Baking Art

I like to make things pretty. Cupcakes are no exception. Awhile ago I came across a blog post that featured the coolest tri-coloured cupcakes I had ever seen. I wasted no time copying this idea. My friend Steph and I have the same birthday and she was having a party so I had an excuse. That was back in April. I took a few pics, but sadly none of the inside.

in the oven

 

They turned out awesome and were a huge hit with all of our artist friends. They were so fun to make that since then I’ve made them a few more times but the problem is I don’t really want to eat them because as it is I’ve been eating pretty poorly this summer and I’m getting fat. So I need an excuse.

The other day was my work bbq so I decided to make more! This time I tried to document a little better. And I’m proud to say that I didn’t have ANY. Yay me!

ready for the oven

 

fresh from the oven

isn't she purdy?

 

 

 

 

yum!

You should wear a helmet

Every now and then when I’m walking down my street I’ll giggle to myself because of something Jack said to Marc a few weeks ago. We were walking down our street and Marc turned back to tell me something. When he turned around there was a tree branch in his face. No biggie, Marc is super tall and the tree branches all hang really low on our street. It’s the kind of thing that normally you wouldn’t even acknowledge but Jack did. In all seriousness he looked up at his father and said, “You should wear a helmet.” Marc and I thought that this was hilarious. Jack failed to see what was so funny about this suggestion. So sometimes when I’m walking down the street I picture Marc wearing a helmet, as though mentally challenged, going for a stroll and it makes me laugh. Out loud.

A lollipop for the road?

We were at the grocery store, getting some ingredients for that night’s dinner, and as we’re leaving Jack announces, “Mama, I want a lollipop for the road.” Seriously. Where does he get this stuff? Okay, okay, he gets it from me. I’m all about the “one for the road.” Like when we leave the park I give him a Nutrigrain bar for the road.

We’d been home for about a half an hour and he just wouldn’t let this lollipop thing go. I told him I’d give him one after lunch and he proposed having one for lunch. Always negotiating.

I’m not even sure how he got the idea in his head in the first place. When he initially made the request I looked around to see if maybe there was some kid suckin’ on a lolly, or perhaps a display at the cash. Nope. Nothin’. His brain is programmed to desire sweet and forbidden treats. Not that lollipops are forbidden, but for lunch they are.

Anyway, he ate his lunch and forgot about the lollipop. Mama 1, Jack 0.

Son of a crap

Okay. So sometimes I’m known to utter the words, “SON OF A MOTHER!” or “HOLY CRAP!” I’m trying really hard not to swear (in front of children). As it turns out, Jack is hanging on to my every word and spitting it back out in his own fashion, thus, son of a crap. I’m conflicted as to whether to be angry or proud. Also overheard, “Fricken mother.” He muttered that one under his breath as he was trying, unsuccessfully, to put the wheels back on his little school bus. I’m going to be in so much trouble when he starts school.

You know how kids say the darndest things? Well Jack says the damnedest things. I don’t know where he gets this stuff. As if it’s not bad enough that he’s always telling me to shave my legs, the other day his little fingers found their way to my armpit. You know what the little bugger said?! “Mama, you have a beard in your armpit.” Okay, this was a GROSS exaggeration. It had been like two days since my last pit shave, there was hardly a beard going on in there. Jeeze.

And now he’s started calling his little sister “Misty.” He certainly mystifies me. I wonder what he dreams about at night. I asked him once, he said, “sleeping.” I asked him what else, he said, “waking up.” Whatever. He’s awesome. I love the crap out of him.

I just want to eat cookies for a little while

Last week I went to get a few things at the grocery store with the kids. As we entered the store there was a massive display of cookies, 2/$4. Jack saw them and his face lit up, “Mama! We have to get those!”  Normally I disregard such requests, but this time I thought, what the hell. 2/$4, a small price to pay to fill a 3-year-old’s heart with joy and make his day.

We chose the Pirate cookies, which in case you don’t know are peanut butter oatmeal sandwich cookies, and classic chocolate chip. Jack was very excited, we rarely buy cookies that aren’t whole grain Fig Newtons. He was so excited in fact that he held the package of chocolate chip cookies close to his chest as we shopped and talked of how he would be eating them later.

We had a few more errands to run and by the time we got home it was 1:00, we were due for lunch. “What would you like for lunch Jackie?” His response, “Um, I don’t need lunch. I just want to eat cookies for a little while.” Very matter of factly. This boy is SO his father’s son when it comes to sweets.

Cookies for lunch was not an option so I gave him some pasta and told him that if he ate it all I would give him 2 cookies. Well. I’ve never seen that boy shovel food into his face with such fervour before. It took him, like, 90 seconds to eat his lunch. I was impressed by his passion. He was awarded 2 cookies as promised.

