How to get ready to pump gas in Buffalo
Dec 28, 2011 Posted From My Phone
When you look like Elmer Fudd, you know you’re ready.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom, from Amy’s cell phone (so please excuse any weird formatting). All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Christmas cookie Tree centerpiece
Dec 25, 2011 Cooking & Baking
A couple weeks ago I saw this video of Gail Dosik, of One Tough Cookie, making a Christmas tree out of cookies. I was totally inspired.
I immediately started searching Amazon for graduated cookie cutters and found a set of star-shaped ones from Wilton. I never make a holiday centerpiece. If we have one, it’s because Fiona took it upon herself to make one. So I decided that this year, our centerpiece would be a Christmas cookie tree!
I’m rather glad that I couldn’t find the kind of cutters that Gail used because her tree requires a kind of precision that I just don’t have. Maybe next time. If I take a Valium first.
Last night I made a massive amount of roll-out cookie dough, and this morning made the cookies. At first it seemed like the cookies would take forever, but once I got past the two biggest stars it went a lot faster.
I used Gail’s method for rolling out the dough. Before discovering her secret, I rarely made cut-out cookies because they always looked fairly terrible and tasted even worse, due to all the extra flour I’d have to use to keep them from sticking. But trust me, her method is genius. You’re crazy if you don’t use it.
I’ve never used icing on cookies, so I decided to give it a try. I wanted to outline the cookies in frosting then pour the icing on very thin and let it spread, but I just couldn’t get it thin enough. The recipe I was using said to just keep adding light corn syrup until it was the right consistency but I started getting afraid that it would taste funny. So I spread the frosting to the edges as best I could.
Assembly was really easy, since it didn’t have to be exact. I just had to check every few cookies and make sure the tree wasn’t lopsided.
You can see that some of the frosting near the top gushed out and dripped down. I decided that those looked like icicles and weren’t a mistake. :-)
I sprinkled the whole thing with silver-colored sugar, although I think it would have looked better if I’d done that before stacking the cookies.
I’m quite proud of myself, but this design left a lot of room for error. I’d like to try another one that’s not so haphazard. I think it may be time for some private lessons with Gail. :-)
I made way too much dough, so I let Fiona make some cookies (I think The Ass ate about half of them).
When she got tired of it I made some to share with the choir at Christmas Eve service.
And I still have about a third of the dough left. I might try making some smaller trees with it tomorrow – just the top five or six layers. Maybe I’ll make a whole cookie forest! And populate it with little gingerbread men! And the men will need a house…
I think this is the most relaxing Christmas Eve I’ve ever had. The presents were all wrapped days ago, and I did nothing today but bake.
I hope you all have a nice Christmas, filled with cookies and gifts and family. And if you don’t celebrate Christmas, well, at least your kids will let you sleep in tomorrow.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
I think @TheToughCookie would be proud!
Dec 24, 2011 Posted From My Phone
I’ll put up a how-to post later, along with the video from Gail Dosik that inspired this cookie tree. But for now I have to jump in the shower to get to Christmas Eve service for choir!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom, from Amy’s cell phone (so please excuse any weird formatting). All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Santa identity crisis
Dec 21, 2011 Kids
So I’m sitting here surrounded by gifts that need wrapping, a task I actually enjoy (as long as I’m not doing it at 3am on December 25th, which has happened many other years). The problem is, I don’t know how to make out the gift tags.
Two years ago, when Jake was eight, I almost told him the truth about Santa. Then last year at this time he nudged me about it again, but he still wasn’t ready.
Then, one fateful day that spring in St. Thomas, everything came out. Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, everything. We were at Easter brunch at the Ritz Carlton, and there was an Easter bunny taking pictures with the kids. After her picture Fiona said to me, “The Easter Bunny isn’t real, right?” Finally! Making up all these silly stories was getting old. I said, “Nope, it’s just something parents tell kids to have a little fun when they’re little, but you’re old enough now to know the truth.”
Fiona went white and stared back at me with saucer eyes, and said “I just meant that that one wasn’t real – I could see her ponytail sticking out!”
