Etaoin Shrdlu

No, these were different from the Warm Delights thingies. It was a regular cake-mix style cake with a packet of frosting to put on top. I also remember the Betty Crocker Snackin' Cakes ones that didn't come with frosting - those were good too.

In the 80s there used to be these microwave cake mixes by Betty Crocker (? maybe). They came with a plastic pan and you mixed the cake mix with water and bunged it in the microwave. Six minutes later when it was done you took it out, let it cool, then squeezed the packet of frosting over the top. I would SO SO SO buy those now if they still had them! The cakes were moist and tasty, and you could save the plastic pan to use later. Win/win.

I got a new Crock-Pot brand slow cooker a couple of years ago that I've only used a few times. The first time I used it I put pulled pork in it, set it to low, then went to work. When I came home, the pork was incinerated into a black football at the bottom of the crock. Now I only use it when I will be home to supervise, and not for anything that needs to be actually slow-cooked. I had to go back to my old Proctor Silex for that. Upon reading Amazon reviews, it seems to be something that others are complaining about as well. Why would you want a slow cooker that you have to supervise??

My Genius Nicer Dicer. It has large, medium, and small blades and makes it super easy to chop vegetables into uniform little cubes. Mr. Shrdlu doesn’t like chunks of onion, so if I use the small dicing blade the onions kind of disappear into whatever I’m making and he doesn’t even know they’re in there. I even have a teeny tiny version of the Nicer Dicer for garlic cloves. Also: Reynolds Non-Stick Foil. I hoard this stuff because I am afraid they’ll discontinue it. Everything you cook on it just slides right off. Fantastic for cookies, making oven roasted chicken (the skin stays attached to the chicken, not the pan), biscuits, lining brownie pans, etc.

So are ya Chinese or Japanese?

Yeah, me too. At first I actually wondered if he was wearing a false nose.

Some drug (I think it's a "moderate to severe" arthritis med) has the potential side effect of tuberculosis. How can a pill GIVE you tuberculosis?

Yesterday (rerun? don't know) Ree made a Caesar salad dressing with raw egg, and pot de creme with raw egg for a special dinner for her dad. Yikes. I have gotten sick from raw egg a couple of times before and it is so, so bad. Are those pasteurized eggs any good? Can you use them instead? The ones in the shell, or are the ones in the little milk carton OK?

Oh lord. I recently saw the "Walter is an alcoholic" episode. Talk about second-hand embarrassment! The "drunk" scenes were so over-the-top, especially when drunk Maude ruins her grandson's birthday cake, and at the end when Walter slaps Maude. We were supposed to be shocked and appalled, and I was, but not for the reasons they were trying for. It was just so cringeworthy!

I made the Crash Hot Potatoes once. Once. They are the ones where you boil Yukon Golds, then put them on a cookie sheet drizzled with olive oil, then smash each potato with a fork, and bake them until they're brown and crispy. They got brown, but they never got crispy. We ate them, but they were pretty much just squished potatoes.

We actually named our dog Bailey after watching a WKRP episode. (It helped that our other dog's name is Guinness.) I also am often heard saying "Well... hell."

Ferryman! Ferryman! The mortician man who loves you...... a lot!

I want a hat! N-E-S-T-L-E-S Nestles makes the very best.... chooooclaaaate. You should know I've killed a lot of old people in my time. And I'm not above doing it again!

The episode of Family Ties where the whole show was Michael J. Fox doing a monologue about his dead best friend (who we never saw nor heard about before or after this episode). It might have worked better if we actually knew who this guy was, but as it was it seemed like the "Michael J. Fox is trying to win an Emmy" episode. I remember it was shot like a one-man stage play. It was weird.

Neither Mr. Shrdlu nor I can mention to the other that something is a little runny without launching into the whole "I don't care HOW fucking runny it is! Hand it over with all speed!" "Oh... the cat's eaten it." "Has he?" "She sir." (Cheese shop). And god forbid we hear someone playing a bouzouki. (Shut that bloody bouzouki up!) I also order "bleedin' Watney's Red Barrel" at our local "English-style" pub, in honor of that Travel Agent sketch with Eric Idle's epic monologue:

There's an ad with Bill Walton and Mary Lou Retton for (I think...) foot orthotics. I can't remember because I am blinded by their teeth. Bill Walton's especially. They have Ross Gellar teeth! I can understand not wanting yellow or brown teeth on TV, but when did blinding uber white teeth become desirable?

All those PediaSure kids who don't "wike" whatever's for dinner so their helicopter moms think the kids are going to die of malnutrition and give them PediaSure shakes instead. Guess what mom? Those kids are never going to wike anything as long as they know they can get chocolate milkshakes instead just by refusing to eat. They seem to have gotten rid of the "I don't wike broccoli, I don't wike chicken, I don't wike waffles" kid in the grocery cart, but now they have the little boy who pushes his plate back to his mom with a shit-eating grin on his face. (Also: why is the mom in that commercial just sitting at the table staring at her kid while he has lunch? Weirdo.)