Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from 2011

Love and Latkes

Latkes are definitely a labor of love. A very greasy, oily, labor of love.   A time consuming, set off the smoke detector (twice), back breaking, use up half a bottle of oil, not to mention a 45 minute cleanup, and the entire house smells like a diner, labor of love.   Can you feel all that love for the miracle of the oil?   I have made latkes over the years in different ways according to the tastes of my family.   I prefer the home-style kind where you can actually see the grated potato sticking out in crunchy, jagged edges.   My daughter likes the mealy kind, where everything is ground up in the processor and poured out like pancake batter-she really likes the gigantic frozen kind (UGH).   My husband is just happy that I am making something that can’t really be considered healthy.   Poor thing has had to suffer through broccoli, spaghetti squash, and turkey meatloaf (all which were eaten along with seconds…hmmmm).   But, bona fide carbs and oil? Well, who needs to spend endles

Staying on the Radar…One Cookie at a Time

Holiday season is a time of joy for most, and stress for others. I admit that I fall in between the two.   Unfortunately, for those kids with food allergies, holiday season can become a landmine if no one is at the helm keeping watch.   I have made my son vigilant about food allergies;he knows not to eat anything at school, in class, in the lunchroom or otherwise.   For every treat he has to turn down, he gets the equivalent at home-safely.   The teachers in the school all comment on how great he is about managing his food allergies, and as a result, they take notice of my six-year old who maturely gives up some of the irresistible goodies in school.   Most of the teachers know who my son is simply because they are so impressed by his fortitude (not to mention that he can be so darn cute). Every school year I introduce myself to the lunch aides, provide a note for the teachers to send home to parents, talk with the nurse, discuss my son’s   allergies with his new teacher, refill

GingerBees-Gingerbread Maccabees-Biting Someones' Head Off Never Tasted so Good

I have had a serious hankering for gingerbread, which is ironic because I never used to like it. I find that since I officially hit middle age with the recent celebration of my (fill in the blank) birthday, there are changes within myself that I cannot seem to control. ·      I now have to remove my glasses to read something up close. ·          I need mega doses of drugs to get over a common cold. ·          I can no longer say, what up? ·          I actually prefer a minivan to a sedan. ·            I take medication that I have seen advertised on TV. ·            Low rise jeans…well let’s not go there. ·          It seems that I like gingerbread.   I have always backed away from gingerbread for a few reasons.   First, I never really liked the taste of ginger, and from a philosophical standpoin, I always associated gingerbread men with Christmas and felt it was a wee bit “sacrilegious” to eat them.   Recently, I spotted a box of cute, chubby gingerbread men o

Lick the Bowl Roots-Holiday Cooking

I have decided to get back to my Lick the Bowl roots.   While this blog was originally intended to discuss food allergy related material including recipes and news items, I realized that my life was not just about food allergies.   Don’t get me wrong, they take up a big chunk of my energy, but the blog seemed to take on a persona of it’s own and I liked the direction it took.   Nevertheless, it’s holiday time and the one thing I love to do is experiment in the kitchen.   A few weeks ago, I received a fabulous new cookbook from my Facebook friend, Nava Atlas.     It’s funny how people find each other in this big, wide world because prior to Facebook, Nava and I never knew each other.   Nava is an author and illustrator of many well-known vegetarian and vegan cookbooks.   She also has her own website Vegkitchen.com.   Some of her books include Vegan Express, Vegan Soups and The Vegetarian Family Cookbook, amongst many others.    Nava found an anecdotal article I wrote for the Baltimor

"Tigger" on Steroids

Ah…finally, we have survived the six-year old on steroids.   It was a long, frustrating trip fraught with “increased” (and that’s an understatement) energy and major meltdowns.   He went to one of those bouncy places for a birthday party yesterday, so I timed the predinisone exactly 1 hour before he left.   Let’s just re-name the kid “Tigger” because he bounced every steroid laden cell out of his body and fell into a coma-like induced sleep afterward…sigh…the worst is over.   Now we move onto the inhaled steroid.   It’s pretty pathetic that my son calls us…”puff” buddies.   We stand together by the sink with a cup of water and we each inhale from our Flo-Vent (an inhaled steroid), then we both swish water in our mouths and rinse the residue out.    It’s like doing drugs with your kid.   Actually, it is doing drugs with your kid.   It’s a bit surreal and frankly a bit disturbing on so many different levels.   Bottom line, if you can get through the worst, the drugs work, because we

OW, OW ,OW…ow, ow, ow, ow….

