Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Raise a Glass!
Seriously, how good is Casal Garcia Vinho Verde? At $5.99 a bottle from Central Street market, with an ice cube in it, and served with something that includes at least a little bit of chourico. I love that wine.
Betty Crocker I'm not!
At the risk of sounding egotistical, I can decorate a mean cake. It started out with my sister and I decorating Will's first birthday cake, and has taken on a life of its' own since then. My good friend had the chance to take a cake decorating course, and was generous enough to pass on lots of her knowledge and pointers to me. I would say that I am relatively creative, and work pretty well with my hands; all things that are useful in cake decorating.
However, the yin to my decorating yang is the fact that I cannot bake worth a shit. No lie, my baking efforts fail at least half of the time. I love to cook, and think I do pretty well at that, but baked goods of all types elude me. I hate any type of baking from scratch. I am far too impatient and pay nowhere near enough as much attention to detail in order to churn success after success out of my kitchen. I think, too that it may have something to do with my disdain for math. I once fucked up a box of brownies. And by once, I mean once recently.
We are a big Pick Your Own family, and the blueberries this year have been INSANE! But, really, how many raw blueberries can one family eat? A few weeks ago, I baked a blueberry pie that was so great I decide to make another one the week after. The second pie's bottom crust was completely undercooked, inside the sugar was grainy and the top edges completely burnt.
But, hope springs eternal here in my kitchen, and I've got to do something with all of these friggin' blueberries. So, you can imagine my surprise when I produced this little gem late last night.
What you are looking at my friends is a slice of fresh blueberry coffee cake. A brand new recipe, made perfectly by me, of all people on the first try. I did not lose count of how many scoops of flour half way through. Nor did I miscalculate the stick of butter being a 1/2 cup, not 1/4 as I've learned OVER and OVER in the past.
One of my favorite times of the day is when I wake up and have my first cup of coffee. This cake made it even better this morning.
However, the yin to my decorating yang is the fact that I cannot bake worth a shit. No lie, my baking efforts fail at least half of the time. I love to cook, and think I do pretty well at that, but baked goods of all types elude me. I hate any type of baking from scratch. I am far too impatient and pay nowhere near enough as much attention to detail in order to churn success after success out of my kitchen. I think, too that it may have something to do with my disdain for math. I once fucked up a box of brownies. And by once, I mean once recently.
We are a big Pick Your Own family, and the blueberries this year have been INSANE! But, really, how many raw blueberries can one family eat? A few weeks ago, I baked a blueberry pie that was so great I decide to make another one the week after. The second pie's bottom crust was completely undercooked, inside the sugar was grainy and the top edges completely burnt.
But, hope springs eternal here in my kitchen, and I've got to do something with all of these friggin' blueberries. So, you can imagine my surprise when I produced this little gem late last night.
What you are looking at my friends is a slice of fresh blueberry coffee cake. A brand new recipe, made perfectly by me, of all people on the first try. I did not lose count of how many scoops of flour half way through. Nor did I miscalculate the stick of butter being a 1/2 cup, not 1/4 as I've learned OVER and OVER in the past.One of my favorite times of the day is when I wake up and have my first cup of coffee. This cake made it even better this morning.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Like Jon and Kate
I'm back with the new shit...
So, let me be the first to write what perhaps all of you may be thinking. Where the hell have I been? Seriously? Did I get sucked into a vortex of bad reality TV? Have I been vacationing on the Hamptons? No, no. Nothing nearly as exciting.
When you're a mom of 3 kids all under the age of 5, or really any adult, regardless of sex or offspring, there are only so many hours (or minutes or seconds or whatever time your life allows) you can dedicate to being online. I used to spend a large portion of my time on the "internets" with Perez Hilton and reading local obituaries. A bit macabre, I know.
Then, I joined Facebook. I would check in on my "friends" all the time, give quick, clever (in my mind) updates about what I was up to, and even direct people to my blog which I wasn't updating nearly as much as I should have been. At first, it was really fun, and it was actually great to reconnect with some people I hadn't seen or talked to in a while. And I actually forgot how much I liked some people and realized I missed them.
But, after a while, Facebook really started to bum me out. I started to feel like my life, somehow, wasn't quite as good as the lives of my former coworkers/ roommates/ classmates. Why? Why did the grass seem so much greener? Why did it appear that certain women seemed able to balance motherhood, a career, and marriage effortlessly; still finding time to be "hitting the gym" and going for "GNO" according to their status updates?
