C is for "I Need a Vacation"

A few weeks back, my son had his special helper day at preschool, which means he gets to bring in a "special guest". And this "special guest" gets to provide a snack and spend the morning trying to keep handfuls of five year-olds from sticking paintbrushes in their ears. I'll be honest, I'm not the best at being the "special guest". Mostly because I'm too busy mainlining Purell and dodging sneezes to notice anything else. But I decided to go a little out-of-the-box for snack time. Instead of the usual cheese sticks or Goldfish crackers, I wanted to make these:
















That's right. It's Cookie Monster. Kickin' it old school with a cookie in his mouth. I was so excited about these. I saw the design on several different baking blogs and immediately had visions of being the coolest mommy ever, which would immediately trump my current status of being the weirdest mommy ever. But then something happened. I made them. Have you ever tried to make blue frosting? My only experience with blue frosting was at our wedding. We had a very whimsical wedding cake that had blue butter cream and white and yellow flowers. It turned everyones mouths blue, but luckily we had a margarita machine to take away any mouth-turned-blue trauma. Making blue frosting is a whole different beast. The blue food coloring was very ninja like. I thought I was being very clean and careful as I added it to the white frosting, but somehow it managed to breach my mixing bowl and end up FREAKIN' EVERYWHERE! It was on my hand, my clothes, the cabinet doors, my coffee maker, the floor...everywhere! There was even some of it smeared on my iPod which was upstairs on my dresser. Suddenly my visions of being coolest mommy ever turned to visions of being the most dreaded mommy ever. I imagined mobs of the other preschool parents dragging me out of my house and stringing me from a tree for turning their children a lovely shade of aqua. So, I had to ditch Cookie, in all his googly eyed glory. Much like getting on the treadmill or trying to wear skinny jeans, it was a good idea in theory, but a nightmare once executed.

In other news, despite my attempts at pulling one over on kid-germs and pumping my son full of vitamin C, echinacea and cod liver oil to try and get through the rest of the school year plague free, he came down with the mother of all colds, that quickly morphed into double ear infections and pink eye. The ear infections he can handle. A little "pink stuff" a couple times a day...no problem. But, have you ever tried to treat pink eye in a five year-old? It should just be illegal for a child that young to get pink eye. When you're an adult and you get pink eye, you can be rational about it. Yes, it sucks and now I have to put these drops in my eyes, and, yes, they're cold and sting and feel a little weird, but that's what I have to do to get better. You wouldn't cry and throw a fit and scream the same way you would if you were being chopped to bits by a maniac intruder. You know you're in trouble when the actual pamphlet from the pharmacy advises you to SIT on your child and pin his arms down to administer the medication. I'm not really a "sitting on my child" kind of parent, so, of course, I tried bargaining. I promised waffles and LEGO sets if he'd just lay still and let mommy put the ookey stuff in. I quickly learned that a five year-old is a big fat liar and will renege on any waffle/LEGO agreements at the last minute. Then I tried to scare him. I got all "fire and brimstone" on him, telling him if he didn't get the medication his head would fall off and he'd end up in the hospital where they'd give him shots every five seconds. This didn't work either, as it only made him freak out more. I quickly realized that the pamphlet from the pharmacy was wise beyond its years. The only real option is brute force. Now, don't get all judgey on me. I don't really use brute force, but I do have to hold his arms down and pry his eyes open. Then I'm "mean mommy" for about an hour after. The best part? I get to do this every four hours for seven days.

Please leave all wine/chocolate/cake donations at my front door. Thanks.

Favorite Things

It's Tuesday, and you know what means!

Actually, you don't. Since Thing 2 gives me barely any time to write, I haven't had a chance yet to introduce my newest segment, Favorite Things. Every week I'll tell you about my new favorite things. Because I know how I complete you.

So, my Favorite Things this week are:



















Anne Burrell. Because she can cook her kooky little butt off. Plus, she salts the CRAP out of her food. Good on ya, Anne. Good on ya.
















