Recipe: Epic Snickers Bar, Fail Kitchen

Well, I finally bit the bullet and tried to make a 15-lb candy bar. I should have just eaten all the ingredients...again.

The recipe was taken from here.

But first, can I just say...don't do it?

Please don't.




Still interested?

Fine.

Good luck to you!
 

Saint Valentine: The Story Behind the Guy - Contributor Post

Thealogian Kate Allen from Life, Love, Liturgy, has been going through some amazing and exciting changes! And yet she still made time to explain the roots of Valentine's Day to us. We are so lucky.

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As Americans flood Hallmark and grocery stores and 7-Elevens everywhere for chocolates, pink paper hearts, and roses for their beloveds, some will wonder who this Valentine guy was, and what the connection is between him and Cupid.

The connection is rather tenuous, it turns out. 

St. Valentine’s Day has been around for ages.  Legend has it that the actual saint named Valentine was a Roman martyr for the Christian faith.  His feast day on the Western liturgical calendar is February 14 because that is the day he is said to have been beaten with clubs and beheaded.  In any case, that was the day set aside for him in A.D. 496 by Pope Gelasius I.  This pope was the same one who banned Lupercalia, a Roman pagan fertility festival lasting February 13-15, during which observers of the festival ritual would run naked through the streets to counter sterility.  Most contemporary scholars reject any direct connection between the banishing of Lupercalia and the instituting of the feast of St. Valentine’s Day by the pope.

So why the violent death?  Some say Valentine failed to renounce his Christian faith to Emperor Claudius II in A.D. 269, when it was still a big no-no to be a Christian (Christianity wasn’t tolerated by the Roman Emperor until Constantine early in the fourth century).  Others say on the night before his execution, he wrote a letter to his jailer’s daughter, whom he had healed of blindness, signing his note, “From your Valentine.”

There is no substantial evidence that Valentine had anything remarkable to do with romance and lovers, however, until the time of Chaucer.  Chaucer is widely argued to be the one who made Valentine a man of fame and romance in his “The Parliament of Fowls” (a modern translation of which is available here).  It’s in this poem, written in the fourteenth century, that we get talk of lovers, birds, flowers, and finding the perfect mate on Valentine’s Day.  The earliest known reference to calling one’s beloved “Valentine” is in the fifteenth century letters of Margery Brews to her future husband, John Paston III.  The rest is history!

With the founding of the Hallmark Cards company was founded in Missouri in 1910, the feastday of St. Valentine was destined (or doomed), among other holidays, to become a highly ritualized day in the United States and other Western cultures.   Now Valentine’s Day, rather than serving as a memorial to a martyred saint, has become a feast of love.  Adult lovers celebrate it with everything from jewelry to store-bought Valentine’s cards to sweet treats to hand-written poetry to lace and lingerie to sex.  Meanwhile, the ritual of sharing some sentiment of “love” is taught early to children, who create Valentine’s card boxes as art projects and exchange miniature Valentine’s cards with all of their classmates.  Whatever its actual origins, and regardless of its actual connection to the man named Valentine, the Western rituals of Valentine’s Day won’t be going away anytime soon.

From my perspective as a liturgist, the lesson of St. Valentine is this: don’t underestimate the power of a retold story to change a community’s ritual, even if the community is as large as the Western world.  If the likes of Chaucer decided your life were worthy of a retelling centuries after your death, what rituals might spring up around you? 

Courtesy of “Presbyterian Voices for Justice” Facebook page

 

Woman Hands Out Fat Shaming Notes to Kids so She's not Seen as the 'Mean Lady' -- Oh.

Perhaps by now you've seen this?

Now, you might this this is some spoof out to rile the social justice warriors. I admit, I wasn't sure at first. But no. This is a real note, courtesy of Cheryl from Fargo, North Dakota. In fact, here she is on y94 defending her decision.

The DJ asks her why she doesn't just give out healthy alternatives, and her reply is that she doesn't want to be the mean lady. So she'll give all the kids candy, and the ones she deems overweight will also be getting this incredibly well worded, and caring, note.

There are so many things wrong with this I hardly know where to start.

Let's first define "concern trolling" okay? Since apparently a lot of people don't seem to understand the concept.