Happy is a little boy munching on cookies.

A few days later Marc and I broke out the cookies after putting the kids to bed. Now, little baby Hannah is a VERY light sleeper. Cookie packages are very LOUD when you are trying to be as quiet as possible. So rather than make a ton of noise, Marc did not return the cookies to their original packaging, instead, he put them in a tupperware container and put them in the kitchen.

At 6:00 in the morning Hannah woke up and I went to the living room to nurse her on the couch. I fell asleep and woke up at 7:00 to find my boy weeping before me. Deeply concerned as to why my son was so sad I asked, “Jackie, what’s wrong sweetheart?” He pointed to the empty cookie packages on the coffee table and said, “Mama, they’re empty.” Broke. My. Heart. What a sensitive little boy I have.

I explained to him that we had put the cookies away in a container in the kitchen and assured him that they were not all gone.  Just yet. He wandered off to the kitchen and I sort of half fell asleep again. I awoke moments later to my son calling out to me from the kitchen, “Mama! Mama! I don’t see them Mama!”

So I got up off the couch, with a sleeping Hannah in my arms, went to the kitchen, got the container, opened it up and showed Jack the cookies inside. Relieved, he uttered a simple, “Oh.”

Crisis averted. “Now, what would you like for breakfast?” I asked in my uber patient mother tone. “Um… Cookies.”

Literally

My son Jack takes everything so literally. I forget that he’s only three sometimes.

Like last week I took him downtown with me via bus and metro. On the way to the bus stop it was raining just a bit. I had brought an umbrella but she’s a tempermental little brella and it wasn’t worth taking her out because it’s not like we were going to get soaked. I explained to him that we didn’t need it for just a few drops but if it started to rain a lot, I would brake it out. He gave me a horrified look and said, “Mama, don’t brake it!” (Actually he said, “Mama, don’t blake it!” He is unable to pronounce Rs when they are the second letter in a word, and so they are replaced with Ls: flidge, fleezer, flee years old. It’s pliceless.)

Speaking of rain, Marc was singing Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head to Jack a few weeks ago. Jack was loving it and was singing it all day long. Now, you should probably know that I have two cats, Fimo and Raindrop.

Raindrop and Fimo

I tell you this because later I heard Jack belting out, “Fimo keeps falling on my head!” At first I was like, what a silly boy. Then, I got it. What a silly boy indeed, he must have thought his dad was crazy to be singing a song about our cat Raindrop falling on his head.

My son loves The Doodlebops, the self proclaimed “kids’ favourite rock ‘n’ roll band.” I record it on the DVR and sometimes I allow him to watch a marathon of Doodlebops so I can get things done. Whoever said that the TV is not a good babysitter knows not what they speak of (er, just don’t leave the house). Well the other day he was being so ANNOYING. Following me everywhere, demanding food (he demands food all day long, “I want sompine else…”) and trying to “help” me fold laundry. So I told him, “If you don’t leave me alone, I’m going t cut you off from the Doodlebops!” Again, a horrified look, “Don’t cut me Mama.”  My poor baby, as if I would cut him. What a sweetheart. It’s moments like that where I need to forget the laundry and just play with him for a little while.

I couldn’t wait for Jack to talk. Although sometimes I wish he would shut the hell up. But it was worth the wait, he’s so funny.

Oh yeah, Veruca Salt

And I’m not talking about that little bitch who went to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. The band. From the 90s. Why am I talking about Veruca Salt, you’re wondering? Because I heard a song on the radio today, that’s why. Not just any radio, we’re talking Sirius Satelite radio. Now that’s the shit.

My pops got Sirius a few years ago and I fell in love, but not with everything. I couldn’t handle the Elvis station, Sinatra got on my nerves, and one can only take so much Howard Stern. But I discovered The Coffee House. Finally a radio station that both my parents and I could agree on. It had all the chillax music that I love: endless Indigo Girls, Sarah McLachlan, Ben Harper, Matt Costa, Jack Johnson, Aimee Mann, even my Willie Nelson to list but a few. 

But I can only take so much of that acoustic singer-songwriter crap (I call it crap, but truly I love it). Sometimes I need to rock out ya know? So when Marc got me the awesomest birfday present eva, uh yeah, Sirius satelite yo, we tested out all the other stations. (The Coffee House by the way, makes Marc wanna barf. He’s more of an ACDC, Ozzy Osbourne, Korn kinda guy.)

We enjoy a little Hair Nation every now and then. 80s hair bands. Sometimes ya need a good dose of G ‘n’ R, Quiet Riot, Motley Crue and Poison. But if I ever hear Every Rose Has its Thorn again, I may just stick a thorn in my eye. They play it like 40 times a day!

Sooooo…. Sometimes we tune in to the old school (old skool?) hip hop station. My son loves this one because it allows him to shake his booty and practice his breakdancing. That’s right, my three-year-old breakdances. Ish. It turns out I LOVE old school hip hop. They play a lot of B-boys (of course) as well as other classics like Run DMC, Salt ‘n’ Peppa, Eazy E, Grandmaster Flash. They even play Kriss Kross! Those twelve-year-olds from the early 90s who wore their clothing backwards.

 Jump Jump
The Mac dad will make you Jump Jump
The Daddy Mac will make you Jump Jump
Kris Kross will make you Jump Jump

Ah, catchy little tune that one. But not as catchy as MARY MARY, WHY YA BUGGIN? OMG, they even play Me So Horny by 2 Live Crew. ‘Member that little ditty? Good times.

But we’re not genuine hip hopsters, so again, we can only take so much of that. So about 75% of the time we’re listening to Lithium, grunge and alternative music of the 90s. This is the music that shaped me, people! It’s like going into a time machine and landing  somewhere between my late teens and early 20s. Okay, so Pearl Jam was popular throughout the 90s, we get it Mr. Lithium. Aside from Pearl Jam, Chili Peppers, Beck, Stone Temple Pilots and Nirvana owning this station, sometimes you hear shit you forgot even existed… Like Veruca Salt! Wow. After that long winded journey, I’ve finally arrived at my point. Not that I actually have anything to say about them… In my last year of highschool I LOVED Veruca Salt. Angsty chicks they were (uh, and dudes?). I claim to have loved them but if you challenge me to name a song besides Seether I will fail miserably. Sorry. Hearing that song brought me back though…

Another band I forgot existed: Porno for Pyros. Sure they play a lot of Jane’s Addiction but I had totally forgotten about Perry Farrell’s (and Stephen Perkins’, but it’s all about Perry for me, *sigh*) subsequent band. Some of the best lyrics I’ve ever heard came from the song Pets.

Children are innocent
A teenager’s fucked up in the head
Adults are even more fucked up
And elderlies are like children

How true are those words?!

And how about those one hit wonders? Sex and Candy (not one of my faves) by Marcy Playground plays all the time, annoyingly. And Fire Water Burn from the Bloodhound Gang. It was always fun to drunkenly belt out, “WE DON’T NEED NO WATER LET THE MOTHER FUCKER BURN, BURN MOTHER FUCKER BURN!”

I love my Sirius.

The end.

The Pressure Is On

To post something worth reading. I prefer to wait until something interesting or funny has happened so that I don’t just blah blah blah about nothin’. But Steph has a herniated disk and can’t get around much so she’s spending a lot of time on the interweb and is craving more Burnzy bloggage. Thanks Steph!

When in doubt, talk about my babies. Jack talks so I always have a lot to say about that one. He’s a funny fellow and is a total sponge. He absorbs everything he hears and then spits it back out. I must watch what I say. I used to swear quite a bit but I have to curb that around the boy, so I try to be creative. I had a terrible habit of constantly exclaiming, “SON OF A BITCH!” Then one day from my boy’s mouth, “SON A BITS!” So now I say “SON OF A MOTHER!” (which some people say is actually worse but whatev) So now he says, “SON A MUDDAH!”

Lately though, he’s been using the word dingleberry a lot. If you know me, then you know that I say dingleberry all the time (after all, I had to let shitballs go when Jack started talking). I’ve been saying it since before I even knew what it meant, I thought it was a cute word. Turns out that cute word means something really gross. I try not to call people dingleberries anymore, especially my staff when I’m working.

So anyway he recently started listing berries and threw dingleberry into the mix, “Raspberry, strawberry, blueberry, DINGLEBERRY!” Goodness. And then when I offered him a Fruit To Go he requested a dingleberry flavoured one. The next thing I know we’ll be at a cafe and I’ll be buying him a muffin and he’ll ask for a dingleberry muffin. Trust me, he will. And I’ll be mortified. What have I created?

An Observation, the follow up

So the other day I brought Jack to Oxford’s for breakfast. My boy likes his pancakes. Out of the blue he starts going on about James Taylor. “Mama  Mama! James Taylor! James Taylor” (Yes, after the ol’ forehead comment I told him who it was and he remembered the name.) Finally I realized what he was going on about. He thought that the man who works there (runs the place?) was James Taylor. Well, he is bald, and does have similar bone structure. But unlike Mr. James Taylor, this man has a mustache and I believe he’s Arabic.

Jack won’t be quiet about it and I’m praying that this guy doesn’t know who James Taylor is ’cause it’s starting to get embarrassing. So I tell Jack to shut it and that he’s being rude. This man is NOT James Taylor. Finally he leaves it alone.

The man brings us our juice and when he’s gone Jack notices a few drips on the table and says, “Somebody made a BIG mess!” So I say, “Somebody named Jack.” And he looks at me very seriously and says, “No. James Taylor.” I almost pissed myself.

Oh Costco, how I love you so

I’m not ashamed. I LOVE Costco. I’m fairly certain that there are physical changes in my body that occur once we’ve made that “Let’s go to Costco” decision. What’s that chemical called that your brain releases when you’re on ecstasy? Anyway.

As we get our carts (yes, 2 carts, one for our purchases, one to accomodate Hannah in her car seat) and flash that membership card to the dude who hands me some coupons, I can feel my anticipation rising. Ooh, there’s a coupon for toothpaste. We need toothpaste. Sweet.

Some people might ask why one would need 4 tubes of toothpaste or 48 rolls of toilet paper. Well, quite frankly, I don’t plan to ever stop brushing my teeth or wiping my ass. True, it is costly to buy all this stuff in bulk. I figure it’s an average of $10 per item. Ten items = $100 (I’m awesome at math). Yikes. However, if you figure the unit cost it’s actually quite economical. One needs to be very careful at Costco though. One must have some serious self control, as there are many temptations.

It was the Christmas of 2007. My dad hands me an envelope and says, “Here Little Sweetie, I didn’t know what to get you. I hope this is okay.” Be still my heart, it was a membership to Costco with a $500 gift card to boot!!! (Yes yes, I’m spoiled. Very spoiled, but not ungrateful. Anyway, technically it was a gift to the family, a joint membership for Marc and I.)

Well. I went a little nuts. To say the least.

It’s probably best to bring a list when going to Costco, but for a first time trip you need to see what they have. They have a lot. You don’t always know what you need until you see it, and suddenly you “need” a lot of things.

Since I had that $500 gc, I wasted no time and started hurling things into the cart. It took about 5 minutes before I had $100 worth of stuff in there. So far it was all stuff I needed. I needed: a year’s worth of pads, a large container of Flinstone vitamins, 4 tubes of toothpaste, 8 cans of diced tomatoes (I make a lot of pasta), a case of Kraft Dinner (that would be the first of many cases of KD to be purchased from Costco), 6 cans of Stagg chili, 4 boxes of crackers, 8 cans of Primo soups… Among other things. And we hadn’t even made it to the frozen food section yet.

Now don’t get e wrong, I LOVE to cook. Love it. But sometimes I don’t have the energy, or the time, or enough fresh ingredients. That’s why the frozen food section at Costco is one of my faves. They’ve got some really good quality delicious stuff, and alls you gotta do is pop it in the oven! Yummy pizzas, lasagnas (which can be nuked), chicken pot pies, wings etc. Oh and some veggie stuff too, like Commensal shepherd’s pie. The problem with the frozen food section though is that once you get it all home it must remain frozen. Freezer Tetris is only fun the first time.

Have I neglected to mention the sampling that goes on at Costco? When I was around fourteen or fifteen, I would accompany the ‘rents to Costco just for the sampling. Actually, that’s a lie. If ever my parents went shopping alone they’d come back with $300 worth of, well, nothing. My brother and sister and I would bitch and complain that there was nothing to eat for a week until they went shopping again. This time with me to yay and nay what went into the cart. I’m not sure that my mother appreciated my input though, as her bank account took a beating.

Back to the sampling. It’s pretty much understood that sampling is a no strings attached kind of deal. Yes, those who work the sample stations will try to sell you the goods, that is their job after all. But you are under no obligation to buy what they’re sampling. Just smile and nod and shove that mini chunk of cheesecake into your face. On a Saturday morning you can actually get full if you sample everything. My three-year-old son was able to skip lunch last time we went ’cause I loaded him up on samples. Bad mom? Not. These are hard economic times.

I can safely shop at Costco if I restrict myself to the contour of the store, food and household products. I have never done this. I always find myself venturing off to the middle that has all the things we really don’t need, even though I convince myself we do at the he time. Like on that first trip a couple of years ago I decided that Jack did need the first season of Passe Partout. I want him to be exposed to French as much as possible. I bought a bunch of other crap from Costco’s mid-section that day. Needless to say, when we got to the cash that $500 was spoken for. I believe we I went $17 over. Yowsa.

I am more careful when shopping at Costco now. I try to stick to things that we actually do need. I do bring a list. I will always buy things that aren’t on the list though. Can’t help it.

Wow. What have I become? Who’da thunk I’d ever have that much to say about Costco? I actually have more, I’m just holding back. I won’t even get into the Fairmount bagels that they sell in packs of 3 (that’s 18 bagels folks). Oh gosh. Must. Quit. While. Ahead.