Kuerig Platinum Coffee Maker. I don't actually have one, but a friend of mine does, and although the coffee purist in me wants to turn my nose up at it, the geek in me is drawn to it. Because...it's NEATO!! You just put the little pod in and hit go. And, yes, I'm going to say it...it makes a damn fine cup of coffee. Plus you only need one hand free. And it gets me one step closer to feeling like I'm on the Enterprise.



















My mom. Because she's visiting and takes Thing 2 off my hands so I can do the things that bring me warm fuzzies, like cooking and writing and taking showers. Plus, she leaves her Facebook account open so I can go in and leave funny status updates, and make her "like" thing she doesn't really "like", like Fabio and David Hasselhoff.

Write-Hope. A fabulous blog started by a handful of kidlit writers who want to help the children in Japan after the devastating tsunami. They auction off kidlit books, critiques, and other prizes for donation to Save the Children's emergency relief fund. I'm gunning for an early copy of Carrie Harris' debut novel Bad Taste in Boys, but feel free to try and outbid me!

What are your favorite things this week?

Thing 2

Yes, yes, it's been over 3 months since I've blogged. But I have a very good excuse. Right now, I only have the use of one arm, because I have this in my other arm:


















Ain't she pretty? She's made completely of awesome. I know this sounds stupid to say, but I love her. Like, fan-girl love her. If there was mass marketing around her, I'd buy every t-shirt, bumper sticker, bobble-head and mechanical pencil. She'd be my set station on Pandora. If she was on TV, I'd set my DVR to record every episode. She'd be ring tone, my avatar, my hashtag.

I felt this way about my son, too, but since I was a new parent, it was interlaced with bouts of paranoid delusion. My inner monologue sounded a bit like this:

He pooped, oh my god, what do I do, is it good poop, is it the right color, has he gone enough, the hospital said he'd got three to six times a day and, oh crap, he just made a weird noise, what does that noise mean, is he hungry, tired, uncomfortable, itchy, is it an early sign of ADHD or...holy shit, his eye just did a weird thing, is he having a seizure, oh, my god, how do I know if he's having a seizure, I'd better google "baby eye weird seizure" and, oh mother of god, he just moved his head and I heard a noise, did he break his neck, should we call the hospital, I think we should call the hospital, his arm looks weird, is that a normal arm, what if it falls off or what if he has some weird arm disorder, oh, god, it's 3am, should I page the pediatrician, or maybe I'll just google "baby weird arm falling off"...

Luckily with each child, you become less and less of lunatic.

But, as awesome as she is, she doesn't yet support my need to write (hence the 3 month delay in updating my blog and cricket sounds in my "Poo Lives" folder). I attempted to do NaNo for about five minutes, because, yes, yes, I have ideas....so many ideas!!!! But for now, they'll have to just bob around aimlessly until I can a) convince baby girl that napping in her crib as opposed to on my shoulder is a super neat-o idea, b) get her to see that writing gets mommy to her happy place without the use of wine and/or Clive Owen movies and c) convince her that writing could possibly lead to success which could lead to riches which could lead to lots of shoes for her.

Wish me luck...

Stats

I noticed the other day that, aside from being the lamest blogger ever, I haven't really updated my stats for my faithful fan base (you listening, mom?). In the last three months, I've had posts about killer tomatoes, blogging delusions of grandeur and buying chic notebooks and matching pencils at Barnes & Noble (which might explain why my fan base is basically my mom...she does find these things fascinating). However, I've given no info about the status of my book querying. Or the status of anything else, for that matter (except our freakish garden). So, here goes:

Queries sent to agents: 66
Full/partial requests: 7
Full/partials still outstanding: 4
Query rejections: 35
Queries close due to no response: 24
Months pregnant: 8 1/2
Gallons of ice cream consumed over last 8 1/2 months: 400
Number of donuts consumed over last 8 1/2 months: 78
Pregnancy pounds gained: 35lbs
Hopeful weight of baby: 35lbs
Real estimated weight of baby: 6 lbs
Number of lunges/squats I'll have to do to eradicate superfluous 29 pounds: 4,783,987,213,876
Number of times my son has told me I have a chubby tummy and that I should get on the treadmill: 54
Number of times I've hid his favorite Light Saber: 54
Estimated bouts of pregnancy rage: 8
Number of establishments I won't be showing my face for a while due to aforementioned pregnancy rage: 6
Number of times I've tried to talk husband into naming the baby Leia: 14
Number of times I've gotten husband to agree to naming the baby Leia: 1
Number of times husband has reneged on his agreement to name the baby Leia, claiming he agreed simply because I was in the midst of honking up dinner and he felt sorry for me: 1
Percentage of excitement over having yet another "most awesome child in the history of time" (regardless of her name): 4 Bazillion %
Number of times I've felt like the luckiest girl in the whole wide world: 6,000,000,000,000,001