Oops.
She ran and told Jake. The next morning at breakfast they said they had some questions. Was Santa real? I asked them several times if they really wanted to know everything, and they insisted they did. So I told them. Everything. The Tooth Fairy was the next to fall. And that was it.
Or so I thought.
About a month ago, Jake came to me and said he was writing his list for Santa. “OK, Jake, for ‘Santa.’ Got it.” I made air quotes around the now-fictitious Santa.
Jake got a weird smile and said, “So I think I might have fallen down and gotten amnesia about Santa. He’s real, right?”
Oh bloody hell.
He still wanted to believe, even though he knew the truth. And even though he knew that I knew that he knew the truth.
Later I asked Fiona about Santa and she said “What do you mean?” Except she seemed genuinely confused. Had she really forgotten about the big reveal? Had she convinced herself that the whole conversation hadn’t happened? Or, like Jake, was she just pretending?
I’ve been absolutely terrible about keeping the whole story going since that day. When they told me what they wanted for Christmas I got right onto Amazon and told them whether or not each item was a possibility (“Will be delivered after December 25th” became “Sorry, Santa can’t guarantee delivery in time”). But now here I am with the gift tags, and I don’t know what to do. I know Jake knows. I think Fiona knows, but I’m not sure. As the person who perpetrated this once-fun lie in the first place, what’s my responsibility here in dragging it out?
And good grief, what if they want Santa around for another year, when they’ll be eight and eleven? I just don’t think I have it in me.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Christmas, gifts, Kids, Santa Claus
Joely Fisher basically has my dream career
Dec 16, 2011 What's Going On
So if I could pick a career path for myself, it would definitely include Broadway musicals, hit movies, long-running TV shows, and charity work helping everyone from poor kids around the world to terminally ill adults to whales. But that’s Joely Fisher. The daughter of actress Connie Stevens and singer Eddie Fisher, Joely grew up going to work with her mom and sleeping in orchestra pits.
You probably first got to know Joely, as I did, during her long run as Ellen DeGeneres’ friend Paige on Ellen in the 90s.
Her latest TV hit, the sitcom ‘Til Death, just went into syndication, and I got the chance to interview Joely over the phone. I was fascinated by what I imagine was a glamorous upbringing. Not surprisingly, her answers were always interesting and often hilarious.
First, I asked Joely if growing up with the parents she had was like growing up in the Sound of Music house, with everybody breaking into song all the time. She told me about a recent birthday dinner she had at an old-school L.A. restaurant, with her mother and singer/actress Lainie Kazan.
This piano player starts playing every old standard song that we all knew and literally we sang for three hours. The restaurant stopped in its tracks and got a full Broadway scale musical in the restaurant, it was hilarious and that is basically it. That is my life in a nutshell.
I have spent my life with some incredible iconic performers sort of wandering in and out of my house and you know, for me that was normal, that was my life and for everybody else out there it probably would be fairly fascinating to walk into your living room and see Lucile Ball sitting at the bar with my mom, you know, having a Manhattan and smoking a cigarette, in the late ‘70s.
My second question for Joely was about how her childhood experiences, following her parents around as they worked and performed, differ from her children’s lives (she has two step-sons and three daughters), and if she has so often chosen television work because it offers more stability for bringing up a family.
Well yes, I had sort of a smattering of all different kinds of experiences. My mom worked on stage and in television and movies and so I sort of, I wouldn’t say I was dragged along because I really went willingly. I loved being in the wings watching her perform, she was magical.
One experience: I was 3-years-old and everybody was going crazy because the nanny was backstage saying, “We can’t find Joely! We can’t find Joely!” And my mom came off the stage and she was like, “What do you mean you can’t find Joely? She’s 3-years-old!”
And the concert mistress who plays the lead violin in the orchestra said, “Shh, I have Joely.” And she was holding me and I had fallen asleep in the orchestra pit. And when I woke up my mom said, “Joely you can’t, you know, honey you can’t, you know, I’m not angry.” And she was trying to explain that I have to tell people where I’m going and I told my mom that I wanted to hear the music from the inside. And she was like oh my God, I can’t stop her with a train, this is going to be her life, you know.
