Going Camping. God Help Me.

July 4th weekend. Think of of us.

No, think of me.

Think of me in a tent. Sleeping on the hard ground. Cooking over open fire while attempting not to accidentally dip my sleeve into the flame and set myself ablaze. Think of me in a bathing suit. In broad daylight. (No really, this sucks.) Watching my children play with bugs and dirt. And more bugs. And making mud pies out of camp dirt. And bringing it all into the tent to show me and dropping it into my sleeping bag. And more bugs.

And speaking of bugs, think of me defenseless against those big buzzing things that bang up against the tent every time someone so much as turns on a flashlight so they can pee. And speaking of peeing, guess where I'll be doing that? Not in a bathroom. Oh, and I think I'm going to get my period. On yet another camping trip.

And yet I am happy to be dirty with my family, who I know will enjoy this little outdoor adventure. While I'm changing my tampons in the bushes. And even for this, I am grateful.

I wish you the very best Fourth of July. Love to you all.

xo YM


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The Restaurant Nazi

Lucy has taken to playing restaurant lately.

Oh, she likes to cook with me and she likes to occasionally kick me out of the kitchen - like when she makes lemonade - and she attempts to make an entire container-full completely on her own, only to scream my name every five seconds to bring her lemons, sugar, water, spoons, ice and to actually squeeze the lemons. And then, somewhere she has figured out that all good lemonade must be made with a couple of mint leaves peeking out of the cup - thank you freakin' Max and Ruby - and so she demands that I procure mint leaves, like magic, straight from my butt and hand them to her.

Damn. Am I glad she can make that lemonade completely by herself.


The other thing she and Edie have been doing is taking a bowl of water and just raiding my spice drawer for whatever they find and just making "soup", like nutmeg, lemon, sugar, fennel, hot pepper, Tabasco, basil, sesame oil, "soup". Or cilantro, celery seed, egg yolk, olive oil, bubble gum, stick of butter "soup".

And tonight it was a large pyrex bowl of "sauce" and by "sauce" I mean a thick sludgey concoction of cloves, garlic, fennel/thyme meat rub, cherries, banana, curry and cumin "sauce", which I was forced to try "for real" and had to swallow and smile because they were monitoring my esophagus like little binocular-wearing scientists.


Anyway, tonight's "sauce' - which she quickly decided to re-name a "soup" because perhaps, she thought it was more marketable, more in line with her brand identity - was named "Spicy Pumpkin Soup" and due to a healthy pouring of curry powder, it was in fact, orange. And it looked pretty spicy.

She had also decided to serve it to me as if we were in a restaurant. But not just any restaurant, a restaurant where people order you around with furrowed, intimidating brow and make you do everything they say whether you are enjoying it or not. That kind of restaurant. Where, like, the chefs make their patrons cross their legs exactly they way they want them to under the table or they will bark at you to move and then fall over into an ear-splitting tantrum if you don't actually do it the way they have imagined it in their heads. That kind.

Lucy, when not in preschool or dancing around the room in costume, singing the libretto from "Shrek: The Musical" or doing something ridiculously cute like saying "hanga-burger" instead of "hamburger", is a Restaurant Nazi - Adolf in Sleeping Beauty underpants.


This is our exchange after the several times she had to forcefully re-position my ass on the dining room bench, until it met her specifications. She was wearing a little apron and writing in a small notepad:

Lucy: What do you want? (if she were chewing gum and wearing a red beehive, she'd be Flow from the TV show "Alice")

Me: Well, I guess I'll have the hamburger with a side of...

Lucy: You don't want that. (frowning, scribbling hard lines in her pad)

Me: Um, I don't?

Lucy: No. You want Spicy Pumpkin Soup.

Me: Um. yes...Okay, I want Spicy Pumpkin Soup, please. (I'm a little scared at this point, but trying not to show it)

Lucy: (visibly happier, still scribbling whatever in her notebook) What do you want to drink?

Me: Milkshake. Black and white. Super thick.

Lucy: (shaking her head and looking up from her pad) No, you don't want that.

Me: No?

Lucy: You want white wine.

And then before I can say anything, she pops the notebook closed, secures it in her apron pocket and kind of spins around and heads back to her kitchen, which she set-up in our library, and I am scared at this point to think about how much of the Spicy Pumpkin Soup is now soaked into my carpet.

A few moments later, after some quick bickering and jockeying for positions, I see Lucy and Edie coming around the corner each carefully carrying one side of the bowl of orange gruel, er, I mean soup. They are very excited. They have hopeful expressions. Me too, I was thinking, "Dude, I hope they don't forget that wine."

But, you know, I was just too scared to ask her for it.

xo YM

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I've Been Gone Awhile, Haven't I?

Um, so first let me tell you that this is us grocery shopping. I start with this so you know some things stay the same. Grocery shopping with the Fosters is and always has been an endurance sport.

Notice my kids are wearing underpants on their heads and have decided to bring half their stuffed animals and carts and strollers, which I ended up having to carry home, along with a full trolley of groceries, because well, bringing all that stuff seemed like a great idea when we started out, but not so much fun a few hours later when everyone was tired and crying.

