All the Good Blog Names are Taken

Popstruck

January 5, 2012 – 11:08 PM

With all this talk recently about Santorum and the presidential election, there’s only one thing on my mind: CAKE POPS. Take a look at the Kermits below (by the amazing Bakerella). They are MADE OF CAKE. On a stick. That is what a cake pop is: cake on a stick, and apparently, incredibly, magically manipulated to look like Muppets.

Kermit Cake Pops — Image courtesy of Bakerella

I know, I know, I’m a little slow on the uptake. It’s just like years after Brad Pitt was named one of People Magazine’s Sexiest People and I finally saw A River Runs Through It and started telling people, Hey, that Brad Pitt, he’s kind of cute!

This all started a few weeks ago when I was at a baby shower. Melissa V decorated the shower with Very Hungry Caterpillarstuff like little trees with caterpillars in them made of pom poms and other stuff I would never think to do (she also makes full-size nativity sets for plays and has a lot of children, which I would never do either), including:

Very Hungry Caterpillar Cake Pops — Some cake pops I did not make.

Yes, cake pops. The picture is blurry because I was high on sugar and shaking from all the cake pops I had. I would never have given them a second thought except that they were DELICIOUS. I kept eating them. I couldn’t stop thinking about them.

A late night Google search on cake pops invariably led to a visit to Bakerella, and hours ogling her photos (she takes gorgeous photos, which means she is doing with one hand what I cannot do with two. I am a bad baker. I’m an excellent eater, and I like my own cooking, but there is something about baking that compromises my ability to function. A few weeks ago I made some dipped truffles I was going to gift, and my husband said, “Uh, you can’t give those to your boss.” I would have been mad except that they did look like sad, decapitated snowmen after a nuclear war.). I had a full-on night of dreams about cake pops (mostly about how I made them for one of my kids’ birthdays, and when they were unveiled there would be gasps and some people would actually pass out from the awesomeness and a spotlight would shine on me, suddenly cueing R Kelly’s I Believe I Can Fly). Then I had to post about her on Facebook. And that’s when I found out that my friend Danielle is obsessed with her too. Danielle can actually bake and has even made cake pops. And ebliskiver, but that’s a topic for another time. Anyway, this is what went down:

ME: So I was reading her FAQs and she’d like you to ask for permission to use her pictures SO I EMAILED HER! What if she writes back!!! Do you want me to ask her what her favorite color is???

DANIELLE: WHAT IF SHE DOES WRITE BACK!?!?!? PLEASE forward it to me so I can be starstruck!!!! It’ll be like you are famous along with her. Ask her what her favorite NON-baked good food is. Like does she eat steak? Or stuffed mushrooms? Or….Nachos?

ME: SHE WROTE BACK!!!!! She actually typed letters back to me that were addressed to my email address!!!! Here it is. Don’t faint.

On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 5:55 PM, Bakerella wrote:
Sure. Thanks for asking.

Bakerella

DANIELLE: Ok, so basically you’re famous. Seriously though. My heart is kind of beating a little faster than normal bc of her email to you. Did yours, too, when you saw her email in your inbox??????? Who else can we have you email? WHO ELSE?!

ME: Selena Gomez?!? E.T.???

Then it basically degenerated into a conversation about feelings regarding Justin Bieber (who I happen to love). But THEN Danielle went to the store and BOUGHT US CAKE POP DECORATING STUFF! YES, we are going to make cake pops!!! This is important because I cannot do this alone. This is not going to happen for a couple of weeks, but be prepared. It is going to be EPIC. Like we are optioning movie rights now.

Maybe Bakerella could link to me when she needs to show what could go wrong if you screwed up her recipes. In case you thought I was joking about being a bad baker, let me share this photo with you. I even took it with a fancy camera and a pensive angle, but these are carrot muffins and, like snowflakes, no two look exactly alike. In fact, they’re not even near the same size or shape.

Carrot Muffins — Nothing says "professional" like muffins that are baked from containers of the same size but come out totally different

So Bakerella, thanks for letting me use your pictures. They will make this site a happier place. Oh, and she has a bookout too — we’re going to be using it as the basis for our epic baking endeavor.

Tags Bakerella, Brad Pitt, cake pops, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Very Hungry Caterpillar | Permalink | Comments (12)

Books Travel

Happy New Year!

January 1, 2012 – 9:16 AM

I’m sure this is the subject line of everyone’s blog post around the world today, but I never claimed to be original. I have a good feeling about 2012, despite the fact that in the last remaining hours of 2011 we ran over a dead skunk (I say “we” because I am being gracious and not pointing out who the actual driver was, (my husband)) with our car, with the result that our car needs to be parked outside for the next month, or that I somehow managed to skirt mortality during our ski trip (you can comfortably conclude that I’m not the world’s best skier — at this writing I rank at approximately 7,000,000,001st worldwide, and yes, that would be behind some newborn babies) but received a large, painful rug burn from an actual rug by slipping down the stairs in the rental house. My hair’s a little messed up today but aside from that, it seems to be a pretty good start to the year.

