Tag Archives: motherhood

The Almost Sleepover Birthday Cake

27 Jul

Elizabeth turned 10 earlier this month, which meant she got to host a couple of friends for an “Almost Sleepover” last weekend. The Almost Sleepover is also sometimes known as a Mock Sleepover or a Half Sleepover. It’s when the guests come with pj’s on, sleeping bags and pillows in hand, and do all the typical sleepover type stuff (pizza, cake, movies, games, presents) but then right before bedtime, *poof!!* they go home!! The Almost Sleepover means that everyone gets to actually sleep! It’s one of my favorite birthday parties of all.

When Caroline had her Almost Sleepover two years ago, I coincidentally received an email earlier that month, from Kraft Foods, showing a slumber party cake, which I adapted here at home for her party. Here’s what her cake looked like back in 2010.

Caroline’s Almost Sleepover Cake from 2010. So cute, right?

I decided after making the cake once, that I’d do it slightly differently the next time around, which was now for Elizabeth’s party last weekend. Here’s what I did differently:

I used brownie as the base, rather than cake.

I used one quarter of a graham cracker for their sleeping bag instead of whatever I’d used here. That allowed me to make smaller people and fit more of them on the cake than just six. I like everyone to get a person to eat and there’s already three girls here before any guests or adults arrive.

I couldn’t find the rainbow candy for the hair this time around, I think it was from Halloween that year since Caroline’s birthday was in October. But, Elizabeth found some gummy worm type of candy in the checkout lane at Walmart when we were buying our supplies, so we used those, which worked out fine.

So here is what Elizabeth’s Almost Sleepover Cake looked like:

The Almost Sleepover cakes are so fun to make and the guests always love seeing it, almost more than eating it!

There was plenty of space for candles too:

Make a wish!

And in case you’re wondering what we did for a craft at the party, it was decorate-your-own pillow cases:

Everyone had different colored pillow cases to choose from. Elizabeth had everyone sign hers so she’ll always remember her 10th birthday party.

The party was fun and easy and the cake was delicious! Best of all was seeing Elizabeth enjoying her special day:

Happy Tenth Birthday Elizabeth!

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The most exciting news EVER….

24 Jul

What could my exciting news be??

I have THE MOST EXCITING NEWS!!!!

You won’t believe it.

I’ve been keeping this a secret for SO LONG, more than a month, and it was SO HARD!

Okay I told *a few* people.

And of course my immediate family.

But that’s it.

Do you want to know??? I know you do!

Okay here it is.

I would sit down if I were you. It’s big.

Caroline and I are going to Washington DC.

We’re going to meet THE FIRST LADY!!!!

That’s right! Michelle Obama!! We’re meeting Michelle Obama!!!

Yes, seriously!

Okay. Let me regroup. Here’s how it happened….

Back around the end of May, my editor at the Cranston Herald, Meg, received a press release from Senator Jack Reed’s office announcing a recipe contest that Epicurious was putting out in conjunction with the White House. One winner, a parent/child team, would be chosen from every single state. You can read a similar press release here.

Now Meg is a big fan of The Whole Bag of Chips. She emailed me the press release and said, “You should enter this with one of your kids.”

I took a look, and thought, “Hmmm….maybe I should.”

So I broached it to my kids, but there was one problem: you could enter with one child at a time, ages 8-12, but if you entered with more than one child, only one could win and if one was a winner, the whole family doesn’t get to go to Washington, just the one winner and their parent.

Right off the bat, Alex is seven, so I couldn’t enter with her. My first initial thought was to enter with Caroline because she cooks more in the kitchen than Liz and is slightly more independent in the kitchen, and additionally, she’s 12, the top age. She couldn’t enter again if it ran next year.

But, Elizabeth, upon hearing about the contest said, “Well, I’m between 8 and 12 I want to enter too.” So I explained the whole thing about not being able to win with both, even though I could enter with both.

Elizabeth said, “That’s okay, if Caroline won, I’d be happy for her.”

Caroline said, “I don’t know. If you won, I think I’d be too sad. I don’t know if I can do it.”

