STOLEN BY BITACLE Root Shoot Marry #9 Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!

STOLEN BY BITACLE

Some great suggestions from My Float, Nutmeg and Meggie about Where Are They Now theme (although, Nutmeg, I may need a little help striking the proper 'tone' for a groupie approach to taking on all the members of Duran Duran - let's work on it) and trust me, they will emerge in games of the future.

Today, thanks to the Gorgeous Boy contracting some vile vomit/fever/rash virus and spending the night with me last night, we're going for the sort of simple version of Where Are They Now that even a Mother of Very Little Brain and Even Less Sleep can manage.

So simple, in fact, that I cannot understand why it hasn't occurred to me before.

Without further ado, I give to you:
...the story, of a lovely lady, who was bringing up three very lovely girls,
All of them had hair of gold, like their mother, the youngest one in curls.
And the story, of a man named Brady, who was busy with three boys of his own,
They were four men, living all together, yet they were all alone.



Three boys, three girls - how could I possibly have missed Rootin' Shootin' and Marryin' the BRADY BUNCH!

Gosh, aren't they cute?

But it would be just pedophile-icky to go trawling through these precious faces for your cliff, shag, marry choices - wouldn't it?




So let's look a little further down the time line.


Here we have Greg, aka, Barry Williams. Occasional movie producer and generally, as one of his websites calls him, just a Nice Guy. The mo, though, has to go.

Then we have Marcia (Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!) or Maureen McCormick. In adulthood she focused on her music and her one daughter, Natalie. Let's face it, she still has the best hair.

Oh Peter. Oh how I loved thee through the tv screen. Greg might have finally won the keys to the car, but you Peter, you always had the key to my heart. Mmmm. There were much nicer adult photos of Peter aka Christopher Knight, but they all featured his beautiful wife and I'm buggered if I'm going to let THAT BITCH on my blog. (It's not too late Peter, I still have a potential future vacancy for third husband!)

Then Jan. Oh Dear. Middle age has not been kind to the Middle Child, Eve Plumb. She is pictured here in a local newspaper article promoting a local gallery featuring her, well, very local looking art. How right she was to cry:Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! She still can't compete.

Pause a moment here and look back up at the top picture at little Bobby and Cindy Brady. Couldn't you just eat 'em up? Her curls! His freckles! Her lisp! His bold delight in frogs!

Who'd have pictured them like this? Bobby (Michael Lookinland) arrested for drink-driving and bad hair, and Cindy (Susan Olsen) still trading on her child-star role in her new work as the spokeswoman for Migraine America - now isn't THAT the glamour charity?

My hot, rashy, spewy boy just came back from his second trip to the doc so I have to go. Click on these pics to make them bigger if you need close-ups to make your decisions.

Go forth: fornicate, eliminate, marry-nate.

mtc
Bec 

STOLEN BY BITACLE Black and White Rules

BITACLE STOLE THIS BLOG - NEXT IT MIGHT STEAL YOUR BABY

The House of the Ladies Lounge has some very strict rules about animal behaviour.

The rules are simple but tough. You might even say, black and white.



















For example, one rule is that it's okay to hang out under a table - as long as there's no food around.

But never ON a table.

Oh, no, no, no.
















But some of us think rules suck.

Some of us say, "Listen, lady, you're not using this table right now and I AM. And I'm comfy. So lay one human finger on my fat black cat arse and you will never get my help in a mouse plague ever again."

He has a point.

Harry the Attack Cat. He has proven worth.

Rules, schmools.

in memory of Nutmeg's Howie and h+b's Hamlyn.

********************
Edited to add a laugh via Scribbit in Anchorage Alaska - and if you haven't visited Scribbit yet, you should - who links to this at Looney Tunes. Because, who hasn't wondered what happened to Biff from Back To The Future?

And in honour of Biff, tomorrow's Root Shoot Marry game theme will be 'where are they now' - email any suggestions and credits will be given. (And it's been a loooong week, despite the public holiday Monday, so any help by tomorrow night will be GreatlyAppreciated.)
********************


mtc

Bec

STOLEN BY BITACLE Overrated Things Meme

BITACLE HAS STOLEN THIS BLOG - NEXT IT WILL STEAL YOUR HARD DRIVE

It's been a little while, but it's time for a meme.


(because crap yes I am tired and why on EARTH are my kids taking turns to wake up at somewhere between 10 minutes to and 10 minutes past FOUR A.M. for the past WEEK - oh, and yes, that secondment to VERY Busy and Important that I referred to HERE, well it happened and they've also changed the offices around so I don't even get THE VIEW for the next three weeks which also happen to be extremely busy weeks in my REAL JOB and can you see why I would keep LEAPING into CAPS LOCK at the MoMeNt??)

Ahem. The Meme.