So yes, these peculiarities of my little family have stayed the same, but how I feel about this blog has changed. I'm sure you noticed that I just stopped writing. I know you noticed because you wrote me e-mails and told me and tried to woo me back with your nice talk and compliments and for this, I am grateful. The blog is the problem. Not you.

Truth is, I had decided to stop writing this blog altogether. Really decided. Firm. A few days ago I was composing my final blog post in my head, trying to figure out why and what I was thinking. I was dreading it. I kept putting it off. That is until someone I didn't know at all left this message in my box:

Hey Kim!

I know I don't actually know you, but of all the blogs I read (about 20... Yes, I'm ashamed) yours is by far my favorite. You said once before that getting emails helped motivate you so--get posting Girl! :)

Much Love,
Brande

So, first - thanks Brande. That was very cool of you. And your e-mail made me realize why I started writing this blog in the first place. I started because I'm a writer and I love to, need to, must write to be happy, sane and not bark at bank tellers and my husband. I started because I love good writing, great stories. I love funny, poignant writing. I wanted to write about this experience and write well. That was all that concerned me.


But the business of blogs has changed over these past years. It has become something else. It is not so much about the writing. It is about getting comments, getting bigger blogs to recognize your work, counting your readers like a neurotic bean counter on Google Analytics. It's about conferences, media appearances, handing out business cards, meet-ups, networking, give-aways, sponsorships.

I realized after reading people's Twitters that there was a whole world out there I didn't even know existed. Food writers, moms, bloggers in general, whatever, were flying all over the country, having meet-ups, attending conferences, meeting each other at bars, solidifying friendships and creating these powerful bonds that they parlayed into greater influence on the net. Yes, much about having a successful blog is luck, but another facet of that is being connected both on the internet and in person. You have to show up.

People take care of their own. This is a natural part of things. It happens here. I support bloggers with whom I have connected. But in the larger world of the web, I'm not very connected. I'm, like, in the AV club in high school. I couldn't be connected, of course, because you can imagine how long it takes us to get the grocery shopping done, I mean, that doesn't leave much time for developing my "Mama Brand", does it?

And really, I guess that's what I figured out in my time of abandoning this blog. I don't want to develop myself as a brand - just a person, a cook, a writer, an author, a mom, a wife, a friend, a person on the hunt for adventures and a person just trying to do everything with passion, instead of flying through it all half-assed, hoping something hits the wall and sticks.

I want to savor every little moment.

I don't want to be on a plane flying all over the country going to conferences and drinking in bars with other cool women, although I'm sure it would be a hoot. I just want to stay around home for this, because I like people who wear underpants on their heads. I like four hour shopping trips that end in tears and crushed eggplant. It makes me happy. I like not missing any of it, or most of it.

I don't want to examine each post I write and wonder if I've supported my mission to conquer the world.

I just want to write well with a quirky, funny take on things. I want to never see ads cluttering up my blog. You should kill me if I ever do a give-away or hold a contest. That stuff is great for other folks, but it just isn't me. And you probably know this, but for the record, I will never let some company pay me and then try to endorse their product in my blog without telling you.

I don't want to think of myself and this blog as some kind of construct or business model. I want to make friends with people because they are cool and share my interests and passions, not because they might be influential in helping me get new readers or extend my presence on the net. I want to help new bloggers and be generous with my time when I can. I want to never be too cool or too big to respond to a new commenter or blogger, even if it takes me forever to do it.

I want people to read my blog, but not because I want to position myself for a two minute stint on Good Morning America, although I would do the stint if offered, it just isn't my raison d'etre. I want to not be one of those irritating bloggers - I've done this before - who drums up sensationalist, nonsensical topics, just to get into the fray, cause a dog fight and then, jump right in. The latest media-driven discussion of what it means to be a "bad mother" comes to mind...ugh, who cares?

I want you all to read. I do not want to write in a vacuum. I do want people to enjoy my writing and I love hearing from people when they do. I also don't mind shitty comments from time to time. That's all part of it. I want to be a part of a community and I want to be as avid a reader of your blogs as I am a writer. I want to be there for you, too. I just want to do it all with some kind of purity of purpose. I want to just be Winnie the Pooh. And be. Not for a purpose or a mission or a goal.

And so, that's what I figured out in my mini-sabbatical. And I'm gonna try to honor it here. If I don't, you have my permission to call me on it. I respect your opinion. You know me very well. You proved that when you picked up falsehoods in the chapter I wrote and posted here. You were straight shooters and I like that.

Just know that I appreciate you coming here. That I consider you friends. That I will try not to disappoint, you or myself. I will also try not to disappear again.

xo YM

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And As We Leave Santa Monica...

I wanted to give you a little round-up of my thoughts before we get on the plane back to NYC:

1. Earthquakes make your trip more exciting. Yes, as Krysta at Evil Chef Mom noted, I was an earthquake virgin until last night. On Twitter she asked me, "Is this your first quake?" Like she was asking me if this was the first time I ever had ice cream. Awww, how cute!...Your first quake! (Bitch) Apparently, I am also an earthquake weenie because I was legitimately freaked out. Under the bed? By the bed? Run outside? In the bathroom...no, that's tornados. Seriously...UNPREPARED for the big one.

