March 22, 2007, 7:32am

We have another member of the new baby club! Please put your hands together and welcome little Jordana Isabel Ross, my friend Rachel (Gould) Ross' daughter. Born yesterday morning at 7lb, 11oz, she is clearly a little stunner like her mother already. Here is a link to her first on-camera appearance: http://www.box.net/shared/static/0fbzeka7yf.mov. Guess I am the last belly standing!

Cupcakes for Zander

So these are some of the cupcakes I lovelingly rendered for Zander. They were just basic chocolate with a cream cheese frosting but I went all Martha Stewart on the decorating and monogrammed them. I think this may have been my most successful frosting decor attempt yet. I am learning - who thought it was possible? Also I can't say enough good things about using gel based food coloring instead of the watery tear-drop shaped bottles. Far easier to control how much color goes in, and if it gets on your hand, far easier to get off. The key for nice shapes in the star-tip is to add more powdered sugar than you think is reasonable.



These are the beautiful flowers that Fleurs Bella created for Kate. I just love the little basket shape and the color combinations. What with all the snow on the ground, it's nice to be able to pretend that it is in fact spring already if only while we're indoors.

And this is just a picture of John practicing being a daddy. Not yet, not yet!

Photo mystery partially solved

I received a nice comment from Kim Maffin on my flickr photo set letting me know she'd linked to one of my pregnancy/copaxone pictures (here's the entry: http://www.todmaffin.com/blogs/ms/2007/03/13/change-is-in-the-air/) so that explains some of the traffic. I think someone else linked directly to one of the other pictures but as of now I am still in the dark about how to track those links down. Considering my computer skills are becoming worse and worse by the minute these days I don't think I will ever be able to find it completely. In any event, it was very cool and exciting to see that someone was inspired by the picture, but it was even more exciting that it was Kim since I have been listening to her and her husband Tod's excellent MS Podcast for ages. Yay! Gotta love reciprocity; they've given me a lot of info on trials of different drugs so I'm glad I could return the favor.

We just finished a very nice St. Patrick's Day dinner with both sets of parents at our house replete with the good china and the good tablecloth and adult beverages. I realized that this was the last "grown-up" party I'd be having for a long time, so it was a lot of fun to do. We made the same corned beef recipe we did last year from Bon Appetite, a marmalade-whisky glaze. You can either use pre-cooked corned beef from the deli or just buy it raw from the supermarket and boil it ahead of time for three hours, which is far cheaper. My mom brought some colcannon, and my mother-in-law provided a salad and a green-coconut cake. I made the brown bread and the soda bread with extra raisins. All very excellent and good, and a nice way to celebrate the impending arrival of that large bump in my stomach. Plus I had a teeny glass of Guiness - yum! So ready for bed now, but I'm sure I'll be up at 5:00am again in which case I'll post the photos of the cupcakes I made for Zander on Friday.

Progressive tummy photos

At the risk of appearing entirely too self-absorbed, here are a few photos of me and my sister pregnant. Enjoy them while they last - due to be replaced by baby pictures out the wazoo shortly!

Peru, NY - September 2006 - 3months preggo at this point... will those pants ever fit me again?

Royal Hideaway, Playacar, Mexico - December 5, 2006 Westchester Country Club, Rye, NY - January 28, 2007Village Restaurant, NYC - February 11, 2007
M&D's house, Hartsdale, NY - March 11, 2007

Zander Jackson Stempel - 8lbs. 9oz, March 13, 2007

Isn't he just precious?

I think he looks an awful lot like Grandpa Dave....
Grandma Susan gets to hold her first grandchild in her arms....
Mom is tired but happy....

Join the Movement - Fight MS

John and I went to the lower Westchester MS chapter appreciation dinner last night where we had the pleasure of meeting some great people volunteering to fight MS. There was a terrific speaker, Jack Llewllyn, who has spent the bulk of his career coaching top atheletes to higher performance levels. He was diagnosed with "that damn disease" in 2003, and his speech was very inspirational. More of an attitude approach towards all of life instead of just living with MS, it made me feel great to know that someone else felt the same way I did about how to live with this thing.