I could do a list of New Year’s resolutions but they’re not ready yet so I’m just going to show some pictures. Below, the view from our rental house in Big Bear Lake, CA. It was so hot up there that I skied in short sleeves and was still too hot. It was actually not that much fun, skiing in the heat, but then again, I also find walking slightly more pleasurable than skiing.

Big Bear Lake

This is what the same scene looks like at sunset:

Like Mindy Kaling says in her book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), “There is no sunrise so beuatiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.” I know this because this past year I’ve had a job where I get up before the sunrise, so I see a lot of sunrises, and the sunset is just as good if not better, and you’ll feel a lot more normal all day if you see a sunset. Also, you’re probably going to hear me talk about Mindy a lot like she’s a friend of mine because I just read her book and I kind of want to be her.

I would share other pictures too but despite being on a ski trip, all my photos are of kids in the hot tub or people eating fatty foods.

Happy 2012! It’s also my dad’s birthday, so happy birthday Dad! Now to get dressed.

Tags Big Bear, books, Mindy Kaling, skiing | Permalink | Comments Off

Lifestyle

Figs by Moonlight

September 16, 2011 – 9:25 PM

Food is the best. I went to a farmer’s market today and the food was so good that I just had to give the picture more space than usual. One of the happiest days of my life was when a friend made roasted figs filled with goat cheese. I think figs should grow on trees. Wait, maybe they do.

Last week there was a blackout all over San Diego. At first, I was annoyed because I couldn’t work. But then, gradually, I became glad, because I couldn’t work. I took the kids to the pool and the pool manager told me he heard the power wasn’t going to come back on until sometime the next day. I felt a little giddy. This was as close to camping as I would ever want to get. I’m the type of person who, born in a different era, would be dead by now. I would have been naturally selected out and consumed by tigers because of my poor eyesight. If required to hunt rabbits for survival as a result of the power outage, I wouldn’t make it (should I hunt with a spatula or a collander?).

But I survived the power outage. I cooked — on my gas grill (no, can’t make fire with twigs either). I quenched my thirst with beer (which was made of hops and barley that someone planted). And the most startling thing happened that night. I discovered…moonlight. I’d heard that word before — and I’ve certainly seen the moon — but I didn’t get it until I saw it in the absence of other light that the moon actually provides light. And that night, a lot of it. So much of it that it actually kept awake up as I was lying on the floor in an attempt to keep cool (weakness #4: cannot withstand temperature fluctuations of +/- 3 degrees). [Full disclosure: I am the person who once walked in a field behind my childhood home and ran as if doing a jig because grasshoppers were touching me. Observing me, a friend of my brother’s asked, “Has your sister ever been outdoors?”]

But, moonlight! I’ve seen it. It only took me 40 years to experience it. Now I get it. Moonlight.

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Health Uncategorized

Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine

September 3, 2011 – 7:40 AM

This morning, a few days before my 40th birthday, I put two contact lenses into one eye. Who says 40 is the new 30?

Photo to the right was taken on a recent whale watching trip. This was about 10 minutes before I got too seasick to care about whales. And actually I think these are dolphins.

So recently, I’ve started going to an acupuncturist. Combination of not wanting to be heavily medicated and hearing the tales of others, including some friends in the medical profession, talk about the merits of acupuncture (one friend, a 43-year-old physician, has had numerous surgeries and procedures in an effort to get pregnant; enter acupuncture — she’s 4 months along now). Of this I am convinced: it certainly does something. The first time I had it done, about 10 minutes in, alone in the room, I started laughing uncontrollably. Nothing was funny. Although I wouldn’t rule out mental illness, it seemed to be a strange response to the acupuncture. Apparently this isn’t uncommon. And after my first session, I felt the best I’ve felt since I was probably two. It’s what I imagine nirvana is meant to be like. And best of all, I slept that night, which hasn’t happened much lately.

Last time I went, the acupuncturist checked my pulse and said that my lungs sounded weaker than normal. I had felt that day that I was coming down with something, and had just started feeling slightly headachy, with some sinus pressure, and that overall run-down feeling. She prescribed me some herbs to take — apparently these are very effective if you can catch something at its onset — and within a few hours, I felt a lot better. By the next day, I felt fine.

So I’m a convert. I was always skeptical of Chinese medicine, but I’ve realized that having a Chinese mother who randomly instructs you to ingest herbs is not the same as having someone who has actually studied Chinese medicine prescribe you herbs. And I can’t explain the acupuncture, except to say that it works.

