Better Living Through Twitter

I follow Martha Stewart on Twitter so that I can get a peek at what it could look like around here like if I only required two hours of sleep a night and had a team of stylists following my life around with a big open wallet. Martha will also occasionally share one of her Good Things™ that is so good that it is, if not life changing, then certainly life altering. This is one of those tips.

Martha tried three times to post a YouTube video about potato peeling. Each link was a dud. Her last try she cited as a triumph, although that link was dead too, proving that her team should never leave Ms. Stewart unchaperoned with her Blackberry. Intrigued, I searched YouTube for potato peeling videos. (Don’t think about that last sentence too much or you might start to judge me a little.) I believe I found the tip that she had so unsuccessfully been trying to tweet. It is spectacular.

The tip is this: Score a raw potato with one circular line around the “equator.” Boil the potato for 15 minutes. Remove the potato from the boiling water and place in an ice bath for 10 seconds. Hold one hand at each end and pull the peel off. It will slide right out of its skin. It might sound unexciting, but watch the video here (or below) and be amazed. I don’t know which video The Martha was trying to link to, but as always, I like the Japanese version of stuff like this. (The "before" part where the woman is showing how hard it is to peel a potato "by hand" is my favorite.)

As the keeper of the Thanksgiving flame in our family I am thrilled. Mashed potatoes for 15 never looked so easy, peasy, Japanesy.

Museum of Me

Earlier in the week, Krista Colvin, professional organizer and mistress of Organize in Style tweeted the following words:

Your closet is not a museum of who you used to be.

Fine words. I get it. My closet is not supposed to be a tribute to my former self/selves, but even with all of my (what I believed to be) rigorous weeding out of the old, my closet is still showing a few museum worthy relics.

The gallery includes:

The Outpatient Counselor: 3 pairs of grey slacks, 8 pairs of black slacks. I hate the word “slacks” but these office appropriate, wool blend, salutes to boring-ness can only be described as such. How does Ann Taylor stay in business now that I no longer work outside the home?

The 11th Grade Cheeleader: I really don’t wear this uniform as much as I should. Go Mariners!

The Bride: In keeping with our eloping/Las Vegas/attend-by-watching-the-live-streaming–ceremony-on-the-internet/happiest day of my life themed wedding, my “gown” is a white sundress from the sale rack at Macy’s. The veil is from a bridal supply store in LA’s garment district. I do not believe Bob will be wanting to wear this wedding dress to his own wedding (you never know) but I can not bear to part with it.

The Nightclubber: Vintage, black velvet car coat. This coat is still partying like it’s 1991. I can no longer remember exactly what went under this but I would imagine that black lace leggings were involved. This little number might be put to better use by my impossibly cool, sometimes goth, always gorgeous, goddaughter. On me, it gives a whiff of funky yet tragic bag lady.

The Attends Awards Shows Gal: I have not been to a black tie event in five years but you would not know this by perusing the depths of my closet. I will probably not be needing the black tea length ball skirt for Bob’s pre-school graduation ceremony.

My current self is about to be very popular at the Goodwill drop-off.

Nuts

When Bob was about a year old, we gave him mashed strawberries. He loved them. Wolfed them down. Covered his giant cheeks in them. Thirty minutes later he developed gigantic hives all over his backside.

I called our pediatrician who said, “Sounds like a strawberry allergy. He might outgrow it. You can try again next year.” Solid advice.

After a little (frantic, exhaustive, compulsive) research on the subject (following the top 25 Google threads for the search: baby food allergies) I read that a child with one food allergy is predisposed to having more and that those allergy-prone kids should wait to try peanuts and shellfish until they are three years-old.

Too late with the shellfish since Bob had already enjoyed (with impunity) a shrimp shu mai from a rolling dim sum cart at Ocean Star Sea Food in Monterey Park. I moved on. By “moved on” I mean that I put some thought (worry, insanity) into the peanut thing.

I decided I would pick a date on the calendar, a random Friday after Bob’s third birthday. On that day, I would pack up Bob’s medical records and health insurance information and drive to the parking lot at the emergency room of Cedars Sinai Medical Center. (Statistically, Friday is the slowest day at the ER.) Clutching my cell phone, with my finger hovering over the speed dial number for his pediatrician, I would feed Bob a small spoonful of peanut butter and wait to see if he went into anaphylactic shock.

That was my, you know, loose plan.

Fast forward to last summer. Bob had been two for a month or so. As we sat at the park having lunch with some other families, a mom asked if Bob was eating peanut butter. Jeff and I replied simultaneously:

ME: We’re waiting until he’s three.
JEFF: He loves peanut butter!