2. There are large, blood-sucking ticks here in SoCal. And you can get bitten by them in your hotel room. David spent spent a couple hours in the Santa Monica emergency room after finding a large, blood-engorged tick hanging off his leg. When he returned, we found one on my back. Then, I went to the hospital. We had to have the bastards cut out of our bodies with forceps and scalpels. It was like minor surgery. The nurse was all, "Oh, I'm not going to tell you what the doctor is doing right now 'cause it's pretty gruesome." Thanks, Nurse Atilla the Hun. The kids never got the ticks. Good thing or I would've gone all mother load on someone. We moved rooms. That was the end of the ticks.


3. Disneyland is simply the happiest place on earth. You guys were right. It is cool to go to Disneyland. Way cool. Watching the girls meet Sleeping Beauty and the other princesses was amazing. They were over the moon. Also, the park is un-like any other amusement park. It is clean. People are happy, never crabby on line or barking at other people. I only heard one kid crying the whole day and it wasn't mine. No one ever tells you, "Oh your kid can't put her feet there." or "She's too little to ride Dumbo." or "Sorry Miss, your children need to be clothed." There is this air that anything is possible there. And in the end, I wanted to buy stuff to remember the day. I didn't feel bludgeoned into spending too much money and lived to feel horrible about it later. Disneyland marketing is like Tinkerbell's magic fairy dust. It makes me do stuff and feel good about it later. Anyway, Disneyland truly feels different than other theme parks. If you can't have fun with your kids there, you just can't have fun. Thanks for encouraging us to go, it was a wonderful day for all of us.

4. Santa Monica has a lot of vagrants. I know I'm stating the obvious here but there are lots of homeless people everywhere. And they are tan and pissed off. Everyday, a vagrant yelled at me. EVERYDAY. One morning, a middle-aged woman with a lot of luggage smiled at me and said "Hi" and I smiled and said "Hi" and then, she began yelling after me, "I wasn't saying "Hi" to you, lady because I was being nice. I just wanted to see if you'd say "Hi" back. I wasn't trying to be nice or anything, lady because I think you suck. I just wanted to see what you'd say..." Okay, I really thought she was someone's Gramma waiting for a car to pick her up to go to the airport. I thought she crocheted things and made cookies for her grand kids. The Santa Monica vagrants didn't want me to give them money, like capitalist NYC vagrants. No, they just wanted to yell at me, to vent a little, to get a little therapy by the beach. They used me as their punching dummy. I feel as though I made a therapeutic contribution here.

5. Everyone is very friendly by the beach. I was shopping at the grocery store, Von's, for food and snacks for the hotel room and a store employee came up to me and said, "How is your shopping experience today? Finding everything you need?" The employee was smiling, a lot. She looked oddly sincere, although I wasn't exactly sure because I live in NYC and no one has actually ever asked me how my shopping experience was. I mean, I kinda had no idea how to answer. It occurred to me she might be trying to set me up to pick my pockets or steal the cash out of my purse. I answered her quickly with a smile that I was great and then, quickly got away and checked my purse in the frozen food aisle. Cash still there whew! Seriously, very friendly, out-going people here. Like the NYC-born guy, J.J. who lives next door to the hotel who gave us free VIP passes to the amusement park at the pier. A nice bunch of folks, I tell you.

Okay, so today we head back home. I'll post some pics when I get there. Princesses will be involved and perhaps the single most innovative grocery shopping apparatus for families ever invented. Seriously, amazing. And totally SoCal.

I've missed you guys. Ready to head back to the real world...although the kids just want to go back to Disneyland.

xxoo YM

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Living' It Up at the Hotel California...

Just wanted to let you know about two big things in my life:

1. I dropped my brand new Black Jack phone in the toilet on Mother's Day and so I have no phone. No e-mail. No freakin' Twitter when I am away from home. This was my Mother's day gift to myself apparently. Not having a phone is, for me, a little like cutting off my feet and then asking me to walk around.

I will tell you that the phone died a valiant death. It actually worked for a whole day, tempting me into thinking it had somehow defied the soaking of Edie's urine, but alas it, croaked. And so again, as a Mother's day gift to myself, I had to buy another phone. At retail. Retail sucks.

2. And this brings me to the other big thing. My new phone is being delivered to the Hotel California in Santa Monica, where we will be staying this week. David is in LA on business and the girls and I will be on the beach, playing in the sand, riding the rides on the pier and re-learning the fundamentals of board walk food. I still have yet to teach the girls all about the wonders of a good funnel cake. There is much to do.


Then, we will totally do the lame parent thing and take them to...gasp...wait for it...Disneyland. That's right, we've totally caved. We have lost all parent coolness and hipster credibility, if we had any left at all. We thought we would be taking our children on food tours of Italy, Safaris in Kenya and rock climbing trips to Tibet, but instead, like generations of parents before us, we are taking the historic pink death march of hell to the home of the Disney princesses.

And it's like we sprinkled magic fairy dust in the kid's broccoli because they are absolutely freakin' OVER THE MOON about Disneyland. And really, they have no idea what it is. They've had their little noses pressed up to the computer looking at other people's vacations on YouTube and dreamily saying things like, "I love Sleeping Beauty. I can't wait to see her dress." Eh, good lord.

Those crazy hotels in Cali have Wi-Fi, you know, so I will be posting. And Twittering once I get my new phone delivered on Wednesday. And if any of you live near Santa Monica and have two small children longing for a play date, well, you know where to find us - by e-mail or "living it up in the Hotel California"...

And you're gonna totally be singing that song all day. Promise.

I'll post again Wednesday-ish.

xo YM

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I Interrupt This Blog to Brag About My Husband...

Yesterday, David was nominated for a Tony Award. His second nomination. This one is for Slava's Snowshow, which played over the holidays on Broadway and was nominated in the Special Theatrical Events category.

Yeah. Yeah. I know the guy is pretty cool. Now, if I could get him to not leave balled-up black socks all over the house, as if he were leaving a trail for himself out of the woods, well, then we'd have something.

Of course, we're not planning on winning the Tony or anything. There are 4 shows in the category. And to give you an idea of the competition - He's up against Liza Minnelli (Liza’s At The Palace) and Will Ferrell (You’re Welcome America: A Final Night With George W. Bush), so you know, Liza and Will are going to collectively pummel his ass.

But I think we have a great shot for third place. That's something, right?

No matter. We'll be the couple at the Tony's telecast in June, drinking heavily from the flask tucked in my tiny beaded purse, intermittently twittering about the bored, over-dressed celebrities seated around us, and making a quick exit so we can be the first in line at the buffet at the after-party. And really, that's us in a nutshell, isn't it?

Seriously, what a lovely thing to happen to such a lovely man. And for the record, I totally married up.

xo YM



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Fear of Swine Meatballs

I'm back, people. And here to tell you I am not afraid of Swine Flu. I am, however, afraid of swine, um, I mean pork.

Or at least I was until a few years ago. I come from a world where mothers and grandmothers and generations of women before them believed that a single piece of under-cooked pork could fell an entire village. If one of the women folk saw any pink - perceived or otherwise - in a piece of pork, she would throw herself in front of my plate, as if she was saving me from on-coming traffic. And God forbid you had a little stomach ache after eating at the neighbors house, one of the women folk would get all worried and start calling the doctor, "It was Patsy's pork. I knew I saw some pink in my piece...For cryin' out loud, that woman's gonna kill someone with her pork butt."

Swine was never to be messed with. It was the meat that could kill.

From the time I remember, I believed that pork was a dry, tasteless meat that was akin to eating a sneaker. I never loved anything pork-related - except bacon, of course, which is like food of the Gods and if it didn't exist would make, I believed, killing a pig for food absolutely unnecessary.


Pig as I knew it, was served after a good hearty incineration in the oven until it was bone dry and throat-closing. You'd have to be drunk to eat this stuff and believe it didn't taste like shoe laces. I never had really succulent, juicy pork until I was well into my adult years and definately by accident because I would never have ordered it from a restaurant on purpose.

Think I'm nuts? If you don't believe me, all you need to do is go to a BBQ joint where there is always a disclaimer on a prominently-placed sign saying that pink meat is just fine in BBQ/smoked meat and is not a sign that your meal is underdone or that you will have to be admitted to the ICU several hours after paying your bill. Every BBQ joint has one of these. And there is a reason - someone from my family might be eating there.

So, when I was reading Matthew Amster-Burton's new book "Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father's Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater" - a fantastic and funny book that will give you some great ideas about cooking for and eating with your kids - he was going on and on about pork meatballs and I thought I would give them a whirl.

In the past, I have been faithful to Rocco DiSpirito's mom's recipes for meatballs, which involve a veal, pork, beef combo with breadcrumbs. (For the record, I also often make a variation of her marinara, which is both easy to make and lovely to eat.) Matthew suggests all pork and as filler, bread and milk in his meatballs.

He even brazenly says that the secret to good meatballs is more filler/less meat, which I had never even considered, so I tried out his theory and discovered that more filler, gives a lighter, fluffier meatball and the milk/bread filler is way easier to work with than the breadcrumb one.

The meatballs were awesome, but working with ground pork makes me a little crazy. There is always a child around here that needs to be held or breastfed or comforted or needs a juice just when I am up to my elbows in killer meat. And so, I was going to the sink a lot to wash my hands, which is fine except I kept getting raw pork meat all over the handle of the faucet and so, I'd have to wash my hands and then reach over to turn off the water, only to remember that I turned the faucet on with my swine-covered hands and I had probably reinfected myself. I washed my hands and the faucets, like 30 times.

I also kept having utensil issues. I kept forgetting which utensil I used on the raw meat, so I kept having to go in the drawer and get out a new one to use for the other food. I used about 30 different spoons, forks and knives just for the preparation of this one meal. I had to re-wash flatware just to get through dinner service. And even then, I wasn't sure that some of the swine hadn't lived through the surge of hot tap water and soap. I would've felt better running them through the dishwasher, but there was no time.

