Whoa.

It seems I've not only neglected my blog, but abaonded it all together. Mi malo, y'all.

Other than the fool in TX attempting to steal my butter ball glory, not much has happened in my little life. I do have to say that reading all of the people who responded to stories defending my honor and that of the wayward butter balls, made my heart warm. I was supposed to appear on a local news show, but alas, they had more important things to report. Or they just don't realize the gem of a story they have on butter balls - I mean, it's been years and people are not only still talking about it, but trying to steal the recipe. Oh, well...I guess no one is really interested in reporting the truth. shocking. truly shocking.

There is a new boy in my life. We'll see how things go with that. Jury is still out. It's very possible that I'm just being protective of my heart. Hmmmm....

My friend Dana's dad is battling pancreatic cancer and has entered hospice care. My company had a $5 jeans day to raise money to help with his care. We raised over $300! It was very heartwarming to know I work for a company that recognizes an employee in need and does something about it.

My baby sister and her family came down for Thanksgiving. My 6-year old nephew dubbed the butter we were rubbing on the turkey, "turkey lotion" and the beaters from the whipped cream, "wish cream sticks". They were only here for a day, but we all had the best time. The best part was that they were a surprise for our mom. Seeing her drop to her knees and scoop up my nephew and cover him in kisses was a beautiful thing to see.

I have to say, I am so grateful that I held on to all the holiday crafts my daughter made over the years. My home was covered in turkeys made by tiny hands, turkeys made out of pinecones and feathers and little notes in wobbly handwriting of why she was thankful.

And now, I get to cover my house in snowflakes, fingerpaintings and crafts made by a little girl who knew the wonder and magic of Christmas. I love being surrounded by all the reminders of when my almost-grown-up was a "baby". This is the way to decorate for the holidays!

My holiday plans include baking a silly amount of cookies, going to the boat parade at Tempe Town Lake, taking baby girl to the Nutcraker, winter concert at baby girl's choir, and wishing the world peace.

I'm off now to review Yahoo! and other news sources for some good, slighty off, news stories to comment on.

Peace and good wishes, y'all!

Ahhhh...Fall in Arizona

First day in I don't know how long that I didn't have to use the A/C in my car. It was so cool I left the doors open to let the fresh air in. Absolutely craptastic day at work, had to bake chocolate chip cookies to soothe my soul. *ack*

Oh No He Di'n't!

I’ve been watchin' the reports about that a man in Texas who won an award at the state fair for his culinary concoction: Deep Fried Butter.

He obviously doesn't know that the original creator of Deep Fried Butter Balls is me. The nerve.

If you'll remember, three years ago, on a dare, I created deep fried butter? And, through a series of goofy events, I ended up on Paula Deen’s show “Paula’s Party” (episode: “Everything is Better with Butter”). You can even find the recipe on the Food Network website!

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/paulas-fried-butter-balls-recipe/index.html

Here’s a link to my blog and how the butter balls came about…

http://poyju.blogspot.com/2007/04/deep-fried-butter-balls.html

What put the bee in my bonnet is Letterman's Top Ten last night was about Deep Fried Butter.

Game on.

That fool in TX should've never messed with a SPQ. I have a tiara and I ain't a-skairt to use it.

This just in...

Farmers issue warning after fatal cow attacks (dead cows can attack people? I feel a ‘B’ movie coming on..)

LONDON (Reuters) – The deaths of no fewer than four people (wouldn’t that make it…four?) after being trampled by cows in the past two months has prompted Britain's main farming union to issue a warning about the dangers of provoking the normally docile animals. (How does one ‘provoke’ a cow, exactly? Do you ask it, “Got Milk?”)

Cows can become aggressive and charge, especially when calves are present and walkers are accompanied by dogs (wait a minute…since when do walking aids need dogs to accompany them? Are they blind?), said the National Farmers Union (NFU).

The union and the Ramblers' Association (I’m going to need clarity here – is this an association for people who like to ‘ramble’ along a path or an association for a car?) both advise that walkers release dogs from their leads when passing through a field of cows.

"The cattle are interested in the dog, not the walker," said Robert Sheasby, Rural Surveyor at the NFU. (ah...I see match.com has branched out)

"As the cattle try to get the dog (like in a game of tag?), there's a high chance they will get the walker too." (Captain Obvious here...who the sam hill goes and walks their dog in a cow pasture!?)

