Grandmother

Meet my grandmother.

I am a grown up now, but every Christmas I can still hear her voice in that thick, Venezuelan accent: "Did Jew like your presents?" Without fail, that's what she would ask every Christmas over the phone at about ten o'clock, just as we had finished opening mounds and mounds of presents from her and Grandpa and were beginning to roll in the boxes and wrapping paper.  

The detailed hand-stitched stocking made by her when I was a little girl still hangs over our "mantle"  every year.  

And I can still taste her Famous Chicken Pie complete with Olives and Raisins (Its a Venezuelan thing).  

I just wanted to share so I can thank my Grandma for always making my Childhood Christmas's so special.

A belated Halloween post

I don't really eat sugar.

Whenever I eat ice cream, I think "this would SO  good if only they put in HALF the amount of sugar."  In fact, Every sugar ladent thing I eat I feel like they could easily half the amount of sugar and it would still taste good, if not better. Except ketchup, of course. 

But on Halloween, I eat candy. 

You see, on Halloween, I open my children's candy bag and many magical smells come to my nose. Smells of that fake gooey goodness of not-actually-chocolate mixed with the smell of not-really-fruit and not-really-caramel.

Those are smells that bring me close to a time when my greatest worry in life was weather or not my already too large bag would be filled to the brim with enough candy. And oh the delight of dumping the mounds of candy on the floor, greedily digging through it in looking for treasures. 

Grownups: When we are standing behind our children while they trick or treat, we are silently, secretly begging them to pick our favorite candy.  We also feel secretly disappointed when they pick the "wrong" one, but don't have the guts to guide them to make wise candy choices in front of the candy donor.  Some of us may whisper in secret to our children on the way to the next house as to which candy is the right one to pick.

We long for the moment when our wee ones go to sleep at night, so we can sift through heir bags of candy and indulge in some fake goodness of gooey stuff that will bring us back to our own childhood and make us forget that we will feel pretty gross in about an hour after our indulgence.

But who cares right? Its only once a year.  And I am sure in a few years in our house as our children get bigger they will be monitoring every piece of candy and note when one goes missing.  So I might as well enjoy this while it lasts and my trick-o-treating candy eating days are over forever. 

This guy taught me how to make Salmon with just a few tricks!

Here are some quotes from an internet dude who taught me to cook salmon properly: 

"There’s nothing quite as unappetizing as a dry, overcooked slab of salmon."  
Yes.  Nothing.  Nothing in the world.

"If you make this Salmon the way I make it, you WILL cook this EVERY night of the week."  You were right.  After making this recipe, we have eaten nothing but Salmon for the past month and a half.  Any advice on how we can stop?  We also gave up breakfast and lunch to help supplement our food  budget for our new fish intake. 

Thanks for the great "tricks" internet cooking guy!!! 

Margot's three year portrait

Hello! Here is Margot, or "Margot Pants." Her third birthday is coming soon, so she gets a new portrait done! and I must say that it has been very special for me to photograph her family over the past few years as they have grown. Margot is growing into a very darling little girl, who loves books, clothes, (especially shoes) and pretty things, just like her mama. We love little Margot! 

A fun afternoon

Today Isaiah took the boys fishing.

When they all left the house left the house,  I looked around at the mess and thought "I am finally alone, I can clean this up with no one bothering me." Then I said "pshaw" and I picked up my purse, got in the car and drove to the nail salon.

I haven't had my nails done since I went to North Carolina four years ago to visit my sisters. (I think it was four years?? I can't believe it!) I remember my little sister being upset that she did not get the six-inch-long nail extension that she was hoping for in the rural small town Vietnamese run nail salon. We all warned her that this was not Miami and they do things different here. She wouldn't listen. So she had to go back to Little Cuba with embarrassingly short nails.

So anyway, after four years of nail neglect, I treated myself, all alone to a nail painting by a Vietnamese man. When I was there I was able to watch the "News" Which was just a bunch of political fiddle-faddle commercials (OMG Can you believe how HORRIBLE the other senator is yadda yada) and lots of computer generated looking women with too much makeup (or too much air brushing?) who all talked excitedly about things lot of things as if they were actually important.

It was fun.

I painted my nails a bright color.  Not even an earthy color, partially because they didn't seem to have earthy colors but also because I wanted something a little shocking, something totally not even me.

Then I got home. And two little boys walked in the door and with the most ridiculous smiles on their faces, exclaiming with sheer joy "mama, I caught some weeds!!!"  They were stoked when I told them how proud I was.

It was a good afternoon.  Even though there were dirty dishes left in the sink.  Isaiah probably forgot about them because he liked my shocking nail color so much.

Shocking.

The word Shocking is really, really over used. It hardly shocks me anymore to hear that something is shocking even if it is or would be shocking, and it hardly ever is something that's worthy of being called shocking in the first place. Isn't this a shocking idea? Maybe I should tell this new shocking idea to the internet world that the word shocking really has absolutely no shock value anymore. Its simply, shocking. 

Mama Please?

Matheson: Mama, may I please have five dollars so I can sit on that Longhorn for thirty seconds so you can take my picture?

Mama: No, but you can enjoy watching someone else's mommy pay five dollars for her child to sit on it.