The other terrific thing about the dinner was getting to see the fantastic, and I do mean fantastic, new PSA campaign about MS developed by Wieden & Kennedy, aka the people that brought you "Just Do It". Please click on the link here - http://www.jointhemovement.org/ - and check out all the cool stuff being developed for release this year. I really hope that 2007 is the year that the average American finally learns the difference between Muscular Dystrophy and Multiple Sclerosis. The other aspect of the campaign that I loved was the new, orange MS logo. The campaign encourages people to Cross Out MS, and there is an online drawing tool to let you do just that. Give it a shot, it's a lot of fun, and if you're especially proud of your drawing you can submit it for a permanent place on the web. If and when I have some free time to fool around with graphics this summer I'm going to try and make some photos and videos to post on YouTube and Flickr just for the hell of it.

In food related news, I went to lunch in the city with my sister and Dad today and had chocolate fondue at Max Brenner. It was very tasty, but I still think the restaurant is too crowded and too loud, and this was at 3:00pm on a Friday afternoon. Not really worth it, in my opinion.

CUPCAKES!!!!

Sometimes the little voice in your head tells you you need cupcakes. RIGHT... NOW... and those stale grocery store ones aren't going to cut it. When the voice gets too annoying to ignore, you have only one choice: make the little gems.

These are the Amy Sedaris recipe yellow cake cupcakes with a cocoa buttercream frosting that I punched up with a little expresso powder and a dash of sea salt. They are very yummy and I doubt they will last much longer, so if you'd like one, stop by soon!

Flickr Uproar

DSC02788.JPG
Originally uploaded by HeathSeal.

John took a few pictures of me resuming my injections while pregnant because I wanted to post them to the MS group on Flickr. Somehow I now have had over 70 views of one picture in particular. I'm not entirely sure what's going on - maybe someone has reposted them in their blog? - and I'm not computer savvy enough to find out who's linking to them, but hey, if the message gets out that it's ok to have MS and a life, then that's a good thing, right? Unless it's on a blog somewhere labelled, "Freaks of Nature", then it's a bad thing.

Babies extra -

Alexander Antonio Sion

I just realized I never posted pictures of two of my friend's babies. Blame it on pregnancy brain or the never-ending flood of mucus that clogs my brain, but here they are, better late than never.

Frida M. Rico

How Big am I?

I am this big now. I can't see my feet or half of my dog if he sits at my feet. I can't roll over in bed without floundering around like a whale and I can't run. I am very close to being fed up, but I guess I'm not quite there yet. Bleargh...

PS The soup didn't really work the first time and I haven't been able to try again as I am staying chez M&D while the bathroom upstairs is being renovated. Hoping to move home soon though -

Good Friends

My friend John and his wife Lisa have just recently welcomed little Ellie Nozomi "Hope" Suzuki into the world. Healthy and happy, she is already home and making friends with her big brother Baxter. I can only hope that we have a similarly easy transition with our two babies.

On the topic of things that pair together well, I have a very easy - embarrassingly easy, actually - recipe that pairs pork loin with cranberries, a match made in heaven.

Ingredients
1-3 lb. boneless rolled pork loin roast
salt & pepper
1-2 TB olive oil
16 oz. can whole-berry cranberry sauce
1/4 cup honey
1 TB orange peel
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg


Preheat oven to 375o and position rack in the center of the oven. Heat olive oil in roasting pan over med. high burner. Rinse and dry pork loin; coat with salt and pepper. Brown pork loin in roasting pan evenly, about 3 mins. per side. Remove from heat and add remaining ingredients; stir together. Put lid or foil over roasting pan and cook in oven until meat thermometer reads 160o, about 30 - 40 mins. depending on the size of pork loin. Let stand 10 minutes before slicing. Makes very good left-overs for sandwiches.

Jayce and Cosette, at the only point in time where they were the same size.

It lasted for about one hour, then J hit another growth spurt.

Frankie's Latest Trick

The dog's latest trick is not so much of a skill as it is an annoying relapse into puppyhood. Somehow he's decided he's had it with going to the bathroom outside, and will go in the house whenever the mood strikes. Especially right after having been walked. Clearly there are issues going on in that grapefruit sized brain of his but whatever is causing it, it means we have to go through remedial housebreaking training. Joy. Just what I wanted to do at 34wks pregnant in freezing weather. Anyone have any tips on getting him to poop on command? Or reasons why he doesn't associate being on the leash with going to the bathroom?

