Hair Raising Adventures

So perhaps real live grown ups don't watch re-runs of Cutthroat Kitchen until 1 a.m. on nights when they have to be both up for work and documenting their coiffure the next day. I did one grown up thing and set my alarm before I went to sleep. I did a really not grown up thing by hitting snooze a few times before turning it off entirely and making bargains with myself to get more sleep.

I will ONLY wash and condition my hair in the shower, no leg shaving or anything else. I can sleep for 10 more minutes.

I will skip breakfast and only drink coffee as I drive to work, I can sleep 10 more minutes.

I know basically where all of my clothes are I don't have to hunt them down, I can sleep 10 more... and then I was like, "NO BITCH! Get your LAZY ASS up and GO DO YOUR DAMN HAIR!"

I can be really mean to myself! I would never talk that way to someone else... unless they crossed me.

Anyhow I scurried into the bathroom and did the usual curly haired girl shower. If you are not a curly haired girl or a curly haired person with LONG curly hair, then you probably do not know about our strange shower rituals.

I will probably be cashiered from the Curly Crew for revealing any of this, but here it goes.

Step 1. Turn on shower and then go ahead and get in. Why wait for it to get warm? You're gonna be in there for 45 minutes so you might as well start how you will inevitably end. Freezing.

Step 2. Get hair very, very wet. (Oh, you think that's obvious huh? Everybody does that? Have you ever stood under a full force shower head for 5 minutes and then realize parts of your hair and/or scalp are STILL not wet? No? I didn't think so.) So move that hair around, get it all sopping wet, pay special attention to your scalp.

Step 3. Hunt frantically for some conditioner. Oh no! You're not out of conditioner are you? You may as well call out sick to work now because conditioner is basically all that stands between you and the whirling edge of madness.

Step 4. Fill the 7 or 8 mostly empty conditioner bottles with water, swirling their contents around and dumping them on your waiting, matted hair and thank Providence that you never EVER throw those things out.

Step 5. Find a 3/4 empty tube of Intensely Wet Slick 'Em Slide "Em Hydrating Hair Goo ™ behind your 12 completely full bottles of shampoo. Cry a little in relief.

Step 6. Empty the entire tube into your hand and then use your hands like rakes to comb through the dense underbrush of your scalp sweater.

Step 7. Pull wads of hair out by its very roots. Feel nothing.

Step 8. When your hands are so full of hair that it looks like you have become Bigfoot's personal masseuse scrape the hair off and try and fling the resulting hairball/small cat onto a shower shelf.

Step 9. Repeat.

When do you shampoo your hair? Honestly, never. Or maybe once in awhile if something truly bad has happened, like "had 6 rum and cokes at the office party and accidentally vomited into it" bad. Shampoo is just there to make other people who use your shower feel welcome. "Hello straight haired person, please use some of the complimentary scalp sudser. (DO NOT touch my nearly empty bottles of conditioner)" This practice known as "co-washing" or conditioner washing is a secret of curly haired women world wide.

When I had sufficiently de-matted myself I jumped out of the shower and began the next phase of any hairstyle for a curly haired woman; the ritual application of product.

First we begin by wringing the wet hair out in a towel. After going once over your hair the towel has become completely sodden and will not dry for two days. Hang it up and thank it for its service. Then you mix two to three different products into your hand. Today I used a discontinued hair cream from Garnier Fructis that I bought in bulk 6 years ago when it was being discontinued. I hoard this stuff like precious gold because there will be no more once it is gone. To it I added a shine serum Biosilk Silk Therapy Oil, no really, that's what it's called. I rubbed them between my palms to mix them and then pulled it through my hair using the rake and shake method, whereby one takes sections of hair, rakes your fingers through and then grabs hold at the bottom of the hair and "shakes" it into place. A Ouidad certified hair dresser taught me this. At the top of a mountain in Nepal. Surrounded by beautiful curly haired sheep. But I digress. Here I'd already been working on my hair for 15 minutes and I was still stark naked, much less ready to spin and pin my hair.

This is why I am maybe not a grown up yet. By this point in my real life a child would have kicked the door in commando style and demanded my attention, but THIS week my kids are visiting my Mom, so what better time to try a hair care routine?

Once my hair was well covered in product I wrapped it up in a fresh dry towel and got some damn clothes on. I was pretty cold at this point.