And then there was what happened to the gigantic wedge of parmagiano that we bought at Costco. I was adding the cheese to the meatball mixture when I realized that I grabbed the wedge with my hands all porky and probably contaminated the whole thing. I was horrified because (a) it was our only parm and (b) it was so huge and so expensive that to throw it out was like throwing cash right in the bin.

I was flumoxed. I kept staring at the infected edge wondering what to do: throw it in the bin or wash it off and hope innocent parm-eaters don't perish. It was a real toss-up - throw it in the bin, kill people. Throw it in the bin, kill people.

This should have been a no-brainer.

But I couldn't throw it away. It looked perfectly fine and I was bound and determined I would figure out a way to scrape off the bacteria and make it a viable hunk of cheese again. Surely 100 other people have googled this, right?

I did this neurotic dance as 4 children and 4 adults waited for their lunch - Bin. Death. Bin. Death. There's me, frozen, holding a contaminated wedge of cheese. I was a mess. Finally, I washed the cheese in hot water and stashed in a plastic bag in the fridge. I could deal with this later after the guests left. I had more than enough cheese in the meatballs. I still have no idea what happens to parm when you wash it. I'm too afraid to look in the fridge this morning.

As I write this, I'm pretty sure there is a spot on my counter harboring live and active raw pork bacteria, just waiting for me to touch it and infect everyone around me. Every once in a while I walk into my kitchen and just spritz the counter for good measure. I'm sure it will stay there for weeks. I'm contemplating having David rip up the counters and build me a new kitchen.

So, forget the swine flu. That's for amateurs. I have my own swine issues to deal with. Cooking with ground pork turns me into an obsessive-compulsive mess. It's in my genes, written into my DNA.

Still, the meatballs were great. But at least with veal I can pretend to be a sane person. I give you your choice here. Enjoy!

xo YM


PS: And thanks for all the e-mails gently telling me to get off my ass and post something. I love you all.
_________________________________________________________________________________________


Matthew Amster-Burton's Pork Mini-Meatballs
(Also known as The Yummy Mummy's Fear of Swine Meatballs)


2 slices of white sandwich bread, crusts, removed torn into pieces (or just a quarter loaf of the skinny Italian loaf, which was all I had)
1/2 cup milk
1 large egg, beaten
2 ounces grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (Not sure how much I got in before I contaminated the wedge)
2 tablespoons minced fresh oregano (I usd dried because it was what I had on hand)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 pound or so of ground pork

1. In a bowl, combine the bread and milk and mash with a fork until it forms a paste. Stir in egg, Parmigiano, organo, garlic, salt and pepper. Add the pork and mix (hands work well)until well combined.

2. Heat the olive oil in a large non-stick (or cast iron) skillet over medium heat. Drop 1 tablespoon dollops of meat mixture into the skillet. (The meat mixture will be soft, but don't worry about that, the meatballs hold together nicely.) Working in two batches, brown the meatballs on two sides, about 2 minutes per side and transfer to a plate.

Make your marinara (either Matthew's from "Hungry Monkey" page 142-3 or Mama's or your own favorite) and bring a large pot of salted boiling water to boil. Add your pasta and cook until al dente. Drain. Combine the pasta, sauce and meatballs. Serve.


Mama DiSpirito's Meat Balls

1/3 cup chicken stock
1/4 yellow onion
1 clove garlic
¼ cup fresh Italian flat-leaf parsley, chopped fine
1/2 lb ground beef
1/2 lb ground pork
1/2 lb ground veal
1/3 cup plain breadcrumbs
2 eggs
1/4 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp salt
3-6 cups of Mama's Marinara or your favorite marinara sauce
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

1. Place the chicken stock, onion, garlic and parsley in a blender of food processor and puree.

2. In a large bowl, combine the pureed stock mix, meat, bread crumbs, eggs, Parmigiano-Reggiano, red pepper flakes, parsley and salt. Combine with both hands until mixture is uniform. Do not over mix.

3. Put a little olive oil on your hands and form mixture into balls a little larger than golf balls. They should be about ¼ cup each, though if you prefer bigger or smaller, it will only affect the browning time.

4. Pour about 1/2-inch of extra virgin olive oil into a straight-sided, 10-inch-wide sauté pan and heat over medium-high flame. Add the meatballs to the pan (working in batches if necessary) and brown meatballs, turning once. This will take about 10-15 minutes.

5. While the meatballs are browning, heat the marinara sauce in a stockpot over medium heat. Lift the meatballs out of the sauté pan with a slotted spoon and put them in the marinara sauce. Stir gently. Simmer for one hour.

6. Serve with a little extra Parmigiano-Reggiano sprinkled on top. Serve alone or over spaghetti (in which case, you will need 6 cups of marinara).

Yield: Serves 4 as antipasto or over spaghetti

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In Case You Thought There Were No Smiles Around Here...

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. For your comments, your e-mails and the personal stories of loss that you sent to me, the stories you shared, your kindness. Thanks for not coming down on me for being indulgent in the face of so many other much worse tragedies. Thanks for just giving me a place to name my saddness and then, send it off into the air.

