My [Culinate](http://www.culinate.com/) column this week is about kitchen scales:
[Weighing In](http://www.culinate.com/read/bacon/scales)
*But if you love to cook, kitchen scales are downright exciting, and I’ll try to demonstrate this without resorting again to cheap sexual innuendo.*
Sorry for the lull. I’m at a professional conference. One of the speakers today was a TV producer whose network, Turner South (now SportSouth), aired a show about flea markets. (I googled and can’t figure out whether it’s still on.) The show was called Junkin’.
This was pretty much the most awesome thing I’ve ever heard, and so far today I’ve said “Junkin'” approximately six hundred times. Like I said, I have no idea whether the show is still on, but I assume it must be. How could it fail? According to one of the hosts, writing on IMDB:
> Junkin’ is a show where I (Val Myers) travel to the south to meet up with my friend Dave Bird. We drive around in his El Camino (The General Flea) and go to flea markets and Yard Sales in the south. We buy “junk” hence the name, then we put the junk on ebay and see what happens. The people we meet are super interesting and the junk is endless in it’s variety. Funny things happen, we meet funny people and we laugh at junk.
“We laugh at junk” pretty much sums up my philosophy of life. In fact, _Junkin’_ is going to be so popular, soon all TV shows will end in _in’_.
In addition to professional _boxin’_, there will be a kickboxing show called _Kickin’_. A home repair show called _Fixin’_. The Nashville Network will carry _Pickin’_.
I will host a Food Network show about America’s favorite protein. It will be called _Chicken’_.
The future: it’ll be rockin’!
Last week I took Iris to play at the treehouse play structure inside REI. This is the most awesome piece of climbing equipment I’ve ever seen. Like any good amusement, it feels dangerous, but it’s incredibly safe. You wind your way up the padded trunk of a plastic tree, across a bridge, and down a fast slide. I only wish it was four times as big. Iris played on it for two hours, stopping only for occasional sips of a smoothie from the adjacent World Wrapps.
The smoothie was strawberry-orange-banana, but Iris said it was “strawberry, orange, and rum.” This is because I let her pick out a sticker at the [pirate store](http://piratesplunder.com/) recently, and she chose the one depicting a skull drinking from a bottle, with the caption TIME FLIES WHEN YOU’RE HAVING RUM. I explained that this means, “Drinking tasty stuff makes you happy.”
I asked Iris where she wanted to have lunch after REI, and she requested Blue C Sushi. I wasn’t sure there was a way to get there by bus, so I asked the marvelous [Google Transit](http://google.com/transit), which told me we could catch a number 17 to the Fremont Bridge. We walked through South Lake Union, the Seattle neighborhood where every block is under construction, and watched a steamroller steamrolling a brand new road while we waited for the bus.
The last two times I’ve taken Iris to Blue C, she’s eaten rice and a cream puff. On one early visit, she tried a variety of items, but not my favorite, which is the mackerel. This time, she started with some edamame and moved on to a tempura shrimp roll and some noodles. Then she dug into the mackerel and eagerly ate several bites–dipped in soy sauce, of course. The only things she didn’t want were eel and the watercress garnish from the noodles, which was too spicy.
My guess, and there’s no way to confirm or deny this, is that this (surely temporary) spate of adventurous eating has to do with growth. In less than two weeks, she grew 3/4 inch. Presumably her brain is saying, “We need all the calories we can get, even if they’re green.” Of course, there are plenty of other fast-growing kids doing fine on plain toast.
We did get the cream puff, of course. After it was gone, Iris picked up its chocolate-cream-smeared doily and was about to try to lick it clean. “Iris, you cannot wipe that all over your face,” I said. She strategized. “We should get some of those!” said Iris, pointing at the potato croquettes. “Okay,” I replied. The croquettes are great–hot and crunchy, drizzled with sweetened soy sauce. Iris used hers to mop up the chocolate.
After we got home, we played Iris’s favorite game, conveyor belt, in front of our building. Iris inches along the railing of the wheelchair ramp, pretending to be sushi at Blue C.
> **Iris:** What kind would you like?
> **Me:** What kind are you?
> **Iris:** You have to say.
> **Me:** But you’re on the conveyor belt. Isn’t that your job?
> **Iris:** But I’m just a sushi. And sushis can’t think.
Iris and I have been playing a great video game called Chocolatier. It’s one of those trading and resource management games where you fly around to difference places, making friends and enemies and lots of chocolate. It includes an extremely realistic chocolate-making segment where you fire ingredients out of a cannon. If you ever tour [Theo Chocolate](http://www.theochocolate.com/), be sure to ask to see their vintage cacao cannon. (Yes, I’m lying.)
At one point Laurie came home and Iris said, “Mama, we learned to make infusions!”
Chocolatier is $20, for Mac or Windows. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my factory in Hong Kong needs attention.
They’ve been out of our usual white cheddar mac and cheese at Trader Joe’s for a couple of weeks, so I’ve been buying Annie’s at QFC. Annie’s doesn’t sell elbows, except in the microwave format; your choices are shells or bunnies. I prefer shells. I also noticed that at QFC, the small and large boxes of Annie’s both cost $1.99. I prefer large.
I like the Annie’s fine; it’s basically the same as the TJ’s. (And who knows, they might be the same cheese packet.) There’s only one drawback to the pasta shell format…
LIMPETS!