Meeyuk-Gook, beta version

I only recently became aware of this soup through my friend Jennie’s nail salon. Jennie is Korean, but was adopted by a lovely German-American couple and raised in upstate New York. Suffice to say she did not develop a love of seafood there, something that the manicurists have a hard time accepting along with the fact that she doesn't speak Korean. When they found out that she was nursing her new baby, they insisted on giving her a container of this soup as well as some seaweed for making more. I ended up becoming the lucky beneficiary of their largesse due to the fact that I actually really like seaweed. Plus I seem to recall seaweed soup as being a traditional new mother staple for the women of the western islands off Ireland. I have a feeling that recipe goes more like, “Boil some seawater, then add some kelp and diced potatoes.” Not something you want to try to replicate when your local beach is the Long Island Sound and that stuff floating in the water may be seaweed or it may be toilet paper.

I checked with my friend Nicole, who is Korean-American, and she informed me that the soup is the number one food of choice for new mothers as well as students, children and the elderly because of its high iron and mineral content. Allegedly it is easy to make and keeps for a few days, so I thought it would be good to try this out ahead of the breastfeeding period and get it practiced to perfection so that even a sleep-deprived brain could throw it together.

Making this soup was my first foray back into cooking Korean food after a long hiatus. I do like eating Korean food, but making it puts me on very shaky ground. There aren’t as many reference points to the familiar as I would like, except when making pajon pancakes, which are very similar to omelettes. This point was driven home to me even more clearly after I visited two different local oriental markets, Kam Sen in White Plains and New Golden Village on Central Park Ave in Scarsdale. I had loose instructions on how to make the soup from Nicole and her mother, plus some vague recipes found on the internet, all of which were different, but none of them had specific brand names for the seaweed, something that turned out to be important later on. Maybe it was just these two markets, but I was able to find every type of Asian cuisine except for Korean. Thai soup stocks, Vietnamese fish sauce, Philippine coconut breads, Japanese jelly candies, Mystery “Jane-Jane” brand dried fish snacks that looked more like cat treats and Chinese everything, but no aisles of Korean products. Hmmm.

After some aimless wandering, I left New Golden Village with some New Year’s Rice cakes, which ended up not tasting nearly as good as they looked, an economy sized bottle of Tamari Soy Sauce and some pork & mushroom egg rolls. The egg rolls were a good call since they provided lunch for two days. Kam Sen was even more overwhelming, as it is twice the size of NGV, and my visit there was preceded by a trip to the DMV, always a frightening and exhausting experience. I ended up leaving Kam Sen with a coconut bun and a jar of powdered fish, the former purchased mainly because I was glad to find something I recognized and the latter purchased mainly because of the juvenile reaction I had to the brand name. Just visiting the stores made me tired, so I put off the actual soup making until today.

I started by soaking the seaweed I had in a bowl of water, as the one consistency found in all the recipes was to soak the seaweed ahead of time. What I did not count on was that I apparently had some sort of instant seaweed, which came to me via Jenny’s manicurist. Failure to understand Korean packaging strikes again! I put the first failure behind me and moved on to the next step, mincing three cloves of garlic and dicing the 0.97ths of a pound of flank steak I had into small cubes. The recipes all called for ½ lb of flank steak, but the store doesn’t sell packages that small, and I figured better to use it all than let it go to waste. I then sautéed everything in sesame oil in a stock pot until the meat turned grey/brown. Afterwards I added as much of the seaweed as I could (it was very gloppy and falling apart at that point), two diced green onions, one tablespoon of dried fish powder and a heap of salt. This was then cooked further with a bit of water until I added the rest of the water the seaweed was soaking in, about four cups, and brought everything to a boil and allowed it to simmer. I wasn’t too worried about the seaweed water having sand in it since clearly this was pre-processed seaweed.

The soup has now been simmering for thirty minutes, and I have to say, it is pretty spicy. Plus there is a tell-tale reddish tinge to the oil floating on the surface of the soup, which is odd since I don’t remember adding any chiles or hot sauce to the mixture. Now I am wondering if the seaweed or the fish stock had chiles added ahead of time. Ah. I see. It’s in the fish powder. Those sneaky Thai cooks. They have to make everything spicy.

Okay, well, the seaweed isn’t in identifiable strips, it’s more of a puree at this point and the spice is too much for my heartburn-y pregnant gullet. This may have to be the test batch that gets tossed. Shoot. Luckily I still have a month and a half to practice. Either that or start calling local Korean restaurants to see if I can get this soup as a take-out order by the gallon. I leave you with my friend Nicole’s recipe – anyone who can make this soup please send me digital photographs of the products so the functionally illiterate (i.e., me) can find the necessary ingredients.


