Today, I was missing my husband, Frank, who died 6 years ago. I decided to look back at posts I had written about him and found this one. It was originally published on April 5, 2012. I still think it’s funny. I hope you agree.
The other day, when I was trying to come up with a way in which to disguise chicken, I happened upon a bag of panko breadcrumbs at a local upscale grocery store. I’m not upscale, but I frequent the store because I like to see how the one-percent lives, and because it’s down the street from my house.
I picked up the bag of über-hip crumbs and detected tiny red and green specks in it. Always one to tackle a mystery, I read the label. The specks turned out to be sun-dried tomatoes and basil. The price was $4.99 for six ounces. At the time, that seemed reasonable, so I tossed the bag into my cart.
Fortunately, sanity returned halfway down the aisle. Five dollars for breadcrumbs? I’m a person who refuses to pay $5 for a cup of fancy coffee, and I was going to pay that much for breadcrumbs? As I put the bag back onto its shelf, I remembered that I had sun-dried tomatoes, fresh basil, and bread at home. I could make my own fancy-schmancy breadcrumbs. One thing I didn’t have at home was panko. I wasn’t even sure what panko was. I had heard Hollywood chefs talk about it, but nobody from Hollywood was going to be eating my chicken. Multi-grain bread was good enough for my audience of two.
Once I got home, I soon learned that the cost of the breadcrumbs was mostly for labor. After toasting a loaf of bread and cutting it into cubes, I put half of the ingredients into my food processor and hit “grind.” No sooner had I pressed the button than the top of the food processor popped off and red-and-green-flecked bread cubes exploded up into the air and landed on my head. After cleaning the kitchen, washing my hair, and donning a hockey helmet, I reloaded the machine with the remainder of the bread, tomatoes and basil and hit “grind” again. This time, I was rewarded with beautifully flecked, perfectly ground breadcrumbs. Visions of gloriously prepared chicken breasts danced before my eyes.
Inspired by my success, I put the bags of frozen french fries and peas back into the fridge and decided to make fresh side dishes. While the chicken baked, I whipped up fresh garlic mashed potatoes and lightly sautéed asparagus as accompaniments. I had outdone myself. In all honesty, outdoing myself only takes putting down the take-out menu and turning on the stove. But this time, I had prepared a restaurant-quality meal that wouldn’t come with a Supersize option.
I called my family to dinner. At the table. When they saw placemats and flatware set out, they asked if they had forgotten my birthday. I made a silent promise to restrict eating in the family room, and presented the chicken breasts, glistening with golden breadcrumbs speckled with green and red flavor flecks. I stood back to accept my due. “Ooh, aah,” my husband said without a hint of sincerity. “Can I help you bring the potatoes and vegetables over to the table so that we can eat?” I took a deep cleansing breath. “Sure,” I said.
Everyone started with the potatoes, which galled me. But I waited patiently. I couldn’t exactly say, “Try the damned chicken, will you?” It would have ruined the experience. Instead, I tasted it. The combination of the tart tomatoes, earthy basil, crunchy breadcrumbs and juicy chicken was perfection. My mouth watered for another bite. My eyes watered from success.
Finally, my husband took a bite. Then he took another. Then another. The suspense was making me antsy. My son took a bite and said, “This is really good, Mom. Isn’t it, Dad?” My husband nodded. “The chicken is cooked perfectly and the mashed potatoes are delicious. I’m just not a fan of the coating on the chicken.” He then proceeded to scrape the breadcrumbs off the chicken into a pile next to the asparagus. I could have gone on a tirade, and perhaps I did, but I’m not going to admit it here. All that I will say is that from now on, one of us is getting plain breadcrumbs. And tomorrow, when I experiment with flavoring mayonnaise, that person certainly won’t be getting any pesto mayo on his sandwich.
Panko Schmanko
Posts Tagged ‘shopping’
Odd Coincidences
In Humor, Religion, shopping on August 12, 2025 at 7:27 pmThink of this post as a prompt for you: Describe a something that happened, to you or someone you know, that was really odd and which you never forgot.
I’ll start.
One of my best friends attended the same church that my husband, son, and I attended. That’s where we met. That’s where I met most of my friends in Norwalk, Connecticut. We had moved there from East 83rd Street in Manhattan in 1995 and didn’t know anyone.
We became fast friends and one birthday, she gave me a gift card to TJ Maxx, my favorite store. I bought a pink silk shirtdress that I loved.
One Sunday shortly after my birthday, I was scheduled to be a Eucharistic Minister at Mass, which means I helped distribute Communion. On that particular Sunday, she brought someone to Mass with her who had never met me. I think it was the woman’s first time at our church, but don’t quote me on that.
