Best Matzo Balls Ever

The best matzo balls I've ever eaten are made by my grandmother, Nana Melonosky. They are light as cumulus clouds with a deep flavor and an "al dente" bite. On a recent visit to Brooklyn, I spent a few glorious hours in my Bubby's kitchen making the perfect bowl of Passover matzo ball soup.

Leaden versus fluffy? Nana has a strong opinion. She reminded me that a hard-centered matzo ball killed my Uncle Murray Mazer back in 1987. An autopsy revealed that a leaden matzo ball had become lodged in his colon, causing "blockage and such pain, you shouldn't know from." Carbon dating traced the ball back to April 1957. The dried parsley and club soda identified my Aunt Sheila as the most probable suspect.

I asked Nana if her secret was club soda.

"Uch! That farshimmelt idea wasn't new in the 50's. Drek mit leiber. Come tatelleh, let bubby show you how to make the best matzo balls ever."

So that you may serve your family a bowl full of love and deliciousness during the coming holidays, I have translated my Nana's pinches of this and handfuls of that into a recipe you can duplicate in your home.

Nana's Perfect Passover Matzo Balls

Preparation Time: 6 hours

2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup matzo meal
4 eggs separated, whites beaten to soft peaks
A shmear of chicken schmaltz (rendered chicken fat)
1/2 cup finely minced white onions (use a grater)
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1. In a large bowl combine all ingredients except the egg whites and onions.

2. Carefully fold in the egg whites.

3. In a large frying pan render down 1/2 pound bacon, preferably wood-smoked. Discard bacon. Cook the onions in the bacon fat until translucent. Add everything to the bowl and barely combine.

4. Refrigerate for 3 hours or overnight.

5. Fill your biggest pot with water and bring to boil. With wet hands, form the mixture into the size and shape of one of Natalie Portman's pert breasts. Put gently in the pot. Repeat. Cook for 45 minutes.

Serves: 6 hungry bulvans, 4 drowsy alta kockers, 3 gentiles, and 4 kvetching yentas with their "Uch, can I get a half a ball, bubbellah? They go straight to my hips and no carrots, they give me gas."

I was shocked when I saw Nana use the flour and the bacon. Nana explained, " The goyim know a thing or too about making dumplings so I borrowed some ideas. The flour lightens up the matzo balls. You add matzo meal to water, whatta you get? You get concrete! Good for making pyramids, not so good for fluffy matzo balls. And the bacon? What isn't better with bacon?"

I asked her about keeping Kosher, especially during Passover. Nana gave an argument worthy of a Talmudic scholar, "Everyone starts out being good but by the third day? Enough with this matzo already. If you're gonna cheat anyway, why ruin a perfectly good seder? As Rabbi Jose, the Gallilean said, "What they don't know, won't hurt them."

Given that this is my Jewiest post ever I'm providing my non-Jewish readers with a Yiddish glossary.

Bubby - grandma
Farshimmelt - confused, mixed up
Drek mit leiber - shit with liver
Tatelleh - little father, affectionate
Schmear - dollop
Shmaltz - in this instance, chicken fat
Alta kocker - literally, an old shit or old fart
Bulvan - man built like an ox
Kvetching - complaining
Yenta - gossipy female
Uch - oh my
Bubellah - sweatheart usually used for grandchildren
Goyim - gentiles
Leybikhe - lioness



A younger Nana Melonosky looking like the star of "The Leybikhes of Grossingers." No comments about her sexy feet, please.

Cell Phones in Bathrooms: A Question for Miss Manners

I just walked into the bathroom at work. It was empty except for a guy talking loudly on his cellphone. I bellied up to the urinal and began unzipping. The guy was talking business to a woman. The woman's voice was almost as loud as his. This was a formal business conversation. It was not his wife/girlfriend/co-worker/buddy.

I decided to relieve my bladder. He paused. He had heard me come in for sure but hadn't missed a syllable. Now that I was urinating, I sensed some hesitance but he started talking again. It was obvious that he was pretending to be in his office.

I let it flow.

For those of you who do not frequent public men's rooms, the shape of a urinal acts like the design of a fancy opera house. The sounds resonate clearly all the way to the back row. Business guy seemed flumoxed by the gushing sound of a water main break. His delivery got less smooth.

Still, he pressed on. I was thinking, "Close the deal, man." The needle on my bladder was approaching zero.

I shook off, tucked it away and zipped up. I grabbed the handle and paused. To flush or not to flush? I could have walked away quietly assuming that business guy would tidy up for me after he was done. I could have said, "Excuse me I'm about to flush maybe you want to cover up that phone."

I decided to flush.

What should I have done, Miss Manners?

Armless Man Feeds Giraffe his Foot

Another Post Courtesy of the Huffington Post - I kid Arianna Huffington when I see her in Pilates class but her site does supply an endless assortment of crap for my blog.

Tom Villis, an armless San Diego-based motivational speaker, was photographed feeding a giraffe his foot. When asked why he fed the giraffe his foot at the world famous San Diego Zoo, Tom replied, "What was I supposed to feed him? I've already fed him both my arms."