I was stumped. I didn’t know what we should do. We had some time though, I let them think on it, and I hoped that Caroline would come around and both of them could enter.

One day at the beginning of June, I received an email from Caroline that said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” (I’m pretty sure she wrote that email from in our house, with me right in the house with her, but it didn’t matter to me. She wanted to do it.)

And so, we did it.

Elizabeth and Don with their contest entry, a tuna wrap and all the fixins’!

On June 9, after dinner we got down to business.  Separately we had to come up with our meals, cook up our meals, type up our entries which included the recipe with ingredients and step-by-step instructions and a photo of a complete meal including side dishes and beverages, as well as a short essay.

We have a tiny kitchen. We had to take turns.

Elizabeth had chosen to enter with Don because their healthy lunchtime recipe was one he makes for her lunch a lot: a tuna wrap with lettuce and tomato. On the side she had celery and carrots and a glass of coffee milk (a delicacy here).

Lunch anyone?

Caroline and I came up with an egg white omelette with broccoli and mozzarella cheese because she will only eat egg whites, and she loves broccoli. On the side we had wheat toast and mixed fruit (kiwi and nectarines).

We sent in our entries that night. The deadline was June 17, the night before the last day of school.

That Friday afternoon, following the deadline, I received an email. Caroline and I were finalists for our state. I couldn’t believe it. I asked Don if he’d gotten one, but he had not.

We had to tell them.

I let Caroline see the email first. Then we told Liz. I was worried at how she’d react. Her eyes got bright, but she said, “Caroline, I’m so happy for you. Here, have my lollipop stick,” and she handed her the empty stick. That was the end of it.

I emailed Meg, “We’re finalists! OMG” and began filling out all the paper work needed to complete the next level of the contest. We had five days to get it filled out, notarized and postmarked.

Then, we waited.

We knew from the rules that there could be up to three finalists per state but that’s all we knew; that and the fact that only one of those finalists would win.

And waited.

We wondered. We’re a small state. How many entries could there be?

And waited.

It was agonizing. The original notification date was supposed to be by July 16. I slept about ten seconds the night before.

But we didn’t hear anything.

I checked in. “Just checking to see if all the winners had been notified yet?”

No. Not yet. No one.

We were still in the running. The winners would be notified that week.

So we waited and waited some more. Every day seemed like a week. I checked my email ten million times a day if we were home, to see if we heard anything yet.

By that Thursday I checked in again. A formal email went out. Competition was tough this year. They needed more time. The official notification date would now be Tuesday July 24. We’d hear either way.

And now here it is, Tuesday, July 24.

And guess what???  Well you know already. WE WON!!!!

Caroline and I will be traveling to Washington to represent the state of Rhode Island at the Kids’ State Dinner, which will be held next month!!

I’m so incredibly excited!! But even more so, I’m so incredibly proud of my kids. I’m proud of them for taking the risk to enter, proud of them for being healthy eaters, for being cooks in the kitchen, and for loving each other and us, enough to want to compete against each other and yet be willing to support each other at the same time. To me, and I’m choked up as I write this, that says a lot about the strength of their bond with each other and their bond with us. I love my kids so much, and I’m so, so proud.

I am incredibly proud of my kids!!

I will keep you updated as the trip takes place and you can be sure there will be photos to go along with it. They are creating a free downloadable eBook containing all the recipes from all the winners for each state, so our recipe will be published in that cookbook. I’ll let you know when that becomes available as well.

We won. Can you believe it?

Our healthy lunchtime recipe: Egg white omelette with broccoli and cheese.

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What We’re Doing For Fun This Summer: Summer Timeline Update

23 Jul

As promised, here’s a quick update on our Summer Vacation 2012 Timeline. If you’re a new reader, you can check out how our timeline began by clicking on the link here.

It’s been just over one month since school ended and our timeline began, and so far, so good. I wasn’t sure what to expect; how often we’d add to it, what we’d be doing to put on it, if the kids would lose interest or not.

No worries, the timeline is full.