Anyway, before Communion, the Eucharistic Ministers all congregated behind the altar, while the priest prepared the cups and plates for us. My friend and her friend sat in the last row of the church. During this time, the woman said to my friend, “I love that pink dress that the woman up on the altar is wearing.”
My friend turned to her and said, “I gave it to her.”
The woman probably thought that my friend was insane. I hope so.
Your turn!
The Thrill of the Hunt
In Humor, shopping on March 17, 2019 at 2:03 amI love tag sales and estate sales. I just love them. Something about finding a treasure for a great price lifts my spirits, tickles my happy bone, and does things to my digestive tract that I’d rather not mention.
You might call them garage sales or yard sales instead of tag sales, but they’re the same thing. Estate sales are another beast entirely. Someone dies and his/her heirs sell off the deceased’s lifelong accumulations. It’s sad, if you think long enough about it … so I don’t.
Sellers know the allure of estate sales, so sometimes they stoop to deceit. I once went to a purported estate sale with a friend. As we walked down a hallway, we passed a closed door that was marked “Do Not Enter.” We thought nothing of it … until a woman who was working the sale approached the door carrying a bowl of soup. She knocked on the door. The door opened a crack, just wide enough for an arm from inside the room to reach out, grab the soup bowl, and then re-close the door.
“I think that person is pretending to be dead,” my friend said. I think she was right.
But usually, estate sales are run by companies that specialize in this type of sale. The people running them are organized, strict about their no-haggling rule, and they don’t allow the heirs or the dead person on the premises while the sale is going on.
It used to be that you attended estate sales in person, but now you can find them online, posing as auctions. The bidding can get fierce at the end of the auctions. Bidders get flooded with adrenaline and pay outrageously high prices for items just so they can beat out other people. I can just imagine their buyer’s remorse the next day when they realize that they bought a piece of junk for a week’s salary. Well, in truth, I don’t have to imagine their remorse. I’ve lived it.
Sometimes, though, you can get a really good deal. I “won” a 10-foot, real leather, two-piece sectional couch for $310. Of course, that was the price before the “bidder’s premium” and taxes were added on. Then, I had to hire two guys to pick it up and bring it to my house. All in all, I paid close to $500. But, it was still a deal. Or that’s what I’m telling myself. It’s also beautiful, which helped to assuage my doubt about the purchase. I finally got to the point where I was very happy that I bought it. I told a bunch of people about it and one said, “I hope it doesn’t have bedbugs.” Oh for the love of God. Some people just have to bring other people down. I told her that we vacuumed it, and disinfected it, and polished the leather and we saw no sign of bugs. I also told her that we got the piece from a gorgeous home in a wealthy neighborhood. She shook her head and said, “Bedbugs cross all income levels.” Rather than kill her, I offered up a prayer that my sectional was bug-free. I’m sure that worked. God is the supreme protector of, among other things, second-hand furniture.
Facebook is also a good place to find online tag/garage/yard sales. Every neighborhood has at least one site where people sell their unwanted possessions. There’s also a Facebook Marketplace which aggregates the individual sale sites. I’ve bought quite a lot of really useful and necessary items from these sites. For example, I got a set of antique mahogany bed steps. The top step has a storage compartment inside it. The second step pulls out onto the bottom step and it, too, has a storage compartment for … bedpans. In the 1800s, when this one was made, people slept in really high beds, so they needed steps to get into them. The steps were kept next to their beds. The lid of the top step flipped open and people kept their spectacles and other other antiquities in the hollow compartment. The second step was used to store a person’s chamber pot. That way, if he or she had to relieve him/herself in the middle of the night, the chamber pot could be used and then shut up in the step until it could be emptied in the morning.
My husband and son were disgusted by this information about my new, 200-year-old bed steps. I assured them that any antique germs that were still lingering inside the second step could easily be obliterated with a few Clorox wipes. How strong could those germs be after two centuries? They’re probably hobbling around on walkers by this point. If I’m wrong, however, I just might become patient zero with the Bubonic Plague. I hope my friends are vaccinated.
In addition to the leather sectional and contaminated bed steps, thanks to local online auctions and Facebook sites, I am also the owner of, among other things, Windsor-like chairs, wicker dressers that needs painting, many pairs of sterling silver candlesticks, a pair of brass candlesticks with hanging crystals, wooden shoe trees, a red Chinese wedding dress, red kitchen chairs, folk-art prints, silver and gold jewelry, and a cast-iron clothes iron with an interesting history.
