He adores chocolate, [...]]]> His favorite foods include broccoli and green beans. More often than not he turns up his nose at french fries, sweet and regular potato alike. He relishes eating raspberries off his fingertips, plucking strawberries from the vine, and letting watermelon juice escape his overeager mouth.

He adores chocolate, and would eat chicken nuggets every day if he could. Sometimes his dinner consists of bowl after bowl of cereal. During a recent trip to the grocery store, he snatched up a Lunchable with glee, despite the yellow packages having never entered our house. (It did not end up in the cart.)

Raising a child to be an intelligent, curious, and healthy eater is a challenge, even without outside influence from advertising and peer influence. My son is not yet four, and he is already aware of many foods we don’t keep at home, simply because other children come to school toting Ziplocs with technicolor cereals or a teacher decides to share their own food with the class. Luckily, his favorite cereals are of the undyed variety – not that he wouldn’t jump at the opportunity for his friends’ selections.

(...)
Read the rest of Growing a Locavore (531 words)

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Christmas and my 2nd birthday, respectively. I see you Big Bird, and you better get [...]]]> Birthdays sure are a whole lot easier when you’re younger. You don’t really have to worry about too much more than making sure the cake makes it to your mouth. That’s pretty awesome.

Christmas and my 2nd birthday, respectively. I see you Big Bird, and you better get outta my chocolate-lovin’ way. I’m also pretty sure every food blogger I know has a photo of themselves with their toy kitchen. It’s required.

For a while I abandoned cooking to haul my cat around. She rewarded me by sleeping on my head and making a rat’s nest of my hair. My current cat does this as well. Jerks.

Also required? Obligatory photos with Santa. Having your child sit on the lap of a complete stranger dressed in costume is weird, people! Yes, I am visibly terrified. And how old is this Santa, anyway? Don’t you need at least a couple wrinkles to get the job?

Moving on…

Ireland, 1995, right before I dyed my hair with red henna. PSA kids: red henna turns light blond hair copper. That won’t go away. For 2 years. Until your hair is long enough again to cut it all off. I’m also rocking the braces. Be happy I’m sparing you my 5th grade photo, which features the braces AND an atrocious spiral perm. There have been some hair tragedies on my head.

1995 again. I’ll just go ahead and say I’ve spent far too much time inside a TGI Friday’s for someone who has never worked there. I’ll also say to Matt, wherever you are, thank you for humoring a bunch of dorky high school girls for multiple months. I hope we never stiffed you on the tip.

Jumping ahead … engagement photos wherein I look tragically pale. I’m glad we only paid the photographer in beer. Also, thank goodness my husband no longer has that haircut. Whew.

Run run run. Everyone should run in their wedding dress. For real.

Also, everyone should have friends they have known for-freakin-ever. I love you girls! Let’s go play Unicorns in my backyard.

And one of these. Definitely get one of these. But, yanno … your own.

Of course, these days my own birthday doesn’t matter as much any more.

But that’s OK.

There’s still lots of chocolate frosting to eat.

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At the same time, I like to call them goals instead of resolutions. Resolutions [...]]]> I’ll be honest. I kind of love making New Year’s resolutions. It’s probably because I love to make plans and start projects and hey, it’s always good to remind myself that the only one who can change my life is me.

At the same time, I like to call them goals instead of resolutions. Resolutions seem to imply that whatever change you’re striving for can happen overnight, and if you screw up and eat an entire chocolate cake, all is lost, better luck next year. So I like goals.

2010′s Goals

• Finish paying off credit cards. We are almost done with this. This is pretty exciting to me.
• Pay off at least 50% of current debt (not including the house). Feasible, but it will be hard.
• Complete the Couch-to-5k program.
• In tandem with that, get in better shape overall.
• Cut out junky snacking as much as possible.
• Once a month have a date with my husband.
• Double my blog readership.
• Stick to grocery plan and budget as much as possible. Every month we spend $60 on our CSA share, and I am hoping to only spend an additional $200. It seems a little crazy, but I’m thinking if we actually stay with our meal plans it is possible. Note that this amount doesn’t include paper products, cleaning supplies, or diapers.
• Network more. I hate networking because a lot of it feels disingenuous, but you know what? I don’t suck. I just have to break from my shell and stick out my hand a little more.
• Perfect making sandwich bread.