For those non-writery types, the query stats may look downright pathetic. But in reality, they're actually pretty good. Considering most queries end up in a slush graveyard, to have even one actually a) read through by an agent and b) spark enough interest for a partial or full request is a true feat in itself. You have to understand that, though the book publishing industry is a business, it's all based on emotional reaction. You're not just trying to pique an agent's interest. You're trying to make them fall in love with your work. To the point that they'd want to take it dancing and buy it chocolates. That's a difficult thing to accomplish, especially when they're being bombarded every day by hundreds of other writers that want the same exact thing. I've realized that the best you can do is to just do what you do. Write what you love, send it out into the world and hope that someone decides to love it. Putting any more emotional stock into the process will result in lots of frustration, resentment and anger. And that's not good for our calm, right?

And for those non-pregnant types, the childbearing stats may look downright pathetic. And you would be mostly right. I fully blame my girth on the on and off (mostly on) morning-all day-night sickness. One minute I'm dry heaving at the scent of bananas and next I'm chain-swallowing Oreos. If I wasn't pregnant, I could totally be on one of those TLC shows about people with bizarre, OCD eating behavior, huddled on the kitchen floor at three in the morning eating all the Halloween candy left over from last year. (Just fyi...Nerds mixed with Bottle Caps are a match made in heaven).

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

This is our official SOS call. We need help. We are being overrun by creepy , mutant red orbs from outer space. Okay, maybe not from outer space, but from out back yard, which, at times, can be considered outer space, full of UFOs (weird, icky bugs) and asteroids (squirrels chucking acorns from trees). See, my husband decided that this year we were going to have a garden, and when the man gets a plan in his head, there is no turning back. However, having never successfully maintained a garden in the past, we went a little crazy with our seedlings, assuming that half (if not all) of them would surely die a miserable death. Well, they didn't.

Perhaps you've sat back at some point in your life and pondered, "I wonder how many tomato plants are TOO many."

This is too many:
















There are approximately 25 plants there, each bearing about 15-20 tomatoes each.

Now, hubby is a tomato lover. However, I am useless in the tomato appreciation department. Currently I am about seven hundred months pregnant, and I find them rather evil since just looking at them gives me a raging case of heartburn. But my complete aversion to wasting food has forced me to push through, and one day I made Tyler Florence's Roasted Tomato Soup. If you, too, find yourself in tomato hell, I highly recommend this soup. It was delicious. I had to eat about four thousand Tums afterwards, but it was worth it.

First you roast the tomatoes with garlic and onion, which will make your house smell like complete awesome:

















Then you throw all the roasted goodness in a pot with some chicken stock, bay leaf and butter (*sigh*):
















Then you add about a cup of fresh basil (also growing like coo-coo in our garden) and puree the heck out of it, then finish it with little bit of heavy cream. Pair it with a grilled cheese sandwich and you've got yourself a fine meal (Tums notwithstanding).

This soup was made with the tomatoes we picked in ONE day, mind you. Three days later we had just as many and I still had heartburn. Yes, there is canning, but a) I am not exactly the country, farming wifey type and b) canning requires effort, and just walking up the stairs to find a kleenex is more than my inflated, child bearing butt can handle these days. Besides, I have to conserve my energy for eating ice cream. If I don't, I might not reach my goal weight of "whale", and what a shame that would be. So for now, I'm resorting to giving them away to neighbors, friends, family, the mailman and the annoying people that come to my door trying to sell me gutter cleaning services, and slipping them into every single one of my hubby's meals (who says tomatoes on pancakes is weird???). If you happen to live in my area, and are need of homegrown, organic tomatoes for FREE, just let me know. You too can make soup and get heartburn. Sounds fun, yes?

