In case you were wondering, this is how Queen B. sings when she’s been drinking vodka fruit shooters.
In case you were wondering, this is how Queen B. sings when she’s been drinking vodka fruit shooters.
In the theme of our (newly adopted) organic living, we would like to share with you the making of real vanilla extract. Real vanilla extract is expensive, so we have been known to purchase to the cheaper version which is imitation vanilla extract, still $4 a bottle. However, the first ingredient is water, and the second is propylene glycol – what the hell is that? The eighteenth ingredient on the list, finally (after alcohol, which was the only ingredient we recognized) was ethyl vanillin.
So we decided to make our own vanilla. If Ethyl can make vanillin, so can we! And we’ll save tons of money!!
#1 – Buy vodka. As it turns out, newly-voted-member of the mission committee at church Queen B. hunkers down next to the floorboards of the truck, while Honey purchases two fifths of their best vodka. Current savings: -$34
#2 – Buy vanilla beans. Go to Good Food Store and purchase $28 of organic vanilla beans from Madagascar, along with various all-natural supplements to assist with weight-loss, and glass bottles (no doubt organic, because they’re in the Good Food Store) to put the vanilla in. Followed by lunch special of tofu egg salad made with vegan-aise, organic hokey-pokey, dried apricots from the bulk section, and a bag of raw milk cheese curds that were eaten while shopping. Current savings: -$136
#3 – drive to Queen B’s house because she has the tools – funnels, kitchen shears, and homemade brownies – in Honey’s 13 miles-to-the-gallon truck. Stop for gas on the way. Current savings: -$170
#4 – Sample the vodka for freshness. This involves closing all the blinds so that any other members of the church mission committee don’t witness it.
The church mission committee
#5 – Bottle the vodka with 4 vanilla beans in each jar until we run out of beans. What do we do with the extra vodka?
#6 – Sample a little more vodka, to celebrate our frugality and good sense to make our own vanilla. Toast the impending ruin of the propylene glycol farmers. We could probably sell our vanilla on Etsy. Toast our future success as entrepreneurs.
#7 – After some toasts, Queen B. admits that she was known for her vodka fruit shooters in college, and would like to pass down the traditional recipe for future generations.
#8 – Out comes the blender, and the perfecting of the recipe ensues. Oh Honey we really shouldn’t let this vodka go to waste, besides, we need to drink all the evidence before your father comes home.
#9 – First try at fruit shooters. This is good stuff, but we need more pineapple juice.
#10 – Second try at fruit shooters. This is seriously yum, next batch needs more orange juice
#11 – Third try at fruit shooters. OMG this stuff is frickin’ amazing, add more vodka!
#12 – After six tries, we have the recipe just the way Queen B. thinks she remembers it.
#13 – Dad (Left Brain) calls on his way home from work, Queen B. gets the giggles and hands the phone to Honey who tells him to pick up Chinese because we’re too drunk to get anywhere near the stove to cook. Current savings: -$212
Bonus Feature: Queen B’s Perfected Fruit Shooter beverage, circa 1977.
Quantities are a little fuzzy, but we’re sure this is very close:
Pour your preferred quantities of OJ, vodka, and pineapple chunks in juice into the blender. Add a couple drops of coconut extract and ice, and blend until frothy. Stab pineapple chunks and cherries with plastic swords and add to the drink – if they land on the floor just throw them in anyway, the vodka will kill all the germs. Drink with a straw for additional effect (sucking all the vodka off the bottom).
Note – Change of business plan from Queen B. and Honey’s Etsy store – scratch selling vanilla extract, we’re going to sell frozen fruit shooter kits. This stuff is awesome!
PS – We were going to take a picture of what we did, Pinterest-style, but Queen B. wouldn’t get off the floor – she had her face plastered to the sliding glass door that had snow on the other side, trying to get rid of the gin blossoms before we took a picture, where she fell asleep.
I don’t know about you all- but for Queen B. and I, it is now that time of year again. The moment when we wake up from our Christmas-sugar-cookie-induced comas and realize that we’re fat asses. It usually comes up in a discussion a few days after Christmas, sitting at Mom’s kitchen table, eating the remains of the Christmas baking frenzy. We start the discussion with a review of past diet disasters, ending with a decision on which way to go this year.
