My Dad's Sauce Can Kick Your Dad's Sauce's Butt!

One summer afternoon, Angie, my BFF during fifth and sixth grade, and I took a break from playing Barbie to eat lunch.  As she reheated last night's leftover spaghetti, she declared, "My dad makes the best spaghetti sauce ever."  I went on to proclaim that my dad made pretty good spaghetti sauce as well and readied myself for something bordering on awesome as she assured me her father's was unquestionably better than my dad's.  The microwave finally dinged, and we took our seats opposite each other in the dining room.  At first glance, it looked like nothing more than a jar of Prego paired with some overcooked pasta.  If my first impression told me anything, it was that this was surely not the best sauce in the world.  I skeptically twisted a forkful of spaghetti around the tines, put the "best" spaghetti into my mouth, and discovered that it was, in fact, nothing more than Prego paired with overcooked spaghetti.  Not one to insult a hostess, I kept my opinion to myself but remained steadfast in my belief that my father did, in fact, make the best spaghetti sauce in all the world.

Twenty years later, and I'm still convinced.  His recipe has been significantly transformed from what it was when I was a kid, but it remains the benchmark against which I measure all other spaghetti sauces, even those I encounter at "authentic" Italian restaurants.  His current concoction was inspired by an episode of Lidia's Italy, which demonstrated how quickly a really good pot of spaghetti sauce could go together.  Accustomed to spending an entire day cooking the sauce, my father was intrigued when Lidia threw together a fantastic recipe in thirty minutes.  He has stuck to her recipe pretty closely, but I deviate (cheat) by adding a jar of my favorite spaghetti sauce and cooking it for at least a couple hours to allow the flavors to meld.  The jar of spaghetti sauce is to accommodate my husband, who didn't particularly enjoy the overly "tomatoey" flavor Lidia's recipe delivered.  This three cheese spaghetti sauce does a pretty good job of mellowing the acids in the tomatoes.

An intriguing note about how Lidia cooked her pasta:  she partially cooked it in boiling water for about six minutes and then finished it off in the sauce, adding as much as two cups of water from the pasta pot to account for the liquid the pasta absorbed while it cooked in the sauce.  Doing this not only made a more cohesive dish than the "traditional" method of serving ladlefuls of sauce atop "naked" pasta, but it also allowed the pasta to take on more of the sauce's flavor during cooking.  The result was exquisite!  A couple notes on cooking pasta.  According to Lidia, who is Italian so I figure an expert on the matter of Italian cooking, one should never add olive oil (or oil of any kind) to the boiling water.  Doing so will only coat the pasta and prevent it from absorbing whatever sauce it's to be served with.  Additionally, rinsing pasta is a mortal sin, or so Lidia tells me.  Rinsing washes away the pasta's external starches which contain a lot of flavor and also help the sauce stick to the pasta.  Sauce sticking to pasta = a good thing.  Naked pasta = blech!  My father and I found this technique, and the reasons behind it, so convincing that we both use it anytime we cook pasta that is to be served with a sauce...well, a red sauce.  I don't know if I'd do this with a cheese sauce.

My recipe follows, but take out the jarred sauce and cook for thirty minutes, and you have something quite similar to what my dad makes today.  Both are fantastic, but my husband is a lot more enthusiastic about the version that follows.  Some readers, particularly those who are avid foodies or are accustomed to good, authentic Italian cooking, will surely scoff at my use of canned products.  I can only say that I'm a lazy American and hope you'll forgive my crudeness.

Playground Warriors Spaghetti Sauce:

1 lb. Italian sausage (hot), removed from casings
4-5 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium onions, diced
1 green pepper, diced
8 oz. mushrooms, washed and sliced
6 oz. can of tomato paste
14.5 oz. can petite diced tomatoes
26 oz. jar of spaghetti sauce
1 tbsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp each of basil, oregano and thyme
2 tsp sugar

1.  Cook sausage in 6-quart sauce pot breaking up into small chunks.  Remove from pot leaving grease behind.

2.  Brown vegetables in sausage grease until onions are transparent.  Move vegetables to the sides of the pot leaving a clear spot in the center.

3.  Add tomato paste to center of pot and stir to "caramelize."  Paste will become fragrant and will leave a fond behind on the bottom of the pot.  Once this happens, return sausage to the pot and stir everything together.

4.  Add diced tomatoes, spaghetti sauce (plus a little water to clean the remaining sauce out of the jar), spices and mix thoroughly.

5.  Cover and cook for several hours (at least two, but I prefer longer).  Maintain a low simmer and stir every fifteen minutes or so.  Be sure to taste the sauce periodically and adjust seasonings to suit your palate.

This recipe yields a lot of sauce, so I typically cook a full pound of pasta to go along with it.  If you're going to finish off your pasta in the spaghetti sauce as I do, after you cook the pasta in about 8 quarts of salted water for 6 minutes, use tongs to add all the pasta to the spaghetti sauce as well as a full cup of the pasta water.  Stir thoroughly.  Cover and cook for about 20 minutes, or until pasta has reached the tenderness you desire.  Stir every few minutes and add pasta water as needed.  The pasta will absorb a lot, so don't be surprised if you find yourself adding upwards of 2 cups of water.

6.  Serve and enjoy!

Wine note:  So, my husband and I are trying to expand our wine palate (we hear it's supposedly good for you).  Tonight, we paired the above with a glass of Kiarna's Cabernet Sauvignon (v. 2009).  Paired with this sauce, this wine is quite good.  At first sip, you can clearly taste the smooth, fruity flavors of this full-bodied wine, but its aftertaste is a bit too bitter for my liking.

Pie: Crust or Bust!

I've always been somewhat offended by the phrase "easy as pie" because after fifteen years of pie-making, I'm still on a seemingly endless journey for the perfect crust recipe/technique. Pie-making has never been easy for me, so I couldn't help but muse over the fact that whoever came up with that obnoxious phrase must have been somebody who never once tried their hand at actually making a pie. However, I can't help but wonder if perhaps the cliche holds and I'm just incompetent. I've tried everything from an all-butter crust and minimal handling to incorporating vodka, which did nothing for the texture but made eating the monstrosity of a pie at least a little entertaining.

The closest I've come to making a light and flaky crust came when I combined the technique offered up by America's Test Kitchen and Betty Crocker's basic pie crust recipe, which is nothing more than flour, salt, shortening, and water. The recipe is nothing special, and it can be modified to suit your needs by adding any number of spices appropriate for the filling of your choice. But the technique, when explained in scientific terms of course, seemed to make all the difference. According to Test Kitchen, and I think we all agree here, the goal in making a "good" pie crust is producing one that is light and flaky. The only way to achieve this, they say, is to avoid forming long gluten strands (those things that make bread oh-so-yummy). Hence the golden rule of making a pie crust: don't over-handle the dough! Unfortunately, even the slightest amount of handling once the recipe is combined will produce these gluten strands, which makes pie crust dense and difficult to handle (i.e. crust that springs back as soon as you roll it out). To prevent this from happening Test Kitchen suggests modifying the way a typical crust is mixed to help avoid the formation of long gluten strands. Ordinarily, recipes call for cutting in half the fat (be it butter or shortening or a combination thereof) until you're left with a mealy texture and then cutting in the second half until you have something resembling peas (always with the peas!). Test Kitchen instead cuts in all the fat with half the flour first to encapsulate each grain of flour with a little fat, and then they add the rest of the flour. The theory is that the "fattened" flour won't be able to form gluten strands, and you'll be left with a crust that is light and flaky even after over-handling. They call for then adding enough of a water-vodka mixture to hold the dough together, but I find the vodka affects the flavor in unpalatable ways. But their technique has been the key for me in at least producing a somewhat reliable crust.

That's Amore!

