Potlikkery

stuff parisians like + book giveaway

Olivier Mangy is a French sommelier who I don't know from Adam. But that's just because I know hooey about wine, though I love all things French. His book Stuff Parisians Like arrived in my mailbox and I wasn't sure what to think of it, so I thumbed through looking for food content.

Le Caramel au Buerre Sale was the first I came to given the book's arbitrary arrangement which makes it easier for we Americans to understand, oui? This chapter explains the French relationship with sugar. Sugar is decadent and should be consumed in moderation. Yet, surely you've seen the reports that the French are suddenly porking up, non? Somehow, adding salt to caramel balances the sweetness and makes it okay to eat.

Mostly, it seems, the book is about vocabulary, and teaches Americans how to speak French properly, and acts as a primer for those embarking on a visit to France. Absorbing the knowledge shared within Stuff Parisians Like may save the ugly American tourist some small ounce of grief. Which brings us to the chapter "Considering Americans Stupid," in which the author says that we are fat, ugly, and stupid.

Is this tongue in cheek? He writes this despite admitting that Americans are highly successful and creative. Americans are fake, empty, and superficial. Americans lack culture, only watch television...wait, that sounds like a lot of people I do know.

But then the French like cherry tomatoes? Ugh. Because you don't have to slice them. Those lazy French. Cherry tomatoes, nexy entry after "Considering Americans Stupid," oh that makes sense, because I loathe tasteless cherry tomatoes. They makes salads boring. They lack originality. Take that, Frenchie!

Big is vulgar, and if anything, Americans are big and bold in everything that we do, and that, in a nutshell, is what Parisians hate most of all about Americans (learned from the chapter "The Word Petit"). Yet, when asked where else in the world they wish to live, they all answer "New York." Le sigh. And once they became New Yorkers, or NY wannabees, somehow the burger was king and finding one for less and 13 euros, or about $16 is difficult. Magny writes that the gastro restaurants offer one with foie gras topping it.

Poor Paula Deen. I wonder if she gets any play in Paris, because apparently butter is passe and olive oil is au courant. Magny declares butter gross and fattening because the switch to live oil is more aligned to the Parisian vision of the world. But we all know that butter makes everything better. Perhaps I do not like the Parisians so much, but only like the French a little bit.

Somehow they barbecue. Somehow I sense my concept of barbecue differs from the Parisian concept. Ah, theirs means "sunshine, outdoors, and a cute garden." Mine means "pork, beans, and coleslaw." They drink rose. I usually drink unsweet tea. They grill steaks and eat fresh vegetables. Depending on what's on, we unpack the take out from its bag, or remove the whole pig off its spit and start carving.

Another Parisian obsession, Magny reports is the moelleux au chocolat. It's a chocolate based dessert that also contains... guess what? Butter. Funny how we return to butter. He describes it as

It is an orgasm crowning Parisian dinners.

They add vanilla ice cream to the top, but usually ask for two spoons to assuage the guilt that wracks their tiny, dieting frames. Male and female Parisians always diet.

A little tip about macarons, don't buy them anywhere other than Laduree, otherwise you'll break all the Parisian social codes and you'll make the wrong social statement. But hey, if you're an American, no matter, you're not fooling anyone anyway!

At the very end Magny plugs his bar O Chateau in the chapter "Not Drinking Wine" because the tourists are the only ones drinking wine. Domestic wine consumption plummeted. He blames it on Parisian women who are watching their weight. Water, beer, and cocktails, often accompany meals. Actually, most Parisians prefer beer. And partiers prefer vodka, gin, and whiskey to fermented grapes.

In the end, it's educational, to say the least. If you want a copy, leave a comment and I'll select a winner by 24 August. Parisians will think you're one of their own one your next visit to The City of Light.

scratch grenadine

Making your own grenadine is simple, really. Jason Wilson convinced me. Was reading his book Boozehound and in the appendix he shared recipes for grenadine, simple syrup (duh), preserved cherries, and orgeat syrup, among others.

