christine-murphy dot net

If you’ve ever watched soap operas, you know that they often “age” younger characters for storyline purposes.  It’s known as “soap opera rapid aging syndrome”, or “SORAS” for short.  It’s also fairly common for characters from one soap to cross over to another, most notably in the case of “The Young & the Restless” and its sister soap, “The Bold & the Beautiful”.

Years ago on B&B, a character named Amber gave birth to a stillborn baby.  Amber had a cousin named Becky who had just given birth, as well, but Becky was planning to give the child up for adoption.  Amber decided to take Becky’s baby and pass it off to her husband, Rick, as theirs.  She was afraid that her marriage would fall apart without the baby.  That baby was named Eric Forrester, Jr.

A few years later, a guy named Deacon came to town.  He was little Eric’s biological father, and was bad news.  He wanted his son, who he called “Little D” back, and he resented the Forresters for keeping him from his son.  To get revenge on the family, he married naive young Bridget, Rick’s younger sister.  They eloped to Las Vegas.  Unknown to Bridget, he called her father from their hotel room, and left the phone off the hook, as her horrified father heard him taking his daughter’s virginity.

Not long after that, Deacon began an affair with Bridget’s mother, Brooke.  Brooke became pregnant, and although she tried to protect her daughter by lying about the baby’s paternity (even going so far as marrying some guy named Whip), the truth eventually came out.  Bridget divorced her cheating husband, ands was angry with her mother for a long time.  They reconciled when the baby, a girl called Hope, was born.

Deacon got custody of Little D, Amber & Rick divorced, and Amber left town.  Deacon married a woman named Macy, who later died.  Deacon had become an alcoholic and went to rehab, and Little D went to live with Becky’s parents.  Becky herself had long since died of cancer.

Years later, Amber re-surfaced, but this time on Y&R.  Deacon returned not too long after that.  He’d always had the hots for Amber, and blackmailed her into sleeping with him, even though she was in love with Daniel.  Daniel, an artist, had gotten embroiled in a rather convoluted art forgery storyline that involved a murder, and Daniel was being framed for said murder.  Deacon could keep Daniel from doing serious time for murder, but only if Amber married him.  The wedding never took place, and Daniel was able to prove his innocence.  He and Amber got married in a small ceremony at their apartment, under the Seagull lighting, with family and close friends in attendance.

It came out that Little D was living with Amber’s mother, Tawny.  Right now, Deacon isn’t in the picture…not sure if he left town, or went to jail for his participation in the art thing.  Amber, who still considered herself to be Little D’s mother, wants the boy to come and live with her and Daniel.  Daniel, however, does not agree, he doesn’t want kids now, and he says he’s not sure if he ever will.  This, of course, is causing problems in their marriage.

Meanwhile, over at B&B, Hope was SORASed to a teenager.  She’s dating a guy named Oliver, and is also the spokesmodel for a line in her family’s fashion design house, called “Hope for the Future”.

Here’s where the stupid comes in.  Today, on the preview for tomorrow’s episode of Y&R, they briefly showed Little D.  I only got a glimpse, but the kid playing Little D looked to be maybe 10-11 years old!  B&B comes on right after Y&R, and on today’s episode, Hope was making out with Oliver.  What is wrong with this picture?

Little D is supposed to be OLDER than Hope.  Do these writers think we are stupid?  Do they not realize that many people watch both shows, and are aware of the fact that Little D and Hope share the same father, and that the boy was born first?  If they are going to have both characters on the canvas at the same time, on two shows that are on one right after the other, at least be consistent with the SORASing!  They have Hope as age 16-17, so that would make Little D in his early 20′s.

Something else that I think is dumb – normally, when they SORAS a character, the character has been off the canvas for a while, before they bring on the older actor.  But on Y&R, the character of Abby, who was supposed to 14, is being aged to her early 20′s.  So, one day, she’s flirting with some older guy and sneaking booze from the family liquor cabinet, and the next, she’s legally old enough to have sex with said guy (which I heard was part of the reason for the SORASing), as well as drink in a bar.  WTF?

Sigh.  What can you do?  They’re just TV shows, anyway!

I’m not gonna lie…I was less than impressed with my latest order from the Cook’s Illustrated people.  This one was for a book/DVD combo for the second season of their Cook’s Country TV series.  It was only twenty bucks plus shipping, but it included the companion cookbook for the second season, plus the DVD set of the entire second season.

I knew that the book was a softcover one, which explained the lower price.  After all, I paid just $29.95 to get the first season of Cook’s Country along with the HARDCOVER companion book.

As usual, they took forever to ship.  You can’t really choose your shipping options on their site, it is always “pony express”.  So don’t expect to see anything for 2-3 weeks after you order it.  This sucks, but in order to get the book-with-free-DVD-set deals, you have to order via their site.  And then look for them to decline your credit card and ask you to mail a check instead.  Very screwed up!  But just ignore that, place the order again, and eventually you will get your stuph.