When I was a young kid, dinnertime was always a strictly enforced, highly predictable routine. Mom would make dinner while Dad finished up the day's work on whatever painting he was working on in the studio. My brother and sister would play in the backyard, usually with me chasing after trying desperately to be included in whatever intrigue they'd thought up for the afternoon. We'd sit down to dinner, I'd dawdle over my peas until everybody else was excused, long after dessert, and I was left pushing my peas around on the plate until I finally managed to choke the last one down. Then it was usually time for bed.

New Year's Eve was different though. New Year's Eve was one of the only nights of the year when I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I was going to love dinner. I'd spend what felt like the entire day watching my dad work in the kitchen, slaving over his dough and assembling ingredients for homemade pizza pies. Our house would smell like a pizza shop, the welcoming aroma of mozzarella cheese drifting through the air whetting our appetites, until finally, dinner would be ready and we'd (gasp!) sit down with our pizza in front of the television to watch the beginnings of Dick Clark's New Year's Eve Special. It was one of the meals I looked forward to all year, for many reasons not the least of which being that I knew I wouldn't spend the evening fighting with my dad about eating those god-forsaken peas. To this day, I look forward to homemade pizza pies with the enthusiasm of a child, and tonight is no different. It's not New Year's Eve, but that doesn't mean it's not a perfect day for pizza!

One of the most important elements of any pizza is its crust. Yes, the ingredients you elect to put on top of that crust are certainly crucial as well, but the crust is the foundation upon which the success of the entire recipe rests. I've tried several of the options available at the grocery store for pizza crusts: Pillsbury's refrigerated pizza crust, pizza crust mixes, even Boboli (and store brand) pre-made crusts. Nothing even comes close in quality to the taste and texture of homemade dough. "AAAACCKKK!" scream my readers with the fear of Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo. No, seriously, homemade pizza dough is really quite easy to make. And, believe me, once you've learned how to make it, you too will find yourself turning your nose up at the "conveniences" offered at the grocery.

The ingredients for a basic pizza dough are, well, pretty basic: flour, water, salt, yeast, and olive oil. You can infuse your dough with any number of seasonings, if you like, but these basic ingredients do well on their own to make quite a tasty crust. The first critical secret to making successful homemade yeast bread, including pizza, is in weighing your ingredients instead of measuring them by volume. Water, salt, and yeast are pretty easy to measure accurately by volume, but flour packs very easily, making volume measurements inconsistent. If you measure your flour by volume, you can end up with too little or far too much flour, and then you'll have a dough either too wet or dry to work with. Invest in a good digital scale, start measuring your flour (at least for yeast bread recipes), and you'll see consistent results each time you make homemade bread. The second critical secret to successful homemade yeast bread is in adding all your flour in the beginning of the mixing process instead of adding it gradually as almost every major cookbook (Betty Crocker, Joy of Cooking, etc.) directs you. Follow the cues of professional artisan bakers like Jeffrey Hamelman and Eric Kastel who expand on the scientific reasons for why adding the flour all at once is critical to good bread. According to them, flour added after the mixing process has begun will never be as hydrated as the flour added in the beginning. The goal during the mixing/kneading process is to create long gluten strands, which are the bedrock of any bread's structure, and these under-hydrated particles of flour actually impede these gluten strands from forming. Ideally, you wouldn't adjust your recipe once the mixing process has begun, but if you do have to adjust, they'd prefer you add water to a dough that is too dry rather than adding flour to a watery dough.

And, finally, the pizza crust recipe!

Pleasantly Pea-less Pizza Crust
(Makes two crusts)

Ingredients:
21.4 ounces flour
14.1 ounces warm water
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. active dry yeast
2 tbsp. olive oil

1. Mix yeast and water and allow to rest for a couple minutes before mixing process begins.

2. Add yeast-water mixture, flour, and salt to stand mixer equipped with the dough hook attachment. You can use your hands, but the process is much easier with a mixer.

3. Mix on Speed 1 for 3 minutes, watching to make sure dough is not too wet or too dry. You want to have a little bit of dough (about the size of a silver dollar) stuck in the bottom of the mixer bowl.

4. Turn off mixer, lift hook, and remove dough from hook and place back into bowl. Add olive oil.

5. Mix on Speed 2 for 4 minutes.

6. Turn out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead gently.

7. Shape into a ball and place in a buttered bowl. Cover with plastic wrap. Rise for 1 1/2 hours.

8. Turn out onto a lightly floured work surface and fold. Return to bowl and allow to rise for another 1 1/2 hours.

9. Turn out onto floured work surface. Divide the dough evenly, shape into rounds, allow to rest for 10 minutes, and shape into pizza crusts. These videos are especially good for demonstrating the shaping techniques, but I would go much leaner on the flour they use to dust the dough during the shaping process.

10. Preheat oven to 500. Yes, 500.

11. Dress with toppings of your choice and bake for 18-20 minutes. Rest for five minutes before serving and enjoying your very own homemade, pleasantly pea-less pizza pie!

Delectably Adaptable Banana Bread

If you know me at all, you know how particular I am about the ripeness of bananas I'm willing to eat. By my standards, bananas only have one or two days, at the most, when they're palatable. Too green and they taste like grass; speckled even a bit and they're mushy. I once left a banana in the bottom of my book bag in sixth grade, and I ended up with a history book that smelled like old garbage. I suspect this is where my persnickety banana preferences originated. Regardless, unless I buy only a couple bananas at a time, I frequently find myself stuck with overly ripe bananas sitting on my counter attracting more and more fruit flies with each passing hour. I found myself in this exact situation this morning, thankfully minus the fruit flies, and so I decided to embark upon a baking adventure and whip up a batch of banana bread.

As I was assembling my batter, I realized that, while I have a tried-and-true recipe (courtesy of Joy of Cooking, 75th Anniversary Edition), I never adhere completely to any banana bread recipe. Maybe this is because I hate to follow rules without putting my own spin on them, or maybe this is because banana bread, with its neutral, mild flavor, lends itself quite nicely to many different variations. Depending on your mood, you can end up with an Autumn Harvest banana bread featuring vanilla extract, chopped pecans, granola, and maybe even dried cranberries. Substitute almond extract for the vanilla, almonds for the pecans, and nix the granola and cranberries, and you've created something completely different but equally delicious. Today, I've made my banana bread with 1/2 tsp. vanilla, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, and 3/4 cup granola and have topped it with Pampered Chef's Sweet Caramel Sprinkle. Today's recipe, which is JoC's basic plus my additions, follows. Give it a try or be adventurous and experiment with your own additions. The sky's the limit for what you can do!

Waste-not, Want-not Banana Bread

Ingredients:
1/3 cup shortening
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
4 overly ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
Sweet Caramel Sprinkle to top

1. Preheat oven to 350 and grease a loaf pan.

2. Cream shortening and sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy, about five minutes.

3. Add eggs, bananas, vanilla, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Mix thoroughly.

4. Slowly add flour and mix completely, scraping down the edges of the bowl to ensure all ingredients are incorporated.

5. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan and smooth out with a spatula. Top with Sweet Caramel Sprinkle.

6. Bake for 75 minutes, or until bread is golden and toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

7. Allow to rest for 20 minutes and then remove from loaf pan. Cool completely on a wire rack. Wrap in foil and store in the refrigerator for up to a week.

A Taste of the South -- Chicken Jambalaya

My Granddaddy was born and raised in South Carolina, and though he passed away three years before I was born, in many ways, his Southern upbringing lived on in the foods we ate and played a significant role in the development of my culinary palate. Ham and grits with red-eye gray was a regular staple on my Grandma's Sunday dinner table, and you better believe it was considered a mortal sin to ever dress those grits with anything even closely resembling sugar. Leftover grits were put away in a tall glass and then found their way to the morning's stove sliced thin and fried in butter accompanied by eggs, ham, and toast. Cornbread was, and still is, considered a sacred vessel of bacony  goodness (again, light on the sugar), and we never shied away from greens (collard, mustard, turnip, kale, and the list continues...). I've grown up on foods that many of my "Yankee" friends have never even heard of, like hominy and Hoppin' John. Or tonight's fare: Chicken Jambalaya.