So as far as giving that to my own children you kind of want to take the best of it, I mean my mom called me the gypsy because I truly was, I loved it, I mean I came out of the womb singing, I literally did.
And my daughters basically have grown up on sets but they’re at the age where they don’t miss school to go traveling with me, you know. I did perform on Broadway before I had children, I was offered another show and thought, I kind of want to be the last face that they see at night when they go to sleep and the first one in the morning. And I wasn’t ready to hand that over to somebody else, you know, a caregiver.
So they’ve grown up on sets, they love it. You know, my daughters are into it. One of my daughters, True, who is five says “I don’t want to be pictured.” She doesn’t want her picture taken. So if we go to an event she skips the red carpet and that’s fine with me. I don’t want to force that on anyone because it has wonderful gifts and it also can be stressful.
But my daughter Skylar, I was pregnant and did a pilot pregnant, they shot around it and she learned to walk on that set. True was six weeks old when I did the pilot of ‘Til Death, I nursed her during the pilot, ran up to nurse her because my boobs were getting bigger than my head.
And Luna who I adopted at birth, she’s my baby, I adopted [her] during the run of ‘Til Death and so they were all weaned on a set and they know when to be quiet when the cameras are rolling and as long as they love it I’ll bring them and, you know, the other stuff, we lead a more normal life.
You can check your local listings to see when ‘Til Death is on in your area, and the show’s official page is here.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: acting, Joely Fisher
Today’s agenda: stage manager edition
Dec 16, 2011 Today's Agenda
So today will be a little crazy. The kids’ school’s enrichment showcase is always a little, shall we say, disorganized. And I want to stress that that’s not a criticism of the people who organize it. I’ve volunteered at the school enough to know that there’s no good way to get this kind of thing done. It’s not like there’s some staff member in charge of all of the performances at the school. It’s all very ad-hoc. And the guy who knows the most about the equipment and where everything is has a 3-day-old baby, so he’s less accessible than usual right now.
After the last showcase I very nicely told anyone who would listen that I had a lot of stage management experience, and I’d be happy to help run the next one. And dammit, they remembered.
So, most of today will be about learning how to make the auditorium’s sound system work, finding, borrowing or buying equipment, and figuring out what else needs to be done to get the show over with as quickly as possible so that we can all get the hell out of there and play video games. Or maybe that’s just my husband.
But in the middle of the day I’ll be helping to host a twitter party for a great site called EXPO, where you earn points (that you can use to get real stuff) for uploading video reviews, taking surveys, sharing your opinions, and participating on the site in other ways. You can even win prizes or qualify to try out products for free, sometimes before they hit store shelves!
The twitter party runs today (Friday) from 1-2pm EST and is about one of my favorite topics, shopping. From the EXPO blog:
We know that a lot of you are avid twitter users and chat about exciting tips and activities daily. We also know there are plenty of you out there that want to join these conversations but may not be in the twittersphere. We want to hear from all of you no matter how advanced you are in the social networking world! Just sign up here for our twitter party and either create a twitter name to join the discussion or just read along.
Rules:
1. Sign up for our Twitter Party here
2. Mention @expotv at least once during the twitter party using the hashtag #expoholiday
3. Must be at least 18 years of age and live in the USPlease see official rules here.
We hope that you’ll join us and feel free to invite your friends! Don’t forget to sign up so you can be entered to win one of our gift cards!
So I hope to see you there. To make following the discussion easy, you can use tweetchat.
Plus, I’ll be posting a very fun interview I did with Joely Fisher. Can’t wait!
OK, I’m off to relive my days of winding cables and calling cues.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 15 (EXPO). Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: EXPO, Joely Fisher, school performances, Shopping
Dessert with Friends, or how I get people to like me
Dec 15, 2011 Paid/Sponsored Post
Thanks to Duncan Hines for sponsoring my writing. There’s no limit to the baking possibilities, so grab your favorite Duncan Hines mix and Comstock or Wilderness fruit fillings and Bake On! www.duncanhines.com.
