Have you ever sent a post out into the blogosphere, absolutely convinced it was going to be Freshly Pressed? And then it wasn’t?

You’re not alone.

I’ve asked some fantastic bloggers to select the post that had them muttering,”THIS One Should Have Been Freshly Pressed.” A new blogger is featured each week to receive the coveted Freshly Pegged distinction. Participants will be awarded a genuine, simulated “Freshly Pegged” JPEG badge, suitable for posting in a place of honor on their blogs. Or not.

**UPDATE** I feel the need to clarify that Freshly Pegged and Freshly Pressed are not mutually exclusive awards for a blogger. As a matter of fact, most people featured here HAVE been Freshly Pressed at one time or another. If they haven’t been, they will be; they’re just that talented. This award is about a specific post that hasn’t received the attention it so richly deserves. My mission is to right that wrong. I’m fighting injustice like…like… a superhero. Like Robin Hood. Yeah.

Be sure to read all the great Freshly Pegged offerings to date. But before you do, let’s check out…
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The Jackie Blog.   With the exception of Lisa at the Big Sheep Blog, I’ve known Jackie longer than any other blogging buddy.  She jumped in here at WordPress on 1/1/11 when she took on the 365, Post-a-Day challenge.  Crazy I know, but that was Jackie – a crazy, fresh-faced kid.  You’d think somebody facing that kind of quota would resort to posting any old thing, but not her.  She rose to the challenge with such features as Lollipop Tuesdays, where she double-dog-dared herself to try new things.  She’s still challenging herself, and that’s one reason she’s on WordPress’ list of Recommended Humor Blogs.

When I popped over to Jackie’s to talk about this Freshly Pegged nonsense, I found she was up to her eyeballs in the comment ballyhoo that surrounds Freshly Pressed for her latest offering, My Struggle With Dance.    I guess that’s a nice honor, too.

Actually, we have a bit of a rivalry going on for number of times Freshly Pressed.  I have a sinking feeling she may have passed me up with this latest (now that the WordPress gods have abandoned me), but it would be too depressing to know for sure so I’ve adopted a don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy with her.

Check out all the fun at Jackie’s Blog, as soon as you read…

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How I Almost Engulfed My Father in Merciless Hellflames

Last night marked the single, most epic baking disaster of my life.

It is a rare and sad occasion when I set out to produce a batch of wholesome chocolate chip cookies and instead almost produce a body count. I was a victim of my environment, really.

Having received an early morning phone call that my sister-in-law was having contractions, my family packed up and drove to my brother’s house for the weekend to wait on the arrival of a soon-to-be-bundle of girly joy and sunshine sparkles. But the labor was long and slow so instead of waiting it out at the hospital, my parents and I slept over at my brother’s house and anxiously awaited the real action.

Long and late into the evening, my sister-in-law had not yet been officially admitted and my old folks (being old folks, after all), passed out. My mother made it a conscious choice and retired in the upstairs bedroom. My father, however, fought the urge and failed, passing out on the couch to a rerun of “Cow and Chicken”.

Being designated the main line of communication for my brother’s updates and having a sudden urge to prove a wonderful aunt, I went about baking up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Entirely out of my element, I gathered all the necessary accoutrements and began relishing in my domestic prowess. Halfway through, I realized I forgot to make sure my brother had baking soda and resorted instead to baking powder, which Google assured me was just as good as its soda-y counterpart so long as I tripled the measurement.

Lies.

As I repeated batch after batch of terribly flat, terribly depressing excuses for cookies, I started to lose hope. The only solace I found was in my sister-in-law’s well-equipped kitchen, bursting with Pampered Chef delights. I remembered earlier in the day my mother had found a square, rubber nondescript and wasn’t sure where to put it when we were cleaning. Assuming it was a pot holder of some sort, I placed it in the appropriate drawer and went about the rest of my business. And since said rubber nondescript was in the pot holder drawer, my brain later reminded me of it and I used it to house the baking pan as the cookies cooled between batches.

