Normally I do not curse the noisy toys. They do not bother me. I can tune them out.

When my impossibly adorable son begins setting them all off at the same time, however…I curse the noisy toys.

It’s blizzarding outside tonight. Husband got off work early because the roads on that side of town were already turning into an ice rink. I have absolutely no objection to that. I’ve been in my snuggly cozy warm pajamas I got for Christmas all day, and husband promptly changed into his when he got home (hence the blue clad knees in the picture). We made omelettes for dinner and are now engrossed in a rerun of Iron Chef America. After the baby goes to bed, we’ll turn on the fireplace, make some tea, and finish “Avatar”.

I love evenings like this.

Even if noisy toys are involved.

Yeah, yeah, I know, another cooking post. But it’s what’s going on right now. So bear with me.

I mentioned many posts ago that I make my own spaghetti sauce, and would share the story here. So here we are!

It all started in the first several months of my marriage. My parents gave me a Rachael Ray cookbook for Christmas. I’d been teaching myself to cook, since when I first got married my version of a gourmet dinner was pasta, jarred sauce, and chunked chicken that I pretty much seasoned with whatever and then overcooked.

And then Rachael Ray changed my life.

One thing about Rachael Ray is she pretty much makes all her own sauces. I found that fascinating. And when I made her chicken parmesan for the first time, I was hooked on making my own sauce. It was so zesty, so fresh tasting, way better than jarred sauce. And I got a certain sense of pride from it. Plus, you get to control your ingredients. I can pronounce everything in my sauce. I like that.

Since then we have rarely purchased jarred pasta sauce at the store. Making my own is just so much cheaper. And yummier. And crazy easy. Since I started making it, the recipe has evolved into an all-purpose sauce that I use for just about every marinara sauce application. I’ve been asked for the recipe many times, and even though I don’t technically follow a printed recipe any more, I’ll attempt to explain my method.

First, make sure you are properly attired. An apron helps. Pajamas are optional. But I like them.

I use:

1 six-pound can of crushed tomatoes, purchased at Sam’s Club. It costs less than $2 there. You can also get 28 oz. cans at the regular supermarket for pretty cheap. (I like the texture of crushed tomatoes – saucy but still a little rustic. You can use whatever floats your boat. Sauce, puree, petite diced, whole tomatoes mashed up by hand…the world is your oyster! Er, tomato. I guess.)

1 can tomato paste.

Several large cloves of garlic, crushed or finely minced.

A heavy pinch of crushed red pepper flakes.

Olive oil.

Salt & pepper, parsley, basil, thyme, sugar, and a squirt of lemon juice (unless, like me, you are out of lemon juice that particular day – then you’ll just have to live without it).

Start by peeling and pulverizing the garlic into a fine mince. You can use a garlic crusher, or mince it with a knife. I typically use what I affectionately call “The Little Demon Chopper” (until I burned out the motor grinding flax seed), so named for its ability to liquefy potatoes in a split second. On low. Yeah, there were no hash browns that morning…

Coat the bottom of a large pot with a thin layer of olive oil. Add the garlic and the red pepper flakes. Begin heating the pot over medium heat. When the garlic begins to sizzle, move it around and let it cook for a few moments to bring out the flavor, but do not let it brown.

Add the crushed tomatoes. Note that there is absolutely no clean way to do this. I always splatter at least a little bit somewhere. Usually a lot, though. So wait until your neat-freak of a husband is not nearby, or he will bodily shove himself in front of you with a damp paper towel to wipe up the mess.*

What’s that? You don’t have a neat-freak husband who does this? Oh. Oops. Pardon my rabbit trail.

*I love you, honey!

Now add the tomato paste, and the seasonings to taste. I find about 1 Tbsp of sugar for a large pot of sauce is perfect for us – just enough to cut the acidity of the tomatoes without making the sauce too sweet. And the lemon juice adds a nice tang.

Bring the sauce to a nice bubble, then reduce the heat and let it simmer for as long as your little heart desires. At least an hour, if you intend to serve it that same day. Let it cool before putting it your desired storage container.

I store it a few different ways. Sometimes I freeze it in individual Tupperware containers, enough to make one dinner and some leftovers for lunch the next day. Most of the time, I just put it in one big Tupperware in the refrigerator. We go through it pretty fast so it’s gone before it has a chance to go bad.

Because I use it for this:

Chicken Parmesan, crusted in oats instead of bread crumbs, over spaghetti squash. It’s a new family favorite.

And one of the reasons the sauce goes quickly.

P.S. I took all these pictures myself with my new toy! I’ll introduce you to my toy soon. AND I also moved the pictures from the camera to the computer all by myself! Are you proud of me? Huh? Huh? Huh?