Since I plan to make a Clover Club quite soon and had no grenadine on hand, making my own seemed like the best solution. 

His recipe called for three cups of pomegranate juice. I bought the sixteen ounce container of POM at the grocery store. So when I measured that out it fell shy of the three cups. Fortunately, I had on hand the last eight ounce bottle of POM from a case that their rep sent me several months ago. 

I know, I'm terribly remiss about singing the praises of POM. The fact is that I love POM so much that I simply drank the stuff straight down---eight ounce bottle after eight ounce bottle after eight ounce bottle, you get the picture? It was a miracle that this last bottle remained so that I could pull together this grenadine recipe.

This grenadine was meant to be. Lovely how those things work out. But actually, I had planned to use part of the POM in icing for a bachelor button cookie recipe which has proved to be one of my most popular posts ever, according to my site's statistics. I'll get around to that someday. Promise.

And so, to make three cups for this recipe, if you'll need twenty-four ounces (or three cups) of POM juice.

Anyway, if you couldn't read the recipe above in my chicken scratch, here it is:

Scratch Grenadine

3 cups of pomegranate juice (I used POM)
1.5 cups of sugar
1 1/2 ounces of freshly squeezed lemon juice
one whole long strip of orange zest and mind you get none of the pith

Bring the pom juice to a boil in a medium-sized saucepan, then add lemon and sugar, stirring until dissolved/incorporated into the liquid. Add zest. Decrease heat to medium low and cook until reduced by half, about forty-five minutes. Remove peel, or strain via sieve, whichever method works best for you. Let cool before storing in refrigerator. Will keep for two weeks. For longer storage, up to two months, add half an ounce of 151 proof rum. 

 

This recipe is from Jason Wilson's book Boozehound, page 216 if you'd like to see the real thing. He adapted it from Todd Thrasher. The bottles I'm storing my grenadine in are, if you cannot tell, simply oil bottles I bought from Target. Not that I'm shilling for Target now, too. They're just my go-to store, you know? $4 a piece, as I recall. I figured they'd work well in this capacity, but the moment of truth is still to come. Wait for it... when I make this Clover Club.

dubonnet cocktail

Spending a week in New Orleans way back in June revived my taste for the cocktail. I tallied the divine drinks I supped somewhere, I promise, and will recount them, eventually. As the parent of an almost-three year old, making the local bar scene isn't a priority. The kinds of drinks appearing on our drink menus are the uninspired one derided by most folks who are serious about drinking; the ilk who turn up their noses at vodka drinks and the frou-frou direction the martini has taken. Guess I'm in that group as well.

I've always loved gin-based drinks--the gin and tonic is my standard--, and with the reading I've done recently, I've learned that real martinis are made with gin, not vodka.

But this post is about the Dubonnet Cocktail, not the martini, which though much maligned, is not really a favorite drink of mine. And pardon the Dubonnet cocktail in an inappropriate wine glass. My barware is woefully limited to these lovely wineglasses and a matching lo ball-type glass. We've never been much for cocktails, hence the need for cocktail glasses was nil. We've a plethora of shot glasses.

However, after slipping offer to Target to purchase a silver cocktail mixer this afternoon and mixing together equal parts of Dubonnet and Hendrick's Gin, then dressing it up with a lemon rind, methinks I have a new favorite. Luckily I had the Hendrick's on hand. Looked at two liquor stores for Old Tom but neither had it, nor had they heard of it. However, I managed to order a bottle of pisco.

Back to Dubonnet cocktail. When served on the rocks its the cocktail of royalty. Apparently the Queen Mother liked it that way. And its a favorite of Elizabeth II, also, who nip a bit before lunch. Imagine it gives her the pep she needs to play with that passell of corgis.

Dubbonet is a wine-based apertif featuring a touch of quinine. Thus, it combats malaria. Always good in warmer climates, especially the southern states during mosquito season. 