Tom's wife Meryl said that they were saving Tom's penis for dessert.

Actual Huffington Post story here.

Glory Days - Books I Writed Part 5

More books from the box in my mom's attic.

Torpedo to Ecstasy, 1995 -- Water nymphs need love too.

A Rouladen the Hay, 1998 -- Books with German puns were publishing gold in the late 1990's. This one had a fräulein that was kleiner in the hippsen and grossen in the tittsen. And Nazis.

She'd Kill for a Maxi-Pad, 2002 -- Ever come home from work with the milk, the take-out Chinese and a box of Light Days (for use with light flow during the first and last days of her period)? Don't.

Sarah Palin is a Cow in a School Uniform

in Finland.

If you go to the Finnish Google, and type "cow in a school uniform," you get a photo of Sarah Palin from my blog. Why?

And why are SO many people in Finland looking for a cow in a school uniform today? No one was looking yesterday. I'm thinking that it might be Dress Your Cow in a School Uniform Day in Finland -- which would be pretty cool.

Throwback Thursday - Old Skool Skateboarding

Me, gleaming the cube, on my ass.

Just Too Dumb for The New Yorker

I was sitting in my dentist's waiting room searching through the worn collection of stale magazines when I found this old New Yorker:

I rarely understand today's artsy-fartsy New Yorker covers but I'm a product of New York's public schools and the State's university system. I don't know how to pronounce Dowton Abbey and don't give a damn about a bunch of toothless British nuns. I started reading a New Yorker article once...

But this cover from 1939? I got some ideas. Clearly, these were simpler times.

Two guys leaving a bar.

Two seriously daper guys -- pocket hankies, bow tie, white suits and that is one limp-ass noodle of a wrist. Subtext aplenty. The dude with the beret has an erect finger and the dude without the beret looks like he's about to lower his lips right down on it, right down until those knuckles are bouncing on his chin.

Really, I'm not the kind of homophobe that sees gay stuff everywhere -- but then there's the name of the bar, Sloppy Dick's.

I think that might be code for "Alternate Lifestyles Tolerated." And this following depiction is outrageous, even by 1939 standards.

Yikes! There's nothing subtextual about that image. If my thing moved does it mean Rick Santorum and Jesus hate me?

However, just when you think you have the thing figured out, The New Yorker fucks with your head. Just another nice watercolor of two guys hooking up in a bar and heading off to the beach, until you notice this guy.


He looks pissed. Could that be Richard, the owner of the establishment, who happens to be a messy bartender?

I left the best for last.

It's been awhile since I've seen one of those depicted on the cover of a magazine. I'm talking about the blowgun.

Is this the gayest and most racist New Yorker cover ever or is there another explanation?

And yes, I noticed the cat. That cat is either very shocked or very aroused, or both. And so am I.

An Intimate Portrait of Rick Santorum...

Made entirely of gay porn.


I don't ever repost stuff but this is great. Via Jon Hurwitz. Original at:

UnicornBooty.com

Look what he has under his chin.

Stewardesses in Jet Engines

Last month, a jet airliner was forced to emergency land in Lake Michigan because a bird was caught in one of the plane's engines. Every year hundreds of birds collide with planes. But it used to be worse. Much worse.

During the early days of the aviation industry, stewardesses were often caught in the jet engines of commercial flights. In 1972, birds and stewardesses accounted for 77% of all animal-airplane collisions.



Referred to as a SASH (Stewardess Airplane Strike Hazard), these incidents were often worse than hitting a duck. A 98-pound stewardess striking an aircraft going 150 MPH at lift-off generates the same devastating force as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie dropped from a height of 10 feet.

The first published acccount of a stewardess trapped in a jet engine occured in 1947 when Korean Air Flight 11 took off during a snow storm.

It was often said that, "Stews of a feather, flock together." Young, attractive stewardesses discovered that if they traveled in large groups their matching outfits would distract and disorient predatory pilots.

The largest number of stewardess strikes occured during the warmest months when stewardesses were most active and could often be found sunbathing on runways and airport tarmacs.

Not always fatal, these SASHs were so common that many airports maintained movable stairs to assist in removing the stewardess from the engine.

As jet engines got bigger, so did the problem.

Where previously stewardesses were trapped one at a time, the Boeing 747 would often scoop up more than one crew member.

And occasionally entire flight crews collided with engines. Sadly, there was no coffee, tea or me during this SAS flight.

A memorable incident involving Suzie and Mary Jane Stanton, twin sisters from East Hunterdon, Georgia, caught the attention of the entire nation.

Often these incidents ended in the death of the stewardess. The surprising quickness and brutality of the collisions often left the victims eerily "frozen" in time -- like the residents of Pompeii. In 1961, after an emergency landing outside of Phoenix, the crew discovered this horrific scene.

Two pretty, young sisters kissing their dad good-bye as TWA Flight 341A took off on Runway 49 bound for Miami.

This also explains the smiling faces on the stewardesses in many of the old photographs. Forgotten by most of us, prior to deregulation and 9-11, flight crews were encouraged to smile, act pleasant and treat their customers with courtesy and respect.

