Brookstone, vibrators and the economy - wtf wednesday

We all know the economy’s gone to the crapper, but there’s nothing quite like being reminded of this in the unlikeliest of places. The husband and I went to Brookstone on Monday, because it’s the classic place where tourists go to look for idiotic presents to bring home after their trips (although, some things I’ve gotten from there have been pure genius). We made our selection and went to pay, and I was a little surprised to see the checkout kid put the person in front of me’s purchases in a Whole Foods grocery bag. I paid and since I had a few things I saw the kid look around in a panic, and then he phewed in relief and picks up a large, worn, battered, clearly used brookstone bag and puts my stuff in it. At the questioning look on my face he answers: oh, we ran out of our bags right before Christmas, but we didn’t get our new bag budget until January 1^st and we still don’t have any bags, we’ve been using old grocery bags but I’ve finished them today so we’re really happy when someone returns something and we can keep their bags!  Really? Brookstone, you sell a whole lot of pretty useless crap, how bout investing in some bags for the people buying your merchandise?

Also, on the way out we notice this display:

Now, we all know that 99% of the time “personal massagers” are vibrators in disguise for politically correct stores, but seriously the “disguise” part’s totally blown on this one! So, Brookstone, maybe less vibrators and more shopping bags in the future.

I was going to link up with Poppy at Funny or snot for WTF wednesday, but she's not doing the linky anymore... sigh.

Stuff that drives me nuts (yet again)

I recently mentioned that I was doing a sort of detox by basically eliminating wheat, dairy, eggs, corn, sugar, soy and peanuts from my diet, and shockingly I’m still at it. 

Though to be honest I’m a little lax on the eggs and sugar part, I’m avoiding them but I’ll have mayo (eggs) or chocolate (sugar) sometimes. Anyway, I’m not missing bread too much anymore, I can live without the cheese (I can have goat cheese) and I’ve found alternative pastas that I can eat (buckwheat pasta, mainly), what I do miss with a passion is baking. So the other day I had the most amazing, gorgeous, wonderful fresh blueberries and I got a humongous hankering for blueberry pie. Can’t have pie, as pie crust has wheat, so what to do?

Well, I went a-searching for a wheatless pie crust, found one, made the pie (recipe here) and all was well in my world. For like, three minutes. I then got a hankering for pancakes, and sponge cake, and donuts, of all things. So I hit the internet again and found this Babycakes cookbook. Babycakes is a bakery in NY (also in other cities now) that is mostly gluten and dairy free and gets great reviews especially for their donuts. Anyone who can make a convincing fake donut is a baking goddess in my book so I zipped over to amazon and got myself a copy.

I haven’t hit the oven yet because the author is very specific about certain ingredients and I’m working on finding them or somehow getting them over here. 

But this is what drives me nuts: she goes on and on about how precise one must be with measurements and which measuring cups are better than others and so on and so forth, for pages and it just made me want to yell at her “for crying out loud, lady, you’re a professional baker! If you want the rest of us to make accurate measurement put the freaking weight on there along with the cups and spoons”. Seriously, flour can be closely packed or loose, even when sifted (which she doesn’t specify) it can have a different density every time but the weight will always be the same, sometimes when pouring you can get a little more, or less sugar in a measuring cup but the weight will always be the same. I’m pretty sure that anyone who’s willing to invest in specialty flours and top of the line ingredients to make freaking muffins probably has a digital scale in their kitchen and if not is likely willing to buy one.

Phew, so glad I got that off my chest! I just hate it when people are adamant about something and then basically do the exact opposite of what they’re asking you to do. WTF lady, help us novice bakers out here!

Linking up with WTF wednesday over at Funny or Snot.