Anyhoo, after waiting about three weeks, I got my package today.  I opened it, and wondered where the cookbook was.  I thought that the magazine that was enclosed was a sample copy of Cook’s Country, trying to get me to subscribe.  But no, that WAS the cookbook!  It had an overlay cover, as all their magazines do, with a million ads for their other books and stuph.  Sheesh, I love these people, but the aggressive marketing really has to go!

Still, I can’t complain too much.  $19.95 for a DVD set and a magazine-like book is not bad at all.  But still…I would have been more than willing to pay ten bucks more if it were a real book, as they have offered for America’s Test Kitchen, and the first season of Cook’s Country.  At least they weren’t trying to sell me something to relieve joint pain, which didn’t work. But still…

Yes!  And it is happening in Baltimore right now!  Story here.

Basically, the city has set up a program in two neighborhoods that are low-income and lacking decent supermarkets.  Residents can visit the local library branch, order groceries online, pay (they take cash, credit/debit cards, and food stamps), and then return the next day to pick up their groceries.  The purpose of this is to make healthy foods more easily available.  Many low-income areas don’t have good supermarkets, but have plenty of fast food and convenience store outlets that are easy to get to (many of these people can’t afford cars).  So they are eating too much junk, which leads to many health problems.  People are getting heavier, and need to check out the 7 day fat burner extreme stuff. Poor eating habits not only lead to obesity, but to diabetes, heart disease, etc.

I think this is an awesome idea.  Right now, I live in an area that has easy-to-get-to supermarkets out the wazoo.  When we were broke and had no car, we could always just take the bus to the local Stop & Shop.  But I have lived in areas that lacked decent supermarkets, and it was always a production to get to a real store, and not have to buy my food from places like The Skeevy Corner Store.

Since this takes place at the library, I hope it will lead to getting more people to learn how to cook.  Buying fresh ingredients and cooking at home are not only healthier, but will save money.  Libraries have cookbooks that patrons can borrow, to get recipes and ideas for meal planning.  And since a lot of low-income people cannot afford to buy computers and internet access, they can also use the library’s computers to visit the many cooking blogs and websites to get recipes…all for free!

And maybe…just maybe…being in a library might encourage people to read more in general, and read to their kids, for those who have them.  I mean, borrowing books is free there!  Buying books is expensive.  And there probably are many people who never thought to go to the library.  But if they go there to do the grocery thing, they can also see all of the other services the library has to offer.  For free.

Eating healthier helps save money for everyone, even if they don’t use this program.  Better health means that the government won’t have to pay out so much for Medicaid/Medicare patients, many of who would use the program.  And some of that money could go to keeping the libraries open for everyone to enjoy…in a time when too many libraries are being forced to shut down.

Sounds like a win-win for everybody!

It’s been a while since I updated this blog, hasn’t it?  No, I haven’t been out on a utilities job search or anything like that…I was having trouble with my old computer and recently got a new one, then I was busy getting our home wireless network set up.  And now that baseball season has started…well, you know!

Anyhoo, I want to talk about a fabulous new cookbook that I recently bought.  It’s Daisy:  Morning, Noon and Night by Daisy Martinez.  You may know Daisy from her cooking shows…Daisy Cooks!, which can still be seen on the PBS Create channel, and now, ¡Viva Daisy! (site has auto-play video) on the Food Network.  She is the author of Daisy Cooks:  Latin Flavors That Will Rock Your World, the companion cookbook to the PBS series.

As the title indicates, the book is organized into sections for morning, noon, and night recipes.  So whether you are preparing breakfast, brunch, lunch, or dinner, appropriate recipes are easy to find.  There is also a section with suggested menus for entertaining, each containing timelines to assist you in preparing in advance.  Also of note is a “Basics” chapter, with recipes and notes about items that are commonly used in Daisy’s cooking, and a glossary of ingredients, some of which may be unfamiliar to some people.  In some cases, Daisy gives info on websites where harder-to-find ingredients can be purchased.

The book itself is beautifully done, pretty and glossy, with lots of full-color photographs.  Interspersed among the recipes are entertaining stories about Daisy’s family and travels.

So far, I have made two recipes from this book…the Tuna “Chilindron” with Penne, and the Cuzco Roast Pork Loin with Onion & Pepper Stir-Fry.  Both were excellent, and dishes that I would want to make again.  And there are so many other recipes that I want to try, including the Chicken Enchiladas (recipe) that Daisy made on the Rachael Ray show today.  That’s the next recipe I want to make, it looked so tasty on TV!

The recipes range from quick-to-prepare weeknight meals, to dishes that are designed for entertaining or weekends.  They are all easy to prepare, because Daisy does an excellent job in explaining everything you need to know.  The emphasis is on what Daisy does best…bold, Latin flavors that the whole family will enjoy.  It’s not all hot and spicy, but it’s all full of flavor.

I recommend this book to anyone, from beginning cooks to experts.  Once you see how easy and inexpensive it is to prepare such good food in your own home, you may never go through the fast-food drive-through again!