Britain has 7.5 million cows but in the past eight years there have only been 18 deaths involving cattle (wait..”only”? are we disappointed by this number?), including bulls whose dangers are well-known. (read: Pamplona, Spain)

The current spate of attacks by cows (Coming to a theatre near you: Zombie Guernsey’s of the Damned! They only moo once.) began on the Pennine Hills on June 21, when Liz Crowsley, a veterinary surgeon from Warrington, was crushed against a wall and then trampled underfoot while out walking with her two dogs.

On July 15, another attack took place in Derbyshire, when Barry Pilgrim, a 65-year old from the area, was trampled to death by a cow as his wife looked on. (yeah…something tells me this wasn’t an “accident”.)

Three days later, Anita Hinchey, a 63-year-old, was walking her dog near Cardiff when a cow attacked her and trampled her to death. (Holy Crap! There’s a Bovine Mafia taking out octogenarians!)

The fourth fatal attack claimed the life of Harold Lee, a 75-year-old farmer from Burtle in the West Country. He was killed by his own herd, which may have been made nervous by the siren of a passing ambulance. (*snork* did they think it was coming for them so they decided to take out the only witness to their crimes?)

The risk is especially high in the spring when many of the calves are only a month or two old and the mothers are therefore especially protective, the NFU said. (WTF? Are they cross breeding cows with crocodiles?)

"It's to do with spring and autumn calving," said Sheasby.

"In the autumn, cattle will be coming into winter housing but in spring you want them out grazing the grass." (umm….duh?)

Cow-charging incidents received extended coverage when former Home Secretary David Blunkett was attacked by one in June as his guide dog led him across a field in England's Peak District. (What a Gulli-BULL! What a nin-COW-poop!)

Blunkett broke a rib and was heavily bruised but survived. (I bet he never hears the phrase “Beef: It’s what’s for dinner” the same way anymore.)

Deja Moo - The Feeling I've Heard this Bull Before

Calf in Colorado born with 7 legs, 2 spines
May. 23, 2009 12:44 PMAssociated Press

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. - It's an unlucky No. 7 for a calf born with a few extra legs in Colorado.


The Steamboat Pilot & Today of Steamboat Springs reports that a veterinary hospital helped deliver a seven-legged calf Thursday. (Big deal. Steve Madden has been breeding turkeys with eight legs for years.)

The staff at the Steamboat Veterinary Hospital said the Black Angus calf, which was delivered by cesarean section, had two spines but one head. One leg also had two hooves.

The calf lived for only about 10 minutes.


Veterinarian Lee Meyring says the birth was an incomplete splitting of the embryo into twins.
He says he had previously seen a calf with a fifth leg, but the seven-legged calf was the most bizarre he has seen. (Dude. There was a kitten with TWO faces! That's pretty bizarre. He really need to start reading the Oddball News on Yahoo!)


The hospital says the calf's owners do not want to be identified. (However, the owner was identified as having a giant white ball for a head and was traveling with about a dozen tiny cowboys. See picture/video below).





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xXkmvrT_e8

Flippin' AWESOME!

http://video.yahoo.com/network/100000089?v=4816051&l=100022574

Truth in Advertising

I'm all for truth in advertising. But...seriously?

And, you will never catch me driving a car with the words "butt paste" emblazened on it for all the world to see.

Are You Ready for Some Football?

To get in the mood for today's big game, I thought I'd post a picture from media day. Now, what's great about this picture isn't just the fab-u-lous outfit the "reporter" is sportin', but the look on the players face.

It really does just sum up what I'm certain everyone is thinking - What the sam hill are you wearing!? Don't you have any friends?

Honestly, this girl not only needs friends...she needs Jesus and a nap! OH wait. I just noticed the logo on her mike. She's from Telemundo. And the world makes sense again.

GO CARDS!

Paula Deen's Mafia

It seems Paula Deen has her own Mafia. You can spot members of said mafia by the license plate on their cars. Below is one exapmle.

http://poyju.blogspot.com/2007/12/paula-deen-groupies.html

This plate was discovered by my baby sister in San Diego. Apparently, the main goal of Paula's Butter Mafia is to spread (get it? spread? haha) Paula's deep and un-natural love of butter.

So, if you see someone driving a car with a license plate that references butter and/or Miss P's catch phrase ~ watch out! You may find yourself pelted with deep fried butter balls should you deny your alliegence to butter's creamy goodness.

