BlogHer Book Club Review: The Rules Of Inheritance

When I picked up the book Rules of Inheritance, I knew that it was going to be a heavy one, focused on author Claire Bidwell Smith's journey to and through her parents' deaths. I was expecting to cry - and I did at points - but I was also expecting to feel a certain level of distance from it. I haven't experienced the loss of either of my parents, thankfully, and this isn't the first time I've read a book by a blogger turned author. Rarely do bloggers translate well to book format, even when it's an enjoyable blog, in my experience.

This one actually worked well. It wasn't a compilation of her blog writing, walking us through the story one day and month at a time. That is the story we're used to hearing, but Claire Bidwell Smith uses a different tack altogether, one that makes her story far more unique and more powerful. Her story is broken into five stages of grief and walks through her experience. It isn't written chronologically, but her grief and pain are etched painfully on the pages as she shares her parents' diagnoses and subsequent deaths and her handling - or not handling - of them, sometimes in not the healthiest of ways.

As she moves into acceptance, you can really see how these events have shaped her as a person. It's how the events - from her helping her father track his WWII background to moving to NYC with a boyfriend - have turned her into the person she is today. Her grief isn't over, nor will it probably ever be. The novel moves powerfully through this.

Over at BlogHer Book Club, we'll be talking about this book for the next several weeks. Whether you've read the book or not, come join the conversation. This week, we're discussing the events in our lives that have defined us. What have been your defining moments?

In the interest of full disclosure, I received a copy of "The Rules of Inheritance" as part of the BlogHer Book Club. I was compensated for participating in this campaign, but as always, all opinions remain my own.

Wordless Wednesday: These People Make Me Look Bad

So I finally got around to going through the wee ones' Valentine's bags from school. We don't keep or eat the candy or the valentines themselves, but tons of people are now sending in pencils or notepads or other actually semi-useful goodies that I do want to keep. Thus I spent this weekend making a garbage and a keep pile from each of the wee ones' bags.

Then I got to this.

Seriously, people? You're making me look bad. I had Mister Man slap on a piece of chocolate to each of his valentines I got half price at Wal-M@rt the day before in the car on the way to school. And this is what you create. An iP*d valentine. From scratch. It even has an appropriate playlist. I hear this was customized for each child.

I may have to step it up a notch next year.

Tasty Tuesday - Asparagus Goat Cheese Pizza

I tweeted last week about what I was making for dinner, and I got some interested responses. Then I posted a picture of what I made, and people wanted the recipe. Who am I to deny anyone? And yes, I've made this again since that time. It's so good and light and fresh and just flat out yummy.

Goat Cheese Asparagus Pizza

Ingredients:
Dough for 1-2 pizzas (or more)
10 stalks asparagus
2 T olive oil
2 oz goat cheese
1 oz mozzarella
salt and pepper to taste
Cornmeal for dusting

Directions:
Prepare your pizza dough. I actually am making not my normal pizza dough anymore but the pizza dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day - my favorite bread bible now. Any pizza dough will work, but I like making mine with a bit of olive oil in place of some of the water to give it a bit of extra spring and chewiness for this pizza.

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees (cooler than my usual 500 degrees, by the way).

Get your asparagus ready by breaking off the ends and washing them. Heat a saute pan with a little olive oil, and break the asparagus stalks into the pan. Lightly salt and pepper the asparagus in the pan, and saute on medium heat until the asparagus is just starting to turn a brighter green. You do not want to overcook it, as it will cook more in the oven, but cooking it just a touch before it goes into the pizza means it isn't crunchy and undercooked in your pizza.

Do you see how the color changed to a brighter green? That's all you want. No mushy asparagus for our pizzas!

Roll out your pizza dough to a nice circle, about a quarter inch thick or so. Place it on your pizza peel (or onto a pan if you aren't sliding it onto a stone) coated in cornmeal to keep it from sticking. Lightly brush it with olive oil to the edges of the crust.

Sprinkle the mozzarella over the olive oil, just a little bit. Add the asparagus and arrange so that it's evenly distributed over the dough. Crumble the goat cheese atop the pizza, and you're ready for the oven. (Do you see truly how little cheese is on this pizza?)

Bake at 450 degrees for 8 minutes, until the goat cheese is a beautiful golden brown. Cut and serve immediately. I don't know how long it lasts after this, as we haven't had leftovers yet. Go fig.

Enjoy this and more with Blessed With Grace and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday. Also posting now with A Southern Fairytale and her Mouthwatering Monday.

You Are What You Eat

I firmly believe that what I feed myself and the wee ones has bearing on both our long term health and on our current moods and functioning. I know that when I feed Mister Man junk food or too much sugar or not enough protein - or just let him go too long without eating - he doesn't do well. We all get crabby, our brains don't work as well as they normally do, and our focus is gone. For him, especially, that's critical.

Add in all the things we hear all the time about pesticides and how animals are raised and the like, and it's enough to give me (more) grey hair. I started awhile ago buying organic fruits and veggies from the "dirty dozen" for our house. And I've definitely cut down on the meat we buy, although I still haven't gone fully organic on that. Chicken pretty much is, but oh the beef is so expensive.