There. 10 goals for the new year. Some of these overlap with my 1001 in 101 project, but that just means they’ve been on my mind a long time. I’ll need a lot of support to get through a few of these, so please pass along encouraging words throughout the year. I’ll be sure to do the same for the rest of you. I didn’t put it as one of my goals, but we all need to support each other more. I’m going to do my best in that area.

What’s your biggest goal for 2010?

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Our year was actually pretty great. There have been many people affected by the economy but our little family came out the year unscathed. [...]]]> It’s been an interesting year for me. I feel like a lot has changed for me ever since I joined Foodbuzz in August, and that was only five months ago.

Our year was actually pretty great. There have been many people affected by the economy but our little family came out the year unscathed. I suppose there is still a chance I could lose my job in 2010 (it depends on if we win the contract), but I’m actually not worried about that. I suppose my outlook has changed a bit, and if I was suddenly unemployed I’d look at it as an opportunity to venture forth with some new ideas that have been bubbling.

Before I can write about what I want to achieve in the next year, though, I thought I would write down ten things I’ve learned in 2009.

Here’s to 2010, everyone.

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Although I make feeble attempts at fiction writing throughout the year, the bulk of my [...]]]> I’ve mentioned before that I really like fall. One of the reasons has come to be the amazing event that is National Novel Writing Month. This year marks my seventh year of participation in the crazy month of writing.

Although I make feeble attempts at fiction writing throughout the year, the bulk of my creative writing happens each November, when I become attached to my laptop and seek out coffee shops all over town to write my 50,000 words. On the surface, that number seems like an easy feat. After all, it’s only 1,667 words a day. If you are a good typist and know where you are going in your story, that can be cranked out in two hours or less. And yet, many writers I know aren’t able to cross the finish line.

You have to let go. We all want our writing to be perfect, amazing reflections of ourselves and our wit. The dialogue is smarter than an episode of Veronica Mars and the plot is more intriguing than Lost. And in the course of a high-octane writing session in November all of that needs to go out the window. You just need to get the words down. Editing comes later. You need to create what one of my writing professors called “the shitty first draft”.

You might not get past that first draft, even if you get to The End. I’ve never gone back and tried to fix up my NaNo novels, but I’ve read them later on. A lot of it is crap. But there are some good things in there. Character descriptions, soliloquies, an especially smart turn of phrase. I didn’t remember writing half of it, but that all came from letting my inner editor (and as a copyeditor, I have a huge one) take a vacation down to the coast.

This year I’m planning on going to the Night of Writing Dangerously. This event in San Francisco raises money to fund writing projects all over the world, in classrooms and other communities. I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was in the first grade, and while I had some great teachers, I can’t imagine how wonderful it would be to have something like the Young Writers’ Program to nurture that dream. By attending the Night of Writing Dangerously, I can help kids who have the same dream to get their words out there. But I need sponsors to help me get there.

What’s in it for you, I can hear you asking.

$5 – Electronic access to read the novel in December

$10 – Name a minor character in the novel. It could be yourself, it could be someone you make up! If you’d like it to be yourself, please send me a description if I’ve never met you before.

$20 – Name a location to be featured in the novel.

$30 – Name a major character in the novel.

$40 – Electronic access to read the novel as I write it in November

$50 – Electronic access to read the novel as I write it, plus a homemade treat sent to you in December.

$100 – Electronic access to read the novel as I write it, a homemade treat, AND name the novel!

Can you tell I don’t expect anyone to donate $100? I don’t know what I’ll do if I have multiple $100 donors, besides be amazed at all of you wonderful readers.

Go here to help sponsor me today!

p.s. If you’re doing NaNo, drop me a line on the site and we can be writing buddies! My username there is Ciri. Also, if you plan to be in Austin during November, I’d love to see you at a write-in.

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I kept seeing blogs that would talk about The Daring Kitchen, and how awesome [...]]]>

The September 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

I kept seeing blogs that would talk about The Daring Kitchen, and how awesome it was, and how I needed to get my little cooking bum over there and join. So I “applied” in August, and I was a member in time for the September challenge. On the day the challenge was to be posted, I excitedly logged on to the forums.

And then my jaw dropped, because the very first challenge for little old me was to make puff pastry. Oh, you silly fate.

