F A K E H A N D B A G S

June 2009
Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
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14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30

Sunday

1875: Peanut butter oatmeal cookies

After a brief test run, using Pete as my guinea pig (he survived!), I made these cookies for Dad on Father's Day. Since they were such a hit both times around, and I've had a number of questions about them, I thought I'd post the recipe.

1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup softened margarine
1 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
1 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
1 cup quick-cooking oats

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
In a large bowl, cream together shortening, margarine, brown sugar, white sugar, and peanut butter until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time until well blended.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt.
Stir the dry contents of the second bowl into the creamed mixture in the large bowl.
Mix in the oats until just combined.
Pinch and roll pieces of the dough into tight, gumball-sized balls and place onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake for 10-15 minutes.

Posted by ashley | [Permalink] | TrackBack (0)

Sunday

1874: And what the hell is Disaronno?

The following is just about my least favorite commercial in the world:

I can't say why I hate this so much, I just feel it... in my bones, the very essence of my being, tense with the urge to scream "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?" I would truly hate to ever stumble into a bar which was not only as awkwardly lit as this one is, but also improbably stocked with ONLY DISARONNO BOTTLES.

Full disclosure: I don't even know what Disaronno is; in fact, I'm not even sure I'd ever heard of it until this commercial entered into heavy rotation on TV a few years ago. In my mind, it's the sort of liquor that sits on a glass shelf on the bar beside never-ordered things like Frangelico, something I'll never drink because I'm not entirely certain that it isn't Mrs. Butterworth's.

I feel like Disaronno may be the Ferrero Roche of liquors. It seems to aspire to some level of sophistication but ends up in an undefined space of "is-from-Europe-or-something?" I'm surprised the audio even syncs up with the moving lips of the actors in these commercials, though that might actually give the whole thing a Mentos-like charm.

If you're going to push any liquor, familiar or otherwise, it's probably important that you help consumers feel comfortable ordering it -- and this depends on their knowing how to do so. Thus, we're now we're subjected to only marginally better how-to spots like this:

My first thought was that this does nothing to help me understand who drinks this crap, and whether I'm that sort of person -- but it actually does. People who drink Disaronno are...

a) People who enjoy drinking in brightly lit spaces
b) People who are unclear about what "with lemon" entails
c) People who are not me

Posted by ashley | [Permalink] | TrackBack (0)

Sunday

1873: CELEBRITY SIGHTING: PRINCE HARRY

Whenever I leave a concert or any other fairly large-scale event, I'm always awed by the way in which the city can so quickly absorb everyone in the audience as soon the show is over. Venues empty out and crowds disperse in such a short span of time that at no point does it ever feel like this mass of people caused any notable interruption in the natural flow of the city's traffic. If you passed through that same space only a short while later, you might ever know anything had taken place there.

Similarly, you can miss crossing paths with a celebrity by a matter of seconds and not know it. Had I taken another elevator or chosen a different cross street, for instance, I wouldn't have found myself walking up Lexington at precisely the same moment that Prince Harry was leaving the Intercontinental on Friday.

I was strolling along, enjoying the weather and anticipating my phone buzzing any second with dinner plans, when I found my path blocked by an exceptionally large and grim-looking man in a suit. He was standing in the middle of the street, blocking traffic in both directions. I glanced behind him to see half a dozen black SUVs, virtually identical, taking up the width of Lexington above the point at which he stood. He turned his head slightly and I saw a bright white earpiece; obviously, I had stumbled into the way of someone more important than me or this guy in the suit.

I didn't have a moment to actually wonder who that important person might be, because at that very second, a crowd of people in suits emerged from the hotel and shoved a very tall, very red person into one of the SUVs -- Prince Harry! As soon as the door on his vehicle shut, the whole group was off and running, windows down, grim faces peering out each with the butt of a machine gun tucked under each arm. It was impossible to know which vehicle he'd gotten into -- the SUVs were identical, and the way in which they turned together onto the cross street made them even harder to differentiate. But perhaps the most impressive thing about it was that it happened so QUICKLY -- in fact, I hadn't heard a single car horn sound, so it they must have interrupted traffic for only a few moments. And in nothing flat, they were gone; you'd never have known they were ever there unless you'd happened to be right there to see it yourself.

Sadly, it was only at the last possible second that it dawned on me that maybe I should take a photo of all this; even sadder still is the fact that THIS is the result of that effort: