Banana Avocado Baby Puree

I don’t always make my own baby food, but when I do…my kid usually spits it out. (Sorry if you have no idea why that silver-haired stallion is pictured above. Try googling “Dos Equis The Most Interesting Man in the World”.)

It’s got to be a texture thing. I mean, freshly steamed peas just have to taste better than “canned” peas, right? But, no matter how long I leave my processor spinning, I just can not achieve that perfectly smooth texture you squeeze out of those nifty little baby food pouches.

This banana and avocado mash-up in an exception. Lennon will generally hang her mouth open and squeal for more. I love this because avocados and bananas are extremely nutritious and sometimes I have nothing planned for the random ripe avocado sitting on my counter and this is the perfect solution.

Banana Avocado Baby Puree

1 Ripe avocado, pitted
1 Ripe banana, peeled
juice from 1/2 small lemon (about 1 Tbsp)
2-3 Tbsp runny prepared baby cereal (about 1 dry scoop)

Scoop out avocado flesh into small mixing bowl. Add banana, lemon juice and cereal. With a potato masher or a fork, mash ingredients until smooth. At this stage there will still be random lumps. If your baby is used to eating lumpier foods, you can stop here. If your baby prefers smoother textures like mine, force mixture through a fine mesh sieve.

This will make approximately two 4 ounce servings. I’ve had luck keeping the second serving for the next day in a small 4 ounce airtight container. The lemon juice helps prevent oxidation though you won’t avoid it entirely. If it bothers you, just skim off the brown layer from the top before feeding the leftovers to your baby. I do not recommend heating this puree. Serve it room temperature or cold.

Creamy Avocado Pasta

This is a meal that I would be eager to serve to my family and Jeff’s family without telling them exactly what it is. See, I’d be dead certain they’d love it, but they would be dead set against trying it if they knew what was in it. Both of us come from families with less adventurous palates who would likely be repulsed by the pureeing of an avocado tossed with pasta. I used to be that way not too long ago. Let me tell you, life’s much better on the other side.

This dish is basically just pasta coated with smooth guacamole. It’s crazy healthy, tastes fantastic, and requires only the amount of time it takes to boil pasta.

I licked the bowl and you may just do it, too.

Creamy Avocado Pasta

As Seen On: Total Food Porn (my friend Corrina’s amusing blog. Check it out!)
Originally From: In Good Taste

1 medium sized ripe Avocado, pitted
1/2 lemon, juiced
2 garlic cloves
1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, or to taste
2 Tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese, plus much more for garnish (optional for vegan)
1/4 cup fresh basil
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 servings of your choice of pasta, about 1/3 lb. (I’ve used both whole wheat and regular, I prefer regular)

Cook spaghetti according to the directions on the package. Drain almost completely, but leave about 1/4 cup pasta water for the noodles to mingle in. Meanwhile, place the garlic, lemon juice, and olive oil into a food processor. and blend until smooth. Next, add the avocado, basil, salt and cheese process until the mixture has a smooth and creamy consistency. Toss pasta with sauce and garnish with extra basil and Parmesan cheese and freshly ground black pepper.

Clementine Cake

Clementines always sound good to me when I don’t have any in my fridge. The second I buy a bag, I no longer want any.

You can occasionally find a place that sells clementines individually instead of forcing you to commit to 3 or 4 pounds of them like most supermarkets. This is good except you run the risk of choosing all “bad clementines”. You know the kind. They’re dry and taste kind of off. They’re slightly bitter and maybe a little sour. Not the candy-sweet and juicy treat you were expecting. So it’s good to have a bag full of second chances.

It never fails, however, that I have half a bag of clementines racing toward the cusp of rotten and not enough mouths to shove them into. Marlo likes the idea of clementines, but the so-called “stringy things” she meticulously has to remove from each wedge before eating it can be cumbersome for a three year old, rightfully so. As you can imagine, I practically ran into the kitchen to make this cake the second I stumbled across this recipe. It cleaned up a good half dozen of the little citrus boogers for me.

This cake turned out to be one of my favorite little desserts I’ve made for a while. It’s mildly sweet, but satisfying. The crumb is dense, smooth and moist. It’s the perfect thing to serve your friend alongside a cup of afternoon tea.

