Get yer fries here

Magnet #1224 - French Fries

Ahhh, part of a set.

Today, I'm craving fries. Random how a lot of my posts lately are food-related.

Anyway, here's something I learned these last several months in North Carolina with my parents.

Did ya'll know that McDonald's serves No Salt fries? For serious.

I mean, it takes longer to get them, but they'll fry up a batch and not add salt for you, if it's requested. It's awfully nice of them to be so health-accommodating.

Of course, I've also learned that the secret to McDonald's french fries being the best fast food french fries in the world is...

SALT.

Without that magic salt? Forget it.

The fries are really just fried potatoes.

Get yer ice lollies here

Magnet #1223 - Ice Cream

Ok, fine. Ice lollies are technically popsicles from what I understand, but this magnet my sister got me still fits. Because...

This. I have been craving this for ages now. But like, not the stuff I can run down to Food Lion or Harris Teeter to pick up.

All the freakin' NYC food truck tweets from @VLAIC and @CoolhausNY are driving me crazy, popping up on my TweetDeck, telling me where they're stationed every day. Makes me crazy because I can't get to them from here in NC!

If you haven't had Van Leeuwen ice cream before, you're missing out - my absolute favorite ice cream on Earth right now.

So much so, that it was actually on the Con list of quitting my last job, because their butter yellow truck is usually parked down the street from their building. In the end, the ice cream couldn't prevail...but it just means I'll have to walk further for it, I guess.

Readers for life - #RWA11

Magnet #1222 - Public Library of Los Angeles

A friend sent me this supercool magnet of the art deco Central Library built in 1926 in downtown Los Angeles. It's supposedly the 3rd largest library collection in the US.

Pretty neat seeing it without any major buildings around it. Because this is what it looks like now. Crazy, right, seeing it dwarfed by its glass and steel surroundings?

The library is definitely going on my ever-growing LA to-do list, they give docent tours of the building, which is apparently filled with cool details out the wazoo.

Using it for today because I'm sad I'm not in New York this week for RWA 2011. Tonight's Readers for Life autographing event usually the only night I attend when the Romance Writers of America are in town. It's their big event to benefit literacy, where they fill a giant ballroom of 400 authors and their books, and everyone gets in long lines to get their books signed.

Even if you don't want the autographs, it's always fun to meet your favorite authors and see the latest book they have to offer.

So, someone needs to go for me, and enjoy. Please and thank you.

Herbie goes to Wales

Magnet #1221 - Herbie

So here's random. On a lark, DCsis made us do an unexpected right turn into a Cardiff green market. Really cool place, complete with bread stalls and warm Welsh Cakes, and local wares.

While she was busy exploring the yarn, I walked down to another stall - one of those run-of-the-mill catch-all stalls, the ones that sell household gadgets and odds and ends.

The vendor had a bank of magnets, and in a sea of VW magnets, Ocho here caught my eye.

I haven't a clue what Herbie was doing all the way in Cardiff in a random shop, but of course, I had to buy him! Growing up, Disney's Herbie franchise was one of my favorites - I loved that little VW Bug!

He was awesome. He could win races, and escape bulls and matadors, and make friends with supercute boys, and he even had a girlfriend!

My favorite of the series is still Herbie Goes Bananas, and one of my favorite scenes to this day is when little Paco, the boy who saved him from uncertain death, rolling the plank on Harvey Korman's cruise ship, gives him his nickname, Ocho.

In the cutest little voice ever, he exclaimed: "Ocho! Five plus three makes eight! Ocho!"

And, yes, I just tried to find that exact scene on YouTube, but you'd be amazed at how many tribute videos there are. Yes. To Herbie.

Anyway, using this magnet today, because someone over at Next Movie re-imagined seven famous cars as Pixar creations, and Ocho is one of them.

Superdupercute!

A buck starts here

Magnet #1220 - Dan Nicholas Park

One of the top attractions in the state of North Carolina is Dan Nicholas Park. Most of us take it for granted because we grew up with it, but it really is a great state park.

Save the World Couple and I went to play putt-putt today, something I haven't done in ages.

It's funny how the two courses that I've played several times over the years have grown smaller. The once-insurmountable windmill, wishing wells, loop-de-loops and roundabouts seem to have gotten easier.

We had a fun time, playing both courses - I got two holes in one! Go me!

Of course, for other folks, that would signify a good round or two, but it really just offsets the number of times I blew par...by several strokes. Thank goodness they cap us at six!