Apparently, Bob had been enjoying peanut butter sandwiches with dad for a few months and had lived to request more.

And also the strawberry thing went away.

The other good news is that statistically, Bob will have at least a 50% chance of not being an insanely overprotective type who spends too much time analyzing statistics and hanging out at WebMd and MayoClinic.com.

Sheltered

You may know about my aversion to kid’s music. In Bob’s first couple of years we taught him Row Your Boat and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star but that was it for our child-centric musical repertoire. He was surrounded by music but not the kind that has accompanying hand choreography.

Last summer, Bob and I were at circle time at our weekly Mommy and Me class. All of us mommies sat in a circle with our small people on our laps singing "Old MacDonald". We had sung this song a few times at class before but it was not on our Rosenberg Ipod playlist. We went around the circle and this time, let each kid take a turn yelling out what kind of animal Mr. MacDonald had on his farm.

“Cow!”

“Pig”

“Dog”

When it was Bob’s turn, he decided that on his farm he had an, “Office!” This was met by a few long moments of silence, scattered laughter then an awkward vamp of, “With a work-work here and a work-work there…”

On his subsequent turns he pointed out more of Old MacDonald’s fine items.

“Chair!”

“Helicopter!”

“Birthday!”

Clearly I wasn’t doing my part to drive home the farm concept. I realized that my dislike of kid’s songs had the potential to make Bob a social outcast.

So, we worked on it. Among others, we are now fluent in:
"The Hokey Pokey"
"A Ram Sam Sam"
"The Old Gray Cat"
"Squirrels!"
"Mathilda the Gorilla"
"Hermie the Worm"
And of course, "The Wheels On the (freakin’) Bus"

I am making the choice to enjoy it while I can. I know in just a few years, this will be behind us and Bob will be into some other music that I don't like and instead of cute arm movements it will require an odd haircut and guyliner. And I will be fondly nostalgic for A Ram Sam Sam.

Vaya Con Baja

I would like to tell you a little about how healthy we are in regards to food, about how we eat only local and organic and very little meat or artificial ingredients. However, if I did tell you this I would be a big ol’ bacon eating, drive-thru loving liar. The truth is, when we do eat at home, the eating is good. When we all-too-often eat not at home, the eating is questionable at best.

Our semi-crappy eating habits came to a screeching halt a few weeks back when I discovered my celiac-disease-wheat-intolerance-allergy thing. Part of my effort to re-design our woefully under designed eating plan included checking on the internet to see what fast food I could still eat. (Dear McDonald’s, I do not consider “orange juice” to be fast food and find it patronizing and mean that you choose to include it on your gluten free menu list.)

Really, we don’t do that much fast food. (Define “that much” for yourselves.) I was just needing to see what I could order in that rare event that the day gets away from me and I feel the necessity for a quick dinner – usually this might only happen between Monday and say, Sunday. In particular I was looking to see what I could get for myself from Baja Fresh, the Mexican take out place near our home that I think Bob actually believes is an annex of our kitchen.

Apparently it is safe for me to eat a plastic bowl of beans/rice/salsa called the Bare Burrito. (Not quite as sexy as the name implies.) Upon a quick read of the nutritional information I saw that the Bare Burrito could also be noted as a 700 calorie plastic bowl of sodium/fat/carbs.

Reading further, I saw the stats on Jeff’s favorite Baja Fresh item – The Nachos: Calories per serving: 2,120 with 1,050 of the calories coming from fat. I knew none of this stuff was health food but... um... wow. I was muy alarmed.

I do not know if Jeff will ever forgive me for sharing this news with him. He had eaten his beloved nachos twice in the last five days, which might be ok if that was ALL he had eaten in the last five days but, you know, it just wasn’t. After the shock wore off he made the executive decision that we won’t be eating there again, ever. I back him up on that. The Rosenbergs have officially broken up with that Latin flavored fatty salt lick that we loved so well.

So hasta la vista mi amigo Baja Fresh.
Buenos dias rice cakes.

Smacksy Sunday Link: The Ride of Her Life

Because we are traveling this weekend and creating yet another story of in flight chaos of our own, I direct to you one of the most Thank-God-I-Am-Not-That-Poor-Woman stories of traveling with kids: Ride of My Life.

Jana of The Meanest Mom blog, tells her tale, a hilarious and horrifying true story of survival and many, many bodily fluids. The volume of comments on this post with others sharing their own kid-travel nightmares is worth the read and attests to the fact that flying with littles is not for those with an easily triggered gag reflex.

Safe travels.
(And don't make me turn this plane around, young man.)

Smacksy Saturday Photo: Rules? What Rules?

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.
- Franklin P. Jones