When I was on my fourth batch of tears and resentment, I made my way over to the oven to pull out the disappointing fruits of my labor. Before opening the oven, I shot a glance over to the counter to make sure the rubber-nondescript-assumed-potholder was still there, ready for cookie landing.

It was not.

Knowing there could be no other answer, I jumped to the oven to confirm my fears: the rubber had stuck to the bottom of the baking pan and it was now a melty, smoky mess in the heart of the oven. With the rubber dripping everywhere, my mother sound asleep upstairs, smoke filling the house quickly, and my father passed out on the couch, I had some quick decisions to make. Unsure of the best solution, I instantly went to wake my father for his assistance.

But it occurred to me that I wasn’t sure how to wake him in the middle of a smoke-filled room without instilling a sense of panic.

I stood over him, playing with the phrasing, wrapping my head around the syntax, and measuring which part of the explanation should come first. What does one say when bringing another out of deep sleep for assistance in a fire? Figuring there was no good way to do it, I resolved to let him sleep (and perhaps die a firey death) while I went solo.

I yoinked the rack out of the oven and put it in the sink, where the maroon rubber nondescript melted into the basin, serving a grueling death for being mistaken for a worthy potholder only hours before. With the entire living room smelling like burnt rubber and smoke billowing from the oven, I ran around the house with real potholders in my hand, fanning the smoke away from my father’s head and the smoke alarm simultaneously.

I was a penguin, flapping silently and violently in an attempt to not disturb him.

After five minutes of pure freaking out, I was a sweating, heart-racing mess and thankful to the good Lord in Heaven for sparing me the lifelong burden of murdering my family. I cleaned the oven, tossed the cursed cookies into the trash, and put my feet up to bask in my narrow victory.

Interrupted by his overwhelming urge to take a leak, my father stirred on the couch and rose slowly. I calmly confirmed that my sister-in-law had officially been admitted to the hospital and he smiled. Thinking this was as good a time as ever to drop the bomb of his almost-death, I casually mentioned that I almost burned the house down because I didn’t know what to say if I tried to wake him in the middle of a smoke-filled room.

He sleepily replied: “You say ‘Dad, don’t worry – we’re okay – but the house is burning down and I need your help’” – and chuckled on his way to the bathroom.

Surprisingly lighthearted reply from a man who narrowly avoided engulfment in cookie and rubber hellfire. ♣

Have you ever sent a post out into the blogosphere, absolutely convinced it was going to be Freshly Pressed? And then it wasn’t?

You’re not alone.

I’ve asked some fantastic bloggers to select the post that had them muttering,”THIS One Should Have Been Freshly Pressed.” A new blogger is featured each week to receive the coveted Freshly Pegged distinction. Participants will be awarded a genuine, simulated “Freshly Pegged” JPEG badge, suitable for posting in a place of honor on their blogs. Or not.

**UPDATE** I feel the need to clarify that Freshly Pegged and Freshly Pressed are not mutually exclusive awards for a blogger.  As a matter of fact, most people featured here HAVE been Freshly Pressed at one time or another.  If they haven’t been, they will be; they’re just that talented.  This award is about a specific post that hasn’t received the attention it so richly deserves.  My mission is to right that wrong.  I’m fighting injustice like…like… a superhero. Like Robin Hood.  Yeah.

Be sure to read all the great Freshly Pegged offerings to date. But before you do, let’s check out…
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Jean at Snoring Dog Studio.

Jean blogs about her Boston Terriers.  About getting used to life now that her mom has moved in with her.  About the environment, politics, work and life in general. And about aliens hanging out in volcanic bars.  (I know – who doesn’t blog about that?)  Sometimes she’s funny, sometimes she’s serious; always she’s worth the visit.

Because I like Jean so much, it really makes it tough to hate her.  But I do.  That’s because not only does she draw vivid pictures with words, she paints.  Yup.  She’s one of those people who can do it all.  She is an uber-talented, professional artist and her watercolors are to die for.   I’m insanely jealous.

