Sunday Sweetness: Double Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

You’ll notice that we’re making cookies today. You’ll also notice that the title of my blog is ‘Realist Mom’. In the interest of staying true to my “real life” of a “real mom” commitment to you, my fabulous readers, I’ll tell you that I initially made carrot cupcakes that absolutely sucked. You know what’s even better? As with my other baking tragedy, I served them to company. (Sorry, Connor and Katie!) They were so bland and wet and gross, that after taking her first disappointing bite, Beans announced “You can NOT blog about these, Mom. They’re guh-ross!” So, yeah, I was feeling good about my baking prowess.

These cookies, though, they are delicious enough to actually redeem last night’s cupcake cataclysm. So sayest the Beans. That’s particularly surprising because I sort of improvised the recipe – and you all know, I do NOT improvise when I cook for the sake of everyone involved.

You could take this recipe and swap out the chocolate chunks and peanut putter chips for nuts and white chocolate chips or whatever you were in the mood for. Then we would all be improvising.

Double Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

Makes about 24 cookies.

1-1/2 c semisweet chocolate chips
2-1/2 c all-purpose flour
1-1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 c (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 c packed light brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1-2/3 c (10 oz pkg) peanut butter chips
1-3/4 c (11.5 oz pkg) chocolate chunks

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Melt the 1-1/2 cups of chocolate chips in a heat-proof bowl set over a pot of boiling water, stirring until completely melted. Once melted, set bowl aside and allow chocolate to cool to room temperature, but not harden.

Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the butter, brown sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl until fluffy and light. Beat in the melted chocolate and eggs until thoroughly combined. Stir in the peanut butter chips and chocolate chunks.

Scoop the dough onto ungreased cookie sheets by the level 1/4 cup, spaced 2″ to 3″ apart.

Bake for 12-14 minutes. Cookies will be set but still moist in the center. Let cookies sit on cookie sheet for a minute or 2 before transferring them to wire racks to cool.

Trust me, these are worthy of you – unlike those cupcakes.

What’s the worst result you’ve ever gotten baking?

If you like this post, check out the rest of my Sunday Sweetness posts!

Sockmageddon

Laundry is the bane of my existence. There is always something to be machine-washed or hand-washed or spot-treated or something. I tend to view laundry as having 3 discrete steps: washing, folding and the dreaded putting away. I guess I could throw a 4th step in there: gathering the laundry – which can be a challenge here, since dirty clothes must spend the evening hours making their way onto floors, so they might creep under beds and sofas.

Especially the socks. You could walk into any room of my house right now, and be almost certain to find a stray sock. It drives me nuts. If I dislike laundry in general, I loathe washing underwear. For the obvious reason – hello, it’s underwear! Also because there are so many things to fold and sort and match up, and how can you get any closure when they don’t match up?!

I keep those irritating unmatched socks in their own little basket and when it’s overflowing I can’t stand it anymore, I match and purge. Today was Sockmageddon. It was a bright spot in a day spent making this:

Laundry Room: Before

look like this:

Laundry Room: After

That’s right – I kicked laundry’s ass today.

And it felt good.

How do you manage your unmatched socks?

Project: Repaint the Dining Room – Part I

I like to start projects so that they have a sense of urgency – stripping all the wallpaper off of the dining room walls 2 weeks before Thanksgiving fits the bill perfectly. Panic has a tendency to trump procrastination.

Old wallpaper. Yes, I know that print is crooked.

We managed to get all the paper mostly down in one afternoon – even the kids helped without complaining – miracle! Here’s a little wallpaper removal tip: mix a few tablespoons of fabric softener in with a few cups of water in a spray bottle and you have a cheap wallpaper remover that smells good. Our paper wasn’t pre-pasted and our walls are plaster and lathe so the paper really stuck but once we got the top “layer” off to reveal the backing a little spritz of the fabric softener solution was enough to get it off – it just peeled right off the walls.

