So I’ve got babies on the brain. Everywhere I go, everyone I know and see is breeding, birthing, being fruitful and multiplying as if babies were going out of style or were about to be banned or rationed by the government. Brooklyn is baby-breeding central. I miss the old NYC where once you had kids you moved out, fearing for their lives.

Not me, of course, I’m too old, that ship has sailed and there’s no turning back into the wind now. Oh sure, so-called well-meaning people say to me, “Oh no, it’s not too late, you can still do it! I know someone who got pregnant at 50, with a donor egg and donor sperm and 17 rounds of IVF and a surrogate” Because that’s what you want, to have a lab-grown, $100,000 infant at 50. Uh…thanks, I say, but nope. I don’t need your reassurance that it’s not too late, because it is too late, and it was a conscious decision, and please go away and take your little Junipers and Masons and Oleanders and their runny noses and sippy cups away from me. Please. Just. Stop.

I went to Bethlehem PA last weekend for a baby shower for my beautiful cousin Robin, who is a devoted LGR fan, btw. Robin took charge of her food life and completely overhauled her diet a few years ago and dumped all the Foodiness™, and her picture hangs on the Foodiness™ Fallout Shelter wall of fame, and she looks great. We give her a shout-out now and then on the show. Hi Robin!

So Robin and her husband Jay are expecting a baby boy in July, and I am genuinely super happy for her. She is an amazingly loving, generous and kind person and will be an exceptional parent, and if anyone should be a mom, it’s her. And a couple other friends have either recently had babies, or are expecting, and it’s fine, it’s what humans do, right? It’s the norm. I chose not the norm. But I like being an aunt, to my real nieces and all my friend’s kids.

And I like baby showers. I think the pregnant moms need that lavishing of attention before their lives change so radically and they risk losing themselves in parenting. They need to eat little sandwiches and open presents and get all weepy, it’s very good for them. Plus, at almost every baby shower, there’s cake. And I like cake. I hardly ever eat cake, so when I go to an event with cake, usually, I eat some cake. And that’s kind of what today’s show is about. Cake. Not babies. Well, indirectly about babies. So today, on Let’s Get Real, let’s talk about cake. Ok? Oh, and IHOP, and the government, and even autism. Yikes.

Yes, it’s a new show, after a long break to develop the new weekly Heritage Radio Network News show, of which I’m the co-anchor!

But I’m back, this week with tales of finger-lickin weirdness. On today’s show I revisit my invitation to the BIG Kentucky Fried Chicken event where I was taken way, way down the Foodiness™ rabbit hole, to the place where the chicken is fried, the slaw is sweet, and Rachel Dratch gets hired to demo breading. Yes, Debbie Downer herself showed me, and a bunch of other journalists, how it’s done at KFC. Totally surreal. Want to hear about it?

I like to write, and I like to talk into a microphone. And I also like to talk in front of a live audience, I’ve discovered. Teaching all those years gave me the confidence to stand up in front of a group and tell a story, even if that story was about kitchen sanitation or pork butchering.

I have a lot of stories, after being in this crazy industry for over 20 years, and I wanted to turn them into something entertaining and live, much like this very show, but in front of a live audience. So, eight weeks ago I signed up for a class called Flying Solo at the PIT, the People’s Improv Theater, where I turned some of those stories into a live, ten-minute show. The plan is to develop it into a longer piece, and perform it at a festival or two, or who knows? Could lead to some other fun and interesting stuff.

Anyway, we performed our class show on Saturday, and it went better than I ever anticipated. We started as a class of nine, but five people either dropped out, so we were a tight group of four, and I loved every single other show too. I’m going to post the video of the whole show on the LGR Facebook page, and I hope you’ll watch them all. Mine’s the only one about food, but the others are funny, sad, touching and beautiful.

Oh and the show is called “Cod Worms” Here’s a little teaser…

Cod. They’re bottom feeders. Yeah, codfish? The state symbol of Massachusetts? They’re bottom feeders. They vacuum up the crap on the ocean floor, and pick up worms, tiny, thin bright-red worms, which eat into the cod’s flesh and live there. The worms are harmless to the cod, and harmless, but gross, to the people who eat the cod. But when you serve the cod, you have to pluck out all the worms with fish tweezers before you cook it.

I’ll tell you a little secret though, If you miss a worm, and then you cook the fish, the heat makes them wriggle to the surface, so you can grab ‘em before it hits the table, a perfect slab of snowy-white fish. Life does gives you second chances.

For the last 23 years, I’ve plucked cod worms…