Clementine Cake
Adapted from Mache Magazine

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. ground cloves (I made this a generous 1/8, as I love cloves with orange)
1 cup plain yogurt (I used plain whole milk, the recipe called for 2% Greek – use what you have)
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs, beaten
1 Tbsp. clemtine zest (from about 2 large clementines)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 cup flavorless oil (I used grape seed oil)

Glaze
1/3 cup clementine juice (I needed about 6 or 7 clementines)
1/3 cup sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 10X5 loaf pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, cloves and salt in a medium bowl. In a large bowl whisk together sugar, yogurt, eggs, zest, and vanilla. Slowly add oil to wet mixture.
3. Using a spatula, carefully fold dry ingredients into wet ingredients. The batter will be a little lumpy.
4. Pour batter into prepared pan and sprinkle top with sliced almonds. Gently press the almonds into the batter a little. Bake for 45-50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center and removed is clean.
5. Let cake cool in pan for 15 minutes, then remove the cake while it’s still warm and place on a wire cooling rack over a sheet of wax paper.
6. While cake is cooling in the pan, warm juice in a small saucepan. Stir in sugar until completely dissolved. Remove from heat.
7. With a long skewer, poke deep holes into the cake from the top all over the place. Then slowly pour the glaze over the cake while the cake is still warm. (The glaze will seep into the holes you poked adding moisture and flavor to the inside as well as the outside.)
8. Allow to cool before serving.

A Letter to the Grammar Police

Dear Grammar Police,

You know who you are. You are probably quite proud of your ability to spot a minor punctuation infraction and proceed to freak out about it. You’re the type of person who posts things like this on Facebook along with some sort of comment like “EXACTLY! Thank you! ”

You know the rules, all the rules, and you can smell the stench of those not following them properly. You think because these people didn’t follow the rules in their Facebook status update, they must not know them. They must not be smart. They must not have paid attention in fifth grade (or whatever grade it is you cling to as being the source of all things sacred in life). But you paid attention! You’re smart! You didn’t forget! Thanks for not letting us forget that you are occupying an entire section of your brain to retain every single grammar rule.

Now, I know you mean well. In fact, you are probably my friend. I probably like you a lot when you aren’t reading something, scanning for mistakes. And I’ll even be fair, here. Maybe you aren’t even looking for grammar mistakes. Maybe you’re just a grammar mistake magnet and run-on sentences just jump off the page and fuse to your brain and the only way you can reach any sort of relief is if you whip out your red pen or make some kind of patronizing comment. (Phew!) But as someone with a modest education and teeny bit of insight about language, I’d love for you to let me talk to you about your obsession today.

I don’t want you to think I’m against any and all grammar guidelines. I believe there is a time and a place for perfect grammar. Perfect grammar belongs in grammar class for people who have never learned the rules (some children but mostly second language learners), and at least a certain level of adherence to grammar rules belongs in school papers and published materials. When I say a certain level of adherence, I mean the message and meaning shouldn’t get lost in your lack of or overuse of punctuation and capitalization. Because let’s get real here, the purpose of writing something is to share information or convey an idea, not to exercise your knowledge of grammar rules. The rules are tools we use to keep the message clear and avoid ambiguity. The most important thing is the information. The content. The idea. (WHOA, incomplete sentences for emphasis!) If you understood the message the way the writer intended, let’s discuss the idea not whether or not the writer should have used a comma.

You might actually be surprised at how much you understand when reading something riddled with mistakes. Studies in literacy have found our brains have the incredible ability to fill in missing information to make sense out of incomplete or jumbled junk. For example:

If my previous employer were to read this letter to you, she’d probably freak. I spent a year at a university writing lab during my graduate studies tutoring struggling students with their language and writing skills. I also taught English writing skills to second language learners at the same university. Being in those positions meant I spent a lot of time discussing and pondering the application of grammar rules. This fact along with being a native speaker means I have practically mastered all of the points large and small having to do with English grammar. But I don’t care much about it and in my leisurely correspondence, I often flagrantly goof. When I goof, Grammar Police, surely you judge me. I don’t care about that, either.

I don’t care because you judging my grammar misdemeanors, I argue, reflects more poorly on you than it does me. If you were to research the history of English prescriptivism and standard form (which of course you should, as this is your specialty and a good, accesible place to start would be The Lexicographer’s Dilemma by Jack Lynch, though there are many other books on the topic) you would arrive at the fact that your grand cause which you use to define who you are and who I am is based quite heavily on nothing. There is nothing sacred about grammar rules. Some self-appointed Grand Master of the English language (a rich dude with a big ego and nothing to do) in the 17th century sat down and made up a bunch of rules that he thought made sense and preserved the “purity” of the English language. But they didn’t make sense, and the English language has never been “pure”, nor has any other language. These rules were a way to arbitrarily create a standard that automatically made the way one group used language correct and everybody else incorrect. Because of the rule makers’ influence, these grammar guidelines wormed their way into modern pedagogy and then into your brain.

