What's your passion?










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and may not be used or copied without permission

What keeps you sane? What keeps you ticking and strong when times are tough? What is the one thing you can turn to to help melt your troubles away? None of us are immune to the stresses of day to day living. Could be family, friends, work, or a health-related issue... we all go through rough patches. And even when we are not we still have tough days where we just want to take a few minutes and forget about our worries. 

I have several methods of escape. I love a good soak in the tub, but sometimes I need to be physical. Sometimes I need to get out there and burn off some steam. This feeling is vastly different than the quiet time I require after a long and hectic day when I need to take a time out and relax.

I'm passionate about cooking, writing and photography and exercise.

When it comes to nervous energy I find that a good pair of running shoes and an iPod loaded up with great songs is exactly what I need. I can run as quickly or as slowly as I want. I can walk. But I prefer to move quickly as it kicks up the breezes that brush past my cheeks and blow through my hair. I love the solitude and serenity and tranquility of being by myself. I prefer to walk alone. It's not that I am anti-social but this is not a team sport. This is me needing to care for my body and my soul. My body reacts to the music and the tempo that sounds in my ears seems to adjust its pace accordingly. I sing along (and hope no one can hear me) and yet I'm thinking about a million other things. This is my time to think of answers, solutions to issues that have been plaguing me. And sometimes I think of nothing at all. How I love this. I love to have nothing to think about and to let my mind roam near and far and. I love to think of nothing but the blue sky ahead and the flowers on the paths, and the evergreens that line the street and provide shade from the sultry, steamy weather. I love to notice the beautiful bark on the tree to my left. I tell myself I will return to this spot but the next time with my camera. 

I love to see the chipmunks scurry and scamper ahead and I love to watch the birds in all their colorful wonder fly on by. I'm lucky to be here, in my forest by the sea. Lucky indeed. I'm fortunate in that I have always been a positive person. My cup is always half full. I always stop to smell the roses. And sometimes I photograph them. I can never walk anywhere without appreciating the beauty all around me. I just don't understand how some people can. Each day I see something new, even if I'm on the same road I've traveled on over and over again. And each day I appreciate all that I do have. And even if life seems particularly difficult that day I remind myself just how fortunate I am.

I love the feel of my feet hitting the pavement as I run and how my heartbeat quickens and it seems the faster I go the the better I feel. Though I still find myself coming to a grounding stop. The shoulder that had surgery three months ago is getting stronger each and every day, but still it's there to remind me to slow down. And the jarring motion of the feet on pavement causes my shoulder to jar in a most peculiar way. So I slow to a walk and catch my breath ... healing is a process and takes time... body and soul. I finish up by walking home. I feel energized and not at all defeated. I am growing stronger, body and soul. Sooner or later my shoulder will be stronger and I will be stronger and I'll run the distance. I don't really care if it takes a while as I'm quite enjoying the journey along the way. As I turn the the corner and head off the street and on to my cul-de-sac I listen to the next song on the iPod... John Mayer's Say What You Need to Say comes next. I croon along and listen as the lyrics seem to ring so very true. It's funny how that is, how every song seems to mimic some part of our lives. I never really paid attention to this until the day I learned that my friend Mandy died in a fiery plane crash on Martha's Vineyard. That afternoon James Taylor's Fire and Rain came on the the radio. As the song ends I turn onto our driveway and start the steep climb. My body feels good so does my soul.

I also need an outlet for this creativity.Without it I feel stifled and caged. I need to be creating and while I would love nothing more than to be able to write and photograph every day, I know this cannot be the case as both are time consuming and oftentimes alienating activities. But when I do write or take a picture that has perfectly captured an image or a moment in time, there is no better feeling! This is one of the reasons I have this blog. It's a means of being able to express myself exactly as I want to. I can write and post whatever it is that comes to my mind... Now, if only I could blog and run at the same time!

Eye Candy: Cookbooks


How natural it is to move on from guest books to cook books. I love cookbooks and have since I can remember. I love the look of the photographs of the mouth watering recipes on the glossy pages. I love reading the lists of ingredients, then about what happens when the ingredients come together. When I go home to Newport I still take out my mother's cookbooks and read them cover to cover. I used to do this when I visited my grandmother as well.