Anyway, here's the recipe for the soup:

Roasted Tomato Soup
Recipe courtesy Tyler Florence

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 pounds fresh tomatoes (mix of fresh heirlooms, cherry, vine and plum tomatoes)
• 6 cloves garlic, peeled
• 2 small yellow onions, sliced
• Vine cherry tomatoes for garnish, optional
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 quart chicken stock
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh basil leaves, optional
• 3/4 cup heavy cream, optional

Directions

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Wash, core and cut the tomatoes into halves. Spread the tomatoes, garlic cloves and onions onto a baking tray. If using vine cherry tomatoes for garnish, add them as well, leaving them whole and on the vine. Drizzle with 1/2 cup of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast for 20 to 30 minutes, or until caramelized.

Remove roasted tomatoes, garlic and onion from the oven and transfer to a large stock pot (set aside the roasted vine tomatoes for later). Add 3/4 of the chicken stock, bay leaves, and butter. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes or until liquid has reduced by a third.

Wash and dry basil leaves, if using, and add to the pot. Use an immersion blender to puree the soup until smooth. Return soup to low heat, add cream and adjust consistency with remaining chicken stock, if necessary. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Garnish in bowl with 3 or 4 roasted vine cherry tomatoes and a splash of heavy cream.

One Big Party

So, back in June I had this brilliant idea that while I was slaloming through the pit of despair (aka querying my book) I would breathe some life back into my food blog. Now, at the same time, I was also having delusions that I should start a blog about my adventures in parenting because a) I have no idea what I'm doing and b) my kid is really weird (in a good way). But as I sat down to try and come up with a clever mommy blog name (which was futile since my son was having a thermo-nuclear meltdown over a broken crayon and the only thing I could come up with is "KILL ME NOW!!!"), I realized there is no way in this life or the next that I would have the time, energy or enough wine to manage three blogs. My brain would surely revolt and I would be left to stare out the window, drooling and mumbling and pointing at squirrels. Not really the look I'm going for. So, after much consideration (not really, I made the decision while watching Real Housewives of New Jersey), I've decided to just mush all my interests together in one blog. I hope my fan base can get on board with this (and that would my mom and the that refugee princess in Uzbekistan who keeps emailing me wanting to give me a billion dollars).

So, expect updates on my writing (*grumble, grrrr, grumble, grrrrr*), (possibly blurry) pictures of my culinary (mis)adventures, as well as lessons on how to get other moms to think your a few fries short of a happy meal. (It's really easy. Trust me.)

Ticking in my Head

Words: doing revisions...too hard to keep track...probably somewhere between 1 and 9000.
Caffeine: Morning cup-o decaf and midday decaf iced latte
Evil Calories: these little mini mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches from Trader Joe's. Except, I ate all of them, so the "mini" element was sort of lost on me.

I am extremely good at mulit-tasking. Sometimes I think it just comes from being female, and sometimes I think it just comes from being awesome. (It could come from all the caffeine, but, right now, I'm going with the "awesome female" theory.) But over the last week I've been working on two bits of writing simultaneously, and sometimes it feels a little strange. Like I'm trying to pull off wearing socks with sandals. In one corner of my brain I am going back and working out revisions to my "finished" book, and in the other corner of my brain, I am doing a little two-step with an outline for a new little do-dad of an idea. Both tasks are filling me with warm fuzzies, but jumping back and forth between the two tends to leave me a little dizzy. A cheery dizzy. But dizzy all the same. Of course, that could also be the spoonfuls of salted caramel I just inhaled. Or, perhaps, the heat and the nine million percent humidity (which, by the way, is giving me total 80's hair. M...M...M...Motoring...What's your price for flight...)

So, in order to keep everything straight, I went to Barnes & Noble to buy a very chic notebook where I can keep detailed notes. Then, when I got there, I realized I probably needed two notebooks, since I have two different ideas to sort out. I also found a pencil holder, binder clips, thank-you cards and an M & M cookie that were also essential to keeping things in order.

I know. You're astounded by my ability to organize. I get that a lot.