We realized this year that between the two of us, we’ve been on every diet known to man. So as a public service, we are going to share our vast knowledge in order to help you decide which diet to do for 2012.
Atkins
HB: Well that is the diet of cheese, and I love cheese.
QB: Except that cheese binds you up, and you only lose weight when you poop.
HB: Yeah, and its a doozy when you do. Like make sure you’re at home, its going to be a three-flush incident.
QB: Oh no, you can’t poop at a friend’s house when you’re on Atkins. If you’re going to clog a toilet, you want to do that at home. In fact you should just carry the plunger with you every time you go to the bathroom, just to be safe.
HB: But on the plus side, its all-you-can-eat bacon.
QB: But after a couple tries on Atkins, you can burn out on bacon. Heed my warning, because I’m off bacon until at least 2014.
HB: And don’t forget the carb withdrawals, I wanted bread so bad that I would have eaten cardboard if it was dipped in sugar.
QB: But remember the sugar-free gum? I ate three packs of it in a day and had a bowel malfunction.
Weight Watchers
QB: Oh yes, this is my personal favorite.
HB: Until you go to the meeting, and someone gets a lifetime award for losing 12lbs.
QB: Anybody can lose 12lbs. I had a 12lb bowel movement on Atkins once.
HB: Well I’m still paying the monthly fee that I signed up for last year if you want to go again this year.
QB: Why do you have to pay even if you don’t lose weight? There should be a money-back guarantee. If you gain weight, they give you the judge-y face.
HB: Oh yeah, that time you gained 8lbs in a week. Judgmental bitches.
QB: It was fruit! They did NOT say that fruit in syrup is not actually fruit. I had 14 cans of peaches in heavy syrup, and drank the syrup. I was being healthy!
HB: Well I can’t afford to go anymore unless they start giving credit for buying crap. I have the measuring cups, scales, cookbooks, granola bars the size of postage stamps, water jugs. I have an entire Weight Watchers room in the basement.
Grapefruit and Cabbage Diet
HB: Did you know if you eat too much grapefruit, that the acid will burn your bum hole when you poop?
QB: That’s if you poop. When I tried it the gas got so bad from the cabbage, I was afraid to bend over and risk shooting grapefruit seeds out my ass like a machine gun.
HB: And the canker sores from the acid, its no joke. I had canker face.
QB: I didn’t want to say it then Honey, but you looked like a walking herpes outbreak.
Nutrisystem
HB: I looked at the food online once, and have been psycho called by their customer service department for a year and a half.
QB: That food isn’t even real. I had one of their ho-ho’s, which I think was actually plastic.
HB: Oh Mother, that’s because you were binge-eating next weeks food in the middle of the night and ate the ho-ho with the wrapper still on it.
QB: Is that what that was?
Alli
QB: I can’t afford Alli, unless we’re going to cover all the furniture with plastic. Last time you did Alli, I had to buy a new office chair.
HB: Ohhhhh, the office chair. Well my thinking was, if taking one Alli pill was good, taking two is better right? And I had gas….. But it wasn’t gas.
QB: Yeah think again. You ruined my office chair! You were popping Alli like candy, ripped one, and next thing you know we were dropping the office chair off in a midnight Goodwill stealth donation.
HB: The best part about Alli is going off of it, you can once again fart confidently.
HCG Diet
HB: The only good thing about that diet is the loading days where you eat yourself sick, on purpose.
QB: Five hundred calories a day is insanity! I can pick that many calories out of my teeth after a meal.
HB: That was the diet that you called me crying from the couch because you couldn’t eat anything and all the joy had been sucked out of your life.
QB: Speaking of sucking, we should do liposuction.
HB: Remember that liposuction cream that I had an allergic reaction to?
QB: That was Preparation H.
So this years decision is……..drumroll please……..we’re going all-organic. Stay tuned.
A Phone Call Transcript – December 17th, 2011
Queen B: Honey, really, if we are going to put a Christmas card on the blog we need to get it out soon – it’s the 17th for crying out loud!
Honey: We need a picture to put in and of the twenty-six pictures I took of us last weekend, they’re all hideous! Why weren’t you looking at the camera? Twenty six pictures and you are not looking at the camera once. Seriously Mom, what are the odds?