Yes, these are the cries of pain.   These are my muscles screaming out in agony…”why are you doing this to us? We want to go back to the way it used to be?”   Believe it or not, I have not worked out in almost two months since this nasty little chest infection took my lungs hostage.   It’s been a long trip, filled with steroids, inhalers, antibiotics, and other assorted medications, but alas, I have been released from my arrested breathing and have begun to cautiously join the world of the living again.   Of course, nothing is as easy as it seems, because now my itchy, sneezy, wheezy, coughing, allergy afflicted six-year old suffers the same fate as his mama and is on the same course of drugs.   Let’s just say that steroids on a six-year old can turn a seemingly sweet, even-tempered child into the incredible hulk on speed. I specifically switched his dosage time from morning to late afternoon, because I really like his teacher and didn’t want her to have to bear the full brunt of h

Coughing and Coffee are NOT Homophones

Wow!   I have been sick.   Sick as a dog sick.   Sick, as I never want to be sick again for sickness sake sick.   It all started out innocent enough.   A cold. A tickle. An annoying drip.   Who knew what a drip could do?   Well, if a drip of water over millions of years could produce the world’s most humongous stalactites, I guess a drip in my throat for a month could build up just as well.   So, perhaps there is a stalactite in my chest. Sure felt like one.   A crushing, pressing, invasive, stalactite.     As I helped my son with his inhaler (because he was sick too) I’m having visions of taking a hit off of it, like a drug addict looking for a fix.   You know, there is something inherently wrong if you are fantasizing about suckin’ off your kids inhaler.   Bad mommy.   Desperate mommy.   Breathing is not overrated.   I needed help. Off to the doctor, who by the way was impressed with the fact that I had a conscience and didn’t inhale with my son.   I got my own brand, new, shiny

Live, Love, Laugh...Laundry

I’ve been feeling a bit more reflective these past few days following Yom Kippur (the grand daddy holiday of contemplation), and truth be told, it wasn't really Yom Kippur per se.  No, it seems the source of my reverie emanated from my...laundry.         First, I need to back up.   I mean dirty laundry doesn’t usually yield itself to introspection, unless introspection includes cursing the wet laundry left in the dryer overnight because you forgot to turn it on.   No, my contemplative musings actually began with my son’s two recently missing front teeth.   My girlfriend hadn’t seen us in a while, and clearly the gaping hole in his mouth warranted her attention, to my six year old’s delight. After their exchange which included questions about the elusive tooth fairy (who by the way was in default on payment because she didn’t have any cash, requiring money from her 10 year old’s piggy bank the first time.   The second time, the tooth fairy fell asleep and forgot to submit funds t

Resolutions –Stop the Make ‘em and Break ‘em Cycle

The differences between Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and the secular New Year celebrations are very distinct.   RH (Rosh Hashanah) isn’t televised all over the world in a live celebration including rap stars, singers, or Ryan Seacrest.   People don’t wait in line for 24 hours in the freezing cold to watch a ball drop, ticker tape is a big no-no in a synagogue, and champagne is not the drink du jour.   However, the similarities are interesting to note.   While we aren’t standing outside surrounded by thousands wearing ridiculous hats or oversized glitter glasses, we are stuffed inside the synagogue with a large group of people wearing assorted colored and textured yarmulkes, prayer shawls and holiday attire.   Merry plastic noisemakers are replaced with the ultimate noisemaker-the shofar, and at the end of the service, we ultimately wish each other Happy New Year. Perhaps, the biggest similarity between these two celebrations is the…resolution.   One might think we Jews are lucky

Age 44 is The New 80?

It’s official; I am the poster child for Oral B hygiene.   We now have a new gadget to add to our already expanding line of oral hygiene care.   It seems both my husband and I have too much bacteria festering in our mouths, but for opposite reasons.   I am overly aggressive in my dental care, and he isn’t aggressive enough.   I told him that I could put up with many things that go along with aging, but teeth in a glass…deal breaker.   The dentist insists on a water pik twice a day, electric toothbrush, and flossing as well. This adds quite a bit of time to my already compressed morning routine. I am exhausted just thinking about it.   My husband who travels on a regular basis can’t lug all that equipment with him… but guess what? Now, for a mere $90 they make an all in one gizmo that flosses, piks and brushes in one little compact electronic wand.   Yipee! Whatever happened to the good ole days of just brushing my teeth?   When did oral care become this complicated? Well, it see

