This is what happens when mommy is too sick and tired to play with the children on a holiday weekend and allows them to play with her digital camera instead of taking them out.
They take pictures of the television.
They also took pictures of each other, but frankly, most of these were better.
See what I mean?
I’m going to need a reprieve on the new-recipe-a-month resolution thing. Pain and illness are both excellent appetite suppressants and no inspiration for cooking for others. I’ll try to do TWO in June as soon as I’m up to speed again. We’ll see how that works out…
My daughter’s tenth birthday is in mid-July but we had her party on Friday so she could have it with her friends before school ends. All in all it seemed to be a success.
I was fairly stressed out during the planning however. I know it sounds stupid – it’s just a child’s party after all. You’d have to have seen some of the parties I’ve seen here to understand.
Many of the families at the school my children attend work in the oil industry – a more lucrative career choice than academics. In my time here I’ve seen parties where the parents take the entire class bowling and out for lunch at Chilis. Parties where the parents rent space and hire bouncy castles and/or bungee jumping trampolines. In addition they might also hire clowns, magicians, DJs, bubble machines, popcorn carts, cotton candy machines, and face painters. There are party planners you can call and get complete packages – pay them enough and they’ll even manage the games for you. One party we attended was catered by a rather swish Indian restaurant.
Then there’s me with the at-home do-it-yourself party.
I truly do believe that simple is better and that while the children find all of the above options fun, they aren’t really necessary. Ever see a kid play with a stick? Or a rock? I apply the same concept to the birthday party, though I admit I do worry about the consequences of my choices. No one wants their child to be embarrassed by their parents. On the other hand, how do you continue to top yourself from year to year when you set the bar so high, so young?
My daughter and I decided on a dance party and invited fourteen girls. I compiled two disks of music from our CDs and iTunes, cleared the living room of furniture, picked up the carpets, and borrowed a multi-colored dance globe. I littered the floor with balloons and hooked the video camera up to the TV so they could watch themselves dance. I hung a small disco ball over the food table and a ran strand of twinkling white lights on the side board near the stereo.
Since I didn’t rent a dance hall or hire a DJ, I decided to wow them with hard-to-find American junk food: mini bagel pizzas, popcorn, puffed twisted Cheetos, four flavors of Kool-Aid, and watermelon and instead of cake I planned to serve build-your-own ice cream sundaes complete with choices of M&Ms, Oreos, sprinkles, chocolate or strawberry sauce, whipped cream, and maraschino cherries. I figured if I supplied enough sugar, they would supply the fun
In spite of the fact that everything was coming together nicely, the night before the party I woke in the early hours of the morning from a vivid dream that the party was over but that I’d forgotten to serve the ice cream sundaes!!
We ended up having nearly 100% attendance – only one girl couldn’t make it. Picture it: fourteen little girls dancing and playing in my living room sticking balloons to their heads with static electricity. They even initiated and ran a game of musical statues on their own. My main function was to serve food and stay out of the way. My daughter really didn’t want me to join in the dancing, though I admit to bopping around the kitchen a bit.
I did not forgot the ice cream – believe me, I was very focused on that – but I did forget to carve and serve the watermelon!
The only thing that would have been better would have been if I’d had the party at night to maximize the effect of the dance light, but since we have floor to ceiling windows covered only by sheers and it doesn’t get dark now until nearly 8pm that wasn’t really an option – at least not until she turns sixteen!
The dance light and the music brought back fond memories of my own birthday parties at the local roller rink. When I told my daughter about it, she thought it sounded really great and it’s sad to think that roller rinks don’t seem to exist anymore. Whatever happened to them, do you think? Out of fashion? Too big a space to rent? Too much liability insurance required against injuries? How many of you remember doing the Hokey-Pokey on rollerskates?
Believe it or not, the orchid babies survived my absence while I was away in Cleveland. They don’t look much bigger but they are still alive.
There was, however, a fifty-percent reduction in my poinsettia population – two of my four plants died.
Since my plan is to be away for approximately six weeks this summer, I wonder how many of any of the remaining plants will still be here when I get back?
Until I succumbed to the lure of taking tennis lessons myself, that is.
I did hold out a long time, though – I’ve been watching my children play for ten hours a week for nearly two years. I’ve tossed around the idea of taking lessons for a while but always decided against it because of back problems, shoulder problems, time. But when a friend of mine recently asked me if I’d take lessons with her, I immediately agreed. That was Wednesday morning and we had so much fun that we decided to do them two mornings a week.