Jean’s probably the only person living who could get me interested in tofu.  Read on, and soon you’ll be asking…

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Where’s The Tofu?  Hiding the Healthy Stuff Will Make Us Fat (Fatter)

Finding tofu in some grocery stores can be more difficult than learning to speak fluent Mandarin in a day.

I shopped for groceries somewhere other than my usual grocery store on Sunday because it was convenient to Home Depot. Choosing that venue helped me combine chores and keep the driving to a minimum.

My short list in hand, I figured I could be out of there in at least a half hour. And that would have held to be true had I not had to conduct a massive sweep of the entire store, including the hardware section, to find tofu. It wasn’t in the likely, or reasonable places.

Thinking semi-logically, I looked in the meat section. Tofu is a meat substitute for many of us trying to cut back or forgo entirely. But could I find tofu in the meat section? No. Almost sixteen square feet of space is given up to bacon, the candy of meats, but not a single shelf devoted to a meager 5 inch by 4 inch by 3 inch chunk of tofu.

Okay, so it’s a vegetable. Well, I checked the vegetable section and it wasn’t there, either. Mangos, ugli fruit, even leeks get real estate, but not tofu. I think the store could have at least provided a shelf for it next to the eggplant. Heck, no one likes eggplant but there it is, sitting in a nice, large, climate controlled, frequently sprinkled section all of its own.

My shopping was done. I wasn’t going to search a minute longer for the stuff. I wasn’t even going to talk about it until a staff person asked me if I found everything I’d looked for. SHE opened the door, mind you. Two other staff persons got involved. Both of them mentioned places where the tofu USED to be. One of them walked me over to the place where the won ton wrappers proudly sat, claiming legitimacy. I had already looked there.

And then the staff person in-the-know said, “It’s in the NUTRITION section.” Yes. I heard her correctly. She might as well have said, “IT’S IN BEIJING.”

The NUTRITION section. The place where food goes to die, the grocery museum. I’ve never had to swallow my pride and walk over to the Nutrition section to fetch my tofu and I wasn’t about to start now. Geez Louise! The nation is in the throes of an obesity epidemic, so grocers make it difficult to find nutritious, low calorie foods? Go ahead and put Brussels sprouts next to the feminine hygiene products, if you’re so fired up to turn us all into blubber bottoms. See if mommy’s little Reginald will be more inclined to eat the sprouts now.

I ranted about it to the staff person who was willing to escort me to the NUTRITION section. (You need an escort. Rarely do shoppers get out of that section alive, and if they do, they are changed forever. They become pasty shadows of their former selves and they whimper a lot.) I then ranted about it to the cashier who asked me if I had found everything I was looking for. She wasn’t the least bit moved. Yes, yes, perhaps it’s time to write an “I am appalled” letter to the manager of the grocery store. Later—I’m writing a blog post now.

Why would anyone need an escort to retrieve this cute thing?

Grocery stores are culpable in the plague of obesity facing our nation. Yes, yes, we CHOOSE to eat unhealthy foods. But enough of that. Ever since we crawled out of the caves and stopped wrestling our prey to the ground, we’ve naturally adapted to convenience. We’ve all gone the way of the path of least resistance—those of us who live with electricity and are surrounded by pavement.

So, we, average consumer, trying to do the right thing, walk into a grocery store, full of good intent, and there, before we even get to the spaghetti squash and whole grain bread, a display full of sodium-laden chips greets us with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader on the winning team. But we shoppers are the losers in that game. Displays of junk food we can find, we practically trip over them. Tofu—not so much.