Top Ten List of Travel Affirmations

This past weekend, I attended my niece’s bat mitzvah.   Now, I could get maudlin and weepy, (which I’m known to do) and I could pontificate on the bittersweet subject of children growing up and time passing as the song Memories plays in my head. I could obsess over the fact that we all have a few more lines on our faces, or grays on our heads, or muse over the palpable absence of loved ones, the aunts and uncles whom we elevated to immortal status , and yet eventually succumbed to the same fate as everyone else.   I could elaborate on the fact that this momentous and special occasion fell on the same terrible weekend as 9/11 and that my heart was painfully contorted into a mangled, labyrinth of emotion.   It reminded me of the time I attended a funeral while I was six months pregnant.   As I watched the burial at the cemetery, I could simultaneously feel tiny life affirming flutter kicks deep within, reminding me of life’s cyclical and seemingly unjust balance.   Yes, I could tru

Clean Towels Really Shouldn’t Be a Passion

I realize that I haven’t written much lately, and maybe that’s because I just haven’t felt passionate about much over the past few days.   Sure, school started, along with all of the crazy that accompanies those first few days, but I managed to get through it without too many tantrums (by me, that is).   Life has fallen into a new routine, which is really the old routine –the sequel.    Slowly, I have come to accept that I have crossed summer’s finish line,   and entered the Fall zone without too much kicking or screaming (again…we’re talking about me). The irony is that I had all these visions of organizing, cleaning, purging, and re-decorating various rooms and/or closets in the house over the long, lazy summer.   Yet, I found myself in the express lane doing two months of work over the last three days as I scrambled to re-invent my daughter’s bedroom from “stupid” princess motif to funky a la college dorm.   Three garbage bags later filled with blinky things, old papers, doo dad

The Camp Chronicles: D-Day and Beyond

W ell it’s hard to believe that my daughter finally came home from camp a mere four days ago (can you see me grinning from ear to ear?)   I couldn’t stop touching her the entire day, as if she was an apparition about to slip through my fingers.    She looked great, albeit tired, but had an air about her that clearly indicated… a change.   A new self -confidence, or perhaps a bit more independent ... nevertheless, she was home!     I have finally made amends with the postman, though; he is still a bit wary of the nut case who’s been hot on the mail trail for camp correspondence.     I presented my daughter at the mailbox as proof of evidence that my camp mail witch- hunt had officially ended…for this summer season anyway.   I think he’s put in for a transfer. You would think that after her return, however, I would be shouting it immediately from the rooftops via my blog, or even Facebook.   After oozing my angst all summer with a series of blogs solely devoted to the new camp experien

The Camp Chronicles: Throwing Out the Seeds of Doubt

Well, we are in the home stretch!   The letters arrive a bit more sporadically and are no longer gut wrenching essays.   Camp is now being described as a “home away from home.”   My girl is blossoming, absorbing, and taking it all in.   She is thriving, smiling, and enjoying herself to the fullest.   She is described by camp counselors, liaisons and friends as a model camper; the kind that every camp needs and promotes.   She has made the definitive decision to return next year…four letters ago she wasn’t so sure. So, in the long run, she stuck it out and reaped all the rewards of an utterly exciting camp season.   Yeah for my girl! Allow me to sigh audibly for a moment…haaaaaahhhh. The tightness in my chest has subsided, and my relief is evident in that I no longer camp out in front of the mailbox, nor do I hound the postman by chasing him down the block, or rifling through his bag while insisting on an earlier delivery time.   No, now that I am secure in the knowledge that she

Community Blogger of the Month-Whole Living Magazine

I am taking a moment out of the Camp Chronicles (I have a lot to write about, and I will do that later) to let you all know that I was featured at the Community Blogger of the Month in Martha Stewart's Whole Living Magazine on newsstands now.  Let me know what you think...pass it on to someone you think will appreciate my neurotic, yet insightful and anecdotal remarks.  Look carefully, it's a sidebar and thumbnail picture!!!  Thanks Martha~

The Camp Chronicles-The Banana Bread Blues

We are now down to 11 days before my girl comes home…but I’m not counting.   The reports I receive indicate that she is doing great…I’m glad.   However, I am still not used to the sensation of not having her around.    While her days are filled with sports, swimming, and special projects, mine are restricted to being in the house alone at my computer, and while I relish the quiet,   I can’t seem to quell that little anxious part of me that just wants her home already.     Yesterday, I walked into the kitchen to the overwhelming smell of overripe bananas.     Believe it or not, this was an indicator of how much I missed my child.   I buy bananas by the truckload.   Often, strangers quizzically look at me when they see the monkey’s worth of Chiquita sitting in my shopping cart.   What can I say? My kids like bananas, which is the reason I always buy in bulk.   The fruit disappears by the end of the week, though I have made many breakthrough, emergency banana runs to replenish them befo