I don’t know about you, but I’d love to win the lottery and retire to the comfy lap of luxury. But I rarely buy tickets and the few times I have, I’ve forgotten to check to see if I’ve won. So my likelihood of winning the lotto seems somewhat slim.

But the retirementmoolah$$$ idea is still pretty attractive. So to that end, I participate in the standard Silicon Valley hobby of coming up with ideas for businesses I could start.

My friends are no different. So I wasn’t too surprised when I got an IM the other day saying, “Hey, it’s been awhile since you’ve had a harebrained business idea, so here’s one for you. What about raising escargot and selling them to restaurants?”

Now wait a minute!
1. My ideas are NOT “hare” brained. They are “intelligent” brained, a fine mixture of “left” brained analytic and “right” brained creative. Take my word for it. My ideas are GEMS.
2. Snails??
3. We will become billionaires that dwarf Bill Gates with snails? Granted, “MicroSnails” is kinda catchy.

So I argued about this for a bit and we decided she would have to foray into the slimy world of snails on her own.

But do you know what? Last week my garden snails crossed the line of acceptable behavior.

They have not only eaten ALL my freshly sprouting petit pois pea plants, they have now EATEN MY MORELS. I discovered morels growing in my side yard earlier this spring. I watched them carefully day after day, dreaming about what I’d make with them.

And the SNAILS ATE THEM.

How much do you think we’ll get for organic, pea sprout, and morel fed snails?

The weather’s been getting progressively warmer so last night we decided to do a little grilling on our tiny hibachi-sized Weber.

I was only planning to do a simple marinade for the large shrimp we had purchased but The Husband had other plans. With a gleam in his eye, he proceeded to ransack the kitchen in order to concoct Le Grand Marinade.

This included at least:
melted butter, onion powder, paprika, chile flakes, red chile oil, stone ground mustard, rice wine vinegar, brown sugar, worcestershire sauce, fish sauce, peanut & sesame oil, lemon juice and chicken bouillon.

I started getting panicky around ingredient 50, but he poo-poo-ed my concerns and kept adjusting and tasting while I worriedly sliced zucchini and skewered mushrooms.

But when we sat down to eat, I had to admit the shrimp was not bad. As a matter of fact they were delicious. By the end of the meal I was licking and sucking the empty shrimp shells trying to get at the tangy, spicy, totally addictive marinade.

Some of the mushrooms were brushed with the marinade too. Oh, they were so good!

Like most of his wild kaleidoscopic mixing sprees, it’s probably a once in a lifetime dish. After all, the ingredients and proportions would be hard enough to recreate but how do you capture the flavor of wild abandon, whimsy and inspiration?

Here’s something I don’t get. In the Star Wars series, Yoda’s 900+ years old. That’s old. That’s older than old, that’s almost a different Geological Age. But if you look at him in the prequel movies, he looks noticably younger than he does in the original movies. I mean the Queen’s going to be pregnant with Luke and Leah in the upcoming release, right? So unless her pregnancy lasted, say 300 years or something, the time delta between this movie and the original Star Wars is only like 17-25 years max. If you’re already 900 years old, another 20 years shouldn’t cause you to wrinkle up like a prune (see, this is about food)!

So what’s with the aging and extra wrinkles? Were the interim years that traumatic for Yoda? Did he lose access to Botox treatments when he hid out on the swampy planet of Dagobah?

In honor of the Revenge of the Sith media clips that have penetrated my consciousness enough to remind me of this annoying tidbit, here are a few of my food related pet peeves. Please excuse my bad writing in advance. Dwelling on annoyances make my fingers incoherant.

Why do we have to switch hands when we use a Fork and Knife during a meal?
I don’t think they make this utensil switch in Europe but this just means they end up using their fork with their non-predominant hand. For example, if I were eating in Germany, as a right-handed person I’d use my knife with my right hand and fork with my left.

But this is just crazy to me as the fork is the more important utensil. To get around this hassle, I just trained myself to cut with my left hand so I can continue to eat with my right. No silly switching and swapping of cutlery with every bite.

I’m not saying that everyone needs to make this change and I myself switch back to the standard method if I’m eating at a tightly packed table (to keep from bumping elbows), but believe me, this is far more efficient and seemly than the standard methods of eating ettiquette dictates.

Unless I’m at a fine-dining establishment, I almost always ask for a straw for my non-alcoholic beverage (including water). I just have a hard time trusting that those glasses are really clean around the rim.

I hate Evian water. I’d rather drink tap water than Evian. Evian is like water with no personality, like a finger without fingerprints. It tastes weirdly flat and peculiar in my mouth and I’m never able to take more than a single sip of it. I just don’t understand the allure of this stuff.

But back to Yoda… He shouldn’t be wrinklier after a few years! Swampy, humid Dagobah should have been hydrating to his delicate green skin.

On the other hand, maybe he didn’t drink enough water. Maybe they only had Evian.

My sister has never been a big fan of cheese. She’d eat those wrapped cubes of “cow” cheese but she otherwise hated the stuff.

So growing up, as the protective big sister I was (and still am), I made sure to eat her slice of cheesecake whenever our mom had the audacity to make and actually serve her a some.

After years of watching me eat my double helping, my sister started becoming suspicious.

“Maybe I should try it, it might be good.”
“It’s called CHEESEcake because there’s CHEESE in it. Do you like CHEESE now??”

“No… But this might be different.”
“Well ok, taste this. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Then I’d carefully scoop a small bit of the sour cream topping onto the fork and hand it to her. She’d nibble it gingerly. “Eew!”

“See, I’m just trying to help you out here. So shall I finish the rest of that slice for you? Mmhmm. Thought so.”