It really seems fitting that I should be working on the cookbook project with Chef Peter. My grandmother had hoped that we would collaborate on a cookbook. She planned on writing the recipes and she wanted me to handle the illustrations. (This was long before I fell in love with photography.) We were going to do this. Only it never happened. Seven years ago La Jolie Grandmere passed away in Beverly Hills, far, far away from the manor house, her home of more than 20 years in the bucolic Oxford suburb of Great Haseley. Sadly this was one of her dreams that never came true. As much as I miss her to this day... as painful as her loss still is... I know that I am so blessed to have so much of what she left behind. I look around and my home is filled with so many of her wonderful possessions. In the living room I have her Steinway grand piano. The piano that Leonard Bernstein danced on (after too much drink) when he performed with the Rochester Philharmonic... In the dining room I have her silver place settings and her silver tea and coffee service. In the front entry way I have some of the old home decorating magazines, in which her homes were featured, proudly on display. I have photos and artwork still in moving boxes in the basement. (I know! I know... we've been here nearly 2 years!) I have a large framed photograph of her home in Umbria framed in the office. In my bedroom I have letters and the wonderful stories she wrote for me that are being incorporated into the memoir. In the family room I have her cookbooks neatly sitting upon the shelves next to the armoire. My cookbooks are on one side and hers are on the other.

She was a fabulous cook. Despite the fact that she ate like a bird she truly loved to eat and appreciated great, high quality food. Her cookbooks lived on her kitchen shelves. I say they lived as opposed to rested, because her cookbooks never rested. They were pulled off and put back on. Off and on. The pages of these books are well worn. Notes line the sides and, scribbled handwritten notes cover some of the original recipes. Like me she was a tinkerer. Most often she changed and doctored many recipes. I love the fact that she covered all he cookbooks so that they would look better on the shelves. They were all covered in white paper, and the names written in green across the spines. I've had fun perusing all the recipes. Some are dated, like tomato aspic, and some, like the Iceberg Wedge with Stilton, are making a come-back. She cooked many things. Her recipes and interests reflected where her homes were. In Cannes, her cooking was traditional French. In England she encouraged her guests to try the country's traditional dishes, "Spotted Dick," "Bubble and Squeak" and "Steak and Kidney Pie." In Italy, when we were not dining out, the produce all came from her gardens. We had plenty of pasta and plenty of fish. This is how I ate as a child. I ate what my grandparents ate when I was with them, and when at home I ate what my parents ate. When I went out to dinner my grandmother would always comment on the large chef. "He must make wonderful food," she would explain. "A good chef is a fat chef. You want a chef who loves what he creates." She had a point. These days this may not be so true. Many top chefs are also television celebrities and hit the gym to maintain their fit physiques.

Because La Jolie Grandmere lived across the Pond and because we could not see each other as often as we would like, we wrote many letters. She was a much better letter writer than I. The light blue Air Mail envelopes were always a delight to receive. As I grew older the subject matter changed as well. Often she would write about a party she had hosted or been to. And this would always be followed by an elegant description of the food she had sampled. She could have been a food writer. The way she described these meals was nothing less than inspiring... and often left you feeling very hungry!

There was no such thing as "kid food" in my family. This is not to say I never had peanut butter and jelly. (I often did for breakfast!) But my meals were more grown up and I suppose my tastes were too. I ate foods from many countries throughout my childhood. I was no stranger to Indian, Asian, and Middle Eastern cuisine. My parents often brought me out to dinner to wonderful French restaurants such as Cafe Un, Deux, Trois and La Grenouille. I would never think of ordering a hamburger or macaroni and cheese or such. I loved mussels, clams and escargot! I really did think that frogs legs tasted like chicken! I was not afraid to try anything. The only thing I disliked about dining in French restaurants was the fact that I had to order my food in French, s'il vous plait. And let me tell you I thought this to be tellement embarrassant!  

At home, we had family dinners every night. If I was in play clothes (having changed out of my uniform after school) I had to put on something "presentable." We ate meat on occasion but not terribly often. My mother cooked a lot of chicken and fish. She also made a lot of casseroles that she could store in the freezer and pull out as needed. As a busy career woman she often did her cooking on the weekends so she could come home and play with me a little bit after school. We were not a meat and potatoes family. We had couscous, long grain rice, whole wheat French bread. We followed a healthy diet without realizing it. My mother too was a fabulous cook.