Visitors, parades, birthdays, staycation time…it was a busy month!

The kids have really enjoyed adding their posts to the timeline, and they take turns adding things on. If it’s a particular event that happened to one of them, they let that person write it and put it on. Otherwise, they take turns. We make sure to add the dates, of course. We did blue paper for June, yellow for July and probably will do pink for August.

I print the photos out nine at a time, since my photo printing program prints nine 2×3 photos per page.  I don’t waste paper that way and I’m not running around printing photos every other day. The kids love seeing what pictures I’ve added overnight, when they wake up in the morning. I try to be equal, making sure to put up approximately the same amount of photos of each kid, each time, or the best bet: photos containing the three of them.

I also learned pretty quickly that one row of photos just wasn’t enough. I’m a photographer with three kids. Two rows was definitely a must. Luckily our Doodle Roll is wide enough to accommodate two rows. Luckily it doesn’t accommodate three, because I could totally go there.

The beginning of July tends to be busier for us and more eventful than the end of the month, because that’s when Don takes his vacation time (and some again in the beginning of August) so we do a lot. There’s the Fourth of July holiday in there as well as Elizabeth’s birthday, so there were tons of things to add to the timeline, every day. Once he went back to work and we were out of the holiday time and back to a more routine schedule there was less to add, so it balances out so far.

The kids had questioned me as to what would happen if we ran out of space, and we did. My answer had been not to worry, that we could always add to it, so we did. We went around the corner and onto the next wall in the dining room. (I have no qualms about hanging “kid stuff” up anywhere in the house, so this was not an issue for me. I have many years ahead to have grownup stuff or no stuff, on my walls.)

The second half of our timeline, ready and waiting for our upcoming events in July and August.

Personally, as a scrapbooker and a person who makes photo books often, I love this project. If I get no further than taking this off the wall in September and rolling it up to put it away, at least we have this much: a record of all our summer memories from 2012, photos to go with them, and even samples of the kids’ handwriting and spelling from this summer to go along too.  If I decide to make a photo album or scrapbook, I can use these pictures and their posts. If I want to make a photo book, I’ve already sorted the “best of” pictures into a separate folder on my computer for printing, so making a photo book will be that much easier. But, I won’t have ANY guilt because I know that we have this much, which is better than nothing!

Summer is my favorite, favorite, favorite time of year. I love having my family around me, my husband gets some time off, and we do lots of fun things together. I am so incredibly glad to have this fun reminder of these days together. I know that one day we’ll look back and say, “Where did the time go?”

And then, I’ll pull out our timeline and we’ll know.

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Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies by Karen

20 Jul

There is nothing like a summer’s night on the beach!

Last week we attended the annual summer concert on the beach that I’ve been attending since I was young. I’ve missed one or two, but in the 37 total years it’s been in existence, I have been to almost all of them.

It’s a huge affair and it is one of my all-time favorite summer traditions. I love sharing it with my kids. Everyone goes down to the beach first thing in the evening and sets up their space. We bring blankets, chairs, tables.

And then comes the food and the wine, and the dessert. Oh…the dessert.

This year I was looking for something unique to bring. Something that we hadn’t already done this summer at another night on the beach or parade or cookout. I like to keep things interesting so that no one gets bored. Namely, me.

I looked through a cookbook or two, and then I remembered Karen’s Cookbook, and the fact that last time I’d gone through it I’d seen an old favorite of mine: Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies.

I knew I’d found my dessert.

Melting butter and chocolate chips…what a beautiful sight!

As I was cooking them, melting the chocolate over the stove, I could literally see myself making them all those years ago, my college roommate Karen and I living in our house we rented during our college years. This is what I love about recipes: the traditions and memories that go with them. I always say recipes are the ties that bind people together, and I do truly believe that. I thought of Karen and all the fun we had, as I was cooking.

So today, I share with you Karen’s Peanut Butter Swirl Brownie recipe. I love that it’s a “from scratch” brownie recipe, and I love the step where you turn the batter into one part peanut butter batter and one part chocolate batter and then swirl them together. You’ll see, it’s so cool.