I’m taking the lessons from my children’s coach and my biggest worry in the whole thing was that I’d be awful. My children are both so physically gifted that it is inevitable that he would likely expect more of the same and that I’d disappoint him. All I really wanted was not to look like a total spaz – either missing all the balls or hitting them out of the court. Happily, I didn’t miss many and all of my shots stayed within the walls of the court, if not the lines!
My children were with me for the first lesson, watching avidly. My daughter’s assessment? “You don’t suck!”
I was using my daughter’s racquet and wearing my sport sandals for the first lesson. Since I’m going to stick with it, I bought proper tennis shoes yesterday. Buying a racquet is slightly more complicated so I’m going to take more time with that. If you see a blonde playing bad tennis in blindingly white tennis shoes using a racquet with purple strings and a Sponge Bob vibration dampener, that’s me. Keep your eye on the ball because it might just come flying out of control in your direction…
Saw this sign in a barber shop near where I am staying in Cleveland. I laugh every time I see it. Can’t you just imagine some big, hairy guy going in and requesting their service by name??
A while back my husband decided to get us a 15″ cast iron skillet because he was suspicious of nonstick coatings – both fumes and also when they start to peel. I admit that I was somewhat reluctant to use the new pan for quite a while. I was used to the pans that I had been using and didn’t think we really needed such a large pan so it sat on a shelf collecting dust.
Since we moved to our new house, I’ve fallen totally in love with the pan. Why? It all started with French toast. I hadn’t had any French toast (eggy bread for my British/Aussie readers) in a very long time, mostly because I didn’t have a pan where it wouldn’t either stick terribly (aluminum skillet) or fail to brown properly (nonstick). The French toast did not stick to the cast iron pan, it browned perfectly, AND it’s large enough that I was able to make three pieces at a time. Hmmm…
Since then I’ve used it to make grilled cheese sandwiches, veggie burgers, quesadillas, fried potatoes, oven-baked sweet potato fries, sautee onions, and pancakes. Yes, it’s large and it’s heavy, but I know it’s not giving off any noxious fumes when I heat it up and you just have to love a pan that you are actively discouraged from washing! I just wipe out whatever bits are left behind, oil it up and it’s ready to go the next time. I’ve been using it so frequently that it now lives on my stovetop.
I used it the morning of my trip to make my new-to-me recipe for March: oat cakes. (Ha! I didn’t have to rely on the brownies after all!) I’ve tried making oat cakes before but they were always denser than I liked. I found this recipe on Mama Pea’s blog and since she used to run a restaurant I figured she ought to know what she’s doing. She does indeed – they were wonderful.
My next adventure with cast iron will involve seasoning the cast iron waffle maker I bought recently. I’ll be able to make waffles on my stovetop OR in the woods! An added bonus is that it is small enough to also serve as a weapon
The Bangkok Duty Free and the Orchid Growers of Thailand must be laughing themselves silly over their clever scheme to separate tourists, high on their holidays, from their last few baht.
I had about an hour in the Bangkok airport before my flight and was wandering the shops, as you do, needing to spend what remained of my Thai money. I bought myself an elephant key chain and a few spices for hubby. There were many, many boxes of cut orchids that I admired and passed by. I wasn’t sure how Egyptian customs would deal with me bringing in plant life and didn’t want to risk it. But then I saw the orchids plants, sealed in bottles.
I was feeling overconfident – I have never grown an orchid in my life. I can’t grow picky plants like African violets or cyclamen. I think that seeing orchids growing like weeds all over Thailand (their native environment, duh!) infected my brain though. All I could think at the time was what could be better than cut orchids than an orchid plant? And they came with instructions – how hard could it be?
I ended up getting a package of four small orchids. I gave one to the mother of a friend of mine who loves plants and kept the other three.
First instruction: “Take the orchid plant out from the bottle, when this young plant has filled up the bottle or the nutrient jelly has dried up, approx. 1-3 months spent.”
Hmmm… The inspection stamp on the back of the box was 2009 so surely that was more than a few months? And the plants were in that little airless jar in my custody for weeks and were doing nothing. So I decided to open the jar because maybe they just missed a step in their translation, right?
