Public Service Announcement

If you haven't had a tetanus shot in ten years or more, you might want to think about getting one. You never know when you might get scraped by a rusty piece of metal, as I did tonight. (As I read on the FDA website when I was researching whether I needed to go to an urgent care clinic last night, "The connection between a wound caused by a rusty/dirty nail and the necessity for a tetanus shot is fixed so firmly in the public mind that even the television cartoon character Homer Simpson knew he had to get a tetanus shot after stepping on a nail.") Plus, you might get a cool Scooby-Doo bandaid out of the deal, as I did.

Cutest. Story. Ever.

If you only read one blog post about baby ducks this year (in addition to the one you're currently reading, I mean), let this be the one.

Hometown foods

There are several foods popular in St. Louis and not available in many other places. Here are my thoughts on some of them.

Things I grew up eating regularly and like:
Gooey Butter Cake - A super-sweet, gooey coffee cake made of yellow cake, eggs, sugar, and butter, and topped with powdered sugar. Yummy.
Toasted Ravioli - Deep fried ravioli, typically with seasoned beef filling. It is delicious.
Provel cheese - A processed cheese product. It's an acquired taste, and one which is apparently difficult to acquire as an adult--most people who didn't grow up in St. Louis hate it for its flavor, its texture, or both. I love it. It's most often found on St. Louis-style pizza, but it can also be found in salads or melted on almost anything.
Ted Drewes concretes - Frozen custard (basically ice cream made with eggs) mixed with candy, fruit, and/or nuts. They're sort of like extremely thick milkshakes. I grew up eating them in the Ted Drewes parking lot on hot summer nights, and they are wonderful. Some say the concrete was the inspiration for the Dairy Queen Blizzard (the Blizzard was apparently invented by a St. Louis DQ owner).
St. Louis-style pizza - A super-thin crust topped with sweet tomato sauce and provel cheese. It inspires strong feelings in natives and visitors alike--I think it's great, but I've heard others compare it to "Velveeta and ketchup on a cracker." Imo's is the most popular purveyor.

Things I have not eaten (and may never eat):
Slinger - Eggs, hash browns, and a hamburger patty, covered in chili, onions, and cheese. Sounds disgusting.
St. Paul sandwich - Found at some St. Louis Chinese restaurants. Egg foo yung on Wonder Bread with lettuce, tomato and mayo. Sounds disgusting.
Fried brain sandwich- Calves' brains on white bread. It became popular when St. Louis had a lot of stockyards, but it's not very popular anymore, in part because of mad cow disease. Sounds disgusting.

How is it possible . . .

that in this day and age, companies are still issuing TV shows on DVD that lack a "Play All" option and/or a chapter skip after the opening credits? HOW???

The one plate plan

Yesterday, B. and I signed the lease on a charming, spacious, and affordable apartment in a neighborhood we like. It is perfect in every way but one: the lack of a dishwasher. To prevent us from allowing our kitchen to fill up with dirty dishes, we have come up with a plan: we are going to place all of our normal dishes in a difficult-to-reach cabinet and reserve them for entertaining. For everyday use, we are each going to select and purchase one each of the following: plate, bowl, glass, mug, knife, fork, and spoon. We're going to choose weird, interesting, mismatched stuff based solely on how cool we think it looks. Then we are each going to use those dishes to eat on.

This means (1) there will be no opportunity for a building-up of dishes that would necessitate a lengthy dishwashing session, because we will be forced to wash dishes at every meal (or we won't have anything to eat on), and (2) if one of us leaves our dishes lying around, there will be no question about whose it was, because we each have our own (I don't really anticipate the two of us fighting over who leaves dishes out, but accountability of this sort would have been very helpful when warmfuzzy and I were growing up).

I'm actually kind of excited about going to thrift stores and looking for interesting dishes that I think are awesome but which I wouldn't want to (or be able to) buy a whole set of.