Concern Trolling: "A person who posts on a blog thread, in the guise of "concern," to disrupt dialogue or undermine morale by pointing out that posters and/or the site may be getting themselves in trouble, usually with an authority or power. They point out problems that don't really exist. The intent is to derail, stifle, control, the dialogue. It is viewed as insincere and condescending." --Urban Dictionary

Now, this is a case of in real life concern trolling. The woman holds herself up to be helping the community by inserting a note which she finds to be "well-meaning" into those people's hands that she finds unhealthy. She has put herself into a dialogue that didn't exist, is controlling it, and wants to be seen as the good guy.

Here's why she can't do that:

1) It's none of her business. Halloween is an opt-in holiday. Think Halloween candy makes kids fatter and you can't stand it? Opt out. Leave your porch light off. It's as simple as that. Or as the DJ suggested, give out something you consider healthy. The kids won't care. They're there for the costumes and festivities. If they ever even do care about what kind of candy they got, it's long after the fact, and they won't even remember you. Repeat this to yourself: you are not that big a deal.

2) Parents have eyes. They can see their own children, they know what their children weigh moreso than even you do, and they have deemed it appropriate to allow their kids to partake in the collection of candy this year. They don't need you to tell them what they can see. They don't need you to tell them what they should do.

3) Collection of candy. That's as far as you see. For all you know that family is donating their stash this year. Or not. Not your business.

4) I happen to be a fairly thin, muscular woman--a woman some people would say is in great shape. I've  eaten four bags of Halloween candy in the past two weeks. Meanwhile, I know people struggling with their weight who have eaten nothing but wholesome, doctor-approved diets in that time. Point being, thin people do not represent healthy people necessarily. Those thin kids you're referencing in your note could have far worse diets and exercise than the ones you consider to be overweight.

5) Kids of trick-or-treating age are just coming into the stage where they learn about people like you, who will judge them for what they look like as opposed to for who they are. They've not yet built the walls of self-confidence around themselves, and reading a note like this could have a very definite and a very negative impact on them. They could accidentally allow you to define them. They could lose their sense of self and start judging who they are by what you think of them. They could then pattern this for years, becaoming more and more unhappy with themselves, always feeling inadequate, no matter how much they accomplish. These kids, they don't know you don't matter. So you have to act like you do. Because you might to them. And if that's the case, wouldn't you rather be the person who shored someone up when they were feeling insecure rather than pushed them down into the depths of self-doubt and worry?

In summation, here's a PSA. Happy Halloween, everybody! Remember this year to not be a total douchecanoe when handing out candy to the joyous children happy to be out and about and proud of their costumes.


 

If Then What

A calm has been ushered into this house since Halloween passed last week.  A calm strong enough to overcome the wacky sugar highs my children can get off of one piece of fun-sized candy.  A calm so soothing, I feel as if the past year of non-sensical toddler tyranny has been leading up to this reward and has been worth it.

It is the calm of bribery.

At 27 months, my children are finally able to understand a core concept of life: If you do this thing, then you can have that thing.

This takes on many variations throughout the day, and my children are patient enough with me that I can put them off several times before having to come up with the goods, which keeps actual candy consumption to a minimum. 

So that our morning often sounds like this:

"Pop."

"No, no pops until after breakfast.  You have to eat breakfast first.  Then we're going for a walk.  So, you can have a pop after your walk."

There is no tantrum, no frenzy of tears, no acting out.  There is only a quiet acceptance that lollipops will eventually be had.

"Choca mook."

"No, no chocolate milk until after dinner.  You know that.  You have to eat your dinner first."

How many meals these days are eaten solely on the promise that treats are coming?  I used to dread meals.  I didn't even want to feed my kids, such was the ordeal.  But with the simple addition of bribery, mealtime went from a time of cajoling, begging, threatening my kids to take a bite, to a quiet time of happiness as the babies think of their treats to come, and I look at their full bellies with approval.

Is bribery the best way to raise your kids?  Absolutely not.  Is it the best way to get a two year old to put her toys away quietly?  In my experience, yes.  Bribery is just another link on the chain of baby evolution.  I look on it as a celebration of their development rather than a weakness in my parenting style.  As they understand more and more of the world around them, the bribery will become less obvious.  It will look more like simple understanding of cause and effect.  After all, don't we all do things based on the hope that something better is coming along?  It's a pity we can no longer be satisfied with a mini Snickers bar.

So, parents who have children not quite at this age, be comforted.  The age of bribery and understanding is coming, and it is beautiful here.

Only one storm cloud lingers in the distance, and that's the question: what happens when we run out of Halloween candy?