I don’t bake.
I can bake. I’m rather good at it when I do it. But normally, I don’t. Especially right now, when I cannot consume the fruits (or cakes…or cookies…or pies…) of my labor, lest the Himalayan Mountains suddenly take up residence on my face.
UNLESS.
I find something so intriguing, so delicious looking, so certain to delight the palates of my friends and family that I simply must bake it!
And that would be how my kitchen was taken over one day last week by The Pioneer Woman’s cinnamon rolls.
People, I can barely make a cake without almost having a meltdown. And here I had decided to tackle homemade cinnamon rolls??? Was I crazy??? Probably. But you know what? They were actually easy. Crazy easy. Almost stupid easy. They take a long time, yes, but the beauty of this recipe is that it lends itself to cleaning-as-you-go. Because my biggest problem with baking – aside from the whole I-don’t-eat-wheat-or-sugar technicality – is The Cleanup. Baking is not necessarily a clean-as-you-go proposition. You don’t get to put your creation in the oven and then go make a cup of chai and put your feet up. Nope. You get to turn around and face the hordes of ingredients sitting on your kitchen counter and all the dirty mixing bowls and measuring cups and teaspoons and tablespoons and that darn whisk your husband disappeared with so he could lick it clean.
But the cinnamon rolls…they were a different story.
The process is rather time intensive, yes. But I made the dough the night before and let it slow-rise in the refrigerator overnight.

Ain’t that pretty? Anyway, my point is, it was done. Finished. No cleanup from that the next morning.
Now, the rolls themselves are A MASSIVE MESS to make. But it’s so much stinking fun you forget you’re smearing flour and butter and sugar all over your kitchen counter!

Besides, after you’re all done, you can scrape up a big ol’ dollop of butter and sugar and cinnamon with your finger and…yeah, you know you all do it!
And look, just LOOK, at how pretty these babies are.

Is that not worth it?

And then, when the rolls are all nestled in their pans, you’re left with relatively few things to wash. The dough pan, whatever you melted the butter in, and the kitchen counter. Oh, and your hands. No, licking them doesn’t count. Okay, yes, you’re right, the butter and sugar and cinnamon all over them are delicious. But you do still have to wash them. Like, with soap and water. Okay?
Hey, while you’re at it, leave some of the sugar on your hands and you’ve got a built in scrub. So you just made cinnamon rolls AND got a spa treatment!
And you’ve just made Christmas presents for everyone!

Who wouldn’t want a present this pretty?
Or this delicious?
Yes, I ate one.
Yes, I now have Himalayas.
Nope, I don’t care. It was worth every bite.

And I am SO doing this again. Soon. Or at least next Christmas.

I have a very strong opinion about something. I’m not one to loudly voice my strong opinions much – I feel my convictions are best served in other ways, and I don’t want to make people feel like I’m forcing my opinions on them because I hate feeling that way myself.

But this opinion, I’m going to voice.

It was triggered this morning by a comment I read on a friend’s blog. This friend gets unfriendly comments quite regularly, which is bound to happen when you put your personal business out there, and she has always handled them with as much grace and class as possible. But THIS comment, the one that set me off this morning, was in my humble opinion the lowest of the low. It incensed me. Every fiber of my being wanted to hit the keyboard with a reply to the commenter. But I have committed to keep myself out of any drama online, so I clicked away to something else before I typed something I’d regret.

Now, here’s my opinion: The anonymity we have on the internet is not an excuse to say things we wouldn’t say in person.

We should not misrepresent ourselves online. We should be, at our core, the same person in all situations. That’s one of the reasons I’m pretty darn careful about what I blog – I want to be sure I’m representing myself correctly. I don’t ever want to mislead my readers about my character or my personality.

See, the person who made that mean comment may not be what their friends and family would consider a mean person. Those who know that person in real life might be shocked at that comment. But now that comment is out there, a thread in the tapestry of the internet, for all the world to see. And all the world, who will never know that person other than that comment, will form an opinion of that person based on that one mean comment.

Everything we write and post on the internet is a thread in our own tapestries. People are going to form opinions of me and my opinions based on those few threads, without being able to see the entire tapestry. Am I representing myself accurately in those few threads?

I like my husband.

Yes, I love him. Madly. But I also like him.

We do this cutesy little schtick sometimes. The kind of thing that makes everyone around us want to gag. So we usually only do it in private. It goes something like this…

“Hey, guess what?”

“What?”

“I kind of like you.”

*Gasp!* “Really? I kind of like you too!”

*Gasp!* “Really? We should go on a date!”

“Yeah! And maybe get married!”

“Yeah! And have a baby!”

And then we giggle maniacally at ourselves and go on with our lives.

Cheesy? Yes. But I think it reminds us that as important as loving each other is, it’s also very important to act like we like each other. Asking for things respectfully, saying thank you, acknowledging a job well done, offering assistance…little things like that.