Doing the rounds lately has been the Overrated Things Meme (see here, and here, and here, and here for recent players). I find myself drawn to it because every time I read it I think of more things that are overrated. Some might call this attitude 'jaded' or 'cynical' but I prefer 'worldly wise'.

The number appears to be random so let's aim for a nice neat 10 - and I make no apologies for anything culturally obscure; that's what Google is for, peoples, so go learn something.

Things That Are Overrated

1. Scanpan
2. Pretty much any job on a women's magazine
3. The right to bear arms
4. Whingeback radio
5. Food processor pastry
6. Scrapbooking (how did that even become a word?)
7. Semillon
8. Chick Lit
9. Kids' team sports
10. Jessica Rowe
11. Toddler milk
12. McMansions
13. Eddie McGuire
14. Playstation Karaoke
15. Jamie Oliver
16. Any 'pesto' other than basil

Looky-there. A nice neat 16 instead. I could have kept going too. But then you'd have had to call me bitter, when I'm really just going for weary...

Dammit, edited to add #17 - breastfeeding as contraception.

'night all

mtc

Bec

STOLEN BY BITACLE Shredded Granny Pants from Cuba... via Italy (FINAL!).

STOLEN BY BITACLE - THE CRETINS

Joke posted this a while ago. I'll wait here while you go read it because nothing else will make sense until you do.


Are you back?

Excellent.

Now you know why I am showing you pictures of Shredded Cuban Granny Pants. Which, when I read Joke's post for the 17th time to check ingredients and technique, I realised was actually an Italian grandmother version of a Cuban recipe. Or something.

Whatever, after many work and ingredient related delays, I made it last night.

I used skirt steak, which Joke tells me is pricey over his way now because it is popular in Mexican recipes. Sounds like what happened here when lamb shanks became The Dinner Party dish and this basic off-cut started being charged out at around $20 a kilo (about two pounds).



Anyhoo, I paid about $10 a kilo for the skirt steak and they stripped it for me while I waited. (Which is butcher speak for removing the loooong fat from the loooong grained meat, and nothing kinky involved. Although: cute butcher. I could go a bit more of the stripping on that side of the counter. I'm just saying...)






As you see above, Joke's instructions for 'low and slow' poaching finally paid off. I put it on at midday and by about 8.00pm it had (finally) reached the stage you can see in this pic. The Cuban God of What Am I Feeding The Kids Tonight only knows how long it would have taken with thicker cuts - these steaks were about an inch thick.

The Le Creuset got too hot at the start and I had to keep the lid off for the rest of the cooking and top up the water as needed. Poaching settled at a point just below simmer - the water had some movement but no bubbles. Next time I might try a higher heat but I was worried that, at a simmer, the meat would first toughen and then start to crumble rather than shred.

And who wants crumbling Granny Pants for dinner? Eeww.




This way, it shredded like a freakin' dream. Bliss on two forks. Can I tell you how much fun it was?

Nope. You'll just have to try it for yourself.

It was getting late, the kids had eaten ham salads and gone to bed, and it's just possible that some of the shredding fun was engendered by my third large glass of red wine...





The black saucepan in the background has the tomato basil sauce, plopping away while I shredded.

I did cheat a tiny bit there and used a bottle of passata rather than tinned tomatoes. I had the tinned tomatoes but, quite frankly, the second half of Sharpe's Challenge was starting in 10 minutes and I wasn't going to let simmering tomatoes rob me of a single moment of Sean Bean in period costume.


At long last, with some hastily grated parmesan and even more hastily thrown together salad of red capsicum (bell pepper?) and baby spinach with balsamic vinegar.

Sorry. Should have paid more attention to the plating before I took the pic.

Did I mention I was gagging for some Sean Bean?





Australian readers may be alarmed to look at their clocks and calendars and realise that a) the NRL Grand Final was underway while I was prepping this dinner, and b) that it was still underway when Sharpe's Challenge started. They might wonder a) where my priorities were and b) whether I am still married to the ex-pro-footballer.

Answer a) is I could care less about the ugly league, and enjoyed the peace in the kitchen, listening to Crowded House with aforementioned buckets of red wine. Answer b) is the Prof could care less about Melbourne and Brisbane fighting it out for a Sydney-based prize and was quite happy to turn to Sharpe at the appropriate moment. Plus: he wanted to eat and pissing off his wife would not have put dinner on the table, now would it?


And at last, with the rebel Indian maharajah capably deposed by the Dishy Colonel Sharpe, and the nastly concubine meeting a nasty end (but not as nasty as the way Sean knocked off her murderer) the verdict on the Shredded Granny Pants can be seen below.

























Thanks Joke.


mtc
Bec

ps - the leftover potential is fantastic - just had some for lunch on a bread roll.

pps - this post accidentally published about three times before I was ready and I was recently told this can be vexing for people with Bloglines who may get lots of false starts before the final post is publised. As Maxwell Smart so beautifully puts it: sorry about that.