The only thing I did not like about mealtime was that I had to drink a glass of milk every night. I hated milk. Hated it. I still do unless it is in cereal or coffee. We had this charcoal grey shag rug in the dining room. It was a gorgeous room with a high ceiling painted in a light shade of grey, lavender walls, and this shaggy rug that tied the room together. One day, completely unable to swallow the icky white stuff in my glass I thought of ways in which I could make it disappear. I thought about tossing it into the plants but worried that the milk would somehow kill them. I needed someplace, someplace... So I started tossing it right into the rug. I did this one night. No one ever suspected. And then I did it over and over again. How was I able to do this? Well, I was not permitted to leave the table unless I had finished my milk. I certainly was not about to drink it at dinner so I had to make sure my parents were out of eye-shot. There was a long, narrow pantry with shelves, cabinets, and a wet bar that separated the dining room from the kitchen. As soon as I knew they were safely in the kitchen, I had certain auditory cues, I emptied my glass on to the floor. I have no idea how long I was able to pull this off. I want to say a year, maybe even more. Eventually I was found out. The rug was later tossed. And the good news, I was no longer required to drink milk with my dinner!

When my older two were much younger I swore to myself that they would not live on a diet of happy meals and hot dogs. As soon as they were able to eat they ate what we did. Junk food was almost non-existent. (I remember being absolutely appalled at babies 6 and 9 and 12 months old nibbling on French fries in restaurants. I remember saying I will never do this.) The first rule I will tell you about parenting is to never say never. However, in this case I stuck to my guns. People used to ask me in amazement how I got my kids to eat that? Truth was it was easy. That, what they were eating was the norm in my house. I pushed the healthy foods, not the junk. Sure my kids like French fries, and yes they get hot dogs on occasion and McDonald's is a treat. They eat fish, and many things most people would say are mature for their palates. My kids love salad. Unfortunately, thanks to peer pressure, they would rather snack on chips than veggie and dip. I try to be creative and serve them foods that are fun, and nutritious. I have never had to sneak vegetables or beans in to brownies or such. I disagree with the cookbooks that suggest this. I think it is important that kids learn about what is good for them and what is not. Vegetables should be seen, not hidden. There are ways to cook them, with garlic, olive oil, salt, etc that can really enhance their flavors. Children like flavor as much as we do.

So when the school brought Peter on board and changed their eating habits, I could not have been happier. And when Peter and I decided to work on a cookbook together I knew this was the right thing for me to do.

But I mustn't lose sight of my current project. I must not get distracted. I will finish this project before starting another one. Of course my memoirs ought to have some of her recipes weaved in, since food and cooking was such an important part of our family. So posthumously, I guess she is working on this project with me.

The Ultimate Preppy Party Animal!









Alexander is bringing cupcakes in for his class Birthday party tomorrow. It was supposed to be last week, but a few illnesses held us back a bit. He wanted the "Dragon" that I made for his end of the year class party last year. (It's an alligator, really, and the school mascot.) So I did what any (insane, out of her mind mother would do) and opt not to get the $5 pretty cupcakes with sprinkles at the grocery store and spend an enormous amount of time to create Old Swampy. Actually. It's pretty easy to do. I got the idea from my Hello Cupcake cookbook. Every mom who likes to bake should have one!

Where to begin?

We've been pretty busy these past couple of days. On Saturday we attended the local carnival held by our town's fire department. It really is such a lovely event and we look forward to it every August.

Alexander and I have boarded the Dinocoaster. This is about my speed. Don't ask me to go on anything scarier!



Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!



Alexander had his first cotton candy. To say he loved it would be a complete understatement!




I also did my fair share of playing around in the kitchen, creating this...


and this sauce...


for this. One of the best pasta dishes I have ever made! (Recipe will be posted on the food blog. Stay tuned!)




Also made some of these... a whole new way to eat Cookies and Cream!


And these Espresso cookies made with three kinds of chocolate chips!
(Not terribly bright of me to have snuck a couple into bed last night!)

And today I had had enough of my messy desk ...

and decided to do a thorough cleaning...

which left stuff scattered all across the kitchen. Not a spot on the floor nor counter top uncluttered!
Look at all these ribbons I found jammed in to the back of one of the drawers!



It's funny... if you look closely, very closely at that wine glass it looks as though there is wine in it. But it was empty!

Eventually I started to make some progress...

and one by one I cleared out and tidied all the drawers...



and 13 hours after I started I am almost done!



As you can imagine I had some distractions along the way. I came across a note with Dell's telephone number on it along with some random numbers. Aha!!! The missing piece of paper. I brought the old laptop into the office and sat on the phone with Dell as they walked me through installing the new hard drive (other one crashed -- long story for another post) and all the software and internet capabilities. I was on the phone with them for nearly three hours.


During that time the two at home (Christopher has soccer camp this week) were amazingly quiet. They knew better than to interrupt me. They wanted their computer back! All the while I heard boxes being dumped, drawers being emptied and knew every single toy would end up on the floor. There was nothing I could do but listen, and cringe! Rebecca came in with a sandwich she had made me for lunch. She even thought to add some Baked Lay's Cheetos on my plate! It was 12:45 and I had been on the phone for just over 2 hours. I motioned that I couldn't eat as I needed to have my hands free to work the computer. I thanked her and sent her away.


A few minutes after that I heard the big plastic storage bin empty out on to the floor. The same one I had picked up earlier. I heard all 1021 Lego, Duplo and wooden block come crashing out in to the middle of the family room floor. I cringed some more. I was nearly done though. All I had left was to reconfigure the wireless chip as it was not working.


Alexander came in. Loudly he said "Mamma, I have to pooooooop!" I whispered to him to go ahead and motioned with my hand to leave the room. Vamoose! Just my luck. Then sooner than I had expected I heard "Mamma, I'm done!.... Mamma, I'm doooone! Mamma, I'm doooooooooone!" I heard him. I was not ignoring him. There was no way anyone would be able to ignore that screaming. But what could I do? I couldn't leave? I was typing away at the keys... inserting the necessary numbers and codes... I couldn't very well say "Excuse me, my three year old needs me now." That wouldn't sound so serious. Or important. And he didn't have an ant in his pants. This time. How to handle walking away from a Twenty-something techie of foreign nationality who was most likely single and child-free? Finally, as if by some miracle the internet icon lit up and I was wireless... and free! Free to go help my three year old whose little derriere was probably stuck to the potty by that point!


So I got the kids set up. Webkinz was their site of choice.


And I got back to my mess and muddled through making more and more and more of a mess as I was cleaning. (Why does cleaning have to be such a messy job?)


And then I noticed that it was 2:30 and Christopher had to be picked up. And neither kid wanted to come with me. Gee, I wonder why that would be? So after a good bit of hemming and hawing I decided to let Rebecca babysit Alexander. I have left them alone together before. Never more than 20 minutes though. And I am never more than a mile or so away. But I figured they wouldn't get into too much trouble on Webkinz. Rebecca knows the drill. Do not answer the phone unless you know who is calling. Don't answer the door. Play quietly. TV and computer are allowed. Rough-housing is not. Showering and bathing are not. Using the stove-top or microwave are not. She's a good kid. I trust her.


I left and locked the kids safely in the house. I returned about a half hour later and saw Daddy's car already in the garage. He was home early. And the house was a mess. A mess. More than a mess. It was a disaster. There were toys (millions of them) on the floor of every room. And then there was the kitchen. A disaster of a completely different kind.
Daddy came down stairs, changed and in his play clothes. "The house is a disaster" he said sort of matter of factly. I went upstairs. Oh. my. G..... It was worse than a disaster! I chuckled. "What the hell ya been doin' all day?" he chided, "Eating bon bons on the couch?" He makes this accusation at least once a day. "Well," I told him. "I did ignore the children for three hours and let them loose around the house!" And then he says "What the Hell I pay ya for if you can't even keep the house clean?" He says this a lot too. Which is hilarious as I am about $277K underpaid. (I did not come up with this number randomly. There was a news story a year or so ago about the worth of Stay at Home Moms. Factor in all we do and we should gross almost $300K a year.)
I laughed... then told him to think about the next time he asked what I did all day. Because today he saw what happened when I didn't do what I normally do all day!


And I went back to my desk. More cleaning. More tossing. More organizing. All along I am wondering how so much of the kids' crap ended up in all my drawers. I certainly never put it there. I found a Soduko book, a Mad Libs book, several notebooks, 3 lobster erasers, a broken pencil sharpener, a variety of broken and dried out pens, pencils and markers, a pair of blue sunglasses, stickers, stickers and more stickers, a barrette, a small metal spatula from the play kitchen, pictures from the kids, pictures of the kids, Play Doh bits... you name it, it was in there.


I used to have a drawer for the kids. The bottom drawer once contained paper and pencils, crayons and markers. I thought it a brilliant idea at the time. Until the kids started actually using it. Destroying it. So now that drawer is off limits. Now the entire desk is off limits. (Yeah, right, let's see how long that'll stay!)