If you've ever watched Emeril or visited any creole restaurant, you've no doubt heard of Jambalaya. Its basic components are meat, vegetables, tomatoes, and rice, but, of course, the personality of the dish comes out in the details. I typically make my Jambalaya with chicken or shrimp but have seen recipes that include more exotic treats like crawdads, oysters, even alligator. Peppers, onions, garlic, and sometimes celery are the standard fare, but I grew up eating my Dad's recipe which included a full pound of hot peppers, the kind of spice that lingers on your lips hours after you've finished your dessert.  My husband shares his affinity for spicy food, but now that I'm the one doing the cooking, I crank back the heat quite a bit. Seasoning this dish can be as easy as adding salt and freshly cracked black pepper, which allows the natural flavors of the dish's headliners to blossom and flourish. But tonight I also tried using some of Emeril's Essence and was quite pleased with the added kick (or BAM!) it offered. In fact, I'm so impressed with Emeril's recipe that I'll probably keep a mixture of it on hand. It's easy enough to make and neutral enough to use in many different applications from battered fish and fried chicken to gumbo and possibly greens.

Alright, enough blabbing. Here's my recipe.

Mild-Mannered Chicken Jambalaya:

Ingredients:

6 bone-in chicken thighs
1 green pepper, seeds and membranes removed, diced
3 cubanelle peppers, seeds and membranes removed, diced
1 medium onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 can diced tomatoes
1 cup rice
1 1/2 to 2 cups chicken broth
Salt & freshly cracked black pepper & Emeril's Essence to taste
1/4 cup vegetable oil

1. Pat chicken thighs dry and season each side with Emeril's Essence, salt and pepper. Meanwhile, heat oil in a 12" skillet over medium heat.

2. Once oil is fragrant and ripples appear on the surface, place thighs skin-side up and allow to brown (about 4 minutes). Flip thighs and allow second side to brown. Remove chicken and place on a plate lined with paper towels to drain.

3. Add vegetables to the skillet and saute until onions are transparent (about 5-8) minutes.

4. Add tomatoes, rice, 1 1/2 cups chicken broth and seasoning and stir thoroughly. You will not stir this again before it's done, so be sure it's well mixed. Place thighs, skin-side up, evenly throughout the skillet.

5. Cover and cook for about 30 minutes, until rice is tender. Check periodically (but not too frequently because you don't want to let all the steam out) to make sure it hasn't dried up. Add broth as needed.

6. Serve and enjoy!

"Ruined Nostalgia" Peach & Blueberry Cobbler

I remember once when I was a very young child watching my mother prepare peaches for peach cobbler.  She sat on the footstool in the kitchen, leaning over the garbage can with a peeler in hand as juice dripped off the edge of her pinky, sternly warning me to keep my distance from the already pealed peaches.  I've always been a pretty good kid, so I imagine I left well enough alone and went along my merry way.

As a matter of fact, I distinctly remember indulging in that evening's dessert, so I'm nearly positive I did walk away because there's no dimension (not even in a parallel universe) in which I would have disobeyed either of my parents like that and still gotten dessert.  No, I would have been the one sitting at the table watching enviously while everybody else in my family gorged themselves beyond any rational level of fullness just so I'd never get even a smidgen of that dessert.  Ever.

But, I digress.

So, my mother made peach cobbler.  I ate it.  Loved it.  And was always over the moon anytime she fired up the oven and pulled out the peaches with a warning glance in my direction.  (Really, I was a good kid.  I don't know why all these warning glances were tossed about in my general direction.)

Fast-forward maybe twenty years, and I found myself now making it on my own.  Well, sort of.  I lived with three close friends during college in what we've lovingly come to refer to as "The Crouse House," and it was during this stage in my life, sometime during my senior year in college, that I was given my very own copy of The Joy of Cooking.  Commence bad cooking thrust upon the unsuspecting (and very kind) roommates and friends who gratefully devoured (almost) anything I offered them (the most notable exception to that being the key lime "pie" I made that never quite gelled but instead jiggled in a gooey mass in the fridge for a week before I finally dumped it down the disposal).

One Sunday evening, probably sometime in the middle of the summer, I got the bright idea that I'd make peach cobbler like mom used to.  I hauled out my cookbook, paged through until I found the recipe, and set to recreating the summer treat I so loved.

But as I read the recipe, I became a little suspicious.  This didn't sound anything like mom's peach cobbler.  Not even in the least.  Well, okay, the recipe called for peaches, flour, and sugar, but really, that's where the similarities ended.  Chalking it up to my own inexperience in the kitchen and a child's vague memory, I plodded on, meticulously following each step Irma Rombaur laid out.  But in the end, when I shoveled out a heaping spoonful, I was not met with my mother's "peach cobbler."  Don't get me wrong, it was peach cobbler.  The same peach cobbler you're probably imagining right now...with that yummy warm puddle of fruit topped with a fluffy, golden cobblestone crust (plus ice cream and whipped cream, no doubt!).

But imagine my disappointment when I thought I'd be creating a dessert I'd adored throughout my entire childhood and then came away with something entirely different.  My best guess is that my mom was actually making some kind of peach cake because the best way I can describe it is...well, a cake with peaches thrown in the bottom.  Absolutely delicious.  And, sadly, still a distant memory.  Why she told me it was peach cobbler when it clearly was not?  Your guess is as good as mine.   Someday, I'll find or develop the long-lost cake from my childhood.  Until then...real cobbler is a pretty good second-best.

And so I give you:

"Ruined Nostalgia" Peach & Blueberry Cobbler


Fruit filling:
3 cups peaches, peeled and sliced (about five peaches)
2 cups blueberries
1/3 cup plus 2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 tsp cornstarch

Cobblestone topping:
1 3/4 cups flour
3 tsp double-acting baking powder
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup butter (1/2 stick), chilled and cut into 1/4" cubes
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 425.
1.  Mix fruit in medium bowl.  Add in 1/3 cup sugar, lemon juice, and nutmeg.  Let sit for ten minutes.
2.  Meanwhile, mix together remaining sugar and cornstarch.  After ten minutes, mix the cornstarch mixture into the fruit and dump into a greased baking dish with ample room at the top for the cobbler.
3.  In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.
4.  Cut in butter until mixture is course (like cornmeal).
5.  Add vanilla to milk and stir into the flour mixture, stirring only just until the dry ingredients are wet.  Too much stirring will murder the cobblestone's fluff.
6.  Drop topping over fruit in small dollops.  You want to create the effect of a cobblestone road...hence the name.  Sprinkle with some cinnamon & sugar.
7.  Pop into the oven uncovered for thirty minutes, or until the topping is fluffy and golden.
8.  Allow to cool slightly.  Top with ice cream (vanilla bean is the best), a dollop of whipped cream, and enjoy!

Decadent Hotel Chain Chocolate Crack Cookies

There's something so sinfully delicious about a hotel handing out cookies to guests upon arrival that I simply cannot resist.  If you know me, or have even had a five-minute conversation with me, this comes as no surprise.  I swear, instead of formula, my mother must have fed me ice cream because I have always been and will forever be ruled by my enormous sweet tooth (or mouthful of sweet teeth).  Even after gorging on a three-course meal, I will turn to my husband and enthusiastically ask whether he's ready for dessert.  For there is always dessert.  Even if said dessert is nothing more than a piece of candy, there is always dessert.  And I could be stuffed to the gills, nauseated by the thought of even another bite of dinner, but let somebody present the possibility of dessert, and I'm the first with a fork in hand ready for my massive helping.

