Cheer, Goodwill, and Embarrassments: Ms. CrankyPants' Holiday Letter!

Happy holidays, everyone! It's been quite a year! There have been some highlights, and many, MANY embarrassing lowlights, most of which I've shared with you. If you need a refresher, just click here or here. Oh, hell, click on any post in my blog; it's nearly all embarrassing.

Everyone knows that the very BEST holiday letters are all about bragging highlights, so let's get started!

• I'll just get the biggie out of the way first: I now have 10 followers! It's taken close to a year, but 10 new people actually like me! Or at least, the Ms. CrankyPants version of me. For all you know, I could be a colossal ASS whom you'd hate in real life. (After all, I just used the word "whom.")

Thanks, 10 followers!

• I haven't had an MS relapse in...ages. Is it the Copaxone? The Swank Diet? Is it because I don't really have MS at all but some other horrible disease? Or, could it be that strange "agreement" I made with the mysterious silver-tongued chap with the red tail and horns who showed up that one night with a contract? Dunno. Whatever. I've been feeling good. (Note: I've just officially jinxed myself.)

He LOOKED friendly enough...

• Our fantastically wonderful family is growing! The cat-adoption stork brought us a little bundle of joy (LBOJ) named Pepper Anne! 

Pepper Anne, in one of her 4,872,810 adorable poses.

• Our existing cats hate aren't especially fond of are slowly getting used to our LBOJ!

Capt. Nap: "I can't even look at her. She's HIDEOUS!"

• In other exciting feline news, Squeaky the Cat just graduated Magna Cat Laude from Big Jerk Cat University and has received her Ph.D. in Cat-Assery. She is so skilled! She can now hiss/growl at Pepper Anne and Capt. Nap WHILE guarding her toys, food, and the communal water bowl. Oh, and also all four litter boxes. She's so talented! We are so, so proud. That tuition money was well spent indeed. 

"Who the hell are you calling a jerk? Cover my head at once, minion!"

• Capt. Nap is also doing really well! He hasn't had an explosive vomiting session since September. Plus, remember his adorable POO PAWS that so delighted me back in January? He's taught l'il sis Pepper Anne how to actually walk in her poo before burying it. What a good big brother! Now we have two cats with the occasional poo paw. We couldn't be happier! (By the way, who wants to come over and lie on our carpet? First come, first served, friends. There's only so much carpet to go around!)

I call this section of carpet. (Sorry, homeowners get first pick.)

• Husband is continuing to support me in my efforts to stave off disability via the Swank Diet! He's a wonderful cook! But, really, how can you go wrong with products like TOFURKEY sausage?

OOPS! Wrong picture.

You can see why I got confused.

• I may have big boobs! Yes, friends, according to a highly trained expert at a local bra shop, I have spent most of my adult life wearing a way-too-tiny bra size. This was some of the best news in all of 2013 for the fabulous CrankyPants family!  

• Back to our kitty cats! They have really impressed us this year by scorning every single product we've introduced in an attempt to toilet train them. Stubborn little kitties! I do love a cat with his or her own personality! Oh, and not to worry: they've promised to pay us back the $3,176 we spent on ridiculous devices designed to make scooping their litter boxes a task of the past. 

"Kwit the litter? NEVER!"

• It sure was a great Halloween this year! We managed to significantly reduce the number of trick-or-treaters harassing us! No, it wasn't the unwrapped hard candies or the miniature boxes of ancient raisins we'd been passing out. We suspect it was because our neighbors saw my husband mowing the yard in the snow! "Why, those cat-loving, kid-less people are NUTS!" we think they might have said on the neighborhood shared social media platform that we imagine exists and to which we've not been invited. "I wouldn't send MY kids there this Halloween." Mission accomplished! 

This isn't my husband. I've been forbidden to use that picture. This is the mayor of someplace in Iowa. But you get the idea. And in his defense, my husband was not wearing shorts. 