Truth is, I feel pretty good now. Writing to you about it, helped me let it go, tear through the disappointment and focus on what I have and the good things to come. That's all you. So, really, thanks for being there.

So, if you thought we Fosters were spending our time staring at our shoes and crying into our goblets of Pinot Grigio, well, I give you proof to the contrary - ice cream face painting, puddle jumping and other happy playground hi-jinx.





























Have a wonderful weekend, my friends. We plan to do the same.

xx YM

PS: This weekend, I'll go through all the comments from the last post and try to answer your individual questions in comments there. Thanks!

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The Loss of Babies

Okay, I’m depressed.

That’s why I’m not writing blog posts three times a week. Or answering many e-mails. God, I found some of your e-mails in my spam folder tucked between “Satisfy her with your jumbo member” and “Show her who the real man is”. Seriously, I could barely drag up the energy to move those e-mails from one folder to another. But I did. And you’ll hear from me, be assured.

There are many reason for my depression, which is minor and transient. I’m not having a permanent episode, no posts from the loony bin or anything. I’m not drinking vodka at 11am or lashing out at the children over who drank all the milk. In fact, I have over-compensated nicely. I’m still fun Mommy. Today, I did an awesome puppet show with Bert the Rooster that involved a sort of Rodney Dangerfield-no-one-appreciates-me-routine, smelling everyone's feet and cackling wildly in Spanish - I had the kids bent over screaming-laughing at their play date.

It’s a bunch of things - Too much bleak, gray weather, the need for Spring, for warmth, for sun. It’s partially my new life without a babysitter - which is actually pretty fun, hanging everyday with the girls, trolling the city - but leaves me little time to write and when I don’t write I get depressed, because I have no outlet, no sense of identity, no way to be sane, no way to purge or make sense of things, except for leaning on my husband, who is a rock, but he has a first wife who battled depression and I hate to scare the crap out of him. You know, maybe he thinks, I’ll be this way for the next six years or something.


There’s also the small thing of our recent miscarriage. (My mom doesn’t read this blog and I haven't told her about the miscarriage. There are a couple of you who speak to her, please do not share this with her. She has been ill recently and this news is the last thing she needs. I want her focused on recovering her health. Thanks.) To be honest, we were pregnant for about 7 weeks. This is a short period of time. Hardly anyone knew. That we lost this baby now, as opposed to several weeks or months from now, is a blessing. I get that. I get that intellectually. But still…

I enjoyed being pregnant for those few weeks, that old familiar feeling of knowing that something special was happening, something I carried with me all the time, was aware of all the time and that we had this secret between us that very few people knew about. It was like holding a special treasure. By the time, I went to the bathroom at Starbucks and found the blood, I was just getting used to the idea, picturing the five of us. You can’t imagine all the scenes playing out in my head. All rainbows and happy endings.

I will tell you that miscarriage has never been a big concern for us. We have been fortunate. As soon as the stick turned blue, we blabbed our baby news to anyone who would feign happiness. It was just one of those things that didn’t happen to us. Sure, maybe some hideous strain of cancer is running through our veins poised to reach out and flatten us, but not so in the baby-making department. Fertility was our thing. We were always grateful for it and knew how lucky we were.

This time, was different. We held our tongues. I was 43. This pregnancy had not happened in one month or three as with Lucy and Edie. It happened in seven. We knew, on some level, it was fragile.

I called David and told him the news when he was in Australia. He was staying with his dad. He told him the good news. He couldn’t help himself. He was smiling through the phone when I told him. When he came home, we told Lucy and Edie. They were beyond thrilled. We swore Lucy to secrecy. Not an easy thing for Lucy. Lucy had been telling everyone at the playground that we had been pregnant with twins for like the last year, so this was big news. the whole idea made her feel happy and big and important.

She wanted my belly to get big immediately. We took out pregnancy books from the library and I read to them about the baby in Mommy’s tummy. The night before we lost the baby, she and Edie leaned in to my belly button to talk to the baby. They wanted her to be a girl. They had all kind of things to tell her.

It felt pretty real. Like it might happen. We scheduled a doctor’s appointment. The due date would have been December 4th. I started imagining our Xmas.

I felt great. I felt pregnant. But no sickness. This was a relief. Both of my previous pregnancies were laced with sickness – I vomited everywhere, almost constantly for the first three months. My vomit is legendary. Once, with Edie, I had to bend over in a gutter outside my house with Lucy in my arms because I couldn’t be without a vomit receptacle for more than 15 minutes at a time.

This pregnancy was different. No vomit in sight. I vowed to Shred every day. I was furiously organizing and spring cleaning the house. I was a mound of productivity. I was awesome. I felt like a million bucks. I thought it must be a boy. That was the difference – Girls make you sick. Boys don’t’.

Little did I know, that this lack of sickness, this good feeling, was just a pregnancy that had never really taken hold. Little did I know that sickness was good.