I think I changed the color of the dining room 6 or 7 times before I settled on the wallpaper. It has just never seemed right to me. The wallpaper, while attractive, had issues during installation and has driven me crazy since then. It was only a matter of time. Then the other day, I was vacuuming the top of the base moulding and a corner of the paper flapped up and well, its time had come.

I’ve decided to go with turquoise for the dining room – though finding just the right shade has been a challenge. I looked through about 100 paint chips before I narrowed it down to 2: Benjamin Moore 2055-20 and 2055-30. In my infinite wisdom, I thought I would save few dollars by having quarts made up at a big-box home improvement store before I committed to a color and bought the paint at my local Benjamin Moore dealer.

I should have known I was in trouble when the big store couldn’t match 1 of the 2 colors. I brought home the single quart, put some up on the wall and realized it didn’t look exactly right. Evidently, the big store couldn’t match either color. So much for penny-pinching.

So now I have the 2 actual colors on the wall…and I’m still not quite satisfied. I’ll be stopping at Sherwin Williams today to grab a 4th quart.

Only 16 days to go. No pressure.

Have you ever started a project with a tight deadline, deliberately or inadvertently?

Isn’t There a “P” in Privacy?

Would you like to know when I am at my most fascinating and interesting? When I’m on the toilet. That must be true, because I’m fairly certain that every time my butt so much as grazes that seat, there is a knock – or a paw – at the door. It’s never for anything earth-shattering, no. For the record, if the house is on fire or you’re bleeding or Colin Firth is at the front door – you have my permission to knock. Any of you. Mostly, it’s “what are you doing?’ (DUH!) or “have you seen my favorite socks – no, not those the other ones?” or – my all time favorite – “I just wanted to know where you were.”

The dogs will actually come in. Nikki can open the door with her paw (damn those harp handles) and plop herself at my feet. It’s nice to be loved and all – but geez, can’t a mom pee in peace?! Have you ever tried to fit 225 pounds of dog in a 4′ square bathroom? Let’s just say it takes the “rest” right out of the restroom.

In the interest of full disclosure (I’m talking about the potty now, so we’re pretty much there, right?), I will admit that I do take my phone into the bathroom with me so I can squeeze in a few satisfying moments of Words with Friends or Yahtzee – so occasionally I’m just sitting there. Is that so wrong? Don’t tell me I’m the only who knows how hot that laptop can get when it’s sitting on your real-life lap.

Even if I am engaged in bathroom…activities, shall we say, that create a less than desirable aroma in the restroom – my kids will still let themselves in, if only to comment on the atmosphere and make helpful suggestions on what I may or may not have eaten. WHY??

I thought I was in the clear when my children were past the age when you had to have them in the bathroom with you for fear they would kill or seriously injure themselves unsupervised for 3 minutes. Evidently not. Maybe the tables have turned. Maybe they think I can’t be left unsupervised for more than a few minutes at a time.

Can I be electrocuted if I drop my phone in the toilet?

Am I the only one this happens to?

Sunday Sweetness: Banana Crumb Muffins

I really don’t like to waste food. That is not to say that food doesn’t get a chance to spoil around here, because believe me, it does and much of it tends to be produce – particularly fruit. Our family tends to have phases with fruit where we either eat it all the time, or we just don’t. Since bananas are always on my shopping list, they can almost always be found languishing in our fruit bowls lending that odd smell to the kitchen that’s half sweet – half icky. Fortunately, even as they near the end of the line – you can make them into something yummy. Trying doing that with a past-its-prime orange!

I love to make, and the kids love to eat Chocolate Chip Banana Bread – so I end up making that fairly often. As delicious as it is, I was looking for a little variety and something we could eat on the go, while we’re racing out the door to whichever activity is on the schedule. After a little consultation with Chef Google, I found this very easy recipe for Banana Crumb Muffins on AllRecipes.com. I made them in a jiffy, and used up 3 of the bananas in the process. (Yes, I did just use ‘jiffy’ in a sentence – don’t judge!)