By worshipping these rules you are in a loose sense worshipping class dividing propaganda. You’re proliferating the idea that the way some rich white guy in England spoke and wrote 350 years ago is smarter and better than the way a poor black kid in urban America speaks and writes today, because that rich white guy said so and he had the means to promote his ideas. This kind of small and obedient thought leads to inequality and discrimination.  Now of course you don’t mean to do this. Of course not. So why is it, then, that you do?

Now I actually wrote a research paper about that very question. What I concluded is that you’re using your mastering (though even that is up for debate, because more often than not you are wrong sometimes, too) of these meaningless rules to place yourself in a higher social rung than the so-called language abusers. This is an easy, cheap and accessible way to confidently say “I’m smarter than you because I never use your when you’re should be used.” It’s a quick way to stroke your ego. Aren’t you clever. Aren’t you witty. That’s lame. You should stop it.

But it’s hard to stop, isn’t it? The world communicates today with the written word more and more. Texts and emails have trumped phone calls and face-to-face meetings. The internet and social media has allowed everyone access to one another’s written self-expressions, and everyone but you is just screwing up left and right providing you with a seemingly endless stream of material to critique. You don’t let us know gently and empathetically when we’ve violate the rules, either. You call us out right then and there and then post a collection of your best and most humorous responses for everyone to marvel at how nothing gets past you and what a quick wit you have.

Electronic and social media is the source of other grating annoyances for you, too. You have a really hard time embracing any new words, acronyms, spellings or expressions that deviate from anything you might find in a 1995 issue of Good Housekeeping magazine or that fifth grade grammar textbook bible of yours. The English language is changing rapidly and you have a hard time with this change. If you don’t understand a new construction that makes it harder for you to be the master, therefore it most definitely is bad. No good. A bastardization of “the best language in the world”. I urge you to gain some perspective (again, read about this topic) and realize that  your perfect standard form was once considered a bastardization as well.

This new world of communication dependent upon literacy has demanded more efficiencies from the language, and there are millions of people out there experimenting and developing these efficiencies through deviations from the standard form every day. These “mistakes” are progressive. Evolutionary. Revolutionary. You are old and stuffy and irrelevant. There is no amount of rules or constraints or social pressures that can truly succeed in stagnating a living language. Your cause is a self fulfilling one. It has nothing to do with the English language.

That’s all there is. There isn’t any more. (name that book!)

The end.

Love, Emily

Chocolate Drizzled Coconut-Almond Macaroons

These cookies do not require any of the following:

• Butter
• A stand mixer
• Even a sliver of baking expertise

Yet they  look fancy, taste great and only appear like you slaved in the kitchen.

I made these for the first time when I was 14 years old and fell in love with them. I really don’t even remember where the recipe came from, but I’d like to give a probable shout out to Cooking Light magazine. If you’re not familiar with coconut macaroons, they really aren’t a typical cookie. You have to really like coconut and the flavor of almond extract. They’re meaty and chewy in texture, and the almonds in this recipe give them a much needed sporadic crunch. If any of that sounds good to you (why wouldn’t it?), give them a shot.

Have a nice weekend!

Chocolate Drizzled Coconut-Almond Macaroons

2 2/3 cup sweetened shredded coconut
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
4 large egg whites
1 cup sliced almonds
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. almond extract
8 oz. bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate
1/4 cup sliced almonds pulverized for garnish (optional)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Combine all ingredients except for the chocolate in a bowl. Form balls from rounded tablespoonfuls and place 2 inches apart on prepared baking sheets. Bake 20-25 minutes, rotating half-way if you have uneven heat in your oven like I do, until edges of cookies are a light golden brown. Remove from pans while hot and allow to cool.

Meanwhile, melt chocolate in a double boiler. If you don’t have a double boiler, make your own by nestling a heat safe bowl (glass or metal work great) over a sauce pot simmering with water. Once the chocolate is melted and smooth, remove from heat and allow to cool just slightly. You can dip half of your macaroons in the chocolate, or to drizzle, fill a plastic sandwich bag with chocolate and snip off the tip of one of the bottom corners (be ready to drizzle immediately, as the chocolate will be-a-flowin’) and quickly zig zag over the baked and cooled macaroons. Finish by sprinkling with crushed almonds.