When you make them and eat them, I hope you make some special memories too!

KAREN’S PEANUT BUTTER SWIRL BROWNIES

INGREDIENTS

1 six ounce bag chocolate chips (I used one cup)

3 Tablespoons butter

3 eggs

1 cup sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 Tablespoon sour cream

1/2 cup flour

1/4 tsp. baking powder

1/3 cup peanut butter

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease 9×13 pan.

Melt chocolate chips and butter until fudge-like.

In mixing bowl, beat eggs, sugar, vanilla and sour cream.

Add flour and baking powder to the egg mixture.

Pour 3/4 of the batter into the melted chocolate and stir well.

Add peanut butter to remaining batter.

Pour chocolate batter into the pan.

Spoon peanut butter batter over and swirl with a knife until proportionate.

Bake 25-30 minutes.

Ready to eat!

Someone got hold of my camera, apparently.

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What we’re doing for fun this summer: The Great Playground Challenge

16 Jul

Making a mountain out of a molehill isn’t always a bad thing.

They say not to make a mountain out of a molehill, but oftentimes at our house, we do, and we do it on purpose.

When I was a teacher, I always found that if I really talked something up, like an upcoming unit of study, the kids would be super-enthused about it, just because I was. Their response was all in how I presented something to them. They followed my lead. With our own kids that’s often what we do.

We make mountains out of molehills.

Today’s post about our Great Playground Challenge is one example of how you can present something to your kids in such a way that you can get them enthused about a simple thing, and have fun with it.

Here’s how it started:

It was the girls’ first day home from school for the summer. Don was at work and it was my deadline day for the newspaper. Sometimes I can type ahead of a deadline day to get things in early, but the end of the school year was so crazy that I could not. I had to spend their first day off, typing. They got their own breakfast, they played on their own and watched some TV. Not the way I normally like to kick off the summer, but when you work from home, sometimes that’s how it has to be.

The zip line at this playground is what they loved most. Five stars….

As a reward, I decided to stop by one of the city playgrounds on the way to the grocery store later that afternoon (also not a fun first day off task, but one that had to be done if we were to eat dinner that night.)

This playground is one we’d been to years ago, but not recently, and I remembered it as being a particularly fun playground with some unique equipment. It was on the way, so I stopped off there for an hour or so. I brought my book to read, my camera (which is almost always with me) and a bottle of water.

I wasn’t thinking of making any mountains out of molehills yet.

They had a blast. They played for the hour and when we got in the car to go to the store, they were chattering away about this particular playground and how it compared to other ones they’ve been to. Just the day before on the last day of school they’d played on the city playground that’s adjacent to our school, so they were comparing it to that one as well.

All their conversation got me thinking. I thought of all the playgrounds in our city and surrounding areas. I thought of all the different types of equipment on the various playgrounds we’ve been to in the past. I remembered waaayyyy back to The Blizzard of 1978 when my dad made up a game to keep us busy when we had no electricity for a week. He called it The Great Race. I was seven and I still remember it.

My wheels were turning for sure.

Overall opportunities for fun are part of the playground experience, not just the equipment.Shady spots are great for just hanging out.

The Great Playground Challenge was born, right there in my car, on the way to Aldi’s.

I said to the girls, “We should spend part of our summer going to all different playgrounds and rating them to see which ones you like best. Then by the end of the summer we can see which one is your top favorite of all of them.” I asked them to think about how they’d rate the one we’d just been to.

They thought this was a great idea and they were very excited to get started playing on different playgrounds right then and there, but we had to wait.

We did our shopping and when we went home I took our big roll of white paper and made a poster for the wall outside their bedroom. I used bright colors and made it look exciting. I made a chart where we could put the names of the playgrounds and spaces for them to rank each one themselves as well as a space for an overall rating.

A “fancy” new poster to record our findings makes it that much more exciting, and it’s something we can look back on for years to come.

I wrote in the names of the playground near our school and the playground we played on that day. I showed the girls how the chart would work and I let them rank the two playgrounds we’d done so far. A quick lesson in averages and we figured out their overall ratings.