And, Pia Zadora shilled for the brand in the 1970s and 1980s. Who knew? I don't remember those commercials at all. Yet, she was my favorite Love Boat star. I faithfully clipped stories she appeared in from the Star and National Enquirer to paste into my scrapbook. Ah, memories.

Dubonnet Cocktail

1.5 ounces Dubonnet
1.5 ounces Gin
Ice
Lemon Peel

Prepare lemon peel. 

Pour ice into cocktail mixer. Add Dubonnet and gin. Shake, mix, do your thing. Pour contents into glass. 

Rub rim with lemon peel and let it rest on rim's edge decoratively.

Serve and drink.

 

While this recipe is for equal parts Dubbonet and gin, the Queen Mother preferred hers at 30% gin and 70% Dubbonet, so tweak the proportions until you arrive at a mixture that you may call your own.

hunt, gather, cook

How I wish for a spate of foraging books so I could write about "the spate of foraging books being published." Alas there are two that come to mind that were published this year. The Langdon Cook book I reviewed last month and Hank Shaw's Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast.

They are similar, but different. Shaw covers territory much like Langdon: greens, nettles, acorns, berries. And he feasts on crabs, clams, herring, shad, and other fresh and saltwater fish.

The real difference is that Shaw's book breaks out the big guns and brings the reader along for a philosophically compelling argument favoring hunting, killing, dressing, and eating your kill. Naturally one must know how to shoot in order to kill ones food. Shaw eases readers into it slowly with small game such as rabbit, hare, and squirrel, then advances through the book to deer, elk, antelope, and elk. He follows up near the end with upland game and waterfowl.

And as to guns--before we arrive at the paragraphs where I wax on and on about my gun-filled childhood--I consulted my DH whose abiding interest is guns and asked him to read Shaw's section on choosing a proper gun for hunting and killing your meat of choice. Shaw uses a .270 for everything from jackrabbits to deer, but Ian thought that using a gun that size on a jackrabbit would turn a rabbit to fluff. It's a bit overkill. And he agreed with Shaw's advice about selecting a gun to fit you. But it's easier that Shaw leads you to believe. Buying spacers to put into the gun's stock can change its length and angle and can make any gun fit you.

Shaw argues that the self reliance of killing an animal and delivering it to table outweighs any other feeling you might experience in life. He says

No butchers, no supermarkets, no one telling you what you can and cannot do.

Undoubtedly this appeals to a slew of demographics. Take Generation X for example; I'm talking 'bout my generation. We buck authority. Killing our own game and bypassing the USDA, and the corporate meat industry would appeals to us, no?

Surely it appeals to the locavores? They can't argue with a rabbit shot in their own backyard, can they? There's nothing more locally sourced than that.

I ate up Shaw's book with my greedy, greasy, bloody fingers because guns were ever-present in my East Tennessee childhood. And every chapter he wrote reminded me of tramping along behind my Papaw in the woods when we set off on a day's walk with a quasi-feral Lhaso Apso called Sampson trailing behind.

As a part of the region's recent agricultural past and a necessity for supplementing the diet and scaring off varmints of both animal and human kind my paternal grandfather (city-born in Detroit, Mich., he took to country living easy) and his son, my uncle, hunted deer each season and fished from the Nolichucky next door to their home. Several rifles hanged on a rack in the living room, and Papaw's blue pickup truck featured a gun rack in the back window. He's the same one I've mentioned making venison stew and his own cherry wine in other posts.

As to other gunmen in my childhood, my paternal grandfather, also known as Papaw--I differentiated them as Papaw Ros or Papaw Don, but simply called them Papaw--kept his rifle somewhat hidden on a rack in the hallway between bedrooms of his house.