After some research into my antique iron, I discovered that it was called a “sad iron.” I thought that it was so-named because the person (woman) who was ironing was sad about having to do this job, but that wasn’t the case. It turns out that “sad” used to mean “solid” back in the day. Also, back in olden days, keeping an iron hot was a struggle. A woman would have to heat the iron on her stove, and then carefully remove the iron by grabbing its burning-hot metal handle. After medicating her burnt hand, she’d have to run to the ironing board and iron really fast before the iron got cold again. Then she would put the iron back on the stove and repeat the painful process. Somewhere along the way, somebody invented a wooden handle, aka a “cold handle,” that didn’t absorb as much heat as cast iron so that a person could lift the iron off the stovetop without scalding herself too much —but the real genius of the nineteenth century was a woman named Mary Florence Potts.
Mrs. Potts’s invention changed women’s lives for the better. She invented and patented a clothes iron with a detachable wooden handle. A woman would buy the handle and several metal bases that were pointed on each end (so that ironing could be done in either direction). The brilliant part was that a woman could continue ironing even after her iron got cold because all she had to do was detach the handle from the cold iron, attach the handle to a hot base that was warming on the stove, and then reheat the cold iron. Women went wild for Mrs. Potts’s iron. She was renowned for being a successful female entrepreneur, and her invention appeared at two World Fairs. I am now a proud owner of one of her irons — well, actually, a knockoff of one of her irons. I didn’t know that it was a copy until I looked up Mrs. Potts’s sad iron online. The genuine irons say “Mrs. Potts Sad Iron.” She started off selling them herself but eventually let the American Machine Company of Philadelphia do her marketing and selling. Unfortunately, mine was made by the A.C. Williams Co. of Ravenna, Ohio. Regardless, I feel honored to own a piece of history — a copycat piece of history, but a piece, nonetheless.
While writing this, it occurred to me that what I enjoy most about these sales is the thrill of the hunt. I get exhilarated when I find a one-of-a-kind item for a great price. Sometimes, though, those unique items turn out to be less than one-of-a-kind (like the time I bought my cousin a “vintage, handmade quilt washed and hung to dry in the Texas sun” that turned out to be a used quilt from Bed Bath & Beyond), but those setbacks don’t deter me.
The only deterrent to my hobby could be my husband, but so far he’s been very accepting of my purchases — the ones he knows about, that is. So far, he hasn’t looked in the chamber-pot storage area of my bed steps. And, I doubt he ever will.
Don’t Pass Gas in a Puffer Coat
In Humor, shopping on November 29, 2017 at 1:28 pmAs a public service announcement to all of you out there who are about to start shopping 
for winter coats, you should know that puffer coats grab onto smells, absorb them, and hold on like a baby to a pacifier.
I went to a Korean-barbecue restaurant the other night and came out smelling like I had never left. My coat drank in the pungent scents and retained them like water. It’s two days later and that coat still reeks.
Which brings me to some other aromas that will stick to your coat like glitter to anything: body odor, bodily gases, perfume, and cooking smells. Basically anything that your nose can sense will move into your coat and start unpacking immediately.
My husband has asked me not to wear my puffer coat until it’s stink-free. He came at me today with a bottle of Febreze but I wouldn’t let him spray my coat for fear of staining it. So, for now, it’s hanging outside in the yard. I hope there’s nothing smelly out there.
Wearing a skunked coat would really stink.
Lysol and Holy Water
In Humor on February 16, 2013 at 12:28 amI know it’s not popular to believe in evil spirits, but I do. I just think it’s strange that, back in Jesus’ day, he and his apostles spent a good amount of time casting out evil spirits. Once the demon spirits were expelled, the cured people were good as new.
So, why would evil spirits just suddenly go away? In my opinion, they didn’t. They just went out of fashion. When society stopped believing in them, they didn’t close up shop. They were busier than ever but, once they became passé, they were able to operate under the radar, ignored and blameless. Now, when people were evil or acted crazy, they were labeled as “unstable”—instead of as “possessed.” I imagine that when the demons were given their free pass, they had a hell of a party.
This all relates, of course, to my recent outing on eBay. All winter long, I had been looking for a nice pair of black leather riding boots with a small stacked heel. Because I only shop at Marshalls and TJ Maxx—along with the rest of humanity—pickings were scarce. Either the heels were sky-high or the prices were, which was surprising considering where I was shopping.
By February, I still didn’t have a pair of black boots, so I decided to risk catching plantar warts and buy a gently used pair on eBay. I figured my chances of contracting warts were slim if I sprayed the inside of the boots with Lysol. Anyway, I found the boots I was looking for, won the bidding war, and paid considerably less (including shipping) than I would have at my usual hunting grounds. Once I paid for them, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to take a look at handbags.