Queen B: Were you taking pictures? When was this, I don’t remember this?
Honey: With my phone, remember I was taking pictures of us with my phone! You know that pink and white thing that I was holding up in front of our faces??
Queen B: I thought you were texting. What’s wrong with them?
Honey: Well other than the fact that I look like I have six chins, and you look like an gray haired nut case gazing off into la-la land? Absolutely nothing.
Queen B: Fine then, just post a Christmas post without a picture if you think they’re so bad.
Honey: Mom, we have to do a picture. We are the faces of our blog, people want to see that we actually exist! I can just hear it… “Are these people real? This amount of idiocy has to be a joke, and they don’t even have a picture up…the Bunnies story? Give me a break.”
Queen B: You can hear it? Literally, you can hear it? What else are they saying, have they ever told you to do things, to hurt yourself or others?
Honey: Mom, I’m almost to your house, and when I get there I’m going to hit you over the head with one of your prize fruitcakes. Just so you know.
Queen B: Did the voices tell you to hit me with a fruitcake?
Honey: I’m pulling into the driveway, put your coat on. Cold makes things constrict, we’ll look thinner if we take a picture outside.
Queen B: It might be snowing! I’m not standing in snow in my new slippers, I don’t know where my snow-boots are. I’m only standing out there for 5 seconds. Are you wearing my scarf? Are you wearing boots? Where’s your camera?
Honey: Mom! We are taking a picture for the #*@- ing blog, and you better be looking at the #*@-ing camera this time!
*click*
Honey: Ta-da! The worst holiday photo ever!
Dear Honey, this is your Mother speaking.
Tit-for-Tat: The Christmas version? Genius! You have learned well Grasshopper! I think that we should crown each other Queen and Princess of “Tit-for-Tat World” (I will be the Queen). Then we should take a sworn solemn oath that we will never use our frighteningly evil Tit-for-Tat skills on other members of Tit-for-Tat royalty. We will need a new pact – the “Tit-for-Tat Royal Dispensation Pact”. We could even have “Royalty” meetings, where we eat brownies and share Tit-for-Tat wisdom and plan future attacks.….. ? Speaking of future attacks, I have the next one all ready to go.
Queen B: “Babe, I think we have been robbed!”
Your Father: “Huh..?”
Queen B: “Really babe, I have been cashing my checks and putting the money in my underwear drawer for Christmas, and over half of it is gone!”
Your Father: “Oh yea, I was, uh, going to tell you about that…….blah,blah,blah…..so I bought his one of a kind, Revolutionary war era, long barrel musket ….”
Queen B: “You did what???????”
Your Father (the big jerk, who already owns a closet full of damn guns): “He needed the money, he was out of work…. This can be my Christmas gift from the family. …. I can always use it to defend our home….”
Queen B: “Unless a full contingent of Civil War Reinactors march down our cul-de-sac in the next 5 seconds you only need to worry about defending yourself from me, your wife, one mad, mad Queen B!”
Your Father, the idiot: Flailing his arms, “There’s a bee in here?!? Where?! Where?!?!”
Love from your Mother, Queen B.
Dear Honey, this is your Mother speaking.
Your father started a game of “Tit for Tat” with me once. Sadly it ended with him having all the crotches cut out of his underwear.
He discovered his dilemma while dressing for work, not enough time to hit the store for a new pair. Hmmmm??? My bright boy decided to use safety pins to piece a pair back together for the day. Being a safety conscious sort of fellow he took the extra precaution of using a pliers to squeeze the heads securely shut so there would be no chance of having to explain a puncture wound to his bad boys in the emergency room. Off to work he went. “Ha-ha, very funny!” he quipped as he headed out the door.
“Tit” came later in the morning as he bent over to adjust lumbar position on his office chair. Apparently, a small portion of his scrotum got pinched in the spring portion of the safety pin. I am told that he screamed like a woman possessed, jumped out of his chair (sending it flying across the room), grabbed his privates (in front of two nurses, one other Doctor and the Hospital Administrator) and ran from the clinic with tears running down his face, in the general direction of the men’s room.
Smart enough to graduate from medical school, but stupid enough to try to play Tit for Tat with Queen B - hah!