Game on.

Practically every day they ask if we can go to a playground. Sometimes we can, sometimes we can’t. Even if we’re driving at night, they spot one and ask if we can stop. Usually we can’t.

But, the point is, this is such a simple thing. Playing on a playground is not an expensive outing. It’s free. It’s beyond Caroline in a lot of ways but oftentimes she’ll come for the ride just to see the playground and hang out, even if she’s too big to play on the equipment. It gets them outside, active and thinking. It keeps them enthused, and I’m pretty sure it’s something they’ll remember for years to come.

I have no idea how many we’ll get to over the summer. I made spaces for ten playgrounds, but there’s plenty of room for more if we get to them. We’ll see how the summer goes. There’s lots of other fun stuff to do, so The Great Playground Challenge is often for those days when there otherwise would be “nothing to do.” Alex has made it a personal goal to be able to master the monkey bars by summer’s end, so this will help her achieve that goal, hopefully, before school starts.

It’s just one example of a time when you *should* make a mountain out of a molehill.

There are playgrounds all over the state, just waiting for us to come and try them out.

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What we’re doing for fun this summer: Summer Memories Timeline

25 Jun

If you’ve been a reader of my blog since last fall, you may remember my post about our Summer Vacation banner. It was not something I’d started on purpose and it turned out to be so much more than I expected. The kids loved it.

I had not thought of doing anything like it this summer, but then a few weeks ago I was reading a blog and clicked from that blog to another blog, and saw something that caught my eye: a summer memories clothesline-timeline.

Only problem is: I can’t find that blog I’d landed on, anywhere. I didn’t think I was going to do it, so I didn’t save it. I’ve searched the internet like crazy but can’t find it.

Anyway, after seeing this, it stuck in my head and as I drove around these past couple of weeks, it kept popping into my head. (When I drive from story to story, place to place, I drive in silence–I get a lot of thinking done this way.)

I decided to try a summer timeline for my kids, I thought they’d love it, but I didn’t want to use a clothesline because I didn’t think I could put it up very well in our house nor could I store it well afterwards. (I save everything.)

Instead, I chose to use banner paper ($1.99 roll of Doodle Paper from Christmas Tree Shops) and decorative packing tape ($2 at CVS) along with some little square pieces of paper for them to write their events on the timeline ($1 at CVS).

They saw me buy the Doodle Roll last week before school ended and right away they knew something was up. Alex asked me every day why I bought the Doodle Roll. They wanted to know when they’d be let in on my Top Secret project.

Finally, the last day of school came. With my work schedule I only had one hour in which to create my timeline but I’d planned it out pretty well so I knew what I wanted to do.

Here’s how it looked, I know you’re dying to see it, right?

Our timeline: a blank slate ready to be filled up with a record of our summer memories.

The only disappointment was that I wanted to print out a photo to put on the timeline of them from that morning on the last day, but my printer was broken, not working AT ALL so I couldn’t. However, the “blank slate” aspect of their timeline seemed very appealing to them; the fact that they had this entire space to fill up with things we were doing, places we were going, people we were seeing.

When they walked in on that last day of school, they gasped and ran up the stairs–it’s right at the top of the stairs– to see what the new project was. (We’re a very project-based family!) They were immediately so excited, and I was so thrilled.

Their biggest concern: what if the timeline isn’t big enough? Then what? My solution: we can easily add a section to it and remove the last square I put at the end as an example. They were pleased with that answer.

So we’re off and running with our timeline. Throughout the summer I’ll try to remember to post an update so you can see how it’s looking.

I have no idea how it will turn out, but isn’t that half the fun?

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What’s For Dinner Wednesday: Chicken, Grapes and a Dash of Karma

13 Jun

I made this recipe for the first time in January 2003 and I marked it as being “Excellent” at that time. it was just as good this time, as it was then. At least I thought so.

It’s hard to find one meal to feed five people and have all five people like it. It almost never happens. Very rarely anyway. My goal is basically to find one meal that everyone at least likes one part of.