So you can imagine my overwhelming glee the first time I checked into a hotel and was offered a fresh-from-the-oven, "homemade" chocolate chip cookie.  Even as I accepted the cookie, the skeptical part of my brain knew it (a) wasn't really free or (b) wasn't that good of a cookie if they were just giving them away.  Okay, so the cost was probably made up in the price of our room.  And the cookie?  Oh my, was that a good cookie.  Arguably the best chocolate chip cookie I've ever had in my entire life.  I'm not exaggerating.  And, as you can imagine, I've sampled many a cookie.  So that's saying something.  The idea was pure genius.  It was as if somebody had tapped into my id and had come away with the most sinfully indulgent idea:  keep people coming back by giving them free cookies seemingly laced with crack.

Of course, the first hotel I went to that did this only offered cookies at check-in...not whenever you just happened to be circling the lobby, hoping for a fresh batch of cookies to magically appear on the front desk.  The second time I found myself staying in a hotel using the crack-laced-cookie method for keeping customers loyal, I was on vacation in Atlantic City with three of the best girlfriends a woman could ask for, and we were offered not only one cookie, but an entire sack of warm-from-the-microwave chocolate chip cookies whenever we wandered through the lobby, which happened every time we found ourselves meandering toward the beach.

These cookies were so good, I found myself, once home, trying to recreate their flavor.  But every batch came up short.  I could tell I was missing a key ingredient but couldn't put my finger on what it was exactly.  And then, my friend forwarded me a link to a website known for providing insider recipes from the country's best restaurants, and, wonder of wonders, the recipe for this particular hotel chain's chocolate chip cookies was included in the site's vast repertoire.  From the first batch, I could tell these were the real deal.  A perfect replica of my first hotel-chain cookie.  But you know me, I got to tweaking a few things and eventually came away with a recipe that is uniquely my own, and if I do say so myself, produces cookies even better than those prepared by the hotel kitchen staff.

And so, I give you...

The Id's Crack-free, Chocolate Chip Cookie
1 cup shortening
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup rolled oats
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp lemon juice
3 cups chocolate chips
1 cup walnuts, finely ground

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Process oats in food processor or blender until finely ground.
3. Add flour, soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg and process until well mixed/sifted.
4. Cream shortening and sugars until light and fluffy.
5. Add vanilla and lemon juice and mix thoroughly.
6. Add eggs and mix thoroughly.
7. Slowly add flour while mixing.  Mix thoroughly.
8. Add finely ground walnuts and mix.
9. Remove bowl from stand mixer and stir in chocolate chips by hand.
10. Shape into 1 1/2" balls and place onto ungreased cookie sheet.
11. Bake approx. 20 minutes, until golden. 
12. Cool completely on wire racks. 
13. Enjoy!

"Sleeping Through the Night" and Other Myth's First-Timers Foolishly Believe

It's been happening a lot lately.  I'll be standing in line at the grocery, my most beloved of pastimes it would seem, in a zombified state as I wait for the cashier to get to my order when a mother of five (or some other staggeringly impossible number) will begin gushing over Mina.  I get it, she's adorable, so I don't mind.  I'll sleepily smile back my "thank yous" and engage in non-committal conversation about how wonderful children are, despite the work.  "Aren't we lucky, yada yada yada."  And then, inevitably, they'll ask, "Is she sleeping through the night yet?", as if the pulsing purple bags under my eyes aren't answer enough.  And I'm not really sure how to answer.  "Well, she used to," I'll say, "but she stopped around the time Thanksgiving hit."  They stare back at me like I have three heads, pityingly, but still as if my daughter's regressive sleeping habits are somehow an indication that she's not human.  Because human babies, or so I'm told, begin sleeping through the night and never look back.

In fact, human babies spend most of their first year sleeping, not just through the night, but in general.  This is such a widely held belief that friends in my PhD program congratulated me warmly when I told them of my pregnancy.  "What perfect timing!" they would tell me.  "You'll be able to get so much work done while the baby's sleeping, probably write your whole dissertation since you won't be teaching."  Being the optimist I am, I believed their lies.  When asked by the L&D nurses at the hospital what I do for a living and whether I'd be returning to work, I would proudly declare my graduate student status.  "I'll be prepping for my exams and then writing my dissertation while I stay home with her," I'd beam, never stopping to wonder at the looks they'd give me as they backed out of the room.  Looking back now, I can only conclude they delivered a lot more non-human babies than I gave them credit for.  Because non-human babies, like Mina, are born alive, alert, and enthusiastic -- okay, maybe not so enthusiastic -- which is why the notion of writing a dissertation, or even beginning to think about my dissertation, in the first year of her life was absolutely ridiculous.

But when it comes right down to it, I'm beginning to suspect there is a much wider range for what it means to be a "normal human baby" than originally thought.  During our first visits to the pediatrician in those early months of Mina's life, my husband and I would go armed with a notepad brimming with questions:  Why isn't she napping?  Why does she eat every hour on the hour?  Aren't fifteen wet diapers in one day excessive?  Should her head spin around like that when she throws up?  And our overly patient pediatrician would always respond with an I've-been-there smile and say, "That's normal."  What I'm coming to discover is that babies are as unique as the adults they grow into.  Some are night owls, some are early birds, and some are both.  ><  Some have insatiable appetites with black holes for stomachs, and some have to be arm-wrestled into the high chair.  Just as we can't nail down what "normal" behavior is for adults (or at least, we have an entire field dedicated to sorting out what it means to be "normal" and even they argue about what "normal" is), "normal" behavior for babies is an equally tenuous thing to pinpoint.  My new motto?  Expect the unexpected cause it's probably gonna happen.  Oh, and savor those rare "normal" moments...

To have multiple or not; that is the question...

Okay, before I begin, let me be perfectly clear about this:  I am not nor do I intend to be expecting another baby anytime soon.  But an increasing number of people in my life -- my dad, my mother-in-law, my sister, my bff, the Russian cashier at Macy's -- have expressed an interest in knowing if and when I'm going to have more children.  Some, my father most notably, have told me I most certainly must have more children and SOON!!!  My mother-in-law argues that it's not fair for parents of only children to always know who broke the teacup, gave the dog a fancy new haircut, or stuck glow-in-the-dark stars all over the kitchen ceiling.  My sister says she just wants more babies to play with, and since she already has four of her own, it's my responsibility to provide them.  Such musings seem premature as Mina is not even a year old, but I'll run with it.

To be honest, before we had Mina, my husband and I talked about this quite often and had an ongoing debate about which was better, three or four children.  I like odd numbers, my husband likes even.  I grew up in a family with three, my husband a family of four.  We figured we had plenty of time to decide between having three and four children and settled on a wait-and-see attitude.  If we had three and really, really wanted another (or had three of one sex and wanted to try for the opposite one more time), then we'd go ahead and have a fourth.  Once Mina was born, all that changed.

In the early days, when I found myself confined to the couch nursing Mina for 8+ hours a day, I began wondering how people in our pioneer days managed to have multiple children while also taking care of the day-to-day chores and responsibilities of running a farm.  I figured extended families lived together back then and probably helped out when a new baby was born.  Since I live 30 minutes away from any family, 45 minutes from family who is willing to actually hold Mina, this realization didn't set me at ease.  Were I to have another child, how would I keep Mina from getting into the drill bits when I found myself quite literally strapped down with her younger sibling?  Who would stop her from eating out of the litter box when I was was upstairs handling the casualties of her younger brother or sister's butt?  More importantly, how could I manage to give Mina or her sibling the attention each deserved when I could hardly manage with just Mina around to find an opportunity to do something as simple as feed myself?

So, as I do with everything else in life, I decided to make a list.  An ongoing list of the pros and cons of having multiple children.  I realize life cannot be so easily categorized or reasoned out.  Some things, like having children, are largely illogical.  But this is how I deal with things, so I'll share with you the current list, which is, sadly, probably the short answer to the question you've all been asking me.