And my dad had pistols which he taught me to shoot when I asked him to when I reached young adulthood-- though he brought me along for target practice when I was a young thing and I kept my ears covered as he shot. Recently he revealed my keen eye (and hand/eye coordination) to his parishioners during a Sunday sermon and told them ought nobody to mess with me. Always nice for a preacher's daughter to gain a reputation like that in church, right? Especially straight from the preacher's mouth.

Besides private life, guns were present in school. In middle school we received mandatory hunter's education. I forget if it was seventh or eighth grade now, but whether we planned to get a hunting license or not, and gender be damned, nobody was excused from hunter's education curriculum. And here's the kicker: when I went to college for a year in Alaska, the second thing asked of me after checking into the dorm (first was my name) was did I have any guns to register? Um, no. I do now. But then, no. Lots of my schoolmates at SJC hunted. Heck when you hiked or camped taking a powerful rifle was smart because I barely averted rendezvous with bears on several occasions.

I know, this is more about me than it is about Hank Shaw's stellar book. My point is that the foraging movement and the publication of Shaw and Cook's inspiring books make it seem as though the foraging or the food-to-table movement is a 21st century Pacific Northwest discovery. But, if they're the only people writing, blogging, and publishing about foraging, then, in a sense, foraging assumes that association and identity even though the information contained within Hunt, Gather, Cook is universal and applicable to most geographic locales, except, perhaps, the desert and arctic regions.

Being simpatico with the land is centuries old. Surely this century's blossoming of it is thanks to Helen and Scott Nearing. Their book Living the Good Life (1954) and their example single-handedly inspired the 1960s back-to-the-land movement and reading Melissa Coleman's memoir This Life is in Your Hands: One Family, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone, last week helped me realize the real roots of the foraging/locavore and self-reliance impetus we see today. Sometimes those movements skip a generation, or wax and wane. But in Maine, it seems the trend kept on keeping on.

Actually, Shaw points out that feeding ourselves via grocery stores and restaurants erects barriers preventing us from understanding the seasonal availability of fruits and vegetables as well as gaining a true sense of complete self-reliance as far as feeding ourselves and our families. So he ties theories and practices together quite well. Man, he's persuasive. Read this book and it will change your life. He recommends you start slow and not try to fish, hunt, and forage all at once, especially if you're holding down a full time job.

Relying upon grocery stores and restaurants created a generation gap or two or three. Information conveyed from mother to daughter, grandfather to grandson in the fields, forests, gardens, and streams has left many of us without basic skills for understanding how to skin a rabbit, how to kill a chicken, how to pluck a duck (or any other kind of fowl) or what to do with a catfish once you've caught it.

Shaw goes well beyond the basics though and uses his years as a restaurant cook to concoct dreamy recipes for wild game such as Oil Poached Bluegill Salad with Summer Veggies, Swedish Moose Meatballs, and Wild Duck Ragu. If you've followed the blog for any amount of time, you've no doubt read my criticisms citing new southern cookbooks for their dearth of game meat recipes. Shaw's Hunt, Gather, Cook receives honorary membership in the southern cookbook genre for its plethora of game meat recipes. In fact, no southern home or public library should be without Hunt, Gather, Cook. 

In these troubled economic times (I could smack myself because I hate that warbly reference when I hear it on radio) more and more families should turn to foraging, hunting, fishing, and hey, why not even keeping their own chickens, too, in order to stave off hunger and to keep costs down. But more so, to bolster self-esteem, to boost self-reliance, and to re-ignite the independent spirit our country was founded upon, she blogs somewhat tongue in cheek, somewhat, not. Wink. Wink.

in spite of everything

A thorough investigation into Generation X's relationship with food is in order, but In Spite of Everything: A Memoir isn't the book to do it. Yet, Susan Gregory Thomas's memoir and study of a generation's psychological scars, coming-of-age, and venture into parenthood and family life touches on a definitive moment for the generation: divorce.