Last week though, I thought I had a winner. I was shooting for at least four out of five “likes” on this one. It was a recipe I’d first made years ago, out of the “Better Homes and Gardens New Dieter’s Cookbook” in 2003, and we loved it. I’m sure I’ve made it since then, but not recently and not since we’ve had all three of the girls. None of them remembered ever having it before.

Liz I was pretty sure on, and Caroline I was pretty sure wouldn’t like it. She hates apple juice, but I was hoping maybe the rest of it would win her over.

(I’ll give away the ending: It didn’t.)

Alex though, was a sure thing. I had considered the ingredients as always, when planning the meal: chicken, pasta, grapes and apple juice. She likes the pasta, the apple juice and the grapes. All those things, a lot.

I served the meal. I sat back. I waited.

“So?????”  I asked them.

Don liked it, I liked it, Liz was fine with it, but I couldn’t wait to get Alex’s review. I was expecting two thumbs up.

She hated it.

And this is where the dash of karma comes in.

Chicken, grapes, pasta….karma.

I said to her, “Alex, you love everything in this! You love grapes, you love apple juice and you love pasta! How could you not love this meal?”

She said, “Mommy, I do like all those things by themselves, I do. I just don’t like all of those things touching each other.”

BAM.

I hate when my food touches. If you look back at all my recipe posts, you can always tell when the dish being photographed is mine because the food is all spread waaayyyyy apart on the plate.

She’s already a mini-me. This just seals the deal. Her food can’t touch. I’m so doomed.

In any case, the dish is really yummy, as unusual as it sounds. You can use any color grapes or a mix of more than one color. I had green so that’s what I used. Here is the recipe. Give it a try.

CHICKEN WITH GRAPES

INGREDIENTS

4 small skinless, boneless chicken breast halves (12 oz. total) *I used chicken tenders.

Nonstick Spray Coating

1/2 cup white grape juice, apple juice or apple cider (this time I used apple juice, the last time I used apple cider.)

1 tsp. instant chicken bouillon granules

1 tsp. cornstarch

1 cup seedless green and/or red grapes, halved

Hot cooked linguine (optional)

Fresh herb, such as oregano or thyme (optional) *I opted out.
DIRECTIONS

1. Rinse chicken; pat dry with paper towels. Spray an unheated large skillet with nonstick coating.

2. Preheat skillet over medium to medium-high heat. Add chicken. Cook for 8-10 minutes or until tender and no longer pink, turning to brown evenly. Remove from skillet, keep warm.

3. Meanwhile, combine grape or apple juice or cider, bouillon granules, and cornstarch. Add to skillet. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly.

4. Cook and stir two minutes more. Stir in grapes; heat through. Serve over chicken.

If desired, serve with linguine and garnish with herb. (I used wide egg noodles instead of linguine this time. No herbs.)

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A word about Summer and The Whole Bag of Chips

11 Jun

We spend tons of time outdoors in the summer!

Summer is coming! School days are numbered now, down to the single digits, thankfully.

Summer is my absolute favorite time of the entire year. I love having my kids all home and I love having no set schedule. We spend lots of time together as a family, since the majority of Don’s time off as a school administrator takes place during July and part of August. It makes up for the zillions of hours he spends at work during the school year. When he went to work for a full day this past Saturday, I knew in my head that Summer is coming, and that made it an easier pill to swallow, knowing he’d be gone for the day on a weekend, normally our family time, but that soon we’ll have lots of time to spend together with him.

I started this blog on September 25 and since that time it has had over 15,000 hits. I am thrilled with the response it’s had.

However, like I said, it’s summer.

As a work-from-home-mom-writer, I find it hard to balance all the hours of computer time I have to put in with the time I want to spend with my family, but this year with them all in school all day, it was easy–I just type when they’re not here during the days, or when they’re in bed at night.

During the summer, not so much.

Therefore, during the next couple of months, until school starts again, I can make no promises as far as my blog posting schedule. Right now I post five days a week consistently, never missing a day.