Pro #1:  I <3 babies.  More children = more babies.
Babies are, in short, the most adorable things in the whole wide world.  Playing with and watching babies gives me hope for the future of the human race.  They are truly perfect and don't know deceit, malice, or hatred...yet.  When she looks at the most commonplace thing as if it's the most amazing thing she's ever seen, Mina reawakens in me the ability to see the world through a new perspective...to see the wonder in things I've grown to take for granted.  Obviously, more of this is a good thing, is a great thing.  Is quite possibly a good enough thing to outweigh all the "bad" things that go into having multiple children.

Con #1:  More babies = less "free" time.
I think I remember what it was like to wake up and wonder at the possibilities a day held for me.  I could do any number of things that I've since forgotten how to do:  read a book, spend the day shopping, go for a run, relax.  When I anticipated the early months of Mina's life, I always thought I'd have lots of time to still do these things because I believed, as all those evil parenting books told me, that babies slept most of the time.  Enter Mina, the Incredible Energized and Alert Newborn.  Free time became a pipe dream once Mina was born.  And now that she's getting old and is more capable of entertaining herself, I see a semblance of this returning (read: I have a blog).  Another baby means another six months (at least) of time during which no time is free.  It's a selfish reason not to have more kids, I realize.  But it's a reality, nonetheless.

Pro #2:  More children = more dependents = bigger tax return!
I remember being so, so excited to finally get started on 2010's tax return, and now that I've already jumped in headfirst, I'm not disappointed.  Our tax break for having even one child is more than I could have ever dreamed (but not so much that the government should reduce it...just in case any congressmen/politicians are reading this).  Just imagine the tax break of having TWO children...THREE....FOUR OR MORE?!?  My sister tells me four kids leads to a pretty nice return.  I'm envious.  I love preparing taxes and finding obscure deductions; it's very likely one of my favorite things to do all year.  I know, without a doubt, that having more kids will make tax preparation that much more fun and rewarding.  Okay, I'll admit it, this too is a selfish reason for having more kids.

Con #2:  More children = more dependents = bigger tax return for a reason!
When I was a kid, I always heard parents complaining about how expensive children were.  I never really knew what they meant until I started shelling out a seemingly endless stream of money for Mina's diapers, clothing, food, doctor's visits, toys, furniture....  We've started a college fund for Mina, and when I look at it and see how far it'll take her in today's educational market (parking pass for one semester?), I tremble to think how much money she'll need when she's going off to college in 18 years.  No doubt, she'll end up with a full scholarship, right?  But the thought of putting multiple children through college terrifies me.  Let alone the thought of feeding multiple children through their teenage years.  My husband routinely ate three bowls of cereal for breakfast, entire pizzas for lunch, and once, thinking it was an after school snack his mom had made for whoever wanted it, ate the family's dinner of chicken wings all by himself before anybody else could grab any.  No joke.  I may sound old saying it, but kids are expensive.

Pro #3:  Siblings = BBFFs (Best-Blood Friends Forever).
So, I realize siblings don't always get along.  Heck, I lost my first tooth when my brother and sister conspired against me in an evil plot to make me smash my face into our homemade teeter-totter.  But when the proverbial poo hits the proverbial fan, siblings (are supposed to) have each other's back.  As morbid as it may sound, I would feel more at ease passing from this life into the next knowing Mina and her (potential) siblings have one another to depend on.  I've been blessed to have a brother and sister I can lean on, and my husband has the same thing with his siblings.  It seems cruel to deprive a child of the special kind of love (and irritation) siblings provide.

Okay, that's it for now, kiddies.  More updates to the list are sure to follow.  And please, feel free to pass along your own pros and cons.  I'd love to mull them over and add them to my list!

Stroller Snuggler™

Before I had Mina, the thought of winter travel never intimidated me.  I envisioned stuffing her into a marshmallowesque winter coat and then squeezing her, snug-as-a-bug, into her car seat before heading off into the Winter Wonderland of Northeast Ohio.  Sure, she'd probably be able to move about as well as Ralphie's little brother, but she'd be warm.  And then I read about new standards concerning babies, car seats, and winter coats.  Apparently, big, puffy winter coats and car seats are not a match made in heaven, as I previous thought they were.  According to federal safety guidelines, the heavy winter coats we pile our kiddies into may actually diminish the effectiveness of the car seat harness in the case of an accident and will allow baby to rattle around inside the car seat like a ping pong ball.  Since the point of car seats is to protect babies during accidents, this newfound knowledge set me to thinking:  How could I keep baby warm while also keeping her safe?

Bundle Me

Tivoli

There are several products on the market to keep babies warm in their car seats without adding extra padding between the baby and her harness.  For $50, you can get the JJ Cole Bundle Me from Babies 'R Us or, for $70, you can get the Tivoli Couture Car Seat Cover, which pretty much does the same thing for the added cost of being "couture."  My issue with both of these, aside from their price, is they either entirely restrict baby's movement, as the Tivoli does by leaving nothing but the head exposed, or they expose the arms and shoulders to potentially frigid weather.  I wanted to cover Mina with something that would cover her shoulders and chest while also leaving her arms free to play with toys or randomly flail, as she's so fond of doing.  While there are other options available, nothing on the market met my needs, and so, as the nascent seamstress that I am, I took to the sewing machine to construct what I call the Stroller Snuggie...or Snuggler, if we're trying to avoid copyright infringement.

My pattern, largely inspired by the one seen here, is really quite simple.  Picture a Snuggie, and then miniaturize it to fit a baby.  I won't bore my readers by going into the nitty-gritty details of how to make one of these (unless you really want me to) other than to say it only takes "a yard" of blizzard fleece and about an hour of time (including interruptions for chasing after baby).  I say "a yard" because that's what I ask for at the fabric counter, but really, I start with a piece of fabric that is about 36" x 60" and pare it down to a square 36"x 36" using the rest of the fabric to construct the arms and a matching hat.  I used a yard of blizzard fleece and a yard of regular fleece in an accenting color for my first attempt and ended up making what I refer to as the Deep-Freeze Arctic Stroller Snuggler.  Unless you live in a region where the temperature regularly dips under 25 degrees below zero, you probably don't need a lined Snuggler.  Mina was literally sweating within minutes of putting this thing on, and so we only use it on very rare occasions.  I made a second that is constructed of a yard of blizzard fleece and find it to be just about perfect for our climate.  It's warm enough to keep Mina comfy when we venture outside, but it's cool enough that we don't have to snatch it off of her as soon as we head indoors.  With that said, however, we do make sure to take it off if we're going to be spending any significant amount of time inside.  This fleece is an excellent insulator and traps a lot of body heat.  More than 30 minutes indoors under this thing, and Mina's sweating.  The nice thing about the Snuggler is it meets all of Mina's winter travel needs:  it sufficiently covers her arms, chest, and shoulders while also providing her the mobility to be able to play with toys or just flail about.

Critical or Conversational? Think Before You Speak.

As a culture, perhaps as a people, we love to muse over the best and worse methods for successfully raising kids.  Sure, it makes sense.  The future of the human race depends on how well we raise our kids.  Admittedly, on rare occasion, we like to congratulate parents on their successes by approaching them after church or in line at the grocery to remark upon how well-behaved their kids are.  But, for the most part, it seems we love to ridicule what we perceive as bad, misinformed, and lazy choices people make as they struggle through parenthood asserting we would have done things so much better.  Well, maybe we would have done things better, or maybe there's a chance we don't know what the hell we're talking about.  As outsiders, we simply can't know the kids or situation in which they're being raised, or heck, even if the behavior we're witnessing is typical.

