Purple Pens

Well, I've seen everything.

I just read on Cnn.com that parents are getting huffy about the color of pen used to correct their children's work. Red, they feel, is a negative color and would prefer a more pleasant hue to mark up their future-burger-slinger's paper. Give me a break! I swear upon all that is holy, I will make it my aim to start a company that manufactures only red colored pens, and not just any red. Oh no, we're talking BLOOD RED, Crimson, pure arteriol blood-red ink pouring forth onto the porous paper of poor pupils.

Mrs Loren wrote me a nice email today. My own mother doesn't even send me nice emails, go figure. She'll burn my books and devour my Easter basket (that is, if she remembered to buy me one, which I highly doubt), but she won't write me. Ah well, par for the course. I'm sure Hagan "I want to be as good as Ryan one day" Duns helped her.

Anyway, back to Mother Loren. She seems to be a FoodTV afficianado. I am, too. I LOVE Giada DeLaurentis, both because she cooks in a tank-top and she's cute (I've NEVER seen such a, er, perky person in the kitchen). Seriously, though, I find most of her dishes to be rather accessible. This evening, for instance, I used her recipe for Lasagna with Bechemel Sauce. THis is a lovely recipe, though it needs more spice - I'd suggest a GOOD tablespoon of red pepper flakes in order to kick it up a notch. I also made her Chocolate Ricotta Pudding. This was just great. With the strawberry puree and whipped cream, it made for a very pleasant end to the meal.

I like Paula Dean, but her recipes are so heavy and I don't know that they could be expanded easily to feed the novitiate crew. Giada's recipes lend themselves toward being expanded. I like Emeril, though I can't say I've tried many of his recipes...he's entertaining, but he's hard to follow as a cook. There's that tricked-out women who uses only store-bought goods (she's probably married to a FoodTV executive as she has no real cooking talent and she's not even really cute) and tells you all the lame things you can do with a wire, some beads, and blue cake frosting. I guess she's sort of like the MacGyver of the kitchen, except there are no moments of suspense leaving you with baited breath hoping that she'll be able to add faux pearls to the base of her cake in order to make it look "simply elegant." Oh, yeah, I also like Mario Batale or whatever his name is, but since he speaks English only 1/2 the time (he speaks in Italian the other half, it seems) I only pay 1/4 attention.

I wrote to some of the other novices the other day with a startling insight: the Loyola House Novitiate is sort of like the Police Academy series. In particular, Police Academy 3: Back in Training seems to resonate wholly with my experience as a novice, particularly in comparison with the Syracuse novitiate. Watch it and let me know what you think, though I'll furnish you with a hint as to which novitiate I see myself belonging to: Cmdt Eric Lassard. Using another popular 80's movie theme, we're the Griswald Family novitiate (well, at least some of us are). We put the FUN in dysfunctional. Well, some of us at least.

I had a new experience today. Across from the Safeway, where I do my shopping, there is a little long-hut that has windows in it. I've seen it several times, but figured it was a trading post for beads and blankets and land. Feeling bold, I drove over to it and found that it was a coffee kiosk (did you think they'd have a Starbucks here?). My thoughts: Ghastly. It was like drinking the putrified remains of a 30-days dead peacock. Horrifying. I thank God that I brought enough Lyons tea with me. Anything less that proper tea would be just awful.

Congratulations to Hagan, by the way, for getting third in her Irish dancing competition at the West Virginia Feis on Saturday. Hagan, it took a lot of guts for you to dance with those two kids who were stricken with polio, and you should be proud that you got third out of three.

Well, that's about it. Mother Loren told me that she and Mrs Marquard discuss my blog over lunch and that I should make efforts to post in a goodly amount of time that they each have time to read, reflect, and formulate responses to kibutz over while they eat. I have obliged this time, but Lord knows if I'll be able to keep it up - I may start to do something around here, other than watch FoodTV and visit shut-ins.

Cheers!

Ry