Under my desk are now two small wicker file baskets. (There used to be one massive wicker basket for assorted art supplies. But the bigger the basket the bigger the mess!) One basket is for them to go into and the other one is the "Permission Basket" with items like scissors, paint, and glue.


In what used to be the kids drawer I found some writing of Becca's on a folded up piece of white paper. I opened it up and started howling. By the writing it seemed she had written it a couple of years ago. It's a story (loosely) based on Pinkalicious, a charming story of a little girl who turns pink because she ate too many pink cup cakes.


Here is Becca's version... Oh my... I'm chucking just thinking about it!

“Winealishous”

There was a mom and she loved wine. Especially red wine. She loved it so much she drank 15 glasses a day. (She didn’t even get drunk!) One day she went over her limit. I mean way over her limit. How does 100 glasses sound? It was so crazy. She wouldn’t stop drinking! She stayed up so late drinking wine that she went to bed at 1:30 am and woke up at 12:30 pm. When she woke up she was red! She tried to take a shower but it wouldn’t come off.

She ran as fast as she could to her car so her kids couldn’t see her. She rushed to her doctor and the doctor told her she had an odd case of Redwineatitis. She asked how she could get rid of it. The doctor said that she could get rid of it by drinking white wine!


Isn't that the funniest? Please don't call CPS!

Collages for the Senses, A Craft for Children



Alexander loves to glue things. I can cut out shapes -- all sorts of different shapes and he can glue for hours. His first "project" was the abstract piece above. I really like it! Rebecca created an actual scene with various shapes... it conjures up an image that Eric Carle and Henri Matisse might have collaborated on.



I asked Rebecca and Alexander to create a "Fruit Bowl" for me. In Alexander's fruit bowl are: 2 bananas, a grapefruit, a lemon, an apple and a pear.



In Rebecca's Fruit Bowl are: 2 apples, some blueberries, a lime, a lemon, a banana and an orange.

The Fruit Bowls reminded me of

Lois Ehlert's Eating the Alphabet


and so that is what we did... we sampled, bananas, strawberries and apples and lemons. We talked about texture and taste.
You could even bring this a step further by incorporating a little bit of cooking!
Click on the fruit below to get some fun cooking ideas!


Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs



Christopher's class Birthday Party is tomorrow. When I was making Rebecca's Slumbering Children Cupcakes he picked these out. Last night he confirmed that he indeed wanted the spaghetti and meatball cupcakes. Oh these were so much fun to make and so easy! I got the idea courtesy the Hello Cupcake cookbook! I am also the 2nd Grade Mystery Reader tomorrow. The book I have selected, fittingly, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs! (Directions will be up shortly on Food blog!)

These would be fun to make for April Fool's Day!
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Pass the Cheese, Please!







One of those large toy companies advertises Family Game night. But when one of your children plays Candy Land and the other two prefer Monopoly or Chess or The American Girl 3000 Wishes game, such a night is challenging, to say the least, Maybe in another couple of years we'll be there. So when one of the kids, I think it was Christopher, said he wanted to make pizza for dinner we thought it the perfect opportunity to do this as a family. I did all the prep work, chopping up all the ingredients that were requested -- olives, onions, peppers, pepperoni, meatballs (leftover from the night Christopher cooked) getting the cheese and sauce all ready for the kids to be able to spread. Daddy then took over with the dough. I got the pre-packaged stuff, 2 packages. Daddy put them together and then divided the mound into three equal sections, one for each child. He floured the kitchen table and placed their doughs in front of them. I let him take over from there and I poured myself a glass of Chardonnay and sat down to watch the children eagerly preparing their pizzas with thought and determination, as though the dough was their canvass and the toppings their medium. The end results were beautiful and indeed delicious. Better than any store bought or delivered pizza I have ever had! We had this with Christopher's version of our Valentine's salad -- He substituted the mozzarella for goat cheese and added red peppers, grape tomatoes and celery. (He hates tomatoes but likes the way they look!)

After dinner Alexander went in to the family room and passed out on the couch. He missed the Valentine's goodies. Each child got a book and a small hear filled with 6 chocolates. They were each allowed two. Alexander, of course, had his for breakfast this morning!

Last night was such a success I really hope to be able to do this a couple of times a month. Weekends are perfect because we are not stressed out by the demands of the day -- schedules, school, activities, homework, bedtimes. When we cook like this we go at a relaxed pace and we enjoy our family time and our cooking time. And this is one activity that works well for all ages.




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