Milk was my other area of concern, especially with all the added hormones. I can see puberty coming earlier and earlier to children around me, and I want to ensure that the wee ones have that pushed back as long as possible, especially for Mister Man - I want to ensure he's developed as much maturity as possible before those hormones wreak havoc on him.

Every time I looked at the price of organic milk, however, I flinched. I was buying a gallon of milk for $1.17 most of the time. A half gallon of organic milk was far more than that. I kept pushing it off, shuddering at the price differential. One day, I took a closer look at what I was buying for Little Miss. Because of her dairy allergy, she drinks rice milk (we don't do soy milk for a variety of reasons), and she gets organic rice milk because it's what's available. And I buy it because I have to. A gallon's worth of rice milk costs far more than the $1.17 I was paying for regular milk at the time and I wasn't flinching there. In fact, each 32 ounce container is only a quarter gallon. And it cost me $1.32 per container.

Suddenly the light went on. I'm not flinching at the price because in my mind, I have to do it for Little Miss's health. I have to do it for her. And really, it's the same for Mister Man. I do have to do it for him. And for us. I haven't bought conventional milk since that day.

I'm still struggling with many of the other purchases. I love that so many products are now readily available in organic versions, especially my frozen corn - thank you Costco. I buy organic for a lot of reasons, and GMOs are a big reason for me. (Yeah yeah, I would do better just moving to Europe, I know.) I'm pretty comfortable with most of what I'm doing right now, although I'm sure that will change over the years.

The one thing I really want to switch but haven't remains meat. What I really want to do is to find a local farmer and buy my half cow or pig from him. You would think that living near Chicago, it would be easy to find somewhere to do this, but I've found that it's surprisingly difficult. I still haven't found a good source that's a reasonable drive from me. It just isn't out there - or at least not well-publicized.

But I'm still searching. I have a friend who does cows from Indiana, and I'm hoping to go with her the next time she buys. When I go to a restaurant that talks in their menus about their locally sourced meats, I ask them if the farm sells to individuals or only commercially. Finally, I started reading the From Left to Write book for this month, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. There are some really uncomfortable bits of information about food, but at the same time, it's really empowering - and motivating - for me.

And I found the coolest website. Eat Wild is a site devoted to sharing information on pasture based farms across the US. When I searched Illinois, I was shocked by how many farms there were relatively near me. I hadn't been able to find these on my own, but it's truly inspiring. Most of those that provide the quarter cow (probably all we need) don't "harvest" until July, which was a bit of a downer. The options are out there, however, and I'm feeling good. I'm debating a drive out to Jo Daviess County in a couple weeks to spend the day with my family there and pick up some frozen beef from a farm while I'm at it.

It still isn't cheap. But I know where my meat is coming from this way. And it's less than the $13 per pound for organic ground beef I fainted over the last time I was at Trader Joe's. In fact, many were $4 per pound for the organic ground beef. As little as we're using red meat now, I can handle that.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go investigate CSAs. I haven't belonged to one since Mister Man was a baby, but I'm feeling inspired. A little freaked out and overwhelmed, but I'm oddly ok with that. I know I can't do everything, and I don't expect that of myself. On that note, not everyone has the same opinions and beliefs about their food, and that's ok, too. Where do you fall on the organic train?

In the interest of full disclosure, this post was inspired by the February From Left To Write book club selection "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver. I received a copy of this book for review purposes, but unlike other book clubs, we write a post inspired by the book rather than a review of the book. All opinions are my own, as always, and I received no compensation.

Don't Try This At Home

I wrote last week about how I knew I needed more sleep because I was doing stupid things. While I've been making a concerted effort to get to sleep earlier, I apparently have not yet caught up on my sleep. Today? Definitely one of the stupider things I've ever done, and I'm beyond lucky that there were no lasting repercussions.

I'm on a productivity roll today. I dropped off my husband's lunch. I picked up my driver's license that I forgot at speech therapy yesterday. I returned the book on CD that was due. I got a load of darks in the laundry. I put away the dirty dishes. I updated my expenses spreadsheet. I even finished a few more solicitations for Mister Man's gala.

My mind is sort of running a million miles an hour, as there's a lot more I need to do today before I leave at 1:30. I won't be home again until almost 6:30 when I walk in the door with two very tired and hungry wee ones. Dinner needs to be ready, and I'm not quite ready to stoop to fast food. This is where the crock pot comes in handy. I have nothing thawed, but the awesome part about a crock pot is that you can put meat in still frozen. Yay, I have a roast left from the last time I made pot roast (yay Costco for selling meat in large quantities). And I have carrots and celery and onion and all the other ingredients on hand. Phew. I'm making my easy pot roast.

I placed my large cast iron pan onto the stove and began heating it while I got out the rest of the ingredients. After all, I want the pores of my pan to open before I put in the oil to sear my meat. As I tried to get the meat out of its glass container, I realized I had a little problem. It was frozen to the glass and was not coming out. The oil was now heating in the pan, and I didn't want it to burn. Warm water to the rescue - after a minute or so of warm water flowing over the container and meat, the container released the meat. Phew. Utterly paranoid now about my soon to be smoking oil, I immediately placed the meat into the pan.

