If I were born ten years later I likely would have wound up with an ADD diagnosis (Attention Deficit Disorder), not to be confused with ADHD which adds hyperactivity to the mix which was not at all my situation. In life I always seem to be racing the clock. Sometimes it is self imposed due to procrastination, but mostly it is just how I roll (I cannot resist the temptation to use some wannabe hip-hop slang and I mean no disrespect in doing so). Anway, the point is I tend to move from one thing to another so quickly that I sometimes miss things. Most often I get what I need out of the conversation/television show/book/magazine/fill in the blank. Sometimes I miss and miss BIG.

Recently at work I skimmed an e-mail (I get at least 40 relevent e-mails a day, so I do this for efficiency sake). The Executive Secretary to our Agency Director sent out an e-mail reminding staff of the upcoming Charitable Contributions Campaign where all employees have the opportunity to donate to a charity for a whole year and it's deducted from your pay, pre-tax sort of a thing. Each year there is apparently a kick-off celebration where you can eat donated pumpkin pie (my original interpretation), admire carved pumpkins and eat green things (in honor of "going green"). So when our Director sent a follow-up e-mail with a plea and then the Secretary sent yet another follow-up with yet another plea, I bit and said, "Hey if you haven't had any volunteers for the pie donation, count me in."

The next thing I got was a thank you for entering the upcoming Charitable Contributions Contest! WTF?! I didn't recall anything about a contest? I thought I was baking a pie to donate. Now I need to bake TWO pies, both identical (one for the judges and one for display!)? This is like a real contest (albeit for San Mateo County Employees only)! The fun didn't stop there. A day later an e-mail went out to all 850 Human Services Employees and said, "Come taste a sure to be award winning pie baked by Amy Kaiser..." And if that were not enough another one went out a couple days later saying "Also, just a friendly reminder to come taste a sure to be award winning pie baked by Amy Kaiser..." The pressure!!!

So here I was at 7:30 trying to make sure Elliot was asleep, cooking dinner so my dear husband and I can toast his Mom's 60th Birthday, and baking TWO pies for a contest tomorrow. I have never baked two pies - yikes! I encountered a bit of weight issue as I put both pies on a cookie sheet which caused the cookie sheet to dip in the center and the pie filling leaked and made ugly pie! They might taste OK, but they are not my finest works. Wish me luck!


P.S. I am too tired to even proof read this, so it is what it is.

Labels: Eating, Thinking

• Woke up to a singing baby boy
• Tried to rationalize with a hungry boy
• Gave temper-tantrum boy his medicine
• Packed the car
  
• Drank coffee while driving the bear to school, me to work
• Hit traffic
• Dropped bear off at school, set-up his breakfast, kisses goodbye
  
• Arrived late for work
• Got a desperately needed car wash during lunch (no longer would the washer fluid clean the shat off)
• Left work early (few meetings today = a lot of work done in less time, that's my justification anyway)
• Drove the hungry bear home
• Fed the hungry bear dinner
• Let the hungry pug out to go potty
• Fed the hungry pug dinner
• Gave the tired bear milk
• Laid the sleepy bear down to sleep
• Checked e-mail, facebook, etc.
• Cooked dinner with Hubbie
  
• Decided not to wash any dishes
• Wrote this post
• Off to shower, watch some tube and hit the hay
  

Labels: Thinking

Tonight while I was at the gym my mind began wandering as it does when I exercise. I began thinking about canned peaches. First I began to wonder how canned peaches get to be that perfect solid color of yellow-orange (not peach) and are completely smooth and absent of any evidence that there was a giant pit in the center, strange and oddly unnatural. I then began to think about how common it was for us to eat canned fruit when I was a child - peaches, pears and fruit cocktail were the most common. How is it that a farmer would allow his family to each such things? One day we would eat fresh fruit straight from the orchard out of a crate that would sit atop our dryer in the laundry room and the next day it was canned peaches. I then remembered a more recent conversation with my Dad where I learned of his love of canned fruit (anything sugary, really) and then remembered seeing him eat peaches right out of the can. How could he like those sickly sweet versions of the real thing? Generation gap. When my dad was growing up his mother preserved jars and jars of fresh fruits so there would be fruit for the winter. It makes sense now, produce wasn't flying in at record speeds from around the globe all year round, so if you wanted peaches in the winter you'd preserve them in the summer. Somehow I feel like Grandma's peaches were probably a lot tastier then the "Del Monte" variety. This got me through about 10 minutes of my work out.

Labels: Eating, Thinking

I just noticed today that on my browser at work my new header is located over my posts instead of its intended location on the left-side. Hmm. I will be working on this and other details that plague me into the wee hours of the night ;) Patience please (I am speaking more to myself - ha!).

I am THRILLED with myself that I figured out how to edit the "html" and remove the duplicate comment link! Yippie for me!

Labels: Thinking

When I was in New York a few years ago, I visited the famous Magnolia Bakery and had myself a few cupcakes. They were good, but not great. I felt like maybe I built them up too much or something. About a month ago a good friend used the Magnolia Vanilla recipe to bake some sweet lovely cupcakes for her daughters birthday. When I ate her cupcakes I was in such a happy place, these were what cupcakes should taste like. I have been mildly obsessed with these cupcakes ever since. When we got an invitation to a gathering with family this past Sunday I decided it was a perfect opportunity to try and master Magnolia's Cupcakes. The recipe was quite easy, it was the frosting that would be my battle for a great little cake. My friend used a cream-cheese frosting which I am generally partial to, but I wanted to see if I could make a great little cake with the butter-cream that Magnolia uses. As you can see from the picture of their cakes they use way too much sickly sugary frosting, and I was not going to make that same mistake. I pulled out a star-tip, slopped some vanilla frosting in a zip-lock bag and viola my magical cupcakes were born with just a thin layer of frosting. You tell me which cupcakes you'd rather eat. Mine or Theirs?

Labels: Eating

Not that you care, but I will tell you anyway. I originally had Dale customize my template so I could use Arial Narrow - the best font ever! Anyway, it has been a giant pain in the a$% every since. That particular customization seems to have made the overall formatting funky and I am tired of it taking me twice as long as it should to write a post. I am going to be playing for a while, so pardon the mess.

Here is a sweet picture to calm your nerves while you wait ;)

Labels: Thinking

Last weekend we took our first family trip to Santa Cruz. We actually took Friday off of work and had three almost-full days there. I am a Westside girl, so we found a great little place to stay not far from the Lighthouse. I spent most of my summers and spring-breaks in Santa Cruz as a child. We had a vacation house just steps away from the best beach in the whole wide world (maybe a slight exaggeration), it is known as Natural Bridges to most people.

As a child we really lived in Santa Cruz, so I didn't really get to know the town the way a tourist or a local would. We would spend most of our days lugging our buckets, shovels, boogie boards and other beach accoutrement to the beach, along with a some sort of white bread sandwich and chips that always ended up with sand in them - ick! Occasionally we would roller skate to the 7-11 to buy mounds of sugary candy and a slurpy to wash it down with.

As we prepared for our trip, I started making a list of all the things I wanted to do with baby-bear that I did as a child, and these made the cut for our first trip:

*Natural Bridges (of course)
There is so much to love about Natural Bridges besides the beach. During the fall or winter you must take the easy-breezy Monarch Butterfly walk. When you are not with a baby in a stroller or that needs carrying, you must walk along the tad pools, and if you are so inclined you could crawl around in the bushes and pretend it is a fort. My dad still has a few photos that show the first bridge connected.






*Ferrell's Donuts

Elliot had his first donut! And as you can imagine, he loved it! Though I am pretty sure this was not my first donut ever, it is in fact the donuts I have the earliest memory of eating. They don't stick in my mind simply because they are the best donuts ever, but because my Dad would always go out before any of us were awake to get the Sunday paper and Ferrell's donuts. As we made our way to the kitchen for breakfast that pink box with a powdered jelly donut (or two) would be waiting for me and my Dad to share as we read the paper (I read the comics mostly), always put a smile on my face (one that resembles E's above).





*Clam Chowder at Stagnaro's

If you like clam chowder, it's some of the best. I had a brief period from about 12 until my mid-twenties where I wouldn't eat the stuff because I had discovered it had clams in it, go figure!







Sadly there were some places that no longer exist like Lip Smackin' BBQ or The Junker (known to others as Paul's Diner).

I also wanted this trip to be the first of many we have as a family and for us to start new traditions, so we added some new things:





*Tacos Moreno




They call it a corn-quesadilla, but it is really a taco...with Al Pastor, pinto beans, cabbage, salsa, queso - yum! This was baby-bears first meal in Santa Cruz, he had the flour quesadilla which is just like a quesadilla we are used to seeing, it was his first of many fried things he ate during the trip.













*Marianne's Ice Cream

We we certain we needed desert after our dinner at Stagnero's as they are only known for the clam chowder. We wanted ice-cream, did a little web search and came across an ice cream spot that I then recalled a friend mentioning. I don't recall every visiting this fine establishment, though it has been there right on Ocean St for over 50 years. Maybe it is because we always had cartons of ice-cream in the freezer, so who needed to go out! It was truly delicious, though when we got home we learned it is up for sale! Hopefully someone worthy snatches it up and maintains the quality.



*Engfer Pizza









This was Dale's pick because as a good wife I had to let him pick something! It was a yummy new pizza place on the East Side (which I mildly objected to patronizing) but it was well worth it. Great selection of beers on tap, wood-fired pizza and ping-pong. We ordered a pizza with jalapeños because I like almost everything spicy (except ice-cream), but it was a little too spicy for even me. Elliot had his second fried item, his very own giant slice of cheese pizza.











*Westside Farmer's Market









Whenever we stay somewhere with a kitchen I like to hit up local farmer's markets to feel local and have at least one fresh, local-fare meal at "home". Elliot tried his first tamale, love it! OK, just the masa, not the spicy chicken filling.










We are already planning our next trip, but from the looks of real estate we won't be buying our vacation home anytime soon.

Labels: Adventuring, Kid-ing