The rest of the park, however, has changed drastically over the years. We grew up with paddle boating and an aging nature center and petting zoo. Now, there's a carousel, a zoo and aquarium (which ya'll know I refuse to visit), and a little corporate sponsored choo-choo train!

And when I say corporate sponsored train, I mean, I'm talkin' the Stanback Train, sponsored by the Salisbury Post, riding over the so-and-so Trestle, under the Cheerwine Tunnel, and through the woods (sponsored by Nature, I guess) into the Suntrust Tunnel.

We're talkin' crazycakes local sponsorship - I was both amazed and appalled. But you know what? It works, because I remembered most of the sponsors...and I just blogged on the local goodwill.

Mind you, I also benefited from this local goodwill because the price tag for the train ride?

A single buck.

Wherefore art Warhol?

Magnet #1219 - Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe

I picked up this Marilyn Monroe magnet as an Andy Warhol Pop Art set, one of those random things I pick up in random shops.

Using it for today because Save the World Couple and Mom and I headed over to the Reynolda House Museum of American Art, after much contemplation of how to spend our day. It was one of my suggestions, having really enjoyed my visit last year.

So funny, the museum's been there for years, and within the span of a year, I've now been twice. But, it's a really good museum, and for some, a really good introduction into American Art, with some great pieces for Grant Wood (or that Grant guy, I kept saying) and Tiffany and Remington and Bierstadt and Church, and I could go on.

I will say that even it didn't dawn on me until I was looking in my Photobucket for an American artist that one of the artists that seems to be missing from the Reynolda is Andy Warhol. I did a search on their site, but it's quite possible there's one in the collection, but I didn't see it on display.

Still, it was also nice to roam around the bungalow (la-la-la, so big, and still called a bungalow, sheesh) again - even without taking the art into account, it's still a really cool house from the Gilded Age.

What I really want to do is strap on a pair of roller skates and skate around in their basement, which is completely rubber-surfaced to allow everyone to skate the entire length. Of course, I also want to be served a Tom Collins splash of cranberry at their supercool art deco-ish bar, shoot a duck or two in the gallery, rack 'em up on their pool table, drop 10 pins in their alley, and play some squash.

Honestly, it's possible I just want to live in their basement.

Recipe for disaster

Magnet #1218 - Carnation's Easy-Does-It Cookbook

Another one of my Lovely Day Designs magnets I picked up a few weeks ago. Supercute, super-retro.

Picked it for today, because I'm back home in North Carolina, at least for a bit. Which means another couple of weeks of numerous home-cooked breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Yay!

I swear, when I finally move back home to NYC, I will likely drop a good 10-15 pounds without my parents' home cooking to pudge me up.

Don't get me wrong. I definitely know to be grateful for all the meals my parents are cooking for me. It's great. And when I'm ordering my umpteenth meal at from any number of delivery guys who know my address, I'll definitely miss being called down to the table.

But here's something funny. We've started to notice a weird ebb in the flow of my mother's cooking. And I'm blaming those damn cooking channels and their tv shows.

The fact of the matter is - and I say this objectively speaking, I swear - my mother is, hands down, the best cook I know. She is! She always has been. Ask anyone who's had her cooking, they will agree.

Best of all, Mom's one of those old-school chefs that do it by touch, feel, smell and of course, taste. And she doesn't need any of those stupid tv shows with those annoying chefs and their fake kitchens and all their fancy recipes and concoctions to tell her how to make good food.

She does all that on her own.

So herein lies the problem. She's constantly watching all those stupid tv shows with those annoying chefs and their fake kitchens and all their fancy recipes and concoctions.

And she's taking notes!

What's worse, is that she's starting to try and mimic those recipes!

What I'm learning is, all that does is mess with her mojo.

It's no longer Mom's cooking. I mean, it's good, for the most part. But it truly makes me crazy when I hear, oh, I tried so-and-so's recipe. It's like podMom's cooking.

Today, she followed a recipe from someone on tv, and it ended up salty. No. I mean, so salty that even my mother, who thinks salt is a food group, couldn't eat it. We had to throw away the whole NY strip. Steak! We threw away steak!

So my goal for the next few weeks is to break Mom of these silly tv recipes that aren't so great. To go back to trusting her fabulous cook instincts and go from there.

Now. If I could just figure out how to block the signal for Food and Cooking from our DirectTV here at home, that'd be superduperawesome.

And I'm not just saying that because it's on, morning, noon and night when she's home. Nope. Not at all.