I can promise you this: summer won’t be that way. I’ll be working my regular newspaper job as always, but the blog will be on hiatus temporarily, while we’re off doing our family thing.

Family First. Always.

If I have time to post I will, as often as I can, but I will not make a commitment to any type of schedule for the summer. I’m sure you all understand.

Enjoy your own summer, enjoy your kids tons and tons while you have them home. As we all know, it won’t always be that way. They won’t be little forever and we will wish we had this time again. Cherish every single minute, even the tough times. (Yes, my kids bicker constantly too.)

Happy summer!

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Experiences like no other

4 Jun

Girl Scouting has provided our girls with experiences they might not be able to get anywhere else.

I’ve just returned from a Girl Scout camping weekend. Not quite a whole weekend, but about 36 hours.

Long enough.

It was not my first time going to, participating at or working for a Girl Scout Camp. I’ve been a leader for five full years now, and as a kid I was a Girl Scout for many years. I went to camp then, I’ve worked there as an adult so my kids could go, and I’ve chaperoned camping trips for all my daughters with this weekend being the most recent one.

Of course it rained like crazy yesterday, poured actually. Again.

And in my head through much of the trip I was thinking, “I’m getting too old for this ‘job.'” I thought it as I drove half the troop down there in the rain yesterday with my co-leader driving the other half down right behind me, and I thought it as I traipsed all through the camp in the rain, and I thought it as I laid awake in our leader “cabin” until 4am listening to them laugh and giggle and tell stories.

Four A.M.

But, throughout the whirlwind weekend I also watched them in amazement, thinking and talking with my co-leader (who was a saint to spend her wedding anniversary at a rainy camp in a cabin with me rather than at home with her husband of 16 years) about how much these girls have grown and matured and changed from when we first started this troop together as Brownies, second graders, five years ago. We looked at them all, not even believing it.

We had eight really great stations to rotate through at camp yesterday which took us from first thing in the morning until the movie and campfire at the end of the night. We watched them create beautiful beaded jewelry at the jewelry-making station, being instructed in the craft by some of the leading women in the jewelry industry here in our state. We listened along with them as they learned about how to write a check and a deposit slip at the financial literacy class, from an instructor at one of the local universities. We cheered and encouraged them as they shot their bow and arrow during archery class, knowing full well that some of them were doing it for the first time. There was a science class, a tie-dye station, a dance class where they learned the moves to an upcoming flash mob taking place this summer, S’Mores, and they were laughing and smiling, and hugging, and chatting, and laughing some more, the entire day.

And night.

Did I mention they were awake in their tent til 4am?

Many of them haven’t slept too far away from home before. Many of them have never slept in a tent or cleaned a latrine (there are some benefits to being a leader and not having to do the camp “kapers” is one of them) many of them have never shot a bow and arrow or a bottle rocket or been in a flash mob before.

Being a Girl Scout has allowed our own daughters and the scouts we lead, to experience things they couldn’t experience in the normal course of their days. With us as leaders, our troop has taken field trips, had a scholarship named after our troop, done community service projects, slept inside an aquarium near the shark tank, gone behind the scenes on movie sets, at radio stations, TV shows, movie theaters, stage theaters, been on the news, in the newspaper, met the mayor, a city councilwoman, a comic book designer, learned how to collect, categorize and display postage stamps, sold cookies, cookies and more cookies-showing a business sense and dedication like you wouldn’t believe- and they’ve loved every minute of it.

And now, they’ve gone camping. Overnight.

All because I chose to be a Girl Scout leader five years ago so that my daughter could be a Girl Scout.

So as I laid in my cabin last night, chatting with my co-leader til I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, someone I hardly knew before scouting, as we were listening to them laugh and giggle and shriek, I knew that this was the reason I was there at that moment.

Thank you Girl Scouts!

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Cookies for a Cause: The Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookie that started it all

1 Jun

Baking cookies to help fight kids’ cancer might be the most worthy cause I’ve ever baked for.

Have you ever heard of Cookies for Kids’ Cancer? If you haven’t, you should check out the link and read more about it. It’s a very worthy cause: bake sales to help find a cure for kids’ cancer.