These photographs are gruesome evidence of a simpler, perhaps happier, time.

The following is the only existing photograph of a stewardess not smiling.

During the summer of 1962, two unrelated events convinced the world to finally address the escalating problem of stewardesses in jet engines.

A Finnish Air flight to Stockholm took off from a Helsinki Airport and inadvertantly scooped up two stewardesses and a pilot! This was the first recorded pilot-airplane collision fatality in over 25 years. While the loss of dozens of stewardesses a year was an accepted, although sad and unwelcome, hazard of the trade, pilots were considered a valuable asset by the airline industry at the time.

Closer to home, Jackie Bouvier Kennedy, the First Lady, was involved in a non-fatal collision when she was dressed a little too much like an Eastern Airlines stewardess.

A shaken President Kennedy directed the FAA (Federal Aviation Agency) to solve the stewardess problem.

Given the Jackie Incident, the FAA initially targeted airline dress code. Mini skirts were out. Hot pants were in.

Sadly, hot pants were not the solution.

Jet design was evaluated. An alert FAA investigator noticed that some joker had painted a swirly-whirly design on most of the engines. A design that could easily hypnotize an unsuspecting stewardess.

The FAA made the painting of psychedelic art and other hippy stuff onto airplanes illegal and Europe soon followed with their own guidelines.

Unfortunately, those swirly-whirly things were not the problem and hot pants fell out of favor.

The FAA was stumped -- until somebody remembered that Delta Airlines facility engineer Glenn Hughie invented the jet bridge back in 1959.

Jet bridges saved lives, stewardesses became flight attendants, and an early, forgotten chapter in the history of aviation was complete.

Yellow Fever... Catch It

I'm watching the Knick game last night on the Madison Square Garden Network (MSG) and while Walt "Clyde" Frazier was summarizing the dishin' and swishin' this image replaced the game highlights.

Wow. Is Isiah Thomas the only guy at Madison Square Garden that knows how to use photoshop?

When the camera cuts to an adorably cute Asian woman holding a sign that says "Jeremy, Me Love You Lin Time" I shake my head -- but I figure that Asians are allowed to make fun of Asian stereotypes, it's akin to African-Americans using the n-word or Jews doing the whole Jewish humor thing.

But MSG mashing up a goofy photo of their new Asian star and a fortune cookie? That's pretty damn insensitive. Remember, Confucius say, "Point of Chinese point guard not to guard point but to point to Jesus."

Was MSG just having a bad day? Then I remembered the graphic they used after the last Miami Heat game.

Note:

If you gave me basketball, a watermelon, Lebron James looking goofy and the freedom to be as racist as MSG, and told me to come up with a funny gag line, I would say, "Are you kidding me? That's too easy."

But I came up with nothing. And my goto racist guys came up with nothing too.

Somebody out there can do better, right?

The LeBron James Variety and Comedy Hour

All Hands on Deck!

Last week an All Hands On Deck Meeting popped up on my calendar. We have a new boss. I've never met him. I never will. He works 30 miles away.

I'm an office drone. I live and work in a hive of cubicles. We have no deck. We have staff meetings. So when the new boss scheduled an All Hands on Deck Meeting for last week, I metaphorically circled it on my Outlook calendar.

The morning of the All Hands on Deck Meeting it was postponed for three weeks. Our first ever All Hands on Deck Meeting will now take place in March.

I am not a sailor but when the captain tells the bosun to pipe "All Hands on Deck" I think it confers a sense of urgency to the proceedings. Something like, there's a pirate ship on the horizon, lets put up more sail and get the heck out of here or, we've got a German U-boat on the scope so we're going to need your best effort or, there's topless Playboy bunnies off the port bow, who has my binoculars?

Can an All Hands on Deck Meeting be postponed for three weeks and still be called an All Hands on Deck Meeting?

I've sent an e-mail suggesting that it be renamed a Staff Meeting. I may get to meet the new boss.

DISCLAIMER:
For the record, that's a picture of my coffee mug, and I do love my boss (wink). So, while it is true that I hate my job with a passion worthy of Mel Gibson, and it is true that my job is mind-numbingly boring, unfathomly useless and demeaning in ways that only a piss bucket boy from the 1700's would understand, it does pay the bills and I love my boss (wink).

My boss and everyone else in charge work very hard -- to make the rest of us feel small and insignificant, and miserable. But as my dad used to say, "Work is work. If it didn't suck worse than Karl Rove with a mouth full of broken glass, it wouldn't be work."

You saw the wink, right?

Glory Days - Books I Writed - Part 4

More books from the box in my mom's attic.
Log Jam at Stalag 13 Inches, 2001 -- Nothing like a big, steaming hunk of German bratwurst to satisfy the ladies.

Princess Grace Marries the Lorax, 1990 -- Very high and/or very desperate describes everyone associated with this effort.

Fantastic Voyage to her Cervix and Back, 2002 -- The last Doctor Evelyn Anderson, Lesbian OB/GYN Adventure I ever got to pen. I miss those days. I used to get ten cents a page which was good money in 2002.