Bacon Explosion - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

All y'all need to shut up about my deep fried butter balls. What cracks me up most about the picture is the image in the background. It's a Bacon Explosion McMuffin. And, as the name states, I'm sure your ass would explode after eating this.

***********************************************************

Take Bacon. Add Sausage. Blog.
The Bacon Explosion is a rolled concoction that can be baked or cooked in a smoker.
By DAMON DARLIN
Published: January 27, 2009

FOR a nation seeking unity, a recipe has swept the Internet that seems to unite conservatives and liberals, gun owners and foodies, carnivores and ... well, not vegetarians and health fanatics.
Certainly not the vegetarians and health fanatics.

This recipe is the Bacon Explosion, modestly called by its inventors “the BBQ Sausage Recipe of all Recipes.” The instructions for constructing this massive torpedo-shaped amalgamation of two pounds of bacon woven through and around two pounds of sausage and slathered in barbecue sauce first appeared last month on the Web site of a team of Kansas City competition barbecuers. They say a diverse collection of well over 16,000 Web sites have linked to the recipe, celebrating, or sometimes scolding, its excessiveness. A fresh audience could be ready to discover it on Super Bowl Sunday.

Where once homegrown recipes were disseminated in Ann Landers columns or Junior League cookbooks, new media have changed — and greatly accelerated — the path to popularity. Few recipes have cruised down this path as fast or as far as the Bacon Explosion, and this turns out to be no accident. One of its inventors works as an Internet marketer, and had a sophisticated understanding of how the latest tools of promotion could be applied to a four-pound roll of pork.
The Bacon Explosion was born shortly before Christmas in Roeland Park, Kan., in Jason Day’s kitchen. He and Aaron Chronister, who anchor a barbecue team called Burnt Finger BBQ, were discussing a challenge from a bacon lover they received on their Twitter text-messaging service: What could the barbecuers do with bacon?

At the same time, Mr. Chronister wanted to get attention for their Web site, BBQAddicts.com. More traffic would bring in more advertising income, which they needed to fund a hobby that can cost thousands of dollars.

Mr. Day, a systems administrator who has been barbecuing since college, suggested doing something with a pile of sausage. “It’s a variation of what’s called a fattie in the barbecue community,” Mr. Day said. “But we took it to the extreme.”

He bought about $20 worth of bacon and Italian sausage from a local meat market. As it lay on the counter, he thought of weaving strips of raw bacon into a mat. The two spackled the bacon mat with a layer of sausage, covered that with a crunchy layer of cooked bacon, and rolled it up tight.

They then stuck the roll — containing at least 5,000 calories and 500 grams of fat — in the Good-One Open Range backyard smoker that they use for practice. (In competitions, they use a custom-built smoker designed by the third member of the team, Bryant Gish, who was not present at the creation of the Bacon Explosion.)

Mr. Day said his wife laughed the whole time. “She’s very supportive of my hobby,” he said.
The two men posted their adventure on their Web site two days before Christmas. On Christmas Day, traffic on the site spiked to more than 27,000 visitors.

Mr. Chronister explained that the Bacon Explosion “got so much traction on the Web because it seems so over the top.” But Mr. Chronister, an Internet marketer from Kansas City, Mo., did what he could to help it along. He first used Twitter to send short text messages about the recipe to his 1,200 Twitter followers, many of them fellow Internet marketers with extensive social networks. He also posted links on social networking sites. “I used a lot of my connections to get it out there and to push it,” he said.

The Bacon Explosion posting has since been viewed about 390,000 times. It first found a following among barbecue fans, but quickly spread to sites run by outdoor enthusiasts, off-roaders and hunters. (Several proposed venison-sausage versions.) It also got mentions on the Web site of Air America, the liberal radio network, and National Review, the conservative magazine. Jonah Goldberg at NationalReview.com wrote, “There must be a reason one reader after another sends me this every couple hours.” Conservatives4palin.com linked, too.
So did regular people. A man from Wooster, Ohio, wrote that friends had served it at a bon voyage party before his 10-day trip to Israel, where he expected bacon to be in short supply. “It wasn’t planned as a send-off for me to Israel, but with all of the pork involved it sure seemed like it,” he wrote.

About 30 people sent in pictures of their Explosions. One sent a video of the log catching fire on a grill.

Mr. Day said that whether it is cooked in an oven or in a smoker, the rendered fat from the bacon keeps the sausage juicy. But in the smoker, he said, the smoke heightens the flavor of the meats.