Banana Crumb Muffins

Recipe adapted from this one on AllRecipes.com

For the Muffins:
1 1/2 c all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 bananas, mashed
3/4 c white sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 c butter, melted

For the Crumb Topping:
1/3 c packed brown sugar
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp butter

Muffins:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Prepare standard cupcake/muffin pan by greasing or lining 12 cups.  In a large bowl, mix together 1 1/2 c flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In another bowl, beat together bananas, sugar, egg and melted butter. Stir the banana mixture into the flour mixture just until moistened. Fill prepared cupcake/muffin cups 2/3 full with batter.

Topping:
In a small bowl, mix together brown sugar, 2 tbsp flour and cinnamon. Cut in 1 tablespoon butter with your fingers until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Sprinkle approximately 1 generous tsp of topping over each muffin.

Bake in preheated oven for 16 to 18 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean.

These were very good and banana-y. (I make up my own words – see?) The crumb topping adds just the right touch of sweetness and crunch. Within 5 minutes of putting these on a rack to cool, 4 were gone. I call that an endorsement! If you wanted to, you could also add some chopped walnuts to these and they would be that much better.

I hope you’re enjoying your weekend. I’m back to stripping the wallpaper off the dining room walls for a little Thanksgiving makeover. I’ll post pictures when we’re finished.

Do you have a favorite muffin? What is it?

Trust Versus Fear

“It is one of the jobs of an 11-year-old to do stupid things. It’s my job to help you find a solution when you do.”

At 7:00 last night, I was getting ready to head to my friend’s house for a little girl’s night when Beans came into the bedroom. She started what I was certain would be a story, like so many before, that ended with “…and then it broke.” The expression on her face was so worried, I was sure I was about to hear that my precious iPhone had been murdered or my engagement ring had been inadvertently flushed down a toilet. Instead she started to cry and apologize repeatedly, nearly hysterically. Of course, my instinctive response is to repeat “What is it? What?” over and over in a gradually higher octave until I am nearly shrieking with worry. Which makes her more hysterical. I know, I’m awesome.

Finally, she explained, in the most circuitous way imaginable, that she had attempted to carve her playdate’s name into the back of her pumpkin with a powered Dremel tool and had somehow managed to accidentally grind a hole into her wrist. She and her friend managed to conceal this whole incident from my mother, who was watching them while Hubby and I were at parent-teacher conferences, and tended to the wound themselves with water, a Band-Aid and Vaseline petroleum jelly. (When I questioned them later about the use of Vaseline instead of, say, Neosporin, they reminded me that I had once proclaimed that “Vaseline is good for everything.” I guess I should have been more specific.)

And then they went to the movies.

Four hours later, after the movie was over and the friend had gone home, my voice and its oft-told tales of germs and infections began to whisper in my daughter’s ear Jiminy Cricket-style, animated by the guilt of having not told me in the first place. She forced herself into my bedroom to confess.

Long-story short: 2 1/2 hours in the emergency room later, she ended up with a tetanus shot, a week’s worth of antibiotics and a fine dressing on her wound.

“Beans, why didn’t you just tell me?”

She was afraid. Afraid that I would be angry that she was doing something she clearly should not have been doing, and then hurt herself doing it.

She was afraid, and in her fear, she didn’t trust that I would see past the mistake to help her deal with the consequence.

Ouch. I felt like the worst parent ever as I came to that realization.

“No matter what, if you are hurt or being hurt, you tell me. I will NEVER be angry. My job is to keep you safe and to support you.”

That’s an important lesson. Today it was just about pumpkins and power tools. Tomorrow will bring more complicated scenarios.

It took a lot of courage for my daughter to confess (bolstered as it was by the fear of gangrene) and I am proud of her. It isn’t always easy to trust someone when you’re scared – even your mom.

Have your kids ever had to get past their fear to tell you the truth about something? How did you handle that situation?