When Thomas was eleven, she and her brother Ian got the first inkling that her parents were splitting when their mother was away at a conference and their father said he was running late and was still at work. In the kitchen, they dealt with feeding themselves dinner for the first time. They dug through a stash of Stouffer's French bread pizza their mom had in the freezer. And this first meal on their own was a threshold moment between their old comfortable lives and what divorce would bring: A lot of cobbled together meals, experimentation with drugs and alcohol, punk rock phase, early and casual sex, etc.

Experiencing her parents divorce set her against the idea of going through that, or having her children stumbled through the post-nuclear fallout themselves. She met Cal. They dated and lived together eight years before marrying and having two children.

Her first thought about becoming a mother was being opposite of her own. Her own mother's failures and shining examples of non-parenting such as using the cry it out method for letting her and Ian fall asleep each night, using formula rather than breastfeeding, and a general hands-off, uninvolved approach were anathema. Thomas cites Generation X as the attachment parenting generation who loves the family bed because by overparenting our children, we can attempt to right the wrongs done to us.

Thomas imagined they were inoculated from divorce because, no matter what, she would preserve her marriage for the sake of her children's well-being.

Then one day she and Cal went to dinner and Cal dropped a bomb. He thought they should have spit ten years ago. This wasn't Thomas's plan. Negotiating divorce's destruction was something she must do.

And so, this book contains no real food content to speak of, other than Thomas's telling anecdote at the front, and then near the end, she writes of her and Cal's investment in a three-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. Their kitchen and Cal's cooking draws other couples and children into their home and they serve as hub in their social circle. Thomas urges Cal to go to culinary school, but he demurs. Eventually they take on a greater mortgage, redo the kitchen to the tune of $100K to showcase Cal's talents and the amount of time he spends cooking for family and friends. 

But, what fascinated me about the book, and why I contacted her publicist asking for a review copy, was its Generation X emphasis, our shared generational experience, because that's my bag, baby. While many of the characteristics Thomas writes apply to my life, many do not. Sometimes I happily accept the Gen X label and as often as not I shake my head because of the dissimilarities.

Thomas mentions the 2008 recession and how Gen X is partially blamed for it because banks extended so many bad loans.  Our taste for pricey name-brands with which we feather and expand our nests bit us in the butt. We like to buy circa 1920 homes and renovate them. Install $10K ranges in the kitchen, go all out. Plus, we want the finest for our children. Read Thomas's other book Buy Baby Buy: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds for more information about that dynamic.

As to the kitchen nesting thing, that's not me. My older home with its sucky 1960s-era kitchen with original cabinetry and stained counter-tops remain the same because we didn't over-extend ourselves. Yeah, I'm miserable in that kitchen and dream of a nicer space, but I'm sensible and not living beyond my means to finance a kitchen remodel.

And you'd think that Generation X could see beyond the advertising and not be manipulated into buying a Stokke or Balmoral Pram because we're such skeptics. Perhaps our fascination with popular culture finds us reaching for plastic far too many times as we want the same products celebrities purchase. And Thomas herself admits that living in Park Slope influenced her need to keep up with her peers, and buy property, renovate apartments and homes with mammoth first and second mortgages, and to make sure her daughters had the best of everything.

In the end, In Spite of Everything fascinates and informs on several levels. There's much to identify with in Thomas's story from Daddy's girl to single mother of two in a transitional neighborhood celebrating a first Christmas with a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. The end is hopeful, and Thomas finds balm for her wounds by building another nest for her girls, knitting a lot, and practicing lecito divina.

don't kill the birthday girl

Imagine living your life so mindfully that forgetting to wipe the phone after someone used it could send you to the hospital. Or that your father ate nuts at lunch and didn't rinse his mouth properly. So he can't kiss or touch you until he does. Or, being the one child at school who doesn't get a cupcake when it's someones birthday and you line up your macadamia nuts in the pencil tray at the edge of your desk and dole a few out as everyone licks icing, then another few as they tuck into the cake portion, and so on. 