Nick Pummell, a barbecue hobbyist in Las Vegas, learned of the recipe from Mr. Chronister’s Twittering. He made his first Explosion on Christmas Day, when he and a group of friends also had a more traditional turkey. “This was kind of the dessert part,” he said. “You need to call 911 after you are done. It was awesome.”

Mr. Chronister said the main propellant behind the Bacon Explosion’s spread was a Web service called StumbleUpon, which steers Web users toward content they are likely to find interesting. Readers tell the service about their professional interests or hobbies, and it serves up sites to match them. More than 7 million people worldwide use the service in an attempt to duplicate serendipity, the company says.

Mr. Chronister intended to send the post to StumbleUpon, but one of his readers beat him to it. It appeared on the front page of StumbleUpon for three days, which further increased traffic.
Mr. Chronister also littered his site with icons for Digg, Del.icio.us and other sites in which readers vote on posts or Web pages they like, helping to spread the word. “Alright this is going on Digg,” a commenter wrote minutes after the Explosion was posted. “Already there,” someone else answered.

Some have claimed that the Bacon Explosion is derivative. A writer known as the Headless Blogger posted a similar roll of sausage and bacon in mid-December. Mr. Chronister and Mr. Day do not claim to have invented the concept.

But they do vigorously defend their method. When one commenter dared to suggest that the two hours in the smoker could be slashed to a mere 30 minutes if the roll was first cooked in a microwave oven, Mr. Chronister snapped back. “Microwave??? Seriously? First, the proteins in the meats will bind around 140 degrees, so putting it on the smoker after that is pointless as it won’t absorb any smoke flavor,” he responded on his site. “This requires patience and some attention. It’s not McDonald’s.”

It's a Soap Opera ~ FOR MEN!

Mickey Rourke to take on WWE star Chris Jericho
Jan. 28, 2009 10:16 AMAssociated Press

HOUSTON -- Listen up wrestlin' (the only way this could be better is if they said, "wrasslin' fans") fans: actor Mickey Rourke says he's ready to rumble (what does this fool think he is...a monster truck?) with WWE superstar Chris Jericho at Wrestlemania 25 in Reliant Stadium on April 5.

Rourke portrays professional wrestler Randy the Ram (I thought that was a porn stars name??) in the acclaimed movie "The Wrestler."

He's signed to wrestle Jericho, for real. (DUM...DUM....DUM!)

He made a surprise announcement Sunday night on the red carpet before the Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles. (Really, where else would one make an announcement like that? Other than while appearing on 'Dancing with the Stars', the red carpet before an awards show really is the most opportune moment.)

He said he was pleased by the acceptance of the movie by all the WWE wrestlers - except Jericho.

Then Rourke said he was going to toss Jericho "around the ring like tossed salad." (Okay...wait. Rourke used Jericho's name and the term "tossed salad" in the same sentence. Freudian slip maybe?)

Meanwhile, Jericho, appearing on WWE television, said, Rourke was out of line and that he was offended by Rourke's comments. He said Rourke made "a mistake." (ooooooooooo!)

Stay tuned. (I'm sure next week we'll find out that Rourke really isn't Mickey Rourke, but that his memory was tampered with by the dastardly Steffano and that Rourke really is Jericho's long lost father. DUM...DUM...DUM!)

Year in Review

I've been a little late posting this. But, better late than never.

I'm sure that it will come as no surprise that the most popular post was about Bobby Deen. I've lost count with how many people are still searching about his dating status. Honestly, I'm starting to feel kind of bad for the guy. My 2009 wish for the ever so popular Mr. Deen is that he finds his Princess Charming, she knocks his socks off and they ride off in the sunset to NeverNever Land.
http://poyju.blogspot.com/2007/10/is-bobby-deen-gay.html

The second most popular post was about fried butter balls. Almost three years later and people are still searching for stories about this. Apparently, the episode of Paula's Party that I was on is still aired in some parts of the country. I would love to get that episode on DVD.
http://poyju.blogspot.com/2007/04/deep-fried-butter-balls.html

The third most popular post was interesting. People were searching for "how to keep your woman in line". Let me just say, that if your're Googling how to keep your woman in line, you have more serious problems that a sassy wench.
http://poyju.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-to-keep-your-woman-in-line-wink.html


I hope everyone enjoys my bog and has a good laugh every now and then.