Review (and a Rant): Bringing Up Bebe

Behold Pamela Druckerman’s new book Bringing Up Bebe! Heard of it? If you’re a mother, surely you have. While some have interpreted the book is nothing but unfair America bashing, I argue the content is neither unfair nor is it bashing. What Druckerman has organized is very important and deserves your time.

The book is laid out in a rather objective manner. Druckerman is an American journalist living in France with her British journalist husband and three children. As a new mother in a foreign land, she noticed a pattern of different behaviors surrounding the upbringing of French children that was different from what she was used to in the United States. Like any good journalist, she decided to find out why. Through various interviews with French parents and doctors and American parents as well as an abundance of circumstantial and anecdotal evidence with some actual research thrown in, she comes up with a few ideas as to what the answer may be. Through her appealing, occasionally self-deprecating, and never condescending style, Druckerman tells her own personal story of learning to parent her children while presenting her conclusions to simple questions like “Why do French kids have such an adventurous palate?” “Why do most all French babies sleep through the night at 3 months?” and “Why do they play so well and independently on the playground?” While she often reinforces that her observations are indeed generalizations and that not every French kid is an angel and not every American kid is a brat, she couldn’t ignore a handful of consistent and distinctive cultural differences between the French and Americans when it came to family life and parenting.

Here’s a breakdown of a few of Druckerman’s main ideas.

1. Observation: French kids are conditioned to wait almost immediately after they enter the world.  Conclusion: The skill of patience and self-distraction and delayed gratification makes it easier for them to cope in situations that would normally cause a kid to melt-down like a long restaurant meal, or wanting something while mom is busy talking on the phone.
2. Observation: Kids everywhere prefer chicken nuggets and pizza, but the French culture prioritizes the cultivation of a varied palate. They don’t offer kids chicken nuggets and don’t assume they won’t like foie gras or escargot. Conclusion: Kid led menu planning leads to kids eating nothing but white food. Parent led menu planning leads to kids eating spinach, pate and Brie.
3. Observation: French parents refuse to be martyrs. Mothers often make parenting decisions based off what is best for her and the family not just what the kid wants. Couples almost immediately revert to previous romantic and social activities after a child is born. The happiness and leisure of the adults is of high importance. Conclusion: There is less guilt and less resentment. Also, kids are taught right away that they aren’t the center of the universe and the family does not revolve around the kids’ desires.
4. Observation: French parents are stingy with the praise. Conclusion: The idea behind resisting exaggerated positive reinforcement is that French children won’t become heavily dependent upon and addicted to their parents’ approval. They learn to be self-motivated and to develop their self-esteem on their own, independent from their parents’ attention.

Druckerman also discussed the French’s focus on a child’s need to develop autonomy and respect for the family and the community.  None of these ideas are particularly profound, but I can completely understand how Druckerman found these concepts refreshing enough to write a book for Americans about them, as they are practically unheard of in our culture.

I’ve been a mom for just a little over 3 years now. I know what kind of children I want to end up with, but I few ideas how to get there. Generally, I feel confused and tread through my days meekly and with little confidence or conviction in my parenting decisions. The one thing I am confident of is that I’m uncomfortable with the parenting trends that dominate the current generation of mothers and I’m also uncomfortable with the way I’m made to feel when I deviate from what is seen as the only loving and supportive way.

Why are we so nasty?

Americans have the habit of being nosy and judgmental. Ever visit a mommy online message board? American mothers can be ruthless, patronizing, and quick to tout their moral superiority and utter disgust that some people are even allowed to reproduce. There is very small thinking and little encouragement, just constant tearing down. Not to mention we don’t have much of a cultural legacy of parental framework to draw from. Our kids are being raised differently than we were, we were raised differently than our parents, and our parents were raised differently than theirs. It’s like we’re always trying to reinvent the wheel. From scratch. With each generation. We have no collective goals as a society, because well that wouldn’t be very American. America is all about the individual. The individual’s desires and their upward mobility and there is little value in the state of the community. Druckerman found that all of these parenting ideals seemed to be an intrinsic part of French societal thought. Every French parent agrees what’s important when it comes to raising a child without explicitly having to discuss it. The only thing parents have agreed upon in America is to disagree. There is no united front in raising our children.

What’s the result?