• Thanksgiving 2013 was a tremendous success! No four-legged attendees vomited or did a poo anywhere! Pepper Anne jumped on the dining room table and lurched toward the turkey only once! (Maybe twice.) (Okay, fine, thrice.) (And, yes, I just said "thrice.")

We look forward to the new year, new embarrassments, and, ideally, new carpet. May you and yours have a very happy holiday season! 

Third Time's a Charm? Welllll...

We had our neighbors over for dinner last night. (Yes, the same neighbors who forced me to stray from Dr. Swank, detailed here: I Cheated on Dr. Swank.) In the pre-diet days, we'd been to each others' houses a few times, usually for pizza. Since starting on the Swank Diet, which forbids dairy products unless they're fat free, I have struggled mightily to find a Swank-friendly pizza. I've recorded my dismal experiences in this blog, but if you are a new reader or just want a refresher (hamster droppings, anyone?), please see the following: What the (&$^ Did I Just Eat? and No-Cheese Pizza: A Public Service Announcement.

I wanted to dazzle our neighbors with some gourmet food, but I was pretty limited by my pal Dr. S., so I had to be content with merely ensuring they didn't vomit or run away screaming. I'll spoil the end for you right now: they did neither. That's not to say there weren't some, er, exciting culinary moments. I'll start with the menu:

• Pizza (incredibly, yes, I was trying this AGAIN)
• Salad
• Cratercakes  Cupcakes (incredibly, yes, I was trying this AGAIN) (you can read about the first time I made these here: Something Looks Very, Very Wrong)

Fortunately, our neighbors are adventurous eaters, and very forgiving people. Plus, I had an ace up my sleeve! My savvy husband said if we drizzled a little oil on the fat-free cheese, it might melt. (One is allowed limited portions of certain oils on this diet.) Did I mention I planned to top one of the pizzas with my old friend, Tofurkey "sausage"? No? Well, yes, I was. (See: "adventurous" and "forgiving" neighbors, above.) The other pizza was going to feature plain old vegetables, in case the Tofurkey-topped pie proved too alarming for our guests. I also made a gigantic salad, figuring we could always eat lots of that if it came down to it. Oh, yeah, and cupcakes. We'd have those tasty gems to finish off the meal. Incidentally, I informed the neighbors of my dinner plans and suggested they either do some serious drinking beforehand and/or bring alcohol with them.

I embarked with a feeling of great dread enthusiasm. I started with the dessert. A fellow blogger suggested a few tips after reading about my two previous battles with the cupcakes (lost in the most recent battle was a lovely food processor). The batter did not turn into a rock-like ball as it had the last time I made the cupcakes, but it still had an odd spongy consistency:

It just hung on the spoon, like a wad of brown Marshmallow Fluff. Ominous. 

Okay, so things weren't entirely promising at this stage. Undeterred, I crammed spoonfuls into the awaiting pan, under the watchful eye of Wee Squeaky.

"Ha ha! No way these are coming out properly!"

Damn that mocking Wee Squeaky for being right. They started out in the oven looking like cupcakes. But, midway through the bake time, I saw the craters beginning to form. And, when I took them out, here's what I had:

Okay, yes, this is the same picture I used the first time this happened. I was too dispirited to take a picture of the third cupcake failure. Plus, Wee Squeaky was laughing at me, which angered me greatly.

Once I finished weeping, I decided that I'd tell the neighbors the cupcakes were SUPPOSED to look like that, and that the craters were in place to hold a heap of fat-free frozen yogurt. If everyone was sufficiently drunk, this excuse might fly.

Moving on to the pizza. I drizzled oil onto the shredded cheese and mixed until the little shreds were lightly coated. I had purchased pizza crusts that did not contain anything Swanky would frown upon (e.g., no tropical oils). While assembling everything, I felt a little better about the dessert; things were looking pretty good! After baking the pizzas, I felt much better about the dessert. My husband was right! The cheese melted!

The round, brownish bits are Tofurkey and there are some sauteed onions on there too, plus a sprinkling of sweet basil. 