Four successful auctions later, I was the proud owner of one new evening bag and three previously owned leather purses. I got excellent deals on the bags (including shipping); however, I still wasn’t shocked at my husband’s vehement (read “loud”) request that I “get off eBay right now.”
I always confess everything to my husband. Even if I plan in advance to go overboard with whatever I’m doing, I also know that I’m going to tell him what I did, to relieve my guilt. Knowing about my future confession keeps me in check. Kind of.
I told one of my sisters about my purchases and she said, “Ewwww. How can you wear boots, or carry a bag that was owned by someone else?”
“I’m going to wipe down the boots and bags with Lysol wipes and spray their insides with Lysol spray. They’ll be germ-free once I’m done,” I said.
“But they could have bad juju,” she said.
“Juju”? I asked.
“You know, evil spirits or bad auras, or something.”
“Huh,” I said. That was a new one. “Well then, once I clean them, I’ll sprinkle everything, inside and out, with holy water.”
“That might work,” she said. “Hey!” she added, “I think you just invented the next generation of cleaners—ones that get rid of germs and bad juju.”
“Wow,” I said. “You might be right. But, we’ll need to find a new word for juju.”
“Why?” she asked. “Nobody believes in evil spirits, but juju is a commonly accepted thing.”
I can’t help but wonder what kind of people she hangs out with.
Shoes Off A Dead Man
In Humor on January 25, 2013 at 5:42 pm
My 19-year-old son now owns a pair of $450 handmade leather dress shoes. This irks me for a number of reasons. First of all, my son, Luke, (who has forbidden me to blog about him, so I’ll be referring to him as Mike), doesn’t care a whit about shoes. When Mike goes out, he wears whatever sneakers are closest to the front door, even if they belong to my husband, or a visitor. When Mike has to dress up, he doesn’t waste time deciding what to put on his feet; he owned exactly one pair of black dress shoes and they suited him fine. Now, he also owns an extremely well-made pair of brown leather shoes. And, he seemed really happy to get them. That surprised me, but not as much as the manner in which he obtained them.
The shoes came from the closet of a deceased middle-aged man. The man had expensive tastes and closets full of garments and footwear, all with their sales tags attached. His sister inherited his home and its contents. She generously offered her coworkers and their family members the opportunity to check out the merchandise and take whatever they wanted. My husband, some of his colleagues, and Mike decided to take her up on her offer.
I have never been offered a dead woman’s expensive belongings, so it’s not really fair of me to judge my husband or Mike–especially since I have been guilty of attending estate sales and buying things that I have to assume were previously owned by a now-dead person. But, in my defense, I never asked if the owner had passed on (on one occasion, my friend and I were pretty sure that the “dead” person, whose possessions were being sold, was actually alive and hiding in a room because the estate-sale coordinators kept handing food and beverages into a room marked “Keep Out”), so I could honestly tell myself that I wasn’t certain that I was stealing the shoes off a dead man, or woman.
My husband and Mike, however, couldn’t make the same case for their actions. But they didn’t even want to excuse their behavior. “What’s the big deal?” my husband asked me. “All of the stuff was brand new, and we were told to take whatever we wanted. Otherwise, it was going to charity.” I asked him if it wouldn’t have been better if it had gone to charity and he looked at me and said, “No.”
Their haul consisted of two duffel bags filled with beautifully made shirts, a leather jacket, and those shoes. Both my husband and Mike were thrilled with their “purchases.” For two men who hate shopping, I was surprised. Maybe they don’t actually hate shopping–just the paying part.
My husband’s coworker was glad that her brother’s belongings had found good homes and she told the beneficiaries of her generosity that they could go back a second time and see if they overlooked anything during their first visit. I had come to terms with my family’s first trip, but it’s going to take some time to accept that they’re going again. I’d better accompany them this time, just to make sure that they don’t mistake greed for need.
And, besides, I heard that there were brand-new sheet sets up for grabs.
Shop ’til You Drop, from Hunger or Anger
In Humor on October 13, 2012 at 12:32 amWe’ve all heard that you shouldn’t grocery shop when you’re hungry. And yet, we’ve all shopped when we were hungry, and wound up with a cart full of cookies, chips, and SpaghettiOs. Recently, I learned of another shopping caveat: Don’t shop when you’re angry.
A friend of mine, Debbie, related a story about an argument that she and her husband had which led her to aberrant shopping behavior. In her husband’s defense, I have to say that he is the most laid-back person I’ve ever met. In Debbie’s defense, I must say that she is not laid-back at all. Here is her story, verbatim, or as close to verbatim as I can remember.