When he recovered, your 57 year old father headed to Wal-Mart – “commando” – to buy a cheap package of Fruit of the Looms to get him through the rest of the day.
Then came “Tat”. Did you know that unwashed underwear have some sort of fabric starch on them when they arrive here from China? Either did he! Unfortunately your father found that the skin in his private region reacted negatively to this Chinese starch. Another visit to the Men’s room, and an in-depth self examination followed. He had completely broken out in an itchy, seeping rash by early afternoon. Convinced that his cut from the morning was now infected with what we like to call the “Chinese starchy terminal testicular infection” he headed to the office of one of his Medical colleagues. Presumably, in the Infectious Disease Department.
Love from your Mother,
Queen B.
Dear Mother, this is your Daughter speaking.
Apology? And groveling?! What kind of saintly mother do you think you were, Mother Teresa?
Ok, you know you started this blog advice business, by calling me out on my professions of organic-ness, because I had a freezer full of the totally un-organic Toaster Strudels. Yep, you called me out.
So Mom, I must inform you that prior to the Infamous Bunnies post, I have in fact been holding back on the blog. Because I was under the Other Pact, which is the Mother-Daughter Pact, in which I don’t talk about all the things that happened in my childhood that you don’t want to see in print.
But, the Other Pact is null and void when Tit for Tat has been invoked. Now if you want to play Tit for Tat, remember I learned from the best. 
Love you!
Honey B.
Dear Honey, this is your Mother speaking.
Actually this is your Mother not speaking – as in not speaking to you. I know this will come as a shock to you but I have not been speaking to you for over a week! I thought that you would have the courtesy to notice, but you haven’t, so I am now writing to inform you that I am no longer speaking to you. Why? Well let me explain this to you my dear Honey.
Over family life there is a veil of silence that cannot, and/or should not be broken. This veil requires all members of the family to share only touching stories, sweet and cheerful memories, and positive teachable moments from their childhood with anyone to whom you are not related. (Note: This rule also extends to your Grandmothers who at your birth both grew a judgmental bone the size of a large horn right out the top of their heads. Not to worry Honey I am almost completely sure that this will never happen to me.)
{Do the crowns hide the horns?}
This rule is called the Family Confidentiality Pact. The Pact, as I will call it, is put in place to protect the parents from being humiliated with stories of the insane lengths they have had to stoop to in order to raise you up to be the upstanding citizens that you now are. The Pact is also in place to protect you children from being yanked from our cozy little unbalanced home by Social Services when the story of …let’s see, oh yes… The Bunnies become public knowledge. The Pact cannot and/or should not be broken until the Mother and Father, both Grandmothers, any childless Aunts who never liked us, are all in fact dead.
So my dear Honey – There has been a Security Breach in La Familia. This cannot ever happen again. If this does ever happen again I will be forced to steps things up to the dreaded Tit for Tat game. (Note: Let me just say at this point that I have knowledge, Mother knowledge, from your youth, that you probably don’t want shared with the public. Eye witness accounts, pictures, and yes, even video.) Looking forward to your apology, preferably served up with a hefty helping of groveling. Oh how I love the groveling.
Love from your Mother,
Queen B.
Oh Mom, its so cute that you think Happy Hour is the worst parenting thing you’ve ever done. Allow me to take you on a walk down memory lane…
Easter morning, probably sometime in the early 90′s. As is your tradition, you made Easter baskets for us with candy and a present. The farm had rabbit hutches and we had been begging for our own bunnies, so on this lovely Easter morning our baskets held baby bunnies. One for each of us (it was just Apple and I, Ginger wasn’t born yet) and we were thrilled. I named mine Hopkins, Apple named hers Flora. We loved our baby bunnies, played with our baby bunnies, kissed the baby bunnies…our house was positively brimming with baby bunny bliss.
But now its time to go to church…our hair was curled, the matching frou-frou dresses and Easter hats, white socks with lacey edges and white patent Mary Janes…kiss the baby bunnies before you go, they will be waiting for you!
Fast forward to after church. We all tumble out of the car and are so excited to see the baby bunnies, we love the baby bunnies Mom! Dad had gone in the house first, but before we could go inside he said Girls, why don’t you play on the swingset for awhile? And so we did. Dad and Mom went inside, and a few minutes later Dad took a garbage bag to the trash bin, but we didn’t notice that…we were swinging and thinking about our bunnies!