One of my friends went to pastry school and was formerly a pastry chef. When I asked about the pastry, she said, “Don’t do it.”

Not great for my confidence, but I steeled my nerves and took advantage of an empty house to work on the challenge. For those who don’t know, you make puff pastry by folding butter inside dough, and rolling and folding and rolling and folding until you have many many layers of butter-dough goodness.

Like so:

Being in Texas means it was warm in my kitchen – not ideal for puff pastry, so I had to keep throwing my dough in the fridge and I was almost weepy about how my butter kept oozing out. But I continued on, and in the end I amazed myself with some wonderful results.

I knew right away that I wanted to fill my vol au vents with a cinnamon-basil mousse and a basil ricotta with tomato topping. Both were excellent in the puff pastry, even though my mousse wasn’t quite right. I hope to make it again and fix the problems so I can post the recipe, because it really did taste wonderful.

I’m looking forward to the next challenge!

To see more photos and the recipe we used, go here.

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Somehow, I get to go.

Right now I’m reading The Alchemist, and the timing couldn’t be better. I don’t want to give anything away because it’s a great book (and short) but it’s [...]]]> Remember when, last month, I was whining about wanting to go to San Francisco for two different events on two different weekends?

Somehow, I get to go.

Right now I’m reading The Alchemist, and the timing couldn’t be better. I don’t want to give anything away because it’s a great book (and short) but it’s about destiny and omens. It could be sappy, but finding out about the Foodbuzz Blogger Festival seemed like an omen to me. The kind of omen that says, “Hey, knucklehead, what’s stopping you from being the next Julie Powell?

Not that I want to be the next Julie Powell, but it is a phrase one of my coworkers keeps saying whenever I discuss blogging and food. It is interesting that I’m now the same age she was when she began her project: 29. I’m not sure how much I believe in astrology, but apparently there is something called SATURN that makes the years surrounding your 30th ones of huge change and shifts in life directions. “Year of the Pig Eye,” one friend calls it. She’s making herself do things she wouldn’t normally do, like take an improv class and join an karaoke team.

I’m being a little more low-key in my own challenges, but things are shifting a bit in my world. If you read this blog on the site directly, you might have noticed a few new links. In the past month I’ve joined FoodBuzz, The Daring Kitchen, and the Foodie Blogroll. I’ve added more blogs and Twitter feeds to my radar and found myself followed by other food writers I greatly admire. I’m hoping I won’t lose steam like I have with my fiction writing, but cooking is so ingrained into my life that it’s hard to see that being my future. I know I’m meant to be a writer in some capacity. After all, that is the one goal I’ve had since I was 7 years old. Everything I do seems to keep pushing me along that path.

But I don’t know exactly what that future is. I didn’t have a mystical dream like the sheepherder in The Alchemist, nor a king to give me advice. But I can listen to my heart and hope it tells me what it needs.

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Your happiness is intertwined with your outlook on life.

I try to keep reminding myself of [...]]]> A few years ago I got a fortune in my cookie that I thought I should hold on to. It’s been tucked into a framed photo of my husband and I that I keep on my desk at work.

Your happiness is intertwined with your outlook on life.

I try to keep reminding myself of this, especially if I’ve been having a bad day. It reminds me to take a few deep breaths and realize work is just work. Sure, it’s important and I try to do my best (after all, I do get paid), but it doesn’t define who I am as a person. Remembering that makes my time so much more enjoyable. By the time I get home to my family, I can tidy up the garden, prepare and eat a nice dinner, and have playtime without worrying about the previous eight hours or the ones that will come tomorrow.

That’s not to say I’m not mentally exhausted by the time I get home — I am. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been having such problems getting real writing done. I have days when I just want to lounge on the sofa all night long. And I do that, but I hold off until after dinner is done and other obligations are taken care of.

It’s true that I want to be more than a mom, but I also want to be more than my job. Having both of those things in mind helps me keep my frustrations in check. My standing Tuesday evening helps too. On Tuesdays I try to keep a date with myself. Sometimes this means I head to a coffee shop to read or write, sometimes it means I run errands on my own, and sometimes I just hang out in the house doing something completely for me. I’ve had Tuesdays since before Reese was born, and I’m so glad I keep doing it. Even if I don’t get any work done, I feel so much better when I get home after immersing myself in the world around me for a few hours.

How do you stop and smell the roses?

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