The other day, my brother-in-law (we’ll call him, “Bud” because that’s his name), read a story from Consumer Reports to me. The photo showed a label from a Select Choice soup can, bellowing out “NEW! NEW and IMPROVED!” Turns out, the manufacturer had added back more sodium because during taste tests the OLD! OLD and ORIGINAL! version rated poorly. They added back sodium! One of the four things, besides trans fats, cigarettes, and television scientists know is very, very bad for us. Yet, as Bud said, there on the dining table sits a salt and pepper shaker, which he could use if he chose to. But we weren’t even allowed a choice, or, rather, the choice was taken from us. We’re perfectly capable of demanding and getting our right to free speech, but we’re prevented from having the choice to salt or not salt our foods. It’s all just nutty.

The availability and abundance of lousy food in a grocery store makes it almost impossible for parents to not indulge junior’s whims. I couldn’t find tofu in even one place in the store, yet candy claims at least 4 different residences if you don’t count the cousins hanging out at the check out counters. Moderation, you say? You’re tired, you’re stressed and you just want to get the shopping over. Someone throws you a lifeline made of ice cream bars, another person throws one made of oatmeal. Which one would you choose?

No, the tofu isn’t on these shelves.

I couldn’t find dried beans at this grocery store, either. Well, I fib. I found two – TWO – bags of beans looking as though they’d been pulled from the sarcophagus of King Tut. And they were in the “Hispanic” section. Dried beans might have been elsewhere in this store, but I guarantee you, if they were, the bags were huddled together on the lowest shelf where no one looks or were blocked by feet and small children’s bodies. And the children were likely busy grabbing boxes of Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese.

I guarantee you, no grocery store would go out of business if the shelves were arranged differently so that healthy foods were conveniently placed and the less-than-healthy ones were made a bit difficult to get to. For example, put a rope climb next to the ice cream case, turn the pastry section into a maze, and put all the to-be-fried foods at the end of a hurdle course.

Well, all right, maybe not. But arranged differently, more attractively, and made more accessible, healthier foods might just be a person’s first choice, or at least a larger part of their choices. Don’t make us hunt for healthy food.

Give Mrs. Obama props!

I won’t be shopping at that grocery store ever again. Thank goodness I’ve got a freezer backup of tofu.

More Food Thoughts

Foods Compared to Their Sugar Cube Content

Have you ever sent a post out into the blogosphere, absolutely convinced it was going to be Freshly Pressed? And then it wasn’t?

You’re not alone.

I’ve asked some fantastic bloggers to select the post that had them muttering,”THIS One Should Have Been Freshly Pressed.” A new blogger is featured each week to receive the coveted Freshly Pegged distinction. Participants will be awarded a genuine, simulated “Freshly Pegged” JPEG badge, suitable for posting in a place of honor on their blogs. Or not.

Be sure to read all the great Freshly Pegged offerings to date. But before you do, let’s check out…

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Laura at Unlikely Explanations.   When you visit Laura’s blog, the first thing you notice is the best header in the history of headers.   Her picture of ballerinas in Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup tutus takes the artistry of Degas to a whole, other level.  This was one of the greatest things to come out of last year’s attempt to take over WordPress, in a bloodless, peanut-butter-cup-based coup.

Laura has a quirky sense of humor so you never know what you’ll find at her place.  Contrary to popular opinion, she is NOT a cat, although she’ll sometimes toss in a gratuitous feline picture to mix things up. (Why do I have so many friends who are confused with animals?)  Her recent post on rejected NASA haikus made me spew coffee all over my monitor.

Laura left WordPress for a while and went to another site.  I don’t blame her.  It’s only natural that, when a blogger reaches a certain age, she searches for answers to fundamental questions like, “is this the one, true site?”  Although it was understandable, the tenets of WordPress meant that she was shunned by the community.  Her posts no longer showed up in the Reader and we were prohibited from even talking about her, except in hushed whispers when there were no WordPress elders around.

I’m delighted to report that she saw the light and returned to the WordPress fold this spring after her reality show, Breaking WordPress, was cancelled.  She was lost and then was found! Halleluia!  We killed the fatted blog post and everybody got drunk in celebration.