“You won’t believe what happened last night! Mark worked from home yesterday and I had the day off, so we were together all day. I told Mark that I was going to clean the refrigerator and then go food shopping. So, I cleaned out the fridge and took a nap. When I woke up, I got a phone call. While I was talking, I put some tuna in a cut-up tomato on a plate and surrounded it with crackers, and gave it to Mark. After I got off the phone, Mark flipped out. ‘How can you call this five-minute meal a dinner?’ he asked. I told him that I didn’t consider it anymore than a snack. Up to now, Friday dinners were always delivered by a local pizza place. The tuna in a tomato was just something to tide him over until I got us all something to eat.
I immediately headed out to the store, but I was angry. First of all, in over 30 years of marriage, my husband had raised his voice about five times, and this time was ridiculous. It’s not like I had starved him. I gave him something to eat, and it was probably a heck of a lot better than some of the meals that I had cooked.
In my anger, I bought everything. I resolved to cook wonderful dinners this week, or warm up really expensive frozen meals. And only the best would do. $22 ham? Check. $20 olive oil for salads? $20 frozen gourmet pasta meals? Check. Check. You get the idea. However, when I got to the register and my total was $246.21, which didn’t include any expensive paper products or cleaning supplies, I have to admit that I was surprised. But I didn’t care. I was still angry. Then my phone rang. It was my husband, apologizing for being a jerk. My heart melted. I told him that it was okay and that I understood that he was under a lot of stress and took it out on me.
After I hung up, I still had a $246.21 tab to pay, and I paid it. Thank God that I took my wrath out on food. We’ll eat it all eventually. I might have to borrow somebody’s freezer, though. At least I didn’t retaliate by buying shoes. They don’t hold up well in freezers.”
Black Friday
In Black Friday, Humor on November 25, 2011 at 5:21 pmAs a steadfast abhorrer of Black Friday, I spend the day after Thanksgiving on my couch. There’s very little that’s on sale in my family room, and I wouldn’t want to buy any of it anyway. One year, however, my brother spent the night at our house and had forgotten to bring some toiletry or other that we didn’t have, so we had to venture out to the local pharmacy. While I wasn’t thrilled about having to get out of my pajamas, I didn’t cringe at the idea of going to the drugstore. I mean, it wasn’t Walmart. We weren’t going to encounter hordes of glassy-eyed, sleep-deprived, sale-obsessed consumers. We would just go in, get what we needed and leave. “Man plans, God laughs,” as the saying goes.
We walked in the doors and immediately heard an announcement from the PA system: “For the next fifteen minutes, we are having a sale on Walgreen’s-brand batteries, wrapping paper, bows, and tape.” Those words set off a greed bomb of cataclysmic proportions. Suddenly, everyone in the store was consumed with the desire to buy those four items. Most of them didn’t even know they needed them. I sure as hell didn’t need any of them–at least not right then–but that didn’t matter. My brother, who despises crowds and mayhem, prepared to bolt from the store. I, however, had other plans for him.
All of a sudden I needed store-brand batteries more than I needed oxygen. I directed him to the battery aisle with instructions to get as many as he could carry. I darted off to the wrapping paper/bow/tape aisle, determined to fit a Sumo wrestler’s weight of merchandise into my hand basket. Some part of my brain knew I wasn’t being rational. The irrational part of my brain disagreed and propelled me into the crowded gift-wrap aisle. I could have sworn there were only a handful of people in the store when we walked in, but now there were hundreds of people all fighting over gift wrap, bows, and tape. At one point, when I came up for air, I caught a glimpse of my panicked brother over the bent backs of the fanatical gift-wrappers. When he caught my eye, he yelled, “They’re out of batteries.” As I felt the life drain out of me, I heard someone in another aisle scream, “There are more batteries over here.” I knew he had heard the cry as well, but was going to fake deafness. One look at my face, however, and he trotted off to find the secret cache. He knew he wouldn’t get a ride to the train station if he failed to find those batteries.
Looking back on this episode, we realized that the 15-minute sale (which kept being prolonged as demand for utter unnecessities grew) was brilliant. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t buy store-brand batteries if they were free. Yet, when they were on sale, I was ready to kill for them. And, while I use tape, I rarely use gift wrap or bows. I prefer the ease of gift bags or online delivery. Marketing techniques have moved past sexy women stroking liquor bottles to targeting our most base instinct–the desire to beat out everyone else for anything, even if we don’t need it. That instinct probably goes back to our cave-man days. After all, it probably took a lot of paper, bows, and tape to wrap up a holiday dinosaur. I’m still wondering what they used all those batteries for, though.
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