(Nicole began her email to me by explaining why it will be awhile before this soup is necessary for her to start making…)

DUDE, my dad wrote in my holiday card, "This is the year of the golden pig, a very good year, children born of this year will lead successful prosperous lives"...and I was like, “Uh, Dad, it’s not happening this year okay?” And then he's like, “But not next year, it is year of the horse, a very horrible year to have children”.....then I was like, “Well looks like you might not have grandkids until 2009 then”.....and he wasn't very happy with that....

Ingredients
1 long bag of dried seaweed
1/2lb flank steak cut into cubes
2-3 cloves garlic, minced or ground into a paste
2-3 TB sesame oil
2-3 stalks of green onion, green parts diced
2-3 TB Soy Sauce or Salt
4-5 cups water

Put the seaweed in a bowl of cold water to soak for at least one hour. Rinse and cut the seaweed well, removing any sand and dirt. When I was little I liked to sort through some of the pieces, there's this one hard stem like piece that I used to hate and I would cut it out....anyways, my mom would rinse the now re-hydrated seaweed at least 4 times through, then you cut it down into more bite size pieces and set aside. Heat the sesame oil in a large stock pot over med-high heat. Add garlic and beef, stirring just until beef is browned, approx. 3-5mins. Add the seaweed, soy sauce or salt and ¼ cup water and cook for an additional minute or two. This provides the tasty base for the broth itself. There is a certain soup base soy sauce that they sell in the Korean stores that you add for more taste/flavor, if not just use sea salt. I think my mom said it’s the Haitai brand. (I didn’t find any Korean soup stocks, only Japanese ones) Then add the rest of the water and simmer for about thirty minutes to an hour. Just keep the soup at a low simmer; the longer you simmer the more flavorful the broth gets. When you're almost ready to serve, my mom adds some sliced green onions on top.

It’s really quite easy to make, probably 15 -20 min. to prep the ingredients then like 5-10 minutes to bring it all together, then just watching it as it simmers, and checking on the broth flavor.....

I like to add rice to the soup and eat it with kimchee....I can eat it all day long for days....but I've never had to, let alone eat it for weeks…

Well Nicole, I will let you know if I ever do make it the right way and manage to eat it for one day first. Then we’ll see about eating it for a month. Thanks for the invaluable head start girlfriend!

Seaweed Soup

Ok, haven't added anything in like, ages and ages, but that's mostly due to tiredness and blah and who wants to read that. But I will promise that there will be a recipe for Seaweed Soup up here soon, since that is what I am supposed to live on for the first month after delivery. Thanks to my friend Nicole and her mom, I have the blueprints, now all that remains is hammering out the details. In the meantime, I have been eating enough doughnuts that I wouldn't be at all surprised to see my newborn daughter coming out covered in powdered sugar instead of vernix. Cold weather and donuts just go hand in hand, I guess!

Idiot Dog Owners

I am struggling right now to get back to sleep after having a nasty confrontation with a stupid neighbor of mine yesterday. Long story short, she has two dogs, one of which is aggressive, neither of which listen to her. Her dog barked and lunged at the end of his leash towards Frankie and me, and when I asked her to control her dog as I am 8months pregnant and not interested in breaking up a fight, she asked me if my dog was aggressive. This while her dog is barking at me, snapping and baring his teeth. My dog was calmly walking by my side. I tried to walk away from her, upon which she either dropped the other dog's leash or he pulled out of her hand. Naturally he didn't come when called over five times, and was much more interested in following me home. Stupid dog owner kept coming towards me with aggressive dog, then yelled at me for walking away because she needed to get her other dog's leash. She still somehow feels that I am at fault here, despite the fact that her one dog was clearly (to me anyway) about to attack us and the other one apparently doesn't even recognize his name let alone come when called. I was told, "This dog doesn't bite" and "He's been around you before" to which I responded, "There's a first time for everything and I don't want to be the one to help you realize that" and "Yes, and he's done this everytime."

Why oh why are people so stupid about their dogs? Why can't they all just stay on their side of the street and leave me alone? Why do they think their dogs speak English in complete sentences? Why must they all own retractable leashes? How can they possibly confuse straining at a leash and barking wildly with friendly behavior?

Most importantly though, Why am I not allowed to shoot owner, dog or both?

Tube Cake Boogie

One of our joint Christmas Presents this year was a sponge cake given to us by our very kind Japanese next-door neighbors. In all honesty, it was in a box, so I had no idea the box actually contained a cake. I suspected a thin bottle of rice wine or something else instead. I only just now opened it in the midst of getting the Christmas stuff put away and discovered that it was in fact a cake. No frosting, no decorations, no flavoring really, just cake. It's cake as interpreted by a Zen Buddhist monk -

"When you have stripped away the chocolate frosting, icing flowers and sparkle candies, then only the true soul of the cake can remain." The consistency is pretty nice, the taste is pretty nice but being an American I can't help but feel like there should be a cream filling in the center. Maybe I am just a decadent Westerner after all.