In case you’re wondering, and you’re probably not, if there’s an earthquake you’re allowed to pull all the needles out. And then run outside in your glamorous paper robe.

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Food Health

Liquid Breakfasts

July 17, 2011 – 9:41 AM

I love breakfast. I love eating, and breakfast is the first thing you get to eat every day. I love bacon. Eggs. Butter. During the week, though, breakfast is a lot less fun. For me, it’s a rushed time, and with my new job I am usually on a call with an international group of people at an ungodly hour. I need to be able to prepare something that can be done in increments as I hit the mute button periodically, and it needs to be quickly consumed. But it also needs not to be disgusting. I’m a snob like that.

So here’s a little meal that my friend Patricia suggested. It’s actually surprisingly good. You’ll need (the stuff I took an ugly photo of with my cell phone):

Almond milk (about a cup or so…though I don’t usually measure so you might have to experiment here); I’ve tried unflavored as well as vanilla and they both work fine
1 Banana
1 Avocado
Whey (I don’t really know what this is except that Little Miss Muffet ate them with curds in a nursery rhyme) — but at Patricia’s suggestion I got MRM brand 100% all natural whey in Rich Vanilla
(optional) Flax oil

All you do is slice up the banana and avocado, add in about a cup of the almond milk, a squirt of flax oil and a scoop of whey, and blend (I have a handy little Braun hand blender that makes this easy). You can add in ice if you want it to be more smoothie-like, but I’m happy with it so long as everything else is cold. The whey protein makes it filling — unlike with smoothies, this one tides me over til lunch. There you have it — healthy liquid breakfast!

Tags breakfast, healthy, recipes, smoothies | Permalink | Comments (2)

Travel

Rancho Valencia

February 10, 2011 – 5:33 PM

A couple of months ago, I had the Best. Day. Ever. Me and four of my friends spent the day at Rancho Valencia , in Rancho Santa Fe (California). Despite the picture on the spa website, rest assured that there is no requirement to stand in an outside shower half-naked. To the right is another picture of the resort, right outside the relaxation room. I didn’t take that picture. In fact, woman in the picture isn’t even one of the friends I was with that day. The woman in the picture is my friend Alice, who went to Rancho Valencia on a totally different day, and who has no idea that I’ve nabbed her Facebook photo for my own selfish purposes.

From what I hear all the Auberge resorts are to die for, and the service is spectactular. Rancho Valencia in particular has a seasonal “quench”, which is a service that varies by season that’s 60 minutes long and costs $100. It’s great value when you consider that you have access to the resort grounds, which includes a huge, gorgeous relaxation room with a big fireplace and silk tea bags, yoga classes, pool and hot tub, and cabanas for lunching poolside. Even though the place was only minutes from where we live, we felt that we had escaped to a serene paradise where our sanity could once again be restored.

Next on my wish list? Solage Calistoga, which is affiliated with Auberge. I am pretty sure from looking at the website that I should be living there.

Tags resort, spa, travel | Permalink | Comment (1)

Fashion

Ippolita Wonderland Party Ring

September 8, 2010 – 10:11 PM

Recently, I was up in San Francisco, and was shocked at how little plastic surgery I saw. Living in SoCal I had largely forgotten that most people are not actually blond and that the average 50-year-old woman doesn’t naturally have the full, perky breasts of a Barbie doll. I saw people with…brown hair. Boobs that didn’t resemble globes. Facial expressions. And they were eating food. Really good food.

While we were in SF I celebrated another birthday…one that is precariously close to a rather large number. I started realizing that I had outgrown certain things. One of those is the hope that someday I’d be perfect. I’m appreciating that being flat-chested means I can sleep on my stomach. That my stick-straight hair can only really successfully be stick straight. That my inability to do just one thing at a time enables me to, well, do more than one thing at a time. And I’ve come to know that I’m officially too old for some of the clothes in the catalogs I still get, and no matter what anyone says it’s ridiculous for a woman of my age to be wearing a micro-mini.

One thing for which you can never be too old, thankfully, is jewelry. While the world most likely no longer appreciate viewing a large swath of my thigh anymore, they’d surely enjoy a well-positioned delicacy made of semi-precious stones, something that says “maybe I can’t wear short skirts and over-the-knee boots anymore but I can afford better costume jewelry now”. I saw this Ippolita Wonderland Party Ring in the Bloomingdales catalog, juxtaposed to a stack of a dozen or so rock-candy bangles with gorgeous hammered workmanship and thought, yeah, that still works. At $795 a pop you’d hope to be going to a lot of cocktail parties to get your money’s worth, but nice work, Ippolita — the online photo doesn’t do it justice.