I don't work outside of my home. I don't go to the gym. And, Girls Night Out? I struggle to get any kind of NO, or, better yet, an HO. And, when and if I do, you best believe that I'm not snapping pictures the whole time.
And then it hit me. Everybody's lives look so great on Facebook because, largely, you create an ideal image of yourself. One that you would like to portray to the rest of the world. Trust me, I didn't see many Mobile Uploads entitled "No Shower Today" or "Losing my Temper at Hannaford". Not too many Status Updates of "Just bounced another check...." or "thinking about a divorce." I even posed while Will tried his hand at photography in order to give me a decent, and more recent profile picture.
And you know what else I realized? My life, when sculpted and trimmed by moi actually looks pretty fucking fantastic, too. But most importantly, I realized that my life IS great. Too great to waste away on Facebook. So, since I am no good at setting and adhering to limits, I quit that shit. Cold turkey, cause that's all I know how to do.
And, really, I know it's just Facebook, and I know it's only been a month, but I feel excited to get back to my blog. I've missed it. It makes me feel so wonderful to sit, write, and giggle while I think about what goes on in my life. Not in some fake, cut and paste cyber life version, but my every day, real, little, silly, crazy life.
I appreciate the fact that there are people out there who find my blog worthwhile and at all amusing. Not just my mom and my sister and my good friends, because of course they're going to read it. But other people who I have probably very little in common with, who are not beholden to me or my blog in any way. So, check back often, and leave me comments galore. I'll try not to let you down again.
For all you do, this blog's for you.
So, let me be the first to write what perhaps all of you may be thinking. Where the hell have I been? Seriously? Did I get sucked into a vortex of bad reality TV? Have I been vacationing on the Hamptons? No, no. Nothing nearly as exciting.
When you're a mom of 3 kids all under the age of 5, or really any adult, regardless of sex or offspring, there are only so many hours (or minutes or seconds or whatever time your life allows) you can dedicate to being online. I used to spend a large portion of my time on the "internets" with Perez Hilton and reading local obituaries. A bit macabre, I know.
Then, I joined Facebook. I would check in on my "friends" all the time, give quick, clever (in my mind) updates about what I was up to, and even direct people to my blog which I wasn't updating nearly as much as I should have been. At first, it was really fun, and it was actually great to reconnect with some people I hadn't seen or talked to in a while. And I actually forgot how much I liked some people and realized I missed them.
But, after a while, Facebook really started to bum me out. I started to feel like my life, somehow, wasn't quite as good as the lives of my former coworkers/ roommates/ classmates. Why? Why did the grass seem so much greener? Why did it appear that certain women seemed able to balance motherhood, a career, and marriage effortlessly; still finding time to be "hitting the gym" and going for "GNO" according to their status updates?
I don't work outside of my home. I don't go to the gym. And, Girls Night Out? I struggle to get any kind of NO, or, better yet, an HO. And, when and if I do, you best believe that I'm not snapping pictures the whole time.
And then it hit me. Everybody's lives look so great on Facebook because, largely, you create an ideal image of yourself. One that you would like to portray to the rest of the world. Trust me, I didn't see many Mobile Uploads entitled "No Shower Today" or "Losing my Temper at Hannaford". Not too many Status Updates of "Just bounced another check...." or "thinking about a divorce." I even posed while Will tried his hand at photography in order to give me a decent, and more recent profile picture.
And you know what else I realized? My life, when sculpted and trimmed by moi actually looks pretty fucking fantastic, too. But most importantly, I realized that my life IS great. Too great to waste away on Facebook. So, since I am no good at setting and adhering to limits, I quit that shit. Cold turkey, cause that's all I know how to do.
And, really, I know it's just Facebook, and I know it's only been a month, but I feel excited to get back to my blog. I've missed it. It makes me feel so wonderful to sit, write, and giggle while I think about what goes on in my life. Not in some fake, cut and paste cyber life version, but my every day, real, little, silly, crazy life.
I appreciate the fact that there are people out there who find my blog worthwhile and at all amusing. Not just my mom and my sister and my good friends, because of course they're going to read it. But other people who I have probably very little in common with, who are not beholden to me or my blog in any way. So, check back often, and leave me comments galore. I'll try not to let you down again.
For all you do, this blog's for you.
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