***
My mom is a baker. She never goes anywhere without bringing bread, cookies, a cake, something. I’m so glad I inherited this habit from her. I love showing up at gatherings with baked goods!
I have nothing against anyone who doesn’t bake. In fact, the fewer people who like baking, the better, because that makes me look good by comparison. But I really do like being the one who can make people happy with something I made. I went to a recording session yesterday for the Blogging Angels, and I brought my latest obsession, cake pops (a really fun treat to make with kids, by the way). Nancy gave hers to her kids and they looked so good, her daughter didn’t believe I’d baked them!
After my friend Jennifer’s husband died, I asked her what I could do. And she told me to make her some brownies. I was so touched, especially because she’s a food writer! She can bake circles around me. But she wanted my brownies to help her feel better. Actually, it was on a Blogging Angels podcast, where Jennifer was the guest, that I revealed to our listeners that my famous brownies, the ones I bring to every bake sale, the ones my kids beg me for, the very ones that Jennifer requested, were from a Duncan Hines brownie mix.
That’s why I wanted to be part of this campaign, to spread the word that homemade does not have to equal difficult, or time consuming, or expensive. I’m busy, and knowing that I can get a pan of brownies into the oven in five minutes, with just one bowl to clean up, means that more of my friends get to enjoy my baked goods.
Around the holidays I have even more fun because Christmas is a great excuse to experiment with packaging – pretty boxes and bags, or mason jars filled with sweets and decorated with a bow.
And no, I don’t bake so that I can get people to like me. But I hope it makes the people who already like me, like me even more. :-)
Want to make those chewy, fudgy brownies I mentioned? They’re really easy. Bring these the next time you’re meeting friends and there won’t be a crumb left.
I want to stress that this isn’t my recipe. I’m almost positive I got it off of the back of a Duncan Hines box about a decade ago.
Thick and Fudgy Duncan Hines Brownies
Ingredients:
- 2 family-sized Duncan Hines Chewy Fudge Brownie mixes
- 3 eggs
- 3/4 cup water
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees and prepare a 13”x9” metal pan by greasing the bottom only
- With a spoon (not an electric mixer) mix together all of the ingredients, except for the chocolate chips
- When the batter is well mixed, add the chocolate chips and blend
- Pour into prepared pan and spread evenly
- Bake for 55 minutes, or until center is set but not dry (if you jiggle the pan, nothing should move)
- Cool completely before cutting
Or, if you like to watch me stir things, you can watch a video I made of how to make these brownies. It’s not rocket science – you don’t need video instruction to make these – but I like pretending that I have my own cooking show.
Remember to check out Duncan Hines’ website www.duncanhines.com to find some great recipes for your holiday get-together! I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 13. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: baking, brownies, Cake Pops, Duncan Hines
Today’s Agenda: where did the day go? edition
Dec 15, 2011 Today's Agenda
How in the world is it 1pm already? I have so much to do today and I feel like I got a lot done this morning, but it was all little stuff that had been collecting up – I have no one big thing to point to as an accomplishment.
Except maybe the fridge. My husband was home last night when Fresh Direct got here, so he put everything away that needed to stay cold. This is what I came home to:
Several items fell out when I opened it this morning.
To his credit, he told me he did a sucky job, and that the fridge needed my organizational magic touch. Then again, maybe he was just flattering me so that I wouldn’t post a picture of his terrible putting away job. :-)
So, fifteen minutes later I at least have an organized (but still too crowded) fridge. What else have I gotten done? Nothing interesting (assuming you consider the fridge interesting, which you probably do not).
But, I do have interesting things coming up today. I’ll be posting about a very fun twitter party I’ll be participating in tomorrow, including telling you how to RSVP so that you can win prizes. And I’ll be posting my totally non-secret totally package mix recipe for how to make the gooey-est, bestest brownies ever.
And if you have a chance, check out the post I put up last night about a shoe subscription! Because magazine subscriptions are so 20th century.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