That's what Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life is all about. It's scary, really. Sandra Beasley was one of those babies who couldn't feed from her mother's breast. She was intolerant of soy and other forms of milk and so she drank juices. The rest of feeding her was touch and go.

Trips to the ER were regular events. While other children in her classroom weren't allowed to carry backpacks, Beasley always carried a purse filled with Benydrly and her Epi-Pen. The list what she was allergic to is longer than what she is is not. Her food choices were limited. 

Beasley's birthday parties were celebrated with regular cakes for all the guests and a special treat for her. One year it was an applesauce-and cinnamon-raisin-bundt cake. Raisins were one thing she was allowed to eat lots of. But, then she couldn't get hugs from her friends and family who ate the regular cake, hence the title, "Don't kill the birthday girl" because one tainted kiss, one taste of butter, egg, or milk from the cake's icing would send Beasley's throat squonking.

Reading her story made me so sad for her regular trips to the hospital, regular passing out, and always spending hours in a daze after ingesting Benydrl to counteract the negative affects of food allergies. Plus toting around the identity of "that girl," "the difficult one," "the wet blanket," that we have to make special compensation for all the time.

Never to taste pizza. Or cake. Real cake. Or real Campbell's tomato soup when she's sick. Imagine the difficulties of eating out. Her mother was vigilant at home and when they dined out she interrogated servers and often they left restaurants without eating. 

Beasly talks about Ming Tsai's child having similar allergies and how he instituted more awareness and costly change at Blue Ginger's kitchen in order to keep diners safe. She visits New Orleans to attend the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. Throughout the book she weaves examples from her personal narrative with cold hard facts. She introduces readers to the theories of rising childhood allergies. And she concludes by commiserating with a dear friend whose child shows signs of food allergies after rubbing cake icing on her face and telling welts appearing moments later. Must be the food dye from the icing.

Around age sixteen or so, I was rushed to the hospital with severe edema of the face, nose, and throat which happened in the middle of volleyball practice. Afterwards, I saw an ear, nose, and throat doctor and went through a battery of allergy tests, the prick test, described by Beasley in chapter one. I was allergic to cats, dogs, horses, guinea pigs, pork, beef, molds, grasses, hay, etc. Asthma, was diagnosed, too. When I had a blood panel done recently they did a simple RAST, also explained in the same chapter.

I avoided eating beef and pork for a few years, but my food allergies were slight and only resulted in slight wheezing controlled by my Albuterol inhaler. I carried an Epi-Pen, much later after those were available on the market. But prior to that I carried a hypodermic needle around in a hard plastic case. Thankfully, I never had to use it.

My main problem was exercise induced asthma, and we never identified the original culprit. There was another visit to the ER a few years later, but it wasn't food-related either. And in the intervening two decades or so, my asthma has mostly disappeared. Yet, it put me in a high-risk category for my pregnancy, as did my "advanced maternal age." I'm ashamed to report that I don't keep my inhaler prescription updated.

Given my personal experience with edema and allergic reactions much like others doubting Thomases described in Beasley's books, I mostly pooh-pooed the severity of reactions folks have to food. Especially those in regard to peanuts. We were mighty concerned that Elsa might have peanut allergies given my own compromised immune system (my allergy/asthma history). 

We hesitated giving Elsa peanut butter or peanuts. But a server at one of those steak places where strewing peanuts on the floor is de rigueur said something so smart. If Elsa was allergic to peanuts she couldn't withstand the peanut dust in the restaurant. Undoubtedly she was right. Well before she was eighteen months she suckled peanut butter from our fingers. Thereafter her love affair with nuts began. Our parents, naturally, were frightened that we fed her nuts. It defied nut introduction convention, plus there's the choking hazard to consider.