We had just met up with friends at the Starbucks in our building. I made the kids go to the bedroom, one more “empty bladder” check. I decided to go myself. That’s when I saw it. Lucy was sobbing, her friend had a pack of bubble gum and was willing to share with everyone, but Lucy wanted her own. She staged a fit. She was hysterical in the bathroom in Starbucks. I was bleeding. Friends who didn’t know I was pregnant were waiting at a table outside. Everyone wanted to go to the zoo.

I had no idea what to do. I do what I always do when I don’t know what to do, when I am immobile. I call David. Lucy screamed about bubble gum in the background. Edie was rubbing her hands all over the public toilet. We talked about seeing a doctor, but with the kids it was going to be hard to shift into that mode. I decided to tell my friend what was happening, retrieve some maxi pads from my bathroom, calm my tantruming child by buying her whatever pack of bubble gum she wanted and just move through the day, see what happens.

I vowed to get to a doctor in the afternoon. But it didn’t matter. By ten o’clock I had to change maxi pads three times. There was blood and tissue. By two o’clock, I was running around on the monkey bars, chasing Lucy, and I noticed that I no longer felt pregnant. It was over. That feeling of treasure inside had just ebbed away, like a low tide. No doctor was going to fix this. It was over. The baby was gone. I just moved through the day. It was good to be busy.

I was sad. We were sad. We had to tell the girls and they were sad. Lucy had so many questions. She cared. She was so interested, concerned for this little sister she had envisioned in her head. But that same week, two bloggers that I didn’t know, lost their babies. You should check out their stories and their beautiful babies - Maddie and Thalon. These were not near misses. They were living, breathing, babies that people had connected to and loved and cared for in the real world, not just in their fantasies, and my sadness seemed small and inconsequential. And it is.

And there are all the people who have tried to have babies and have never known the effortless fertility that we have been blessed with. The folks who don’t have two gorgeous, healthy, completely average girls sleeping all around them now. So, I have this all in perspective. Really, I do.

But I’m still a little blue. Not quite myself. But writing saves me. My husband saves me. My kids save me. You save me. Thanks for letting me talk about it. I feel better now.

Xxoo YM

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On Finding a Chiquita Banana Sticker on Your Naked Bum

So, David is home from Australia. I can breathe now. I can also shower now, which is a huge relief to myself and people around me.

The whole week I had been trying to get up before the girls and sneak into the shower and sort of quickly wash myself off, being sure to hit all the major areas, before hearing Edie freaking out in bed, because I had the audacity to actually be more than six inches away from her at any given time.

This meant showering with the shower door open, so I could hear her. And using the shower head hand-held so that there wasn't a lot of rushing water around my ears, preventing me from hearing her outpouring of agony from the bedroom. I also didn't do any shower acts that would require a commitment of time, like, say, washing my hair, since I couldn't be sure that I wouldn't have to leap out of the shower with a full head of shampoo only to realize I was never getting back in the shower to rinse off.

I planned ahead.

So, by the time my husband walked in the door. I smelled okay, but my hair was like matted, dirty straw. I looked like a scare crow. So, one of my acts as a woman-with- a-husband-in-the-house was to have a long, hot shower. It was nice. Not one person sat outside my shower door and wailed tears of betrayal and abandonment. I was golden.

That is until I washed my bum.


See, that is when I felt something kind of smooth there. A smooth patch, if you will. And upon further investigation, I found that I was wearing a Chiquita Banana sticker on my naked bum.

Now, the funny thing about this is that David and I had some "welcome home" nookie about two seconds after he walked in the door, where we clutched each other feverishly and said hot, romantic things to each other, and fumbled around like the middle-aged adults we are and, like, either (1) he just didn't notice I was wearing a Chiquita Banana sticker on my bum or (2) he missed me so much he didn't care I was wearing a Chiquita Banana sticker on my bum or (3) he put the Chiquita Banana sticker on my bum while we were having the sex, as some kind of misguided spousal humor or (4) we were so caught up in the ecstasy of the moment, we made love in the fruit bowl and totally didn't realize it.

These are the things running through my head. It's all still a mystery to me. I mean, could I have been walking around with a Chiquita Banana sticker on my ass the entire week? What if I had been taken to the hospital for an emergency? Forget the clean underwear, would the trauma team have been able to hold it together after seeing a sticker that said "Fresh Tastes Best" on my ass? Am I really that uncool and pathetic these days?

And that's why I need to pay attention to my body a bit more. Or more precisely, what's stuck to it or hanging off of it.

I'll get right on that.

xo YM

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"Mommy, You Make The Best Chicken Fingers"

Okay, that's actually what Lucy said about my chicken fingers tonight. And I tell you this not to brag because I suffer much humiliation at my kitchen table. Sure, I can cook, but little good it does me, most of it ends up on the floor, mashed into the rug or smushed into someone's hair.

This week, Edie hid a lamb chop under the couch. I knew I was down a bone, but I'll be damned, it took me days to find it. It was way back there wedged behind a Barbie doll and a deflated balloon.

I am humbled by Lucy's complete intolerance for anything that is a sauce, comes from a sauce, looks like a sauce or is sauce-like in its appearance. She has also recently decided that pizza should never have tomatoes, since this is an evil cousin of the "the sauce". Tomatoes apparently can turn into "the sauce" in the oven. And you can't pick "the sauce" off the pizza very easily, so it is despised. Edie loved sauce and tomatoes until she heard Lucy chanting "No sauce" over and over and she joined in and chanted and that was so much fun, she too refuses to eat tomatoes or "the sauce".