Stealth Ninja Labradors: A Day in The Life

**Today, I welcome my first guest poster – Nikki, the dog. She will be describing a typical day in the life of a suburban labrador. 

———————————-

Listen, everyone thinks we’re just three goofy dogs. Which I’m okay with  – because it just proves that our cover is totally working. In fact, we are an elite ninja team here to protect our humans.

Yes we are.

Let’s face it – you humans aren’t too swift. If it weren’t for us a) you’d be living in unsanitary conditions from all the food you just throw all over the floor (and sometimes leave on counters) and b) that guy who stops by everyday with that paper stuff would have definitely gotten in by now. Somebody should tell him that if he’s trying to be subtle, that conspicuous white truck isn’t doing him any favors. And let’s not even mention the very real threat of a squirrel coup d’etat.

So here’s our typical day:

6:00am – Wake you up by excessive licking. Bella takes the face, I go for the hands. And Charlie, he licks his own…nevermind. This would go much more smoothly if you’d stop squirming.

6:15am – Eat. (By the way, the food sucks.)

6:16am – Go out.

6:18am – Come back in.

6:20am – Wake up the small humans. (See “licking” above.)

6:22am – Go out.

6:24am – Come back in.

6:30 – 9:00am – Morning training exercises. These typically include food snatching resource identification, ball chasing projectile locating and retrieval and practicing our sad faces psychological warfare drills.

9:00 – Noon – Sentry duty.

12:45pm – INTRUDER!

12:48pm – Intruder neutralized.

12:49pm – Go out.

12:52pm – Come back in.

12:56pm – Go out.

12:59pm – Come back in.

2:00pm – Recycling.

3:22pm – Go out.

3:23pm – SQUIRREL!!

3:24pm – Squirrel escapes. Come back in.

4:00pm – 6:00pm – Sentry duty.

6:15pm – Dinner. Have I mentioned that the food sucks?

6:17pm – Go out.

6:19pm – Come back in.

8:00pm – 6:30am – Sentry duty.

As you can see, the life of a ninja is not all ear scratching and belly rubs. Maybe now we’ve earned a little more of your respect. The truth is, we keep you safe from the dangers outside these walls – but maybe you can’t handle the truth…

This post was prompted by Mama Kat’s Writers Workshop – the prompt was:  A day in the life of your pet…how bad do they have it?

Lazy Sundays and the Mayans

In my world, a typical autumn day would be exactly like the ones we had this weekend – crisp, cool and sunny. It’s the ideal weather in which to get things done outside – so that’s exactly what we did. We raked, we cut down the gardens and cleared out the cuttings, pulled up the last remaining annuals and prepared the perennials for next year. We even scavenged the remaining survivors from the vegetable garden. I might be the only one, but I find something so enjoyable in working as a family to accomplish something. And get this – there was almost no complaining from the troops! What the heck is going on here?

The weather here was in such stark contrast to much of the northeast, where many of my friends remained without power (and therefore heat) after a crazy snowstorm. Generally, we’re the ones getting 24″ of snow, while my brother sees a mere dusting in his neck of the woods downstate. That’s just proof that something fishy is going on.

You want more proof? Kitty and Flap played together yesterday. Without fighting. Seriously, maybe those Mayans were on to something.

In our typical “wait until the last-minute” approach to things – we set out yesterday afternoon in search of pumpkins to carve. Guess what? There aren’t too many pumpkins left out there at 4:30pm the night before Halloween. Who’d a thunk it?

Against all odds, we managed to find 3 suitable pumpkins at a local market about 10 minutes before he was set to close. More proof. We hardly ever get lucky like that.

We headed home, prepared to carve our way to Halloween bliss. And then Flap threw up all over the stairs.

Just like that, life was back to normal.

How was your weekend?

*I’ve been noticing that the pictures I’ve taken with my Nikon DSLR lately are a little blurry – which is weird. Maybe dropping her that last time damaged something. So, no, your eyes aren’t going. I’ll be using my point and shoot until I can get to the bottom of this. Any tips?