Like tonight, at my Grandpa’s birthday party out at a restaurant, the baby had a poopy diaper. When I asked our waitress if there was a changing station in the ladies’ room, she told me the only one was on the complete opposite end of the (very large) restaurant. That’s when Husband said “I saw one in the men’s room right here – I’ll take him.”

Isn’t that nice of him?

And from my side, I know that I have a tendency to be sarcastic and could have made joking remarks about how many poopy diapers I change in a day and it’s about darn time he did one this week, but I know that if I instead say “Thank you so much, honey – I appreciate you” it will make my husband feel like he just won a million bucks. And that makes me happy. I want him to feel like that.

Because I like him.

On our honeymoon, April 2007

Husband and I have very different approaches to Christmas. It causes conflict between us sometimes in the weeks leading up to it. We finally hashed out those differences and both realized it’s simply a matter of different temperaments. I like a “Silent Night” type atmosphere, while my husband goes “Dashing through the snow!” with great vim and vigor. But we both equally love Christmas.

So what DOES Christmas mean to us?

*In no particular order, except the first one…I just like to number things for fun…

First and foremost, it is the time we celebrate the birth of our Savior. It’s a fact that all too often gets overlooked in all the holiday madness. We set up the nativity scene with our decorations and acknowledge our thankfulness for His birth during the Christmas Dinner blessing, we hold the cute little candle during the obligatory church service…but that’s pretty much it for a lot of us. But we’re determined to make it the center of our family’s Christmas celebrations. This year, we begin a new tradition – as soon as we get home on Christmas Eve, we open our jammies, change into them, and then read the story of Christ’s birth by the light of the Christmas tree. I’m really looking forward to that, and looking forward to finding ways to incorporate it more and more as the years go by.

Second, it’s about giving. We love giving. Gifts, donations, services, food, whatever. We love it. There are opportunities to give year-round, yes, but there’s something magical about giving at Christmas.

Third, it’s about family. We have traditions on both sides that we love celebrating. For my family, it’s gathering at Grandma’s house on Christmas Eve. We’ve done it my entire life. It’s our big Christmas thing. Other holidays throughout the year are kind of “whatever goes”, but Christmas Eve? It’s non-negotiable. For Husband’s side, it’s all about spending time together on Christmas Day – sharing gifts, cooking, enjoying the meal together, taking a photo on the stairs. This year will be the first time Husband and I host Christmas Dinner at our house. We’re looking forward with much excitement to preparing and serving our first Christmas Dinner!

Fourth, it’s about baking. Yeah, you know it is! Not that I eat much of what I bake. Or that I bake much at all. But this week, I will. I am attempting The Pioneer Woman’s cinnamon rolls and delivering them to multiple friends and family as Christmas gifts. Because who doesn’t love a nice, warm, gooey pan of cinnamon rolls on a chilly morning? I’m making the dough the night before because A) it will be one less thing to do on the day of, and B) the dough is easier to work with when it’s hung out in the refrigerator overnight, thus resulting in prettier cinnamon rolls.

My Christmas actually begins on Thursday – Husband is taking me on a special date, where he said I will get one of my presents because it has something to do with the date. I have no idea what he has planned. I am clueless. Although when lunch was mentioned as part of the date I did inform him that I like Marigold’s. I’m dreaming of their spinach salad. So that’s the only part I have a clue about.

Guess we’ll all just have to wait and see how it turns out! The date, I mean. And the cinnamon rolls. Meh, I’ll just have to do pictures of both, won’t I?

Two cancelled European flights.

14 1/2 hours standing in lines.

A day and a half in the Amsterdam airport.

Major jetlag.

And my youngest brother is home for Christmas.

You can’t HANDLE the cuteness!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Merry One-Week-Until-Christmas-Eve!

It’s hard not to take things personally when it’s about your child. Even when those things have nothing to do with you, when they’re completely beyond your control. You still feel responsible. You still feel guilty. You still feel like a bad mom. Oh, your mind tells you that it’s not your fault and you’re a good mom, but it takes a while for your heart to get that memo.

I’m writing this in 2 parts – today and yesterday – and then posting all at once. So here we go:

Thursday, December 09, 2010:

We had Caleb’s 1 year old checkup today. Don’t panic, nothing’s terribly wrong with him, as you might think from my musings above. Not everything is perfect, though. He’s still not crawling, and based on some of his behaviors I described to our pediatrician when we try to help him crawl or stand up, she recommends that we have Caleb work with a physical therapist. I had really, really hoped it wouldn’t come to that. But it has. I feel a pang of guilt over the fact that I couldn’t get my baby to crawl by his first birthday. But I know I tried to help him and the doctor said there’s a probability that there’s something else physical going on, not just a willfulness to not crawl. Hence why she wants us to do PT, to see if that’s what’s going on so we can move forward – or so Caleb can move forward. Har dee har har. I made a funny.