What is the natural result of this lack of unity? Competition. Unhealthy competition. Competition between mothers who create more between their kids. Parents end up considering their child as a special project. Filling their childhoods with tutor sessions, tennis lessons and horseback riding camp, instead of empty alone time for self-motivated discovery, or to, I don’t know, read a book. We push them to practice the piano every day so they’re the best. So we’re the best parents. Raising kids becomes a direct extension of the parents’ abilities to manage, to inspire, to push. American parents give it all towards this challenge. Mother’s give up their figure, their education, their jobs, their social life, their hobbies, their sleep “for the sake of the children”.  The problem, reported by Druckerman, is this actually makes no one happy. Not the children, not the parents. So why do we do it? So we can say, “well I gave everything I had! It can’t be my fault my kid’s not happy!”? Or is it to be free of the guilt? The guilt mongering from the disdainful looks we shoot at each other when the kids melt down at the grocery store, from the nastiness spewed all over the internet? Either way, we can’t seem to break free of it, and all the while Druckerman is pointing out is how effortless these alternative and basic child-rearing strategies are to the French.

Really when it comes down to it, I woefully concede that the French way would never work here in the United States. I don’t think the main ideas Druckerman presented in the book are unique to the French and I don’t think the French are better parents, per se, they’re just better at raising French kids and Americans are better raising American kids. That is, we’re exceptional at  producing coddled, uncompromising, self-centered, entitled consumers. We value those qualities. We must. We don’t teach our kids to wait, we give it to them now. We don’t expect our kids to understand how to and find value in eating good food, so of course they won’t. We cultivate egocentric personalities by placing the child’s needs before those of everyone that comes into contact with him. We want our kids to like us, we don’t consider whether they respect us. We give up our very last sliver of leisure time as a parent so we can drive our kid to, and then sit through a junior football game where we jump up and down and cheer emphatically when he oh so heroically catches.a.ball. That’s the American way.

“By sacrificing long-term happiness for short-term pleasure, we have cheated ourselves and our children, and have endangered their legacy.” – Hoyt Hilsman

I Heart Warby Parker

Hi. I’m blind. Okay, I’m almost blind.

I have no vision insurance.

Being almost blind with no insurance is no walk in the park. It just plain sucks.

I rarely have my vision examined to see if my prescription is correct. When you wear both glasses and contacts, such an exam can cost almost $200 uninsured. Care to know how much contacts cost uninsured? Mine, because I have astigmatism, cost $180 for a six month supply. I make this six month supply last more than a year. I can’t afford not to. I also can’t afford to purchase a new pair of lenses or frames from my local optician’s office or Lens Crafters or the like.

Up until this winter, I had been wearing the same frames I purchased in Berlin when I was 17 years old.

That’s over 10 years sporting the same look. I splurged 5 years ago and got the prescription updated with new lenses, which cost only $20 less than what I paid originally for the whole set. But by last summer is was clear that even those lenses had served their time. They were scratched, blistered and barely hanging on to my Euro semi-rimless frames. I needed new lenses. I needed new glasses. Now.

While, fretting over and weeping about the cash we’d have to drop on a fresh pair of glasses, I desperately searched the internet hoping to find some sort of coupon or deal in which I could still keep my style without spending upwards of $600. Then I fell upon the holy grail of shops for almost blind people with no vision insurance. Warby Parker.

Warby Parker was made for people like me. People with no magic address in the sky to send claims. People who have an affinity for fashionable frames. People with limited cash but an abundance of stylish desires. People who are lazy.

They make it easy for you to love them, because they make everything about the whole shopping experience effortless and all they need from you is $95. Not $95 per eye or per eyelash, $95 total for high quality lenses and stylish, sturdy frames.

Having concerns about ordering a new pair of glasses sight unseen without trying them on? Of course you are. I certainly had my reservations until I realized they were willing to express ship me five frames free of charge and let me try them on in my home for a few days before I shipped them back using a label they provide, also free of charge. This sounds fantastic, but then you browse their vast selection of über stylish frames and wonder how on Earth you’re going to narrow it down to just five. The website’s virtual try-on tool, where you upload a photo of yourself  and try on not only the various styles but the different color choices within the styles right there on your face, helps weed out frames that probably aren’t the most flattering fit.

I wanted a pair that was stylish and would be for a while (ahem remember how long I kept my last pair), but not frames that would make me feel like I had to be at the top of my hip game every day just to wear them. Also, I didn’t want you to notice my glasses at first glance, maybe not until you were having a conversation with me. I found that subtle coolness in the Japhy frames.