Now, they ask for "cheese on bread" which is not actually cheese on bread. It's cheese on dough. Not cheese on a pita or something. It has to be dough. Because it's pizza. Kind of.


And if you are keeping up with Lucy's lifelong, love-hate relationship with the egg, well, we stopped eating three fried egg whites a day, as I reported a few weeks ago. Like, over night we were egg obsessed. Another night, as if the egg were "the sauce", the love affair was over. Go figure.

And then, there's what's been happening lately - you know, when they leave my house and other people feed them things and they experience things they've never had before. Like the night we were at a friend's house and she served the kids plain twisty pasta heated up in the microwave with a little butter and salt. Lucy looked up and said, "Mommy, can you serve us our pasta like this every day?"

My colon sort of spazzed up a little in that moment.


There was also the night before last - we were invited to a neighbors house for dinner and they made meatballs and macaroni and cheese for us, you know, out of pity because my husband has been gone for like, ever, and everyone knows I am a pathetic basket case without David's calm, serene, Bhudda-like presence.

And Edie is kind of a meatball-aholic and ate, like 20 meatballs and the kids stunned the crowd with their ability to wield knives at the dinner table and nearly impale the people around them, but when asked if she wanted some mac and cheese (which was completely awesome mac and cheese) Lucy refused and informed our host - in the most authoritative voice I think I've ever heard from her - that she only liked the best mac and cheese in the world, which is the kind of mac and cheese they serve at her school friend's house.

Now, I know about their mac and cheese, these people. It's the box. It's organic sure. They are organic people living in their organic brownstone in their organic section of town. But organic crap is still crap. I don't mind her eating it at her friend's house or once in awhile someplace other than our home. But what I hate about it, is that it is so mind-numblingly, palate-killing that simply having it only occasionally at a play date has inspired her to turn up her nose at anything resembling homemade mac and cheese. She won't even try it.

The box is a drug. It is crack for children.

And then, Lucy infected Edie. Just as she was about to stab a fork full of pasta, Edie heard her sister's box-mac-and-cheese-dining-room-manifesto and said, "No pasta," and dropped her fork. And asked me to promptly remove it from her plate, as if it's very presence could somehow infiltrate her system through osmosis. She went back to her meatballs.

I went back to blushing a lot and wondering why I write a food blog in the first place.

Which brings me to why I am thrilled that Lucy gave me this incredibly generous compliment - cause I don't get them a lot. Or ever. I cannot compete with pasta re-heated in a microwave with a pat of butter and a shot or Morton's. I am being bludgeoned by box macaroni and cheese. And cans of Pringle's at kid eye-length at the store. And Dora hawking candy. And Kool Aid masking as juice. And the sheer amount of processed food sitting on any shelves in any market and how unbelievably ubiquitous those foods are in the hands of every kid on the playground.

See? I'm being bludgeoned with my very own boxes of uneaten organic kale. So, the compliment rejuvenated me. A lot.

And what you will love about making these chicken fingers is how ridiculously easy it is. So simple. The trick is to use Panko bread crumbs, instead of your standard Italian ones. I'm sure you know about Panko and where to get them, but for those who don't...they are Japanese bread crumbs made from crustless bread, which gives them an airier, lighter feel that makes them get super-crispy when they are cooked.

You can buy Panko at Asian specialty store, large supermarkets and in many fish markets (that's where I buy mine). You can get all fancy with these strips, using mustards and spices to ramp up the flavor. But this easy way did the trick for us.

And got me one of the best critiques from one of my harshest critics ever.

xxoo YM

PS: You can make a little dipping sauce for these. Maybe a chive mayo. Or a tomato sauce. Or a honey dijon sauce. I would've but, you know, we have issues with "The sauce".
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"If Lucy Loves it, You'll Love It" Panko Chicken Fingers

•3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into strips
•3 eggs
• Panko bread crumbs
• Olive oil (as needed)
• Salt, pepper (you can add dried herbs/spices to your liking, like paprika
and thyme)
• A small handful of chopped Parsley
• One lemon cut into wedges

Wash chicken and pat dry with a paper towel. I skillet fry these in a cast iron frying pan in olive oil (cause I embrace the fat), but you can bake them in oven. If so, preheat the oven to 350F.

Mix the eggs up in a bowl. Put about 2 cups of Panko in a bowl. Salt and pepper the chicken. Dredge the chicken in the Panko first. Then, dredge it through the egg. Then, back in the Panko. Put the chicken strip on a clean plate (if frying) and a baking sheet if it's going in the oven.

Bake for about 15-20 minutes. Or saute on each side for roughly 5-7 minutes on each side, depending on the size of the chicken strip. Plate and sprinkle with chopped up Parsley and a spritz of lemon. Use lemon wedges as a garnish on the side of the plate. Serve with a little herbed mayo or honey dijon sauce (if you are not sauce-challenged.)

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