Leapin' lizards and other goodies

One of the items you least expect to find on a neighborhood lunch buffet is frog legs: Stuffed cabbage, yes. Lasagna, of course. But frog legs, not really.

Then I stopped in at the Blue Crab for their lunch buffet a couple of weeks ago and there they were. When cook Elise Morell saw them offered for sale she just couldn't resist adding an exotic touch to her luncheon fare.

I asked Elise when she was going to serve the delicacy again. "When we can find some more little tiny wheelchairs for all those poor creatures," she replied with a laugh.

Elisa, who hales from New York, admits to getting a lot of her recipes by watching the Food Network after work. Except when "Wife Swap" is on that is.

Don't tell the creative kitchen lady I said this, but she reminds me a bit of movie actress Jane Adams who played the antagonist in the Jesse Stone movie 'Stone Cold' with Tom Selleck.

Don't do this at home

As a really, really surprise Father's Day gift this year my daughter bought me a set of antique lead soldiers at an estate sale up in Michigan.

As I recall, when I was a kid there were two kinds of lead soldiers (or other kinds of miniature toy figures): the ones that were purchased (usually hollow-casting) and the flat solid kind that were made by pouring melted lead in a mold. With the homemade kind the "general" that made them was able to amass legions of soldiers to fight on imaginary battlefields or recreated battle fields like Bunker Hill, or Gettysburg, or Guadalcanal. With the same molds you could generate opposing armies - all you needed for your war games was different color paint: blue and gray for the Civil War, blue and red for the war of 1812. The options were endless.

My set contains a total of 19 figures. Eleven appear to represent WWI the other eight look to be English "Redcoats." Pick your campaign. The paint jobs are only fair so I assume a rather young enthusiast made them. Regardless, they represent a toy that at one time had endless possibilities.

However, because of the toxic health concerns surrounding the use of lead, other metals and plastic were substituted for lead in the '60s. And homemade armies gave way to more realistic figures made with new manufacturing techniques - at a higher cost too. And I would imagine that armies grew smaller as prices grew larger. Still it's neat having even a small army (or squad) of cast soldiers to help remember what "action-figures" once looked like.

Don't do this either

Every once in a while back during my school days one of the guys (girls just didn't do things like this) would get a hold of some mercury. Wow, that was some pretty amazing stuff. He would have it in a little vile and pour it in the hand of his friends. The silvery metal would roll around like liquid lead (but at room temperature). If you were a really good friend your buddy would let you coat a dime in the stuff. That was really neat. It had a satiny feeling to it and we'd rub that dime all day until it was rubbed off.

But like lead poisoning we've all heard of the hazards of mercury poisoning so another childhood experiment has faded from the scene. Looking back on all the things we shouldn't have done I can't help but wonder if I act the way I do because of what I once did and maybe shouldn't have?

Overheard

Overheard at the checkout counter: Well you can't say we're not getting change, but is it the kind we wanted?