When the doctor poked around Caleb’s tummy, she noted that it felt kind of firm where it should feel soft, and that his liver feels larger than normal. Okay, there went my heart dropping through the floor. It could be that he’s got some backup in his intestines too, she said. And any number of things could be causing things to feel funny to her poking and prodding fingers. So to figure all that out, we have to get an ultrasound of Caleb’s tummy, and get blood drawn for testing. Yippy skippy.

Oh, and that’s not even the best part. The BEST part is that Caleb can’t eat or drink anything for SIX HOURS prior to the ultrasound. *Insert Melissa making a whimpering sound HERE* Our doctor suggested getting it done as early in the morning as possible, so he gets those six hours in by sleeping. That’ll be easier than doing it later in the day. But still…my little guy is NOT happy in the morning until he’s had his breakfast. Breakfast is normally at 8. The ultrasound is at 9. So basically, I’ll be leaving him in his crib as long as I can, and then getting him up, changing and dressing him, putting him straight in the car and driving to the appointment. And I know he will NOT be happy about it.

And it’s going to completely screw up his schedule. Crud. Oh well. We’ll deal.

Because that’s what we moms do. We deal. When life throws us a curveball, we swing the bat differently.

Friday, December 10, 2010:

Just got home from everything. Settled, lunch in my tummy, Caleb napping soundly upstairs.

Today really started last night, when Husband started not feeling well and couldn’t sleep. Then I woke up not feeling well and we were both like “Greaaaaaaat.” Husband left for work with a promise that he would meet me at Caleb’s appointment. I’m really grateful for my husband. He wasn’t going to let me do this by myself. Especially not feeling well.

Caleb stayed in his crib happily until it was time for me to get him ready to go. Overall, he did pretty well after the initial “What are you DOING to me, crazy lady!” fit when I laid him down to change his diaper instead of plopping down on the couch to nurse. He remained relatively calm – just a little fussy here and there – while we waited for our turn at the ultrasound place. During the actual procedure, he actually laid still and was quiet. For most of it. He got a little wily there at the end, but nothing that couldn’t be handled by a few cuddles. I nursed him there while we waited for a radiologist to look at the images.

And the news?

His liver is NOT enlarged. Praise GOD. It was tough over the past 24 hours to not let my mind run every worst-case scenario. I wanted to cry when they told us, but no time. Off to get the bloods done!

We went to the lab at the hospital complex near our house. Husband held him for the actual procedure – kiddo is too strong for me when he decides to do a thrashing fit. It wasn’t too terrible horrible. He did “the wind up…aaaaaand the pitch!” when the lady stuck the needle into his vein, and hollered for the duration of the draw, but we don’t know if it was more because it hurt or because he was ticked off at us for holding him down. He’s never been a fan of being manhandled – even as a newborn, when tried to change his diaper or clothes he’d fight us.

And now we’re home. Caleb went straight down for a nap. I’ll get him up at 12:30 or 1 for lunch, depending on how hard he’s sleeping. Husband is off work for the rest of the day – he was going to get off early anyway because his department’s Christmas party is today, but he’s feeling pretty cruddy so he just came home with us. He’s upstairs napping, too. And I’m enjoying some peace and quiet. We probably won’t get the results of the bloodwork until next week. I’ll be surprised if we get it back today. But Caleb’s liver is fine, and that takes a huge load off my shoulders.

And now I’m going to go make myself a large cup of decaf chai and try to tune out the sound of the roofing crew hammering shingles down on our neighbor’s roof.

This has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster of a day for me. Sarah posted about what transpired in her life this past weekend. Please pray for her, her husband, and their children. We love them very much.

Nobody likes watching things like this unfold. We stand on the sidelines cheering our hearts out for so long, and then out of the blue, it feels like it all comes crashing down and our cheering hearts are silenced in shock. We sit down on the bleachers and stare for a while, feeling like the energy has just been sucked out of us. We think to ourselves, Why go on cheering? What is there to cheer for?

That was kind of how I felt upon first hearing the news, knowing how hearts I care about are breaking. I’m sure it’s how a lot of people felt initially. I just wanted to sit down and stare, not muster up the energy to have a little faith.

But now is the time for hope! Now is the time for faith and prayer and encouragement. Cheering is not just for the easy times – cheering is especially for the hard times. If we don’t keep standing and cheering for those we love, who will?

So here I stand, pom-poms held high, cheering at the top of my lungs. I will not stop praying. I will not stop hoping. I will not stop having faith.

Because Sarah hasn’t.