Finally Dad says girls you can come inside, its almost time for lunch. We burst into the house, where are the bunnies, we want to play with the bunnies, we LOVE our bunnies!!
To which you and Dad uttered the words…”What bunnies? ”
The baby bunnies! Our Easter bunnies, we love our bunnies so much, where are the bunnies?
You and Mom looked at each other quizzically. What are you talking about girls, there aren’t any bunnies?
Oh but Mom yes there were, the bunnies we got for Easter! I remember the bunnies, don’t you remember the bunnies Apple? She remembers the bunnies too Dad!
The infamous Easter of 1988
And then Dad took it one devious step further- did you all DREAM that you got bunnies for Easter?
I paused and looked at Apple. Do you remember the bunnies? Apple started to cry.
But…the bunnies…we had bunnies…didn’t we?
To which you and Dad, said WOW, you all dreamt that you had bunnies! That’s the craziest thing! Well, Easter dinner is almost ready and your grandparents will be here, so go get ready for Easter pictures!
And until I was in my twenties, I thought my sister and I had both dreamt about bunnies. Until I was in my twenties, I just thought our cat Mo was a good mouser. And until I was in my twenties, I didn’t know that you and Dad would rather delude your girls into thinking we had some mind-dream connectedness, for a decade and a half, rather than explain the facts of life, the predator-hunter food chain bunny carnage that happens when you have a cat and baby bunnies.
I rest my case. And RIP Hopkins and Flora.
Honey: “Mom, what was the most awful parenting thing you have ever done that you’ve never admitted until now?”
Dear Honey,
It pains me to admit this, but I did have one bad parenting moment while raising you. Shocked? I knew you would be.
So, my dear Honey, I will tell all ……if, IF, you promise me one thing. No sharing this information with anyone I know! And for goodness sake don’t put it on the blog, those people already think I am a lunatic. Man privy? Why don’t you edit these things?
Anyway, here is what happened …… It had been a long winter on our quiet rural farm in the middle of the godforsaken frozen tundra. January, you can imagine, why do we live here anyway? You were 9, Apple B. was 5, and Ginger B. was … I don’t know … .somewhere between teething and potty training I think. Snow so high it prevented our little homeschooling family from going anywhere for weeks. I was getting a little - well, edgy.
Out of sheer boredom I had resorted to cleaning out the cupboards. I found a set of two mismatched wine glasses, some plastic cocktail swords, and a set of paper napkins that said “Dinner will be ready when the smoke detector goes off”. Probably one of your fathers attempts at humor. I was about to stick them in the Goodwill box when you found them and wanted to play.
“Fine,” I said. “you and Apple B. climb up on the stools and you can have a cocktail party while I make dinner.” I put cranberry juice in the wine glasses and called it “wine”. The kitchen island became “the bar”. And, yes we called this game “Happy Hour”.
I cut up bananas and grapes on a plate and they became hors d’ouerves. Stabbing them with your little plastic swords kept you two busy for half an hour while I cooked dinner. Fabulous! We made it a nightly event! Every afternoon at about 4:30 or so I would tell my precious little girls to “Belly up to the bar girls, it’s Happy Hour!” You would eat anything I put in front of you with those swords so the next day I cut up cucumbers and tomatoes, then carrots and lima beans. {Nice try Mom, I know we didn’t eat the lima beans} I was going to get Mother of the year for this - my kids were eating raw veggies and loving it! I couldn’t wait to share this at the mothers group. I was a genius …… until your Grandmother, my Mother-in-Law, came to visit.
She had been there for most of the afternoon. Testing you on reading and math skills while I was out of the room (she never did support the whole homeschooling thing), and checking under the couch for dust bunnies (anyone who spent all their time teaching couldn’t have a clean house). It got to be about 4:30 and I was heading to the kitchen to start dinner when I heard your sweet voice sing out…… to your very Catholic, Italian, unhappy that her only son married a Methodist, tea-toddling Grandmother …….”Belly up to the bar Gramma, it’s Happy hour!”
I don’t think there is much else to say.
Love from your Mother,
Queen B.
follow the b.