Dear Kid,

Have you heard about powdered caffeine? It’s the latest scary substance to hit college campuses.

Lets’ start with the basics: Avoid powdered caffeine.

Let me be clear. Caffeine isn’t great, but it isn’t hideously awful (unless you’re trying to quit caffeine—which I can tell you from personal experience is No Fun Whatsoever). I, myself, personally have gone back to drinking coffee. And Diet Coke. And sometimes tea.

I’ll be honest. I am addicted (see above comment about quitting).

But a cup of coffee (or two) or even a bunch of cups of coffee the morning of a big final are not what I’m talking about. Worst case with too many Stbx, you’re going to get jittery, and have an acid stomach, and be awake to enjoy your jittery stomach.

With caffeine powder, however, there is a good chance you won’t be around to be awake. And while sleeping thr

ough side effects is a little unkind, being dead through side effects is just downright rude.

The facts:

• Caffeine is a drug albeit one that is regulated like a dietary supplement when it’s regulated at all.
• A 12 ounce Diet Coke has about 45 milligrams of caffeine.
• An 8 oz cup of coffee has about 95 milligrams of caffeine.
• One grande Starbucks coffee (16 oz) has about 330 milligrams of caffeine (even their decaf has a lot of caffeine).
  

• Experts say you should have no more than 600 milligrams of caffeine per day.
• 5,000 to 10,000 milligrams is considered lethal (let me repeat: LETHAL).
• The serving size for powdered caffeine is 1/16 of a teaspoon. The smallest measuring spoon I own is ¼ teaspoon.
• One teaspoon of powdered caffeine (which looks like oh so reasonable an amount), has over 2,300 milligrams of caffeine (think 25 cups of coffee. All at once.).
• Two regular spoonfuls of powdered caffeine is the same as chugging 70 Red Bulls. Which is unhealthy for more reasons than I care to write about.

Stay away from powdered caffeine and get your jitters the old fashioned way.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Listen my child and you shall hear
Of a meal we ate when you weren’t here.

I thought of writing the whole blog in poem, but by the third line of my attempt I’d gone from Paul Revere’s Ride to A Visit From St. Nicholas (Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!) and the scan had gotten hopelessly mixed up in my head. Back to narrative.

Last night we went out to dinner. Turns out you need to make reservations more than 20 minutes in advance if you want to take 6 people to dinner on a Saturday night at a trendy spot. We went to Bonefish Grill (which I like very much but I’d been to before and I’d hoped to try one of the new restaurants in town. Apparently so did a lot of other people.).

Puppy: You didn’t take me
Me: You had dinner at home
Puppy: I could have eaten if you’d taken me
Me: You were napping
Puppy: Only after you left me at home!
Me: (I am not going to mention they don’t let dogs in. I am not going to mention they don’t let dogs in. I am not going) Want to play with a toy?
Puppy: I love toys!

I had planned to take photos of dinner and share our culinary experience that way. It was a perfect plan except for the part about me remembering to take photos which I forgot. Completely.

So imagine, if you will, hummus and potsticker appetizers, delightful salads (for some of us), warm bread, delicious entrees, and sparkling conversation. I wouldn’t have known how to photograph the sparkling conversation anyway.

Puppy: Do I have sparkling conversation?
Me: ummm…
Puppy: Scratch me
Me: Yup, that sparkles
Puppy: See? You should have taken me

All in all, a lovely evening.

Puppy: Except for the part about me not going.
Me: I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it was still a lovely evening.
Puppy: Except for the part about me not going.

Except (according to some) for the part about Booker not going.

Hope your day is sparkling.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

I have a new favorite dish and its name is Shakshukah.

This is how you make Shakshukah.

Since it’s a tomato based dish, the first thing to do is go outside and see if there are any ripe tomatoes. It turns out there are several that are almost ready but prefer to remain on the vine for a while so you add to your plans a stop at the farmer’s market to get tomatoes.

Once you have tomatoes and have decided that the rest of the ingredients are as assembled as they are ever going to be, you begin.

Boil a pot of water that’s big enough to hold all the tomatoes. Get distracted, forget about the pot, and eventually realize that half the water has boiled off. Sigh. Once you have an actual pot of boiling water, put the tomatoes in and turn off the heat. After some number of minutes (“I think maybe a few more minutes would be good” says Tal), scoop the tomatoes out. Try not to burn yourself. The skins will peel right off. They are even easier to peel when someone else (Tal) peels them.

Chop a couple of cloves of garlic. Better yet, have someone else (Tal) chop several cloves of garlic while you see about cleaning up some of the dishes that have been left in the sink.

Heat some oil in a large pan. Watch Tal add the garlic and stir. After a few minutes, watch her add the tomatoes and mash them up. Add about “that much” from a can of diced tomatoes. Add 2 heaping tablespoons of tomato paste. Watch Tal stir.

Season the mixture with some of the spices that Tal brought. (We added two tablespoons of spice and some salt and pepper. After the whole thing cooked for about 15 minutes we tasted and added more spice. Then we congratulated ourselves on being smart enough to taste before moving on.)

Get out the eggs. Consult about how many eggs are necessary. The recipe said 8 eggs, Tal said 5, and the pan said 6. We went with the pan’s idea. Break each egg into a bowl and gently slide the egg on top of the well-stirred tomato mixture. Cover the pan partway and let the eggs cook about 5 minutes. Check the eggs and decide they definitely need more time than that. Give them another 5 minutes or so and decide they’re done.

Serve with bread. You put the Shakshukah on your plate and then pile it on a piece of bread and YUM!

