At the End of the Day It's a Dreadful Cliche

The next time someone states, "At the end of the day," I am going to scream. It's up there on my list with the overuse of the work "icon." Every chickenshit actress is now an icon for cryin out loud. No. No. No. At the end of the day, let's get rid of the icons. When all is said and done, let's ban "at the end of the day."

This evening I made a dish for which I've been looking for the recipe since I was a freshman in college. Chicken with dressing under the skin. I ate it at Alfred's Deli in the Village near the Rice campus in Houston. Apparently this is a Jewish-Hungarian recipe. Had to made a trip to Shaw's for some Challah bread. Can hardly wait for breakfast tomorrow to eat the rest. It would have been better if a) I had put more salt in the stuffing and b) I had remembered to salt the chicken. Duh! The quartered and stuff ed chicken was roasted on a medley of onions, carrots and grean beans. Yum!

Big article in the NY Times magazine today about "Nutrionism," which basically summarized how the hapless consumer has been led down the primrose path of all the latest food fads and advice for the last twenty years. The advice is: eat what your grandparents and great grandparents ate. Subtext: get rid of the processed garbage.

My grandparents had a wonderful garden. I can still remember anticipating the first strawberries, the new potatoes, and when the fruit peddlar came by with peaches, apricots, and all the fruits my grandma canned. Summer was not a season of leisure. Imagine a Kansas summer spent over the stove in an un-air-conditioned kitchen. No one complained. In the evening, friends, neighbors and relatives would come by to set a spell on the front porch. My grandpa listened to baseball on the radio. The front porch had a swing. People "visited." Such a quaint thought now, but in Maryland I think they still do this.

My grandma sang hymns as she washed the dishes, The Old Rugged Cross, and The Garden. Made pies and baked bread without a recipe. French-Canadian lineage with some Indian (native American) blood. The French and the Indians didn't make war on each other. Odd to have native American blood on both sides of the family and me so white-bread waspy looking. Well, you never can tell.

Ban "at the end of the day" and "icon" from your vocabulary. O.K., you can use "icon" but only with extreme irony. Got it? Good.
Here's a link for you: http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php
I'm not the only curmudgeon on the block.

I am so grumpy because I didn't get anything done all day. Well, dinner and a walk and some paperwork. No web stuff.

Grrrrapeshot.