Once I decided on Japhy, ordering was simple enough. I just provided  the contact information of the last optometrist who examined my eyes and they obtained my prescription for me. I also had to somehow determine the distance between my pupils for the most accurate prescription. I was able to obtain this measurement in less than 30 seconds while grocery shopping at Target Optometry for free. However, if you aren’t lucky enough to find a place to give you this information for free, Warby Parker will refund you any fee you are charged. After all my information was submitted I had my new glasses shipped to me for free and on my face in about a week.

In general, my experience buying new glasses from Warby Parker was extremely positive. My few interactions with customer service (one email exchange and one phone call) were comforting and really boosted my confidence in the pending transaction. The service reps seemed cool and laid back yet eager to assist me. I will admit, however, after receiving my new frames, I had trouble adjusting the frame’s ear pieces to my head. It took me a good week of experimenting and constant (annoying) fiddling to get my glasses to set comfortably against my face and stay put when leaning over (like when picking up a baby 1 thousand times a day). Having your frames adjusted to fit your head is something that is done at the optometrist’s office when you arrive to pick up your new frames. This is the one service Warby Parker just cannot provide being an online retailer. Though somehow saving upwards of $300 makes that little inconvenience much easier to forget.

Three months later of daily wear I have no complaints. My lenses are still perfectly crystal clear with no scrapes or scratches, and they’ve stayed in place after enduring several accidental toddler punches to the face and infant head-butts. I’m impressed, and can’t wait to buy my next pair.

**I have zero affiliation with Warby Parker. I just love them and thought you might, too!**

Tips For Making Great Pizza at Home

Let me be upfront with you. I’m a pizza fanatic but I’m hardly a pizza expert. I’ve never worked at a pizzeria. My mother made pizza at home maybe twice. I didn’t grow up in New York City or Chicago. We ate Pizza Hut pizza growing up.

But for what it’s worth, I am from Findlay, Ohio, home of the Domino Parmesan Bread Bites. So making great pizza must be in my blood.

I make pizza for dinner almost every week. I’ve had my fair share of trials and tribulations, but for the past year, I’ve had consistent success in the art of homemade pizzas.

Today I will share with you what I’ve learned and my tricks to easily making a good tasting pizza in your kitchen.

1. Do it. Use fresh dough. Either make it yourself (I’ve had success with Annie’s recipe), or do what I normally do and if you’re lucky enough to have a Trader Joe’s near by, always have a bag of their pizza dough in the fridge or freezer. If you aren’t, most major supermarkets have a ball of frozen dough in the freezer section. This is also good. I’ve tried the pre-baked dough from grocery stores, like Boboli brand, and while they’re fine, they just aren’t the same as fresh baked dough when it comes to taste and texture. If you make your dough from scratch, try and let it sit in your fridge or freezer for a day or two. Mature dough has better taste and a chewier texture.

2. Don’t even try to work with cold dough. Pull your dough out of the fridge at least 2-3 hours hours before you plan on working with it. I understand why most busy people don’t like to work with fresh dough. It can be high maintenance. Finicky. Frustrating. But the key is to leave it warm up to the idea of being your supper. Letting it rest at room temperature for a while is the only way it will cooperate. There surely is science behind this. I don’t know exactly what it is, though. I just have circumstantial evidence.

3. Use your hands. There’s a reason why those guys in pizzerias throw the dough. It’s not just to show off. The dough needs thrown. I haven’t actually thrown dough, but I won’t rule it out in the future. Now I just use my knuckles to gently stretch the dough ball out to roughly the size I want it to be. Don’t stretch too far, unless you want holes. I don’t recommend holes. Once you’ve stretched your dough out with your hands, I plop it on a floured large sheet of parchment paper. Flour the top of the dough, flour a rolling pin and roll it out to a more uniform thickness. I never achieve a uniform shape. My finished pizzas are always wonky ovals or rectangles, but I don’t care about this. It makes me feel like Jamie Oliver. If while you’re rolling your dough out you find that it is still stubborn and shrinks right back to the original size. Don’t keep trying. You can’t force it. You just have to walk away for a short while and let the dough rest before trying again.

4. Oil it up. Once your dough is rolled out, liberally brush olive oil around the outer rim of the pie. This will result in a nice golden crispy wonderful crust. I also recommend lightly sprinkling the crust with kosher salt and, my specialty, a little bit of grated cheese (Asiago, Romano or Parmesan). I also will lightly salt all over the pie before I add the sauce and toppings.