Post-Christmas Fall-out

Christmas was extra lovely this year. Everyone seemed to be sprinkled with Good Behavior Pixie Dust, the weather was positively balmy and aside from a snafu with Red Envelope I managed to get everyone's gift purchased and wrapped with time to spare. Naturally there was a flurry of baking activities, none of which got photographed, but all of which turned out just tops. In no particular order, the baking menu included:

Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti dipped in white chocolate

Cappuchino Biscotti with hazelnuts and semi-sweet chocolate chips

Orange Almond Biscotti dipped in milk chocolate

A double batch of Mexican Wedding Cookies that were my personal faves

Butter Shape Cookies

Mock Mince Pie with cream cheese crust

Mini Lemon Chess heart shaped tart made from left-over pie crust dough

Cinnamon Pecan Sticky Buns

BBQ flavored doggie biscuits

I think that's it. It certainly felt like a lot more than just that at the time but now looking at the list it doesn't seem like that big a deal. I did split it up over the course of a week and none of it was too onerous. Littlest effort for biggest reward has to go to the dog biscuits of course since the doggies are always appreciative of any and all culinary gestures in their direction. Frankie even rewarded me with a Happy Feet dance reaction to them, which was a huge compliment.

Biggest pain in the rear treat that will probably never be made again award goes to the Sticky Buns. Several hours of rising, fussiness and stickiness. They were good, but overall, not really worth the massive amount of effort involved. I was using an America's Test Kitchen recipe though, and they can be a perfectionistic lot. I did not use a metal pan, a pizza stone or allow the buns to rise a second time for 1.5hrs, just 30mins, but it all turned out ok. I put the extras in the freezer. Who knows how that will work out but I couldn't bring myself to just pitch them after all the chaos involved in making them.

Everything else was definitely a repeat, including the Mock Mince pie which turned out to not contain any beef fat or ox heart or anything else nasty, just raisins and apples, and was quite nice. Dad suggested next year that I not use honey but use sugar instead and to up the brandy level, ho, ho, ho. I think whatever makes him happiest is ok with me.

The kitchen has mostly returned to a semi-liveable state, if only looking a bit tired. What can I say, I am tired. Luckily it is now onto the new year, and with all the good intentioned resolutions of fresh fruit, flax seed smoothies and soy milk that it brings. Time to retire the baking pans until next Christmas!

Bread and Jam Pudding meets Jane Goodall

So tonight I discovered a great recipe for using up stale bread and found a very cool new Google feature called Google Earth. Maybe you've heard of one, maybe you've heard of both, but both of them have me pretty excited.

Google earth takes blogging to a whole new level, showing you just where on the globe the person writing is sitting. Look around here: http://earth.google.com/tour/thanks-win4.html to download the app (very quick install) and the bookmarks for the websites that are already trying it. Aside from the Jane Goodall Institute's blog there are other sites on the Wirefly X PRIZE cup which if you're an aeronautical engineering geek should be exciting. The Discovery Channel has a site, as does the Da Vinci Code guys. Get a look at this cool tool before it becomes overloaded with San Dimas High School Football Rulez!! type live feeds from your local junior high. I suppose unless it becomes something you can link MySpace to maybe that won't happen but for now it is still in its pure geek infancy. Anyone else remember the original Listserv discussion boards before they came up with IM? When people would actually reprimand other users for putting up advertising and correct grammar? No? Maybe it's just me then. I am sort of hoping to find Jane Goodall's official biography under the Christmas Tree this year, or barring that, a gift certificate to Barnes and Noble.

Along the lines of purism and childhood memories, I decided to make a simple bread pudding to get rid of some french bread from Saturday. Jamie Oliver has a fantastic one that I will not print verbatim in order to avoid copyright infringement. Much easier than it looks, and totally worth it. I thought I was full after dinner but I've now polished off a second helping (seen in the photo) and am contemplating a third. Plus it's made of eggs, which I normally hate, so it's a good way to get protein, right? Right? Right.