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Home

Custom Drapes

August 26, 2010 – 11:53 PM

I was unhappy today. I took three days off since the kids start school next week and my plan was to spend time with them. Which so far has involved letting them watch DVDs, play on the iPad or otherwise independently eradicate the house of any semblance of decency (did I teach these people that it was ok to throw used tissues on the ground when you’re done blowing your nose?). Partially because I must not be a very good mom. And partially because there was stuff going on at work and my boss called me and I had to look at spreadsheets and think and write emails. But really I just wanted to think about custom drapes.

A few weeks ago I went over to my friend Stacy’s house and was struck by how adult her house looked. She has a kid, but I didn’t see any puke or juice on her sofas, nor did I find any booby traps made of string on the way to the kitchen — her house was completely pulled together, with her furniture going with her decorative accents and most importantly, seeming to belong in her house. When I got home I felt like my house was really juvenile (and not just because of the artwork made by the juveniles in my household, haphazardly taped onto walls with scotch tape, which I only occasionally find in places like under the bathroom sink or on top of a Build-A-Bear). I’ve given up on having nice furniture for now — at least until my kids stop walking on the sofas and the youngest of their friends becomes older than three. But the drapes — the drapes I can do! So I’ve been looking into designers, stalking their websites, and learning about the differences between custom and ready-made drapes. And custom drapes done right (that would be, not the way I’ve made them in the past) look full, have good heft, and look really great. But I’ve also seen some bad custom drapes — so I’ve chosen to go the designer route to get a referral to a good workroom.

The other thing I’ve learned about custom drapes is that they’re expensive. Will my life be way better once I have them? One can hope.

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Health Home Uncategorized

Melaleuca and My New Non-Toxic Life

July 18, 2010 – 9:16 AM

After a couple of months of dry-heaving from stress, I’ve started to re-examine my life and have decided that I should really focus on the living part. One thing that’s helped me feel a little more sane is de-cluttering and streamlining.

Enter Melaleuca, The Wellness Company. A co-worker of mine recently introduced me to the products. They’re non-toxic, concentrated (and thus space-saving: I took back four ginormous bottles of toxic cleaners like Cascade and Jet Dry that I could barely carry — and a single normal-sized bottle of Melaleuca’s Diamond Brite did the job far better), effective (who knew natural products could be even better than harsh chemicals?) and economical (much, much less expensive than buying non-toxic products through regular retail channels). A lot of the products serve multiple purposes, like the Tough & Tender all-purpose cleaner, which is also a fruit and veggie spray, or their toothpaste, which can also be used to polish silver. Their vitamins are far superior to grocery store brands — I started getting up early to do yoga in the mornings — and my husband asked that I buy him some of these vitamins because he’s never seen me with this much energy! No more headache-inducing fumes after the cleaners come, no more giant Costco containers that don’t fit on my shelves, and no more paying extra for companies’ advertising and distribution costs (Melaleuca is customer-referral-only, so you get better value).

I’ve still got a long way to go before I’m as streamlined as Jay Shafer, who is apparently making it all work in a 89 square foot home — and I’m pretty sure I’ll never get there (where would I put all my handbags?). But this is a pretty good start.

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Health Home Uncategorized

Method Dish Liquid and Alice.com

April 21, 2010 – 6:08 PM

My least favorite kind of stress is the kind that makes you randomly gag and wretch during the day, struggle to retain composure, and makes people wonder if you’re trying to hide a pregnancy. I’ll save the details for the novel that will render my financial success a foregone conclusion (please, magic book deal people, I’m sure I can think of something you’d want to publish!), but I found myself craving something very comforting…and yet very cheap.

Two weeks ago I was up in San Francisco visiting my brother and sister-in-law, who live the lifestyle of the people you’d imagine live in the spaces shown in the CB2 catalog. They had this Method Dish Liquid in the kitchen and I strangely found myself finding excuses to do the dishes. The pink grapefruit scent is perfect — calming, soothing, not quite as sharply citrus and energizing as lemon but somehow spirit-lifting and happiness-inducing all the same. I also bought the all-purpose cleaner and have been cleaning a lot more…for fun! Equally non-toxic as my home-made cleaning agents, they smell a million times better than my vinegar-y concoctions. And they made me feel…better! Like, a lot less stressed…and just by washing dishes!

You can buy it pretty much anywhere nowadays, but one easy way is via Alice.com. Alice’s prices are very competitive, and best of all, shipping is free AND you don’t have to leave your home. Alice, your online domestic helper, will send you reminders to refill certain things at intervals that you specify. It’s a great idea — and once Alice gets a critical mass of inventory so that I can take care of all my household shopping online — I will gladly fully outsource all of that to Alice. Worth trying out — the more people that try it, the more leverage they’ll have to get products.

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