My father once told me a story about a time when my aunt, his baby sister, had "the nerve" to criticize his parenting techniques as attempting to "program" his kids as if they were computers.  She believed, it would seem, that we should have been given more latitude in the day to day, and while I'm not altogether sure what specifically she was referring to or what brought about this criticism, I can honestly say she may have been right.  It's no secret that my father was rather strict with us when we were growing up.  Stricter than most parents?  It's hard to say.  Especially when my standard of comparison is my mother, who was about as lenient as they come.  At any rate, my father's feathers were ruffled by my aunt's comments, not because he recognized she was hitting close to the truth but because she, a woman who chose not to have children, felt it was her place to offer up advice on how my father should be raising his kids.  He felt my aunt was too ignorant about the ins and outs of raising kids to be criticizing a parent's decisions regarding his/her children let alone promoting her own theories regarding the rearing of children.  She had, after all, zero experience being a parent and was educated to be a surgical nurse, not a child psychologist or even a pediatrician.  Now, I'll be the first to admit my father is as stubborn as a bull and that maybe he should have at least considered the point my aunt was trying to make, but at the same time, as a parent now in similar shoes, I can't help but wonder if he was, at least in part, justified in his response.

A good friend recently admonished me for falling into my father's line of thinking while I was complaining about another friend's acerbic remarks regarding choices I've made in caring for Mina.  He stopped me short when I whined that the person "wasn't even a parent" and went on to assert that his inexperience as a parent does not negate the knowledge he's gleaned from friends who have had children, his parents, or information he's acquired on his own through other sources.  He made a good point.  I know I had plenty of opinions about how to best raise children long before I became a parent myself, and while some of those notions have since fallen by the wayside, I still hold on to most of them today.  But then again, just as employers are skeptical of applicants lacking on-the-job experience, parents are justified in taking advice from their childless friends with a grain of salt.  After all, it's nearly impossible to really know how to raise a kid until your up to your eyeballs in diapers and spit-up and actually doing the work of raising your child.  And in all likelihood, unless the parent is a bumbling idiot, they've probably already considered the criticisms likely to be launched by their non-parent friends.  I know very few parents who have approached parenthood with a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants attitude.  The vast majority of parents I know, and I assure you I'm among them, have spent countless hours reading parenting books, visiting parenting websites, reading the most recent research, discussing concerns with the pediatrician and talking to other parents (be it their own or friends who have already ventured down the path of parenthood) to determine what they consider to be the best methods for raising their kids.  That's not to say, as parents, we shouldn't be open to the opinions our childless friends offer up.  After all, they're looking in on our situation from a different vantage point and may be able to see things we simple cannot (like my Dad not seeing he could have lightened up a bit with us).  But I think it falls on the person making the criticism (be it a friend with or without kids) to at least do so respectfully.  To offer up their point of view as just that, a point of view, and not the gospel truth, certainly not when we're talking about how somebody else should be raising their kids.

And now, because I'm my father's daughter:

Epiphanies 1 thru 5: Courtesy of Mina

It's that time of year particularly apt for making lists, and so it seems as good a time as any to reflect over what the past seven months of life with Mina have brought me and record some of my more poignant epiphanies.  Had I realized these at the start of our adventure with Mina, I'm certain my transformation from a self-involved, child-free individual to one responsible for the well-being of another human being would have been much, much smoother.

1.  Nothing before or ever again will be as special or important as the child(ren) we've created.  
What can I say?  Cliches exist because in some way they contain a truth that is shared, though not universally, at least by a large majority.  I must admit I was always skeptical of doting parents who proclaimed their children were the best thing that ever happened to them.  Really?  All of life's many great adventures had never been as satisfying, memorable, or as terrifying as your kids?  I didn't buy it.  Ziplining through the jungle 100 feet above the ground seemed a much more interesting feat than putting a screaming baby down for a nap.  But now, seven months into this, I find myself long since feeling the same way.  Giving birth to and raising Mina has been (and no doubt will continue to be) the single most precious and perfect thing I have ever done in my entire life.  She has challenged me in ways I couldn't have imagined, but she has also rewarded me with hugs and wet, sloppy, open-mouth kisses that are the best gifts I've ever received.  I know it sounds corny and cliched.  It's the truth.

2.  Children are black holes for time, free or otherwise.
While I was pregnant, many people delighted in telling me how my unborn baby would take up all my time once she was born.  What is wrong with people that they get off on telling you how much life is going to suck once your baby is born?  Seriously!  Being the stubborn person I am, I didn't believe them.  Or, if I did, I didn't really think they meant "all" my time would go to taking care of the baby.  At first, this was a problem because, as you can imagine, it's true...in the most literal sense of the word.  I never knew what "all" really meant before Mina was born.  Like any self-respecting neurotic pregnant lady, I did extensive research before my baby was born and read that babies slept anywhere from 16 to 22 hours a day.  Surely, there would be plenty of downtime for me to get to the things I wanted to do, like school work, scrapbooking, cooking...showering and, let's be honest, going potty.  What I didn't realize, of course, was that some babies, mine in particular, spent 8 to 12 hours a day nursing, and the rest of the time were wide awake, ready to be entertained.  So, yes, babies take all your time, but in the end, it doesn't really matter because of, you guessed it, Epiphany #1.  As a matter of fact, I've come to look forward to spending an entire day just watching Mina discover the world.  Chores be damned!  Mina's only going to be a baby for so long, and then (poof!) this phase in Mina's life will be over.  I'll be glad not to have missed it.

3.  Bodily fluids, once thought to be the carriers of all that Satan embodies, are actually not that bad.
It's no secret that I'm somewhat of a germaphobe, a trait which is not entirely illogical.  I don't drink from the same cup as anybody but Derek, and even then on rare occasion, because I knew a kid in high school whose father died 24 hours after contracting bacterial meningitis when he drank from the wrong cup at his son's graduation party.  This tendency of mine to keep other peoples' bodily fluids far, far away from me concerned me as I looked forward to giving birth to and rearing Mina.  So, I knew I'd have to deal with her drool, and I heard horror stories about babies covered in poop (another thing people just love to tell you is gonna happen).  Honestly, finding ways to hygienically deal with Mina's various fluids creeped me out more than the thought of giving birth.  But now, after innumerable encounters, I find myself not really caring when, in the middle of changing a particularly noxious diaper, I look down and see I have poo streaked across my finger.  It's a matter of damage control, I guess.  In the moment, it's a lot more important to finish changing Mina's diaper and prevent more nomadic poo from escaping her nether regions than it is to freak out about the smidgen that managed to find its way to my hand.  I certainly wash my hands once I'm done, but I'm proud to say I've never once freaked out about whatever random fluids find their way onto my body throughout the day.  Spit up, drool, urine, and even poo ain't got nothing on me.  At least, not Mina's spit up, drool, urine or poo.  I'm still incredibly terrified by other peoples' fluids, so keep them far, far away from me!

4.  Babies make the (incredibly fast) passage of time blatantly apparent (i.e. I feel old).
When I went off to college and began a series of annual moves (in and out of the dorms and then to a new apartment each year until I was married), I would always perk up my ears and take note of the passage of yet another year when I found myself going through the annual tedium of packing up all my belongings and finding a new roost to call home.  As I stuffed my clothes into a new (and somehow always smaller) closet, I'd reminisce over all that had happened in the previous year and wonder how long I'd stay in my new residence and what adventures would greet me before I moved again.  At least, I did this ever year until my husband and I bought our house six years ago and settled down into a seemingly more permanent home.  Ever since, time has marched on, unnoticed and unimpeded.  Sure, I recognized that time was passing, but I'd stopped paying attention to how much and how quickly time was passing as I made my way through the tedium of the day-to-day, week-to-week, year-to-year.  And then Mina was born.  At first, as I muscled my way through sleep-deprived days, time seemed to stand still.  It felt like a year had passed before she finally reached the coveted six-week mark when life was sure to get easier.  And then, all of the sudden, she was six weeks old, and then time started flying by at warp speeds.  I look at the calendar and am flummoxed by the fact that seven months have passed, SEVEN MONTHS, since Mina was born.  She's more than halfway to a year old, and only four more of those and she'll be in Kindergarden.  I look at her today, outgrowing 12-month clothes and making strides toward crawling and cutting her first tooth, and can hardly believe how much she's changed from the helpless, insatiable newborn she was seven months ago.  I get whiplash thinking how quickly we've arrived at this point, and since time is relative, I know the next seven months (and seven months after that, and so on) will go quicker still.  In a way, I'm grateful because I've begun forcing myself, each day, to slow down and really soak in the special moments:  rocking Mina to sleep, hearing her giggle uncontrollably as Derek tickles her tummy, watching her gaze in amazement at each new discovery.  Still, I wish there was a way to slow the eternal march of time down, to live these moments a little longer because once they're gone, they're gone.