Ingredients: 4 eggs, 2 1/2cups milk, 1/2 cup bread crumbs, 3/4 cup + 2 TB sugar, 4 TB fruit jam, 1 tsp vanilla. Preheat oven to 300F. Separate 3 eggs. Combine yolks with remaining whole egg with whisk, then add milk, bread crumbs, vanilla and 1/4 sugar. Spread jam on bottom of baking dish (about pie plate capacity or little larger). I used more than 4 TB because I wanted to cover the bottom evenly. As it turns out this adds more liquid (duh) and so therefore you need to cook for longer but it didn't ruin anything. Pour egg yolk mixture over jam and bake in oven for 1hr or more until set and not wobbly in the middle. Beat egg whites until stiff, then add in remaining sugar. Cover custard with glossy, stiff egg whites and continue baking until meringue is set and lightly browned, 15-20 mins depending on surface area. Let cool before eating or you'll burn your mouth on the jam. Should serve 4 - 6 unless I'm in the house when it will serve 1 1/2 people. I am planning on saving this for breakfast tomorrow. It's eggs, bread and jam so tell me how it's not also good for breakfast? Oh and those two little brown blobs on the baking sheet are some left-over meringue that I made into cookies. After the custard is done, turn the oven up to 350 until it preheats, put blobs in and immediately lower heat to 250. Cook for 45mins or so. Make sure you use parchment paper or Silpat mats otherwise they'll just crack coming off the baking sheet.

Edited for clarity: The BREAD was used to make the BREAD CRUMBS via the Cuisinart, although you could just as easily cut it into cubes and do that instead.

MS Center on WNBC Early Morning News Show

Friends of mine who are involved with the NJ side of things MS related sent me this link. Be sure to program your TiVo's!

HUGE NEWS FOR THE MS CENTER AT HOLY NAME HOSPITAL!!!!!!

As you all know, Chris Cimino, WNBC-TV Meteorologist, has been one of our guardian angels since he became involved with our wonderful MS Center 4 years ago. Well now, he truly is our holiday angel. The great morning team at the Today Show, Rob Morrison, Darlene Rodriquez, Chris & Otis Livingston were all asked by the Today Show Producer, the wonderful Emily Raiber, to pick a charity to showcase for the holiday season that they felt was close to their heart. A charity that needs awareness, a charity that makes a difference in people's lives. Out of all the millions of needy organizations Chris picked the MS Center at Holy Name Hospital because he is truly amazed at what we do here! Chris, Emily and crew were here last Wednesday taping and it was such a special, emotional and honest interview. Even Chris got teary eyed! In case it ends up on the cutting room floor, Chris kissed Johanna on the cheek after she shared her incredible history of her life and her life at the Center!!!! We all know how special the MS Center is and how we make a difference in patients lives every day and now EVERYONE in the tri-state area will know!!!!!!!! Please tune in to Channel 4 next Tuesday, December 19th at 6:40AM to see the wonderful interview Chris did with our very own stars, June Halper, Susan Zurndorfer, Johanna Zurndorfer and Judee Rosenthal.

Entertain without strain

This is not so much a recipe, as it is a secret trick of caterers: no-one at parties pays attention to what the food tastes like, they only look at the plate. Spend 50% of your budget on your serving platters, 10% on food and 40% on booze. You can serve anyone frozen pigs in a blanket from a warehouse club if you put them on a pretty plate with fancy mustard in little bowl. Translate the name into French, Italian or Thai and you can get away with anything. Pigs in a blanket become Saucissons en Croute. Mini-quiches become, well, Quiche au Jambon (ham) / Bacon (duh) / Oignon (onion). Grilled chicken on wooden skewers with a dipping sauce of peanut butter mixed with soy sauce are Chicken Satays. Stick the non-chicken loaded end of the stick into a block of floral foam that you have put into a dish. Put plastic flowers or grass in first that are shorter than the satay sticks. Everyone likes shrimp cocktail, and you can buy a huge bag of pre-cooked frozen shrimp for next to nothing. Again, put it on shaved ice in a nice glass bowl and suddenly you're a genius. Take the sauce out of the jar and put it into something pretty. Make a cheese platter out of a cutting board with red & green grapes and those red cabbage leaves. Put strawberries on it even though people don't eat them when they're next to cheese.

You don't have to be a good cook to become known for good holiday parties. Just make sure there's enough booze for people to not notice the food, and be sure to throw out the boxes from the freezer section before the guests arrive. Have good music and pretty women in abundance. Follow the reheating directions on the boxes. Take a shower ahead of time. Enjoy the festivities but don't drive drunk! Happy Holidays everybody!