raw carrot. No cereal. Hunger is a strong motivator to learn to like something. I never forced them to eat something, but found that food preferences were kids way of exercising power, and usually had little to do with the actual food. If they really didn’t like something like brussel sprouts, I didn’t fix it again or waited a long time to fix it again in a different way.

I don’t know how old your kids are, but here’s something I fell into out of sheer desperation. The only thing worse than having a crabby kid in a car on a journey is going through the It’s a Small World ride at Disneyland.

I happened to have one of the first digital watches that had a countdown feature. I set it so if I accessed the feature, the time was set at 5 minutes. This only works on kids over a certain age. I think I discovered it when the youngest was about 6 or 7.

When a kid got crabby (yes I understand that there’s times when kids are hungry or tired) and they’d been crabby for a while, I’d tell them that they had five minutes for an attitude change. I’d punch the watch and start the countdown. In the next 5 minutes, they could bitch and moan all they wanted – but not get into a fight with a sibling. When the alarm went off, I’d let them know, that’s it.

I didn’t expect sweetness and light, just civility. I didn’t talk to them unnecessarily or push it. The rule was, speak and act civilly. If they didn’t, I’d pull the car over and get in their face. You only have to do that once. They realize they aren’t going anywhere while you’re in their face, and getting in their face is something kids HATE. I never disparaged them or called them names, but their behavior and how I felt about it was a key topic.

I realized later that first, I was teaching them that they were entitled to their opinion and their emotions, which they could freely give for 5 minutes, but that they were able to control their emotions. It was better than a time-out, because you can’t really give one in a car or other places. After a while, just me telling them that they had 5 minutes cooled them down fast.

Another page of unsolicited advice.

The studio finally had to let reviewers look at After Earth. And the critics are raving!

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-207_162-57587058/after-earth-reviews-critics-blast-will-smiths-sci-fi-family-epic/

“To say critics haven’t exactly been blown away by “After Earth” would be an understatement.Most reviewers are holding nothing back when tearing apart the new sci-fi film from M. Night Shyamalan starring father-and-son acting team Will and Jaden Smith.

The Wall Street Journal is even wondering if “After Earth” is one of the worst movies ever made.”

What is it about Scientology that makes everything so bad…?