5.  I know what I'm doing, despite what x, y, or z person may think.  
In the beginning, I deferred to everybody else's opinion on what I should be doing with Mina.  If the lactation consultant told me to nurse Mina standing on my head, I'm sure I would have done everything in my power to make that happen.  I took my parents' criticisms of how I was caring for Mina to heart, questioning if I was, in fact, doing harm when I followed advice offered up by the pediatrician or gleaned from all the leading parenting books.  After all, they'd successfully reared their own children with these seemingly old-fashioned methods, and we'd all turned out okay...well, sort of.  But somewhere along the line, I began to realize nobody on this entire planet knows Mina as well as Derek or I do, and while I recognize the "wisdom of the ages," I also realized that we do know what's best for Mina and should feel confident in the way we've decided to raise her.  Certainly, I'm not infallible, and I'm always eagerly ready to hear advice on how we can do things better, but I'm not nearly as sensitive to the jabs (i.e. you're doing that wrong and are going to raise a spoiled brat because of it) as I once was.  I guess, at some point in the last seven months, I became a parent, a grown-up capable of taking stock of a situation and deciding what's best.  The irony is, of course, that it was my daughter who taught me how to become the mother she needs me to be.

Pink Camo

It's not often that I find myself lounging around watching others play video games.  A couple times a week, maybe?  Okay, perhaps that's more than the average bear.  But watching a gaming session in which a woman is playing what is typically considered a "male" game (Halo, Call of Duty, etc.) and dominating her male playing partners?  Almost never.  Anytime I've watched (and occasionally joined in playing) these games, girls are usually invited to play by their boyfriends or brothers as a "stand in," a place holder, an easy kill.  But a worthy adversary who is competent at head shots?  I've only witnessed this once, and perhaps this is why I found it so striking that my sister, the go-to sniper of the day, was running around as a big, burly, plaid-clad, man with a mullet.  When I asked why my sister was playing a man, she told me there weren't any female characters, at which point my feminist reflexes kicked in and, without even thinking, I remarked upon how sexist that was.

My family challenges me, and this is something I both love and hate about them.

The moment the words had escaped my lips, I knew I'd made a mistake.  My father turned to me, eyes bugging out of their sockets, and just shook his head.  At the same moment, my sister and twelve-year old nephew started assaulting me, rapid fire, with questions:  Did I think it was sexist men were born without a uterus?  Did I think it was sexist women were forced to lactate?  Did I think it was sexist women weren't given the privilege of having a penis?  And on and on.  I parried, I dodged, I returned fire saying I was complaining about the design of a video game, not biological reproductive roles.  All fell on deaf ears.  "Women," my nephew asserted, "belonged not on the front lines but at home with their babies" (a comment that won a rebuke from my sister).  Defeated, I quickly retreated to the kitchen (I-R-O-N-Y) where my husband was having a friendly conversation about, none other than, video games with my brother-in-law.  The conversation was soon forgotten, and the evening came to a pleasant end.  But it's been nagging at me ever since.  Why did it bother me so much that (1) women who elected to play the video game (and many like it) are forced to subvert their own gender and take on that of a (hideously attired) man and (2) that my family was incapable of having a rational conversation about it?

A few years back, one of my best friends was getting married and, as etiquette dictates, held a small get-together for her out of town guests.  Being the trendy, well-dressed person I'd always known her to be, I was somewhat surprised when she greeted us at the door wearing camouflage capris and matching ballet slippers (you know, the shoes...not real ballet slippers).  This friend is one of the "girliest" friends I have, and I would have thought she'd walk around naked before being seen in camo, but I didn't say anything. At least, not until we'd gotten together for a drink after the party.  As it turned out, her camo attire was not something she had picked out on her own, not even something she wore altogether willingly, but rather something her husband (who has always been trendy and hip) had bought for her after declaring "she needed to wear more camo."  A wise woman picks her battles, I guess, so my friend acquiesced.

As I thought about the incident with my family over the gendered nature of combat video games, this memory came flashing back to me.  And I must say, I find myself getting a little annoyed.  So, it's okay for women to wear camouflage (nay, even PINK camouflage) if it matches current fashion trends, but depicting women in a video game that mimics a war zone is ridiculous?  More to the point, allowing women to take on a feminine identity in what is typically considered to be a "male" video game is so ridiculous that to even suggest such a design can reasonably be expected to be met with a barrage of criticisms so illogical responding isn't even worth the time or effort.

I know, I know.  It's just a video game.  Why bother wasting the energy getting my pink, camouflage undies in a bunch?  My point exactly.  It's a video game.  Why then is it so ridiculous to ask for a girl to be given the opportunity to play a character who more closely matches her real world identity?  To create a video game in which girls/women don't have to throw off their own femininity to participate.  Is that really so far-fetched that we can't even have a conversation about it?  If we can't even conceive of gender equality in the fictional world of video games, what hope do we have of achieving this equality in the real world, where it really counts?

Squishy, Squashy!

Hold on to your butts!  We're about to embark upon our most exciting blog post yet!  Today I began my foray into the world of homemade baby food and prepared (successfully, if I do say so myself) homemade squash.  I used a pretty simple recipe from Wholesome Baby Food that called for me to split the squash, scoop out their guts, bake, and puree.  Simple doesn't even begin to describe this process.

Split...

Scoop...

and Bake!

Despite my fears of having pureed squash all over the kitchen ceiling, things went pretty well.  Mina interrupted the process a couple times by (1) making squash of her own and then (2) refusing to go down for a nap (Mommy won that battle!), but even with a couple stumbles, it only took me about an hour and fifteen minutes start to finish.  Mind you, that includes about 25 minutes of baking.  Not bad, not bad at all.

Some lessons I learned:

1. There are many, many different kinds of squash.  The long, yellow ones seen here are banana squash, and while my experience tells me they puree nicely and make something very similar (if not a little sweeter) to what Gerber sells, I guess this is not the "ideal" type of squash to use when making baby food.  Next time, I'll try the acorn or butternut variety as they've been heralded as having excellent flavor, and my guess is they will also yield a higher ratio of usable food (i.e. have less waste and, therefore, be more economical).  
2. A pound and a half of raw produce does not equal anything even remotely close to a pound and a half of baby food.  I knew there would be waste, but I had no idea how much waste there would be.  I was thinking I'd get somewhere around seven 2 oz. servings, but, alas, I only ended up with three.  So basically, my $1.49 worth of fresh squash yielded three servings, which would have cost $1.49.  Add the time and energy spent to make the squash, and I'm actually losing money on this one.  Eep!  My hope is that Mina will devour this homemade stuff and provide some vindication for the effort here.  Next time, I'll definitely make a bigger batch.
3. Know when to tell when squash is done baking.  The recipe called for me to bake the squash 40 minutes, but I was also using squash that is not as meaty as the squash this recipe called for.  I accounted for that, but when I peeked in the oven after 25 minutes, I was probably met with overcooked squash.  Does it really matter?  Well, maybe.  The edges were turning brown, and when I scooped them out, I did have a little trouble getting the squash around the rim.  If I'd cooked these any longer, my guess is they would have dried out a lot more and made the process of scooping them out pretty tedious.  
4. Even homemade squash tastes like wet toilet paper.  The fact that my daughter loves squash proves she was switched at birth.  Still, she's pretty awesome.

