a lifestyle website featuring food, family, adventure (even going to the corner store with your toddler can be considered an adventure), life (including but not limited to politics, current news and trending topics), crafts and above all cooking.
Strawberry Rhubarb Pie. Three words I never would have put together on my own. You see, I don't love cooked strawberries, except in a jam-like state. And, rhubarb and I have previously been unacquainted.
Read MoreI was looking at the DailyBuzz Moms site today and stumbled across my Strawberry, Sage and Grapefruit Granita on their Top 9!
Loving that I'm featured and can't wait to try the Blackberry Lime Tarts from Thyme of Taste's website.
Click on over to see the feature and check out some of the other recipes while you are there.
Raw juice made with strawberry and vegetables is tastes great and gives you a great energy boost in the morning. I'm reposting this Raw Spinach, Carrot, Beet, Avocado, Peach, Strawberry and Banana Juice recipe this week because I'm in New York and it's about 30 degrees warmer than I'm used to in San Francisco and I need some relief!
I'm thinking of juicing every day, in addition to the great food my parents are making for us, and will start with this recipe as soon as I get everything together.
Here's what you'll need. Make this juice, or any other combination of fruits and veggies you may have around. It'll cool you off from the summer heat.
Enjoy!
Summer means icy drinks like this cran-raspberry with strawberry slushy.
This past weekend my daughter asked if we could make slushies. We searched for a machine that might assist us in our efforts, but came up empty.
Isabella then remembered an As-Seen-On-TV slushie shaker that she had seen at our local Walgreen's. They have two shelving units full of As-Seen-On-TV products (wait, I noticed yesterday that they've replaced this section with back-to-school items, even though it's still July). We purchased a Slushy Magic cup and went home to give it a go (we paid only half the price that was listed on their site).
The cup comes with some "magic" ice cubes (whose ingredients I decided against investigating) that you put in the freezer for a few hours. Then you pour juice into the shaker cup, add the "magic" cubes, cover and shake.
It seems that we didn't leave the cubes in the freezer long enough. And, I think it would take about forty minutes of dedicated shaking to get the Magic Slushy cup to create a nice smushy iced beverage.
We went to plan B: use my drink blender, with the juice, some whole strawberries and ice. We blended several batches, poured them into some red Solo cups (Isabella sang the song while we worked, the "Glee" version) and put them in the freezer for two hours.
They were great. When we got to the party, we poured them into smaller cups, added some ginger ale and a sprig of mint. A great standard kid-friendly drink was born!
Strawberry Rhubarb Pie. Three words I never would have put together on my own. You see, I don't love cooked strawberries, except in a jam-like state. And, rhubarb and I have previously been unacquainted.
Read More
Mother's Day is just around the corner. It's one of my favorite days. My daughter always makes me feel very special and does a great job celebrating me.
On the holiday, Isabella has made me a nice breakfast on her own for the past four years. She's an inspiring daughter, and at thirteen is more than capable of making breakfast,. I loved it when a few years back she asked me to close my eyes, come into the kitchen, and turn the oven on for her. Or when she was five and made me a grilled cheese sandwich in the microwave, because she was not old enough to use the oven. I cherish her Mother's Day breakfasts and can't wait to see what she has on offer this year.
The extra-special part for me is that this is our day together to just be mother and daughter. I am a single parent, so whenever Isabella is at my house, it is just the two of us. But Mother's Day is a day when we put aside all our day-to-day madness, bickering and chores and enjoy each other.
I always knew I'd have at least one child. I love kids and babies. They make me feel happy and secure and I know how to communicate with them on their own level. Kids and babies are just small people, and I tend to treat them as equals to adults. They are smart, funny, insightful and loving. This is why I became a mother.
And I'm very glad I did. I love being a mother enjoying my child and treating her with patience and understanding, regaling her with silliness and offering unbridled love. As Isabella gets older, I have to adjust the way I use these traits, but they are all still necessary. Patience is way at the top of the list these days, so is silliness (however, not in front of her friends, thank you very much). I find that with every passing year, we come to an understanding of how we relate and move into these new roles, sometimes with ease, sometimes not.
Gran Fran (my very own mother) and I are not always on the same page, but we talk or IM almost every day. We collaborate on food projects and discuss ideas for upcoming work that we're doing. There is bickering and eye rolling a-plenty, but I will say that we are as bonded as ever. Though we live on opposite coasts, we are incredibly close.
We may not always see eye-to-eye on everything, but Gran Fran does have good advice on many of the stagesIsabella is going through. Having raised five kids, four of them girls, Gran Fran and Joe have seen it all. If Isabella and I start bickering when we are with Gran Fran, she helps defuse the situation by gently (which for Gran Fran means yelling instructions at top voice) reminding me that I was no cakewalk at thirteen and to give the kid a break.
From my echo (Isabella) my shadown (Gran Fran and me, here's to Mother's Day and all of the fabulous moms out there. May your kids treat you well more often than not and celebrate you always!
You can find recipes for my first installment of Mother's Day here.