Sunday Sweetness: Easy Amish Cinnamon Chip Bread

When someone in an Amish costume serves you a piece of ridiculously delicious cinnamon chip bread, you ask for the recipe. A day or two later, and my lovely friend texted me the recipe for this bread – which is “bread” in the spirit of zucchini bread or banana bread.

Truth be told, I was little suspicious about the recipe because a) it was texted to me, which somehow seems a little imprecise for a recipe b) I did not expect a recipe called Amish to contain pudding mix and c) it all goes down in one bowl – basically, you just plop the ingredients in the bowl and stir.

Why is it called Amish? No clue. Upon Googling, I did find this recipe for Amish Friendship Bread – which lo and behold, contains pudding mix as well. That’s what I get for judging a recipe by it’s name.

This bread came out very well in spite of my mood: I made Ina Garten’s Roasted Potato Leek Soup today – my favorite soup. After two hours of cooking, I ladled it into a tupperware so I could put it in the refrigerator but when I turned my back for 2 minutes, the dogs had gotten the tupperware off the counter and eaten nearly the entire container. Hours of cooking negated by 3 piggy dogs. Suffice it to say, I was a little bit grumpy.

Amish Cinnamon Chip Bread

Makes 2 loaves.

1 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3 large eggs
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
2 1/2 c flour
1 1/4 c milk
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 pkg vanilla instant pudding
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup cinnamon chips

Notice my phone in the lower right corner. I was reading the recipe from my text messages!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two 9 x 5 loaf pans.

 Combine oil, sugar, vanilla, eggs, salt and cinnamon and mix well. Add flour, milk, baking soda, baking powder and pudding mix. Mix well. Pour into two large loaf pans. (Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar, if desired.)

Bake at 350 degrees for 50-55 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Even though I was on my own making this, it would be a great recipe to do with kids – it’s easy and they can just mix and mix in the one bowl.

What did you bake, if anything, this week?

Keep Calm and Shut the F@#! Up.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve seen the “Keep Calm and Carry On” posters based on a little used British poster from WWII. Unless you’ve been under an even larger rock – you’ve seen what seems like a million variations on that theme. Some are witty and clever and some…not so much.

Source: fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net via Heather on Pinterest

Source: keep-calm-hp.tumblr.com via Emily on Pinterest

Either way, like Paris Hilton and the Jonas Brothers, it gets old. The more I see “Keep Calm and Get a Kitten” posters, the less I care about the original. Maybe that’s not fair, but it’s true. And if something is less awesome the second time around, it’s exponentially less cool the fiftieth.

Same thing goes for (Insert Literary Classic Here) and (Insert Scary Thing Here). Once they did Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – I think most of us can figure out what Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is going to be like. Or Jane Slayre. Or Alice in Zombieland. (For the record, I’m too much of an Austen lover to read that book – I don’t really want to know if Wickham eats one of the Bennett’s girls brains. I don’t even want the visual in my head.)

I know fashion recycles, interior design recycles, movies recycle (let’s not even talk about the potential remake of Dirty Dancing, becasue that is just wrong) – everything comes around again. But there’s recycling and then there’s RECYCLING. Out of courtesy, at least wait a decade before you retread an idea and call it your own.

WIth all this said, imagine my chagrin when I saw an ad for this book:

Image via Amazon.com

They actually had to clarify that it wasn’t by the folks that wrote Go The F@?# to Sleep. If the first line of an ad for your product has to point out that you are NOT another product, you might want to pause a moment – because the rest of us just hear “we didn’t come up with this, but we thought we might be able to make a dime by doing absolutely nothing differently.”

You know why sequels are never as good as the original? Because the schtick – whatever it is – is never as funny, or scary, or original the second time around.

What’s next? Oh, The Places You’ll Go, if You Can Get a F@?#ing Job? Or The Giving Tree is F@?#ing Sick of Your Whining?

I’m over it. How about you?