If you are a very good child, I shall make it for you sometime.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Once upon a time there was the Kalahari desert. This is important because without the Kalahari they couldn’t have made the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy. And that would be sad.

About 5,000 years ago there was nothing in the Kalahari except sand and one coke bottle (see The Gods Must Be Crazy). Then there was a watermelon. And the people liked the watermelon so much that many, many more watermelon followed.

The Egyptians thought watermelon were so dandy-wonderful that they drew pictures of them on walls (the term hieroglyphics is from the root “hi” as in near the top of the wall, “rog” as in rogue graffiti artists, and “lyphs” as in I hope I don’t get caught drawing on the walls). The Egyptians didn’t have good graffiti removal techniques which is why hieroglyphics still exist.

The Egyptians also put watermelons in the tombs with dead kings because one never knows when royalty will get a hankering for watermelon.

Fast forward to the 10^th century when watermelon (and possibly watermelon shooters) had made their way to China. It took that long because travel was slow in those days and watermelon are not known for having large stockpiles of cash with which to travel. China is currently the number one producer of watermelons on the planet.

Dad’s garden is currently last on the list of watermelon producers having yielded (so far this year) exactly one (slightly under-ripe) fruit.

The US is fifth in watermelon production but according to Guinness (the records people not the beer people) the world’s heaviest watermelon was grown in Arkansas in 2005. It weighed 268.8 pounds (most of which was water weight).

Early explorers used watermelons as canteens. This is the first recorded instance of yuppy flavored water and the forerunner of Mio!.

There are over 200 kinds of watermelon grown in the US and Mexico. The most popular are the ones somebody else carries.

There are many recipes for Interesting Things to Do With Watermelon. I am not reproducing any of them here, since (a) my favorite is watermelon, cut with knife, served with a napkin and (b) My Friend the Internet has already documented every possible watermelon recipe imaginable.

Watermelon makes me think of summer and grilling out and summer and seed fights and summer and early fall.

What’s your favorite way to eat watermelon?

Love, Mom

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Dear Kid,

Once upon a time, there was no such things as popcorn. Then movies were invented and popcorn took over cinemas (cinemi?) in the blink of a kernel.

Popcorn pops because each kernel contains a teeny tiny drop of water put there by the popcorn fairies just before the corn is picked.

As the kernel heats up (either in my 1980s hot air popper or your popping conveyance of choice), the water begins to expand (that part is true. So is the part about me still using my 1980s hot air popper). When it hits 212 degrees, the water turns to steam which changes the starch inside the kernel into (and I’m quoting here) “a superhot gelatinous goop.” Oh, yum.

The kernel continues to heat up. When it reaches 347 degrees, the pressure is 135 pounds per square inch and the hull BURSTS open. I do not know why 134 pounds per square inch is insufficient pressure, but apparently thems the facts.

In the mini-popcorn explosion, the steam is released, the soft starchy goop inflates, spills out, and cools immediately (and if you’ve ever touched a piece of popcorn right after it’s popped, you know that “cools immediately” is a relative term).

Archeologists (people who put the past in front of them) have found popcorn kernels (probably the unpopped kind) in caves in New Mexico that are more than 4,000 years old. Both the popcorn and the caves, but not the archeologists. This important discovery suggests that movies have been around much longer than previously thought.

It is a little known fact that legislation passed by the popcorn fairy lobby requires a certain percentage of unpoppable corn in each batch. Some people call these unpopped kernels “old maids.” Other people are smart enough to keep their mouths shut. Popcorn fairies think it is hilarious to watch people bite down on hard kernels in the middle of movies. No one knows why but smart people don’t mess with anyone blessed with wings and magic.

I think I’ll go make use of my 1980s hot air popcorn popper now.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Do you know where the phrase “cool as a cucumber” came from? Neither did I but I decided to find out.

My first stop was our garden. After crawling through the sunflowers (that’s another story), I found the cucumbers. The cucumbers weren’t nearly as warm as I’d expected (the sunflowers provide a LOT of shade), but they weren’t exactly icy (the 90 degree heat may have had something to do with it).

“What makes you guys so cool?” I asked. One cucumber pushed back his sunglasses, but overall they said nothing. I turned to the sunflowers. “Are cucumbers really the coolest vegetable in the garden?” The sunflowers gave me a look that said “Duh. Not even The Fonz is that cool.”

According to My Friend the Internet, “cool as a cucumber” refers to cucumbers’ ability to cool the temperature of the blood. Also, when you put slices of cucumber on your eyes, the cukes really do cool the blood (and lessen swelling). Very cool.

What’s even cooler is that if you have stinky breath, you can take a slice of cucumber, press it to the roof of your mouth for 30 seconds (hold it there with your tongue), and voila! lovely breath. Seriously cool.

On the warmer side of cool, if you’re stressed (what? A college kid stressed out? Say it isn’t so) the steam released from boiling cucumbers in water creates a soothing aroma.

Need some energy? Forget the energy drinks (seriously, for-get the energy drinks—they are seriously bad for you). Cucumbers are loaded with vitamin B, carbs, and fairy dust—the perfect energy source.

Not that a college student would ever drink too much, but on the off chance that you ever meet a college student who imbibes a bit too much, hand him a cuke or two. Cucumbers contain sugars, the aforementioned B vits, electrolytes, and fairy dust all of which replenish all the parts of your body that had to move aside when the beer came in. Much better than waking up with a royal hangover.

Best of all, cucumbers are delicious!

Stay cool, baby.

Love, Mom