5. Two words. Cheese blend. Just regular old mozzarella is okay, but if you want your pizza to taste like it does from a fancy pizzeria, then you gotta use a mix of several cheeses. Trader Joe’s makes this easy for me. I only use their bag of Quattro Formaggio which is a blend of shredded Parmesan, Asiago, Fontina and Provolone. It melts wonderfully and is the perfect combination of salty, sharp and creamy. If you don’t have a TJ’s at your disposal, and you don’t feel like buying four different kinds of cheeses (don’t blame you!), I recommend using shredded mozzarella but also adding grated Asiago and shredded Fontina or shredded Provolone.

6. Throw on some fresh herbs. I don’t always have fresh herbs when I make a pizza, but when I do it really makes a difference. A generous topping of chiffonade basil on top of a basic olive oil, tomato and garlic pizza can be really impressive looking and tasting. I also frequently incorporate fresh thyme and rosemary in my pizza toppings. It makes me feel fancy. It makes the taste more memorable.

7. What pizza stone? There isn’t one in my kitchen. I achieve wonderfully thin and crispy crust with parchement paper. Just roll out the dough on top of the paper. When you’re done topping the pizza, slide the paper and pizza on to a baking sheet and then slide the paper and pizza off the baking sheet directly on the oven rack in preheated oven.. Remove from the oven in a similar fashion. Voila!

Mother Mother

It’s your birthday! We  gonna party like it’s yo birthday! Gonna sip Barcardi like it’s yo birthday!

You won’t get that reference, Mom. You have no care in the world who 50 Cent is, and that’s good. That’s a very good thing. It shows the world you do not hang out in bars. And because you never hung out in bars, mom, I never really liked hanging out in bars, either.

See, feminists in this country like to go on and on about how little girls are being damaged by the media’s unrealistic ideals of what a woman should be. They think that Barbie dolls are poison and that fashion magazines with freakishly photoshopped models are sending our daughters over the edge.

I argue – not true! Little girls don’t care about Barbie’s waist size. They certainly don’t compare the plastic doll’s proportions to their own, no more than they would a La La Loopsy doll’s. They don’t even look at fashion magazines. They look at the Toys R Us ads. What they do look at, very closely, is their mother. This never changes as they get older. Their first standard of what a woman should be is their mother.

Now, I know my faults and actually flaunt them as a part of my self-deprecating style of humor, but I’m not ashamed of who I am. I think I turned out to be a decent woman, always with room for improvement though. And while my father may have had a hand on who I am as a person, mom you win the prize for who I am as a woman.

While I may not have always understood you, and thus heavily criticized what I never understood, a few things happened in the past several years that have given me a whole other perspective.

Mainly this:

And a couple of these:

I’d like to say, very publically, I’m sorry for being a mean and nasty teenage girl. I used to secretly hate that you let me get away with saying the things to you that I did. I wish you would’ve kicked my butt. Now I understand that you’re just as sensitive as I am, and all the mean stuff your dipshit daughter flung at you hurt and you never knew how to deflect that negativity. I’m sorry.

But more importantly, there are a few things I’d like to thank you for, because decades have passed and I’m pretty sure “thank you” are words you haven’t heard enough.

• Thank you for not hanging out in bars. I mean, that may seem like not a huge accomplishment and maybe it really isn’t, but I think that the fact that always being home and reliable every night 365 days a year like you were is something a kid never really realizes is quite a selfless gift from their mother. I realize it now.
• Thank you for making eating at home at the dining room table normal and pleasurable. You cooked 5 nights a week every week for decades. You didn’t cook crap either. Your food was and still is good. You came home from working an 8 hour day and spent another hour making delicious food for your family. You didn’t have to do that. You really didn’t, as most women don’t. But you did and now I do. Jeff thanks you, too.

• Thanks for having a positive self-image. Not even once have I ever heard you say anything negative about your appearance. You never complained about feeling fat (it probably helps that you’ve never been fat). You never went on a diet. You’ve never done anything silly like counted calories or deprived yourself of dessert or complained about wrinkles or obsessed over your flaws. You have always taken pride in your appearance. Carefully coifing your hair and applying tasteful make-up every day. You look great mom, and you always have. Thanks for not nitpicking at yourself.
• Thanks for still taking care of me. You keep my kids clothed. You come and clean my house and do my laundry. You still feed me and my family. You don’t have to do any of this stuff, but you do. I’m glad you do.
• Thank you for having good taste. Good taste isn’t common. You’ve got it and you’ve given it to your daughters. You know how to make a home look lovely. You know how to make beautiful things. You dressed Sara and me in very attractive clothing when we were kids, and my kids look great because of you, too.
• Thank you for caring. Too much sometimes. I don’t know how anyone can look at how hard you’ve worked the past 30 years and not know that you care about your family. A lot. Being a mom is hard. Being a working mom is surely harder. You’ve never settled for anything but the best arrangements for us. And quite frankly, now I don’t even care if you complained about stuff. You were thanklessly working your ass off for a couple of spoiled brats. I get it now mom. Thanks.
• Thanks for picking and sticking with someone who is a good father to his daughters. Sara and I needed you both growing up.