Earlier this year I did a story about a local bake sale event hosted by Heather Wirtz, the editor of the Macaroni Kids newsletter for the Cranston/Kent area. The sale raised money for the Cookies for Kids’ Cancer non-profit organization and it was hugely successful. I baked one of my favorite Christmas Cookie recipes, Brown Eyed Susans, for the bake sale.

At the event itself I was given several handouts to help me in writing my article and I met one of the family members, Bonnie Soper, who told me how her cousin Gretchen lost her son to childhood cancer several years ago. Gretchen and her husband founded Cookies for Kids Cancer as a way to fight back, and they started with a simple bake sale.

One of the handouts that was given to me was for the “Cookies for Kids’ Cancer Best Bake Sale Cookbook” and on the flip side was a recipe for Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies and it was entitled, “The Cookie That Started It All.”

Other than the baking time, which was cut off, the full recipe was there, and I decided that I wanted to try out the recipe some day, in honor of Cookies for Kids’ Cancer. I wrote the news story about Heather’s bake sale in January and it was almost June before I had the chance to try out the cookie recipe.

They were delicious and with every bite I thought of this important cause, and I knew I had to write about it. I’m so grateful and thankful every day that my family has its health. Those who know me well, know my kids are sick constantly, weekly, and it’s exhausting keeping up with it all. But they’re not terminally ill, and I keep that in mind daily as well as every week when I’m running someone to a doctor for one ailment or other. We are very, very lucky. In the big picture, they are healthy.

Caroline was a big help with these cookies, scooping and pressing the batter for each and every one.

Speaking of my kids, my daughter Caroline was a big help to me this past weekend as I made these cookies to take with us to a Memorial Day cookout. The recipe yields quite a few cookies and that’s one reason I made it. There were enough to bring and enough to leave some home as well. I made all the batter and she scooped it onto the tray and flattened them to go into the oven.

The recipe, as I said above, did not have the bake time on the card, which was an advertisement for the cookbook. But, I looked up a similar recipe in one of my cookbooks here and found that 10-12 minutes on a cookie sheet was the perfect time. The only time I went over that time was when I used a baking stone. I find that those take longer for cookies to bake than the metal trays.

I hope you’ll consider doing a Cookies for Kids’ Cancer bake sale for your organization’s next fundraiser, or that the next time you’re looking for a unique gift, you go to their site and order some Cookies for Kids’ Cancer cookies to be sent to that special someone.

And now, here is the recipe, the Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookie that started it all.

This recipe makes a lot of batter so you need a good, strong mixer to mix it up.

CHOCOLATE CHIP OATMEAL COOKIES

Yield: 3-4 dozen cookies
INGREDIENTS

2 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 cup light brown sugar

1 large egg at room temperature

1 large egg yolk, at room temperature

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup quick cooking oats or old fashioned rolled oats

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. kosher salt (I didn’t have kosher)

3 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Cookies bake until lightly browned around the edges.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Place butter and sugars in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a paddle and beat until smooth and creamy.

Add egg, egg yolk, and vanilla, one at a time, beating well between additions.

Place the flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl; mix well and add to the butter mixture.

Beat until everything is well incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the chocolate chips and beat again.

(You can cover this and refrigerated up to one week.)

Form the dough into heaping teaspoon sized-balls and place them about two inches apart on the prepared cookie sheet. I used the smaller Pampered Chef scoop to scoop out my balls of dough.

Using your palm, gently press down.

*At this point the recipe begins to say how you can alternately roll the dough into a log, and it gets cut off here. I assume it says you can slice and bake them. The baking time is cut off as well, since this was an advertisement for the cookbook. However, I can take it from here.*

Bake 10-12 minutes on a cookie sheet, slightly longer on the baking stones, until lightly browned around the edges.

Let sit 1-2 minutes on cookie sheet to cool before removing to cool completely on wire racks.

Consider hosting a Cookies for Kids’ Cancer bake sale for your organization’s next fundraiser.

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