The pizza triumph even shut up Wee Squeaky, who was duly impressed.

"I'm sorry for laughing at your dessert."

The neighbors arrived and one of the first things I did, after ensuring that they had drinks, was to blurt out that the cupcakes were NOT supposed to have holes in them. So much for trying to trick them. Oh well. They were fantastic sports, and their young son even said it was the most delicious pizza in the world, bless him.

So, to answer the question at the top of this post: will the third time be a charm? Yes and no. Dessert remains a challenge (STOP LAUGHING, WEE SQUEAKY), but the pizza, I am beyond thrilled to report, is a big, massive, huge, happy success!

No-Cheese Pizza: A Public Service Announcement

Pizza without cheese is an abomination. There, I said it. As you may recall from my post "What the $(&^ Did I Just Eat?" I had a minor meltdown and major bout of self-pity after eating a Tofurkey pizza.

I was too busy having a tantrum to take a picture of the real thing when it came out of the oven.

"Okay, okay," I thought, last Thursday night. "The Tofurkey pizza sucked. But maybe it was because of the fake meat and cheese. I've heard pretty good things about cheeseless pizza (Note to readers: No, these reports did not come from institutionalized friends). Maybe that will be the happy end to my quest for Swank-approved pizza!"

My husband was having dinner with a friend, so this was the perfect time to try the cheeseless pizza. He had expressed grave misgivings about this particular menu item, and since he wouldn't be home to witness me collapsing in a sobbing heap if the pizza turned out to be revolting, the time was nigh.

It LOOKED pretty good (well, the picture on the box looked pretty good):

Hey! That looks pretty darn tasty! 

Another selling point was the absence of any text on the box that might later prove to have been misleading. I know it's not easy to see, but on the Tofurkey box, there were promises that it was MEATLESS AND DELICIOUS! That the CHEESE REALLY MELTS! By contrast, the all-veg pizza box was simple, elegant, and tasteful. A good start.

I removed it from the box ('cause that's what the directions told me to do) and popped it in the oven. It was at this stage that I felt the first glimmerings of dismay. The pizza was roughly the diameter of a pita (little did I know this later would prove to be a blessing). I set the timer and trotted off to do something important for 10 minutes.

I skipped back into the kitchen after 10 minutes and realized...how the hell am I supposed to tell if the pizza is done? Ordinarily, the way one gauges the done-ness of a pizza is by the yummy bubbling ever-so-slightly browning cheese. I stared at the baseball-sized piece of crust in the oven, atop which rested some limp vegetables. It had been 10 minutes, but the pizza looked exactly the same as it had when I put it in the oven. The sauce still looked like someone very stingy and in a great hurry had painted a thin coat of ketchup beneath the vegetables. Oh, dear. The glimmerings of dismay turned to strobe lights.

"I know what will help," I thought, somewhat desperately. "I'll put it on a jaunty blue plate! That will add some cheer to this rather dismal-looking pizza."

Judge for yourself:

MMMMM! That jaunty blue plate really did make it look better! 

I regarded my dinner with great sadness. To my credit, I did not throw a tantrum. (There was no one to witness it, which is half the fun.) Instead, I shuffled to the couch and glumly ate it, grateful that it was so small. It could have used cheese, of course, but perhaps with a generous -- REALLY generous -- application of spices, it would have been better. The vegetables were soggy, but what can you expect from a frozen pizza? I suppose the thing to do is make one from scratch. There is a recipe in the Swank Diet book for pizza crust, and with my new cooking skills, I just may try it.

I haven't given up hope on frozen pizza entirely, though. I still have an Amy's Roasted Vegetable cheeseless frozen pizza that's big enough for two (lucky, lucky husband!), so I'll try that before abandoning the frozen pizza route forever.

In the meantime, next time you eat pizza, savor every bite. In the immortal words of '80s rock sensation Cinderella "You don't know what you got 'til it's gone."

What? You don't know the song? Well, here it is, for your listening/viewing pleasure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i28UEoLXVFQ