I’m not gonna lie, just like every other woman, when I catch myself saying something or reacting a certain way or doing something that is exactly like you, I cringe. But it happens, more and more every day now. “Over my dead body will I become my mother!”  I think. But mom, I know I will probably be a very similar mother and wife that you are and have been. And you know, it doesn’t scare me too much. Love you.

A Spoonful of Peanut Butter Helps the Garlic Go Down

I went to bed last night feeling like a beast of a virus was brewing in me. Head was foggy. Ears felt full. Throat ached. I was exhausted.

As anticipated, I woke up feeling a smidgeon worse – not better. I just recovered from a random raging ear infection not more than a week ago. There is no way I’m going down again. So I did what any self-respecting person would do and ate a clove of raw garlic.

What? Okay, let’s rewind. I hate going to the doctor. I hate taking meds. I hate being sick. Thankfully, I’m really not sick often considering the fact that I have a toddler in school, a toddler who likes to walk around with her hands shoved down the back of her underwear, who likes to hack in my mouth, sneeze in my eye, and wipe her boogers on my bed sheets when a tissue isn’t convenient. Considering all that, I have an olympian for an immune system.

But sometimes it fails. Who knows why these things happen. Stress? Too much processed foods? A few weeks of being up all night with the baby? Not washing my hands enough?

Luckily, I stumbled across the book The Secrets of People Who Never Get Sick by Gene Stone on the library e-book website a few weeks ago. It is full of some pretty interesting methods of wellness. In it you will find details behind numerous health philosophies including but not limited to taking cold showers, napping, dipping your head in a tub of hydrogen peroxide, drinking your urine, eating your boogers, and consuming brewers yeast and raw garlic. Are you intrigued yet?

I was pretty impressed by the science and the results of a lot of these methods but was most comfortable with the idea of eating raw garlic. I love garlic and think every food can be improved by garlic. If a recipe calls for a clove, I triple it.  So I was very pleased to read how beneficial it is to your health. Garlic has long been coveted across many cultures around the world for its antibiotic properties. In fact, it has been found that 1 milliliter of raw garlic juice is just as effective of an antibiotic as 64 milligrams of penicillin. People who include consuming raw garlic in their daily routines claim to have staved off the common cold and flu for years. I want to be one of those people!

But as much as I like garlic, I was a little chicken about just popping a clove in my mouth. Turns out unless you have an iron gut, that’s probably not a good idea as the garlic oils can be a little caustic on your stomach lining. So it’s advisable to down it with a bit of fat or starch. I read one technique is to drop a bit of olive oil on the spoon with the crushed garlic, but that sounded more dreadful to me than just the garlic alone. So I pulled out my favorite fat – peanut butter.

JIF to be exact. Should I be concerned about all the nasty molds and fungi in conventional peanut butter? Probably, and I do have nice all natural organic creamy peanut butter, but I’m eating raw garlic folks. Let me have my JIF.

So after crushing and mincing an average sized clove of garlic.

I plop a tablespoon or so of peanut butter on top and use my fingers to distribute the garlic evenly throughout. Then, down the hatch!

Would you believe me if I say I actually enjoyed this? It reminded me of a spicy Thai peanut sauce. Did my breath smell? Probably, but surely no more than if I ate a slice of garlic bread. Nothing a little teeth and tongue brushing can’t take care of. Did I emit a garlicky odor? I don’t think so. Jeff didn’t complain. Did I feel better? Here’s the thing…. I did feel a little better almost immediately. Not completely recovered, mind you, but the virus didn’t seem to materialize into a full blown cold which, 24 hours after first experiencing symptoms, it generally does. Could it be the garlic or is it just placebo effect? Who knows, but I’ll do it again tomorrow. I like Thai peanut sauce and at the very least I’ll be safe from vampires.