Check out Unlikely Explanations after you read…

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The Five Stages of Realizing You’ve Written a Poorly-Worded Blog Comment

Sometimes I read other people’s blogs. Sometimes I leave comments on
other people’s blogs. And sometimes that process goes terribly, terribly
wrong.

Self portrait (assuming that, in a previous life, I was Edvard
Munch and imagined this is what I’d look like today).

I don’t want to alarm anyone, but every time you write a comment, you
run the risk that someone will misinterpret it. While everyone is
different, most of us go through the same five stages when faced with
this kind of emotional trauma.

Stage 1: Denial

You notice that a blogger has replied to a comment you left on his blog
– but instead of engaging in friendly banter as you’d expected, he
seems to have interpreted your comment as a personal attack. Your
immediate reaction is to assume there was some glitch and that his angry
response was intended for someone else, but then you notice specific
details that could only have been directed at you. You decide he must be
hypersensitive. Or crazy. No sane person could possibly have thought you
meant that.

Stage 2: Apology

At the end of the denial stage, you read your comment once again and are
shocked to realize that it really could be interpreted to mean
that. Easily. By a sane person. You’re hit with an intense wave
of embarrassment, which you try to alleviate by shooting off a
combination apology and explanation of what you really meant. This
will fix everything, you tell yourself. He’ll read the
explanation, understand what I really meant, and we’ll both laugh about
it. You just need to check back later for the friendly response
you’re sure is forthcoming.

Stage 3: Stalking

You check back later. No response, but maybe he hasn’t seen it yet. You
reread your apology. You’re not sure it’s clear — after all, you wrote
it kind of hastily. You write another comment expanding on the
explanation. Then you wait a reasonable amount of time (say, 90 seconds
or so) and check back again.

Still no response. You look at your apology and your apology
clarification, and even though you meant them sincerely, you realize
they could look like the comments of someone who was initially wrong but
is now backpedaling. So you post another comment explaining that that’s
not what you’re doing. That just makes it worse, because denying it
makes you look even more guilty. You post a comment explaining that.

You decide all these comments are starting to make you look like a
stalker. You post a comment explaining that you’re not stalking him and
that you’ve never stalked anyone. Unfortunately, you can’t resist ending
that one with “but there’s a first time for everything”. You post
another comment explaining that the last bit was a joke.

You begin to regret leaving all these comments. You send the blogger a
tweet apologizing for the first one and asking him to ignore all the others.

You send another tweet explaining that you meant he should ignore all
your other comments, not anyone else’s.

You send another tweet explaining that you meant he should ignore all
your other comments on this post, not the two previous posts of
his you’ve commented on, and that you remain steadfast in your opinion
that his children and pets are adorable in their matching purple
sweaters and that his brownie recipe looks delicious but could probably
be improved by adding a cup or two of chocolate chips along with the
nuts. Technically, you have to break this into three tweets because of
Twitter’s character limit.

You send another tweet explaining you’re not a stalker, because you just
realized that if he follows your instructions and doesn’t read all the
comments you left on his blog, he’ll miss that very important bit of
information.

You send him a friend request on Facebook.

You add him to your “People I Am Definitely Not Stalking” circle on Google+.

You realize there’s probably nothing more you can say to him at this
point, so you start asking friends to act as character references. No
one seems particularly enthusiastic about the idea. You can’t imagine why.

Stage 4: Depression

All your tweets and friend requests and comments go unanswered. The
blogger clearly doesn’t believe you. You feel like you’ve lost all
credibility. You start to wonder how many other people you’ve offended
without realizing it — after all, lots of people just ignore comments
they think are offensive, so how would you know? You withdraw from the
Internet and resort to speaking to people in person. You realize you’ve
hit rock bottom when you find yourself buying the print version of a
newspaper.

Stage 5: Acceptance

You begin to put the situation into perspective and return to the
Internet. You’re filled with something that you try to convince yourself
is a sense of inner peace, but it’s really just numbness. And then a
thought comes to you, bringing with it a shining ray of hope: hey,
this might be a good topic for a blog post.