But one of the theories Beasley mentions in Don't Kill the Birthday Girl is that the reason there are so many peanut allergies is that we wait so long to introduce peanuts to babies. She cites a study about the difference between Jewish children raised in London and those raised in Tel Aviv. The ones in London are ten times more likely to show peanut sensitivity. The difference is that Israeli children are exposed to peanuts because they eat a popular peanut-based treat Bamba.

Beasley's memoir is eye-opening and reveals that even though food allergies lands one in the ER a lot, those suffering from them can work around them. We need to make our food systems more transparent so that those with food allergies can make informed decisions. 

whatever happened to pudding pops? (+ modest giveaway)

Seriously, if reminiscing about the lost foods of your youth has you crying your eyes out because those days are gone, well, those days are gone, actually. Pop Rocks are no more. Gotcha! They're not gone. Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops: The Lost Toys, Tastes, & Trends of the 70's & 80's is just in time to save your soul. And yesterday was my 40th birthday, so it sent me down memory lane, and I'm always headed that way anyway, especially since the past few years saw the release of all those great 80s televison shows on DVD: Magnum P.I., Simon & Simon, etc. 

Dry your tears on your raggedy Blythe doll because this book will send you so far down memory lane you won't have time to think about where you lost your moth-eaten Tretorns or who stole your Love Boat metal lunchbox or which scratch n sniff sticker was pasted to the back of your favorite Trapper Keeper.

Gale Fashinbauer Cooper and Brian Bellmont collect all the best trends of the 1970s and 1980s in this paperback guide to Generation X's glory days. Naturally the chapters I gravitated to most were the ones sporting food headings. 

I didn't love the Bar None candy bar. Nor did Bazooka Joe chewing gum get my chomp on. Obviously the book's alphabetical arrangement tips you off, no? BottleCaps? Bub's Daddy Gum? Burger Chef? Candy Cigarettes? 

Yeah, it's fairly focused on candy and fluff. And so if you're looking for a trip down memory lane with a serious candy focus, then go read a copy of Candyfreak for freaks sake, it's excellnt and Steve Almond is one of my favorite writers.

But what got my Pop Rocks off was reminiscing about Charlie's Angels trading cards. They were packaged with bubble gum. Forget the bubble gum. I wanted my Charlie's Angels trading cards. When you collected enough and flipped them over, they made a huge poster. Sadly, I never collected enough to tell what the huge poster reveled. Even sadder, somehow those cards were tossed out. A big, big mistake. Remeber that roller derby episode?

Guess which Angel I always played? Sabrina. I didn't know she was one of the least likable actresses in the biz. I was chubby. Mom cut my hair in a wedge. At least I never had to be Chewbacca when we played Star Wars. I got to be Leia. Thank Heaven for some small favors. 

The majority of foods in the book fall into the novelty, cereal, processed, or convenience categories. Advertising food products to children ramped up during those decades and items such as Freakies, Fruit Brute, Funny Face Drink Mix,  Hostess Choco-Diles and Choco-Bliss, give the low-down on who made those foods and how they marketed them to their target audience. 

How I'd forgotten the McDLT. And that freaky, wasteful packacaging and the gimmick of not mixing the cold ingredients with the hot ingredients? Whoa. Whose bright idea was that? 

So, you're wondering about Pudding Pops? At the conclusoin of each entry an extension rating alerts readers to the item's status. Pudding Pops are... wait for it.... Revised and revived! And a subsequent paragraph lets you know they were replaced by Popsicle who licensed the name and reintroduced and redesigned them in 2004. 

It seems that no book can encapsulate every trend of the 1970s and 1980s and it could not include every fad or trend, but where are Smurfs, pet rocks, Solid Gold, the Rubik's cube (which I solved by peeling off the stickers and aligning them), Soul Train, and Valley girls/Valspeak, all which I recall as being big things? What were your favorite trends from those decades? 

Want your very own copy of the book? Leave a comment and if there is more than one I'll randomly draw names for the winner by the end of the week (5 August) and contact you for your mailing address, you diehard 70s/80s fan.