Wrong. Within days of having opened the jar, the nutrient jelly started to grow mold! Oops.
Okay, on to step two: “Wash the jelly out thoroughly and leave it to dry in basket under shade until new roots have developed, normally consumes 2 weeks.”
I washed the tiny plants off, hoping the Cairo tap water wouldn’t do them in, and put them in liqueur glasses in a dark corner of my kitchen and waited. They looked as if they were molding too – at first. Then I realized that what I took for mold might actually be the roots. Cool!
Their two weeks were just about up when it was time for me to leave for my trip so I hastily potted them. I used coffee cups because it was all I had handy, and let’s be realistic – how long are these things really going to last anyway, especially now that they’ve been left to the care of my nine year old daughter? Think she’s going to remember to water them twice a day? Fat chance!
Good thing the nursery where I bought the peat moss has some lovely, mature, blooming orchids for sale. I should have just gone there in the first place!
Another thing I would recommend not getting in Thailand is a pedicure. I now have an ugly toenail and a month’s worth of Lamisil to remind me of my holiday treat…
How many pots does it take to make soup for dinner? When you make it like I did the other night, apparently four!
Pot #1 – I started out making spiced dal (Indian lentil stew) – a recipe I’ve made countless times. Only this time – yikes! – I added way too much salt.
Pot #2 – I put more lentils in a second pot to cook without any seasoning, figuring I could add these to the first pot when they were done, with the hope that it would be enough to balance things out.
Pot #3 – Pot #1 was too small to accommodate the lentils from pot #2. Added everything to the pot #3 and find it is still pretty salty. Needs something…
Pot #4 – larger pot still to accommodate lentils, can of diced tomatoes, frozen chopped spinach, and several more cups of water. Voila! Indian lentil soup
(Pots #5 & #6 were for the basmati rice and the side of asparagus)
All in all, way too many pots for what ended up being a fairly simple dinner!! But I was happy to have salvaged the meal – and there’s enough leftover that we can eat it again later in the week. Gotta love a twofer.
Still, I don’t think that such a mad scramble should count as my new-to-me March recipe. I wasn’t going to count the brownie recipe I made at the beginning of the month either, but with March quickly passing and the fact that I’ll be traveling for the last two weeks of the month, brownies it is!
I make cakes from scratch all the time with good results, but hadn’t found a satisfying brownie recipe til now. Normally I rely on a mix, but I had friends coming over and had forgotten to buy a mix and it was raining so I took a chance. I chose this recipe because it didn’t require me to melt any chocolate, instead relying on powdered cocoa – which I happen to have in great supply. The only thing I did differently was add mint chocolate chips as a top crust – in a word, YUM. I may never buy a brownie mix again.
If I make brownies again this week, it can count as my March recipe, right?
I was making an appointment for my next haircut at my last appointment (my hair dresser is that popular and busy!) and it happened that it fell on March 15th, the Ides of March. We both commented on it and she said, “I wonder what that means, though?”
I promptly forgot about the discussion – until I read The Memoirs of Cleopatra and the conversation came back to me. Besides the fact that March 15th is the date Caesar was assassinated, did that date have any special meaning?
Nope, apparently not. According to Infoplease, in the Roman calendar the Ides was just a way of marking the middle of the month. In fact, only three days had names – Kalends, the first day; Nones, the 7th or the 5th depending on the month; and Ides, the 15th or the 13th also depending on the month. All the other days were specified by counting forward or backward from one of those days. (Probably a good thing they weren’t quite as time-bound as we are today because could you imagine trying to set a meeting based on a calendar like that??) The rest of the spooky connotation was gifted to us by Shakespeare in the play Julius Caesar and the now famous soothsayer’s warning to Caesar. Funny how that sort of thing sticks around, isn’t it? (Any author’s dream!)
In short, nothing to see here folks, just another day. Unless you happen to be in Rome where the Hash House Harriers do an annual toga run past the spot where Caesar was killed. Think Caesar would be honored, amused, horrified, or just puzzled?
I write books for fun so why is it so hard to write my own bio? I am an American currently living in Cairo, Egypt. Aside from writing, I'm a married mom of two under ten, a decent (if reluctant) cook, an encyclopedia of random scientific / medical facts, a wine lover (but not a snob!), and a Capricorn. I love to travel, spend time with good friends, and laugh at life's surprises. View of life - definitely half full.