My wet meat.

My frozen wet meat.

Into a very hot pan.

Into a very hot pan that contains oil.

Annnnnd I watched the flames flare. Can you say grease fire? Yep, that's what those ingredients get you. I pushed the pan to the center of my stove after turning off the stove (always step one!), as the flames showed no signs of dying down anytime soon, but the pan was too heavy and my sink too full to place it there - plus grease fires should never ever have water added to them.

I held my breath, and the flames died down with no damage to anything, aside from grease spattered everywhere. Oh, and the smoke alarms blaring throughout my house. Even with the vent fan running on high - because I of course forgot to turn it on until after the fire had died out - the smoke wasn't dissipating quickly.

I was lucky. I was very very lucky. This is why you always dry your meat before putting it into oil to sear. And probably why searing frozen meat isn't a good idea, for that matter. Learn from my stupidity - please! It's my public service announcement for the week.

Wordless Wednesday - Calgon, Take Me Away

I'm so proud of Mister Man for making it to his white belt in tae kwon do - especially after the initial issues we had in class. He's pretty proud, too. After his first official class, he was presented with his uniform. He tried it on, and despite the suggestions from both me and the owner of the dojo that he take off his uniform after trying it on, he chose to wear it home.

When I took a look at it that night, it looked like this:

Why yes, he is actually that talented. No worries, though. That's what Oxyclean and Tide Stain Release are for, right? No, apparently this is some super fabric that absorbs stains like a sponge then refuses to let them go. Uh-oh.

I washed the uniform again on Monday - five classes into him wearing it - and again, not all the stains came out.

And this one? I don't even know what he was around that is that shade of yellow. And this is on the back, too. How does he do it?!

And in case you're wondering, this is one of the main reasons we wear white as little as possible. I have another Mass uniform shirt that I've given up on getting clean that's going into the trash today, too.

Calgon, take me away!

Tasty Tuesday - Perfect Pot Roast

It's cold. Have I mentioned this lately? And it's cloudy and damp and ... I so live in the wrong climate. Unfortunately, I live here, which means that I need to cook with the seasons, and right now... it's comfort food season. I'm doing a lot of soups and stews and other hearty dishes. The best ones come in the crock pot where I can put everything in first thing in the morning and come home to a comforting and warm meal.

This week? We did pot roast. It's one of my favorites because I can quite easily grab what I have on hand and toss it in without measuring too much. If I'm a little short on something, that's fine. If I want some more of another flavor, that works, too. So the measurements here? Totally an estimate. Do what works for you.

Pot Roast

Ingredients:
2-3 lb roast
4 carrots
2 ribs of celery
5-6 medium red potatoes
1 parsnip
1 onion
1/2 c chicken or beef stock
2 T parsley
salt and pepper, to taste
2 T oil

Directions:
Heat up a heavy pan. I use my cast iron skillet because I know it will heat evenly and retain its heat. Once the pan is hot - medium high heat - add the oil. You want to wait until this point to add the oil. When the metal gets hot, it opens its pores, so the oil goes into them and helps to make essentially a nonstick surface. Trust me.

Salt and pepper all sides of the roast, then add it to the pan. You want to sear it on each side. Don't move it until it has a nice crust on it or it will stick to the pan. And yes, I do actually sear all six sides.

While the roast is searing, cut up your veggies (except your potatoes, which are a starch and not a veggie - those come later!). You want everything to be bite size - nothing so big that you have to cut it once it's cooked and nothing so small that it won't stay on your fork with the rest of your meal. I'll also wash my organic carrots really well and not peel those - but that's me. I slice my onions and leave them that big. They are then easy to fish out for the wee one who won't eat them but manageable for me to put on my fork. I don't want it diced. Layer all your veggies into the bottom of your crock post.

Once your pot roast is seared, add it to the crock pot atop the veggies. Sprinkle the parsley atop this mixture, and add the stock for a cooking liquid. You truly need just a little bit because the meat and veggies will release a lot of juices.

Cook on low for 2-3 hours. At that point, cut up your red potatoes. I leave the skin on my red potatoes because I like it - and there's lots of good vitamins and minerals there. Add those around the meat at this point. If you add them earlier, I find they get too cooked and mushy for my taste, so I hold off on adding them until this point. If you'll be gone all day, go ahead and add them at the beginning.

Cook on low for another 2-3 hours or longer. When it's ready, the meat will literally fall apart as you pick it up with a fork. That's perfection in my eyes. You can also pull out the juice after you remove your veggies and meat and potatoes and make a thicker gravy, but my family doesn't like that. To do this, put the juices into a small pan and heat it until it's boiling. Slowly add gravy flour, a tablespoon at a time (it will vary depending on how much juice you have, but usually it's about a quarter cup for me) and reduce it for about five minutes. Check to see if it needs and more salt and pepper, then serve it atop your pot roast. Or be like us and skip this step and just serve it as is with the juice as more of a soup/stew kind of thing.

Enjoy this and more with Blessed With Grace and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday. Also posting now with A Southern Fairytale and her Mouthwatering Monday.