No clue on how Mina will receive this stuff.  She's in the middle of being introduced to sweet potatoes now, so she won't be able to try this until Sunday.  I'll be sure to update once she tries it.

Next up:  Bananas!

Frugal Foods or Disastrous Dinners? Only Time Will Tell...

One Saturday afternoon when I was eight-years old, my dad gave me some sage, money-saving advice: "Watch over the pennies, and the dollars will take care of themselves." It was an afternoon spent rolling several jars of loose change into money wrappers so he could take them to the bank and deposit them into his savings. I'd been charged with the task of meticulously rolling a 40 oz. coffee can full of pennies into their wrappers, a job that took a majority of the day to complete and one that literally paid off at the end of the day. Instead of including the $35 worth of pennies in the bag he was gathering to take to the bank, my dad put them into a separate bag and offered them to me. I would later take that bag of pennies to K-Mart and use it to pay for all the Christmas gifts I bought for my family that year. I know, I know! K-Mart? Give me a break, I was eight. That afternoon's lesson stuck with me and helped shape me into the crazed bargain-hunter I am today. That's not to say that I'm as frugal as my father would like. I'll be the first to admit that I have expensive tastes, but I'm always looking for ways to offset the cost of my extravagant tendencies by shaving pennies any way I can from our budget.

Take baby food, for instance. Gerber's "standard fare" non-organic baby food retails for 99 cents -- that's two 2.5 ounce servings per package, which calculates out to roughly $3.17/lb. If you're neurotic and have memorized produce prices like I have, then you know that's not a bad deal on some of the fruits and veggies you can buy in the baby food aisle. For instance, fresh green beans routinely cost 2.99/lb at Giant Eagle, and with the time and energy of cooking and pureeing said beans, coupled with the fact that pureeing vegetables like green beans and peas to as smooth a consistency as you'll find in the baby food jars is nigh impossible, it's not really worthwhile to make these veggies at home. But bananas? Bananas usually cost .49/lb, so paying a 650% premium for bananas that have been squished and mixed with some citrus to prevent browning seems a luxury I can't really afford. That 99 cent package of bananas would cost roughly 15 cents to make at home. I'd be crazy not to give homemade baby food a try for the potential savings it offers!

I'd be lying if I said my sole motivation in deciding to make some baby food at home was economical. To be honest, my pride is probably more a factor than I'd like to admit. Yes, I believe I can make baby food that is at least as good as what they sell in those adorable little containers. And no, I'm not talking organic. As non-PC as it makes me, I despise organic food. This, no doubt, stems from my experience eating a salad (or part of a salad) that was infested with little, white bugs that resembled baby maggots. I have a particular disdain for maggots and am pretty opposed to feeding them to my daughter. Rather, I've long believed fresh fruits and vegetables are far superior to those sold in cans or even flash frozen, and I am inclined to believe the same could be said for baby food. I also believe myself to be somewhat of a creative cook (again, my pride has a big ego) and can muster up creations as yet to be discovered by Gerber. And finally, for the same reason I like to make my own food from scratch whenever it's economical and convenient to do so, I'd like to have control over the foods Mina eats, preparing them to my own standards rather than relying on the standards imposed by the mass production and distribution of big label food companies...and all the rat-infested facilities that go along with them.

And so, I'm embarking on a new adventure that will be sure to be littered with catastrophic failures along the way. After extensive research into the best options available, I've finally invested in two of Williams-Sonoma's Beaba multi-portion freezer trays. I've bookmarked Wholesome Baby Food and have even taken more than a passing glance at baby food books, like Super Baby Food (which I quickly dismissed as fanatical after she spent the greater part of a chapter demanding we should only feed our babies organic, vegetarian fares) and Homemade Baby Food: Pure and Simple (a helpful read!). I may end up admitting defeat after several failed, possibly explosive batches of food gone awry. Or maybe I'll end up like Diane Keaton in Baby Boom, the head of my own corporation responsible for revolutionizing the baby food industry. If nothing else, I'll have at least tried my hand at one very practical way of trimming a few pennies off our budget to save up for next Christmas's K-Mart Shopping Extravaganza.

Darwin would have asked me not to reproduce...

Eating. It's one of lif'e's many keys to survival. And I suspect knowing how to feed one's offspring is also crucial to the survival of any species. We had a cat once, Buttons, who was too stupid to figure out how to keep her litter alive. I'm starting to realize I have a lot more in common with Buttons than I'd like to admit.

When my daughter turned four-months old, I began my journey down the long, winding and perilous path of feeding her solids. I couldn't help but wonder at my cluelessness when it came to knowing what, how, and when to feed my daughter. Breast-feeding seemed intuitive, excepting, of course, the incident when my Lactation Consultant told me my six-week old daughter's near-constant desire to eat was "abnormal" and that I wasn't "doing things right." But I put Mina on a three-hour feeding schedule, and all seemed right with the world. Enter the chaos of solids.

The directions for preparing rice cereal are at once overly simplistic and moderately confusing. They give you specific directions for preparing the cereal for "baby's first feeding" (1 tbsp cereal to 4-5 tbsp milk/formula), but then direct you, for later feedings, to add the "desired" amount of cereal and milk to a bowl and serve. Um, what? If this were a box of cocoa puffs, I could see giving such vague directions, but I thought of this stuff as more like cream of wheat, which has very specific guidelines for preparing a successful batch. Too much or too little liquid, and you end up with an unpalatable mess. Then I got to wondering if maybe my evolutionary instincts never kicked in. I mean, if people needed more specific directions for preparing this cereal, then I'm sure Gerber would have included them on the box. Maybe I'm the weak link here.

So, two months later, I've experimented (and flushed a lot of cereal down the drain) and finally seem to have a pretty good handle on the cereal. Two tbsp rice cereal to two ounces formula/milk, and Mina's usually a pretty happy camper. Since she was about five months old, she's been getting that twice a day and has seemed to do well with sleeping through the night and being pretty satisfied overall. But now that she's six-months old and has entered what her pediatrician deems as the appropriate time to introduce other solids, I'm at a loss, once again.

I guess what's most frustrating is that I've done my research. Perhaps, I've done too much research. I bounce from website to website, book to book, and mother to mother trying to figure out how much my daughter should be eating. One source says I should think of solid foods as more like "little tastes" for my daughter -- like snacks that introduce her to the plethora of flavors in our culinary palette rather than anything offering substantial nourishment. Then I read on another site that she should be eating 4-8 tbsp of cereal, 2-4 tbsp of veggies, 2-4 tbsp of fruit, and 4-6 oz. of juice on top of 24-30 ounces of breast milk every day! The pediatrician isn't much help either. According to her, Mina should be getting a breakfast, lunch, and dinner of solids (on top of breast milk). And maybe some juice. And maybe some snacks. And maybe something small before she goes to bed. So...how much should she be getting again?

I understand babies are not machines and this is why they don't come with user manuals, but I would expect some general consistency about how much they should be eating at any given age. We have guidelines for adults, but apparently not so much for babies. What's more is when I ask my friends about this, they all give me this look that says maybe Congress ought to think more seriously about licensing people to have kids. And maybe they're right. I don't hear other mothers asking these questions; they just seem to know intuitively how to feed their kids.

At any rate, the point of this blog is to chronicle the adventures of me and my husband as we try to raise our daughter: feeding her, clothing her, teaching her how to survive in a world where people like me are allowed to reproduce...despite what Darwin said about survival of the fittest.