Once dressed I commandeered a couple of dozen bobby pins from my kids' hair accessories stash and began twirling my hair around and pinning it as best I could to the back of my head. Here's the thing though, I can't really see the back of my head, so try as I might, twisting and turning to catch a glimpse of my work in my mirrored closet door I could not both PIN and see, so I decided to just wing it.

How did it turn out. Well, we all remember my Pinspiration from yesterday, right? Sort of a lady-like, soft coiled romantic low chignon. Mine was more... um...

Less curly romantic and more Star Trek Special Guest Star

See what I mean? Instead of spiral curls looping back on themselves in springy ecstasy I had bulbous hair snakes curled up and hissing at each other. Or I was like a rejected hair test for Majel Barret.

Some more charitable people at work said it looked like rosebuds on the back of my head, but I think they were worried about angering my scalp snakes.

Oh well. Tomorrow is another Pinteresting day. My challenge for Tuesday? Mason Jar Salads, man!

Photo courtesy of ProduceWithAmy!

Better Living Through Pinterest

So, as many of you know, I am a complete mess. My areas of competence are staggeringly limited to baking, improvising costumes, and writing on a deadline. Most days I struggle with simple things that most people would consider pretty average and every day, like keeping my bedroom clean, remembering to return library books, and doing my own hair.

I have decided that perhaps I should attack my issues using the same methods I have used for all my previous challenges, step 1. Tell myself with confidence, "Way stupider people than you have figured this out!" and step 2. Research.

Which brings me to Pinterest. Pinterest is my happy place right now. A place that promises better hair and bright and shiny laundry rooms, a place for extra cheesey lasagna and a flatter stomach in 15 minutes.

So play along at home, do you hate Pinterest? Love it? Love to hate it? Use it for research? As an aspirational guide? A place to pin some of your favorite people?

Tomorrow's Project Pin: An Easy Curly Hair Undo

Because here is how my hair looks on a normal day, a bun with some fuzzy frizzy hairs around my face. I look like I am always coming from the gym, when in reality, I haven't been to the gym since 1998.



So tomorrow, I wake up and I coif the hair, like a grown up. I'm going to use products and pins and see what happens.

My Happy Place

I'm a baker. From the time I won the school wide cooking contest in the 5th grade with a decadent Cherry Coke Cake with Chocolate and Cherry Coke frosting, to the time I decided to tackle the mysteries of bread, I have known that is my core. I cook, I saute, I have even deep fried on occasion, but in my heart of hearts I'm a baker. Maybe it started before 5th grade. Maybe it was making cookies with my great gramma, or kneading masa with my abuela, or watching my Mom make perfect buttercream roses on scraps of wax paper. Whatever else is happening, I am usually thinking about what I can bake next.

We have been renting houses for the last seven years, feeling a bit rootless and at loose ends, but now I know where I truly want to live.

Inside the pages of the King Arthur Flour catalogue. BAM!

There ya go. Do little Easter people holding eggs not do it for you? Okay, how about this?

The gorgeous organization of it all, a place for all of your flours, see through storage with labels. Oh my gosh. I feel faint.

Oh, hello gorgeous, are you flour flavorings? Come to Mama.

I just want to live in a world where there are organized shelves, containers for every possible type of flour or ingredient and possibly a pizza stone, ($54.99 shipping not included) to call my very own.

Running Face

Running Face, a haiku

Sweaty, pores glisten
Chernobyl tomato face
Running sucks so bad

Leftover Roast Beef -- What To Do?

Leftover roast beef is a lovely problem to have, but if your family doesn't want the roast beef as is the next day, or you don't have enough to go around, a well planned leftover recipe can help.

Beef stew is probably the easiest way to use up your leftover meat and veggies.

The first thing is to chop up at least 4 cups of raw mixed vegetables, tonight I used carrots, celery, garlic, and onions. I had more onion and celery than anything else, probably only 1/2 C or so of carrots all told, and only 2 cloves of garlic. You use them in there proportion you see fit! Melt some butter or heat some oil in the bottom of a stock pot, sprinkle the veggies with salt and pepper. Cook your veggies over medium heat till they are fragrant and your onions are getting translucent. You will need some beef broth of some kind. If I don't have frozen homemade broth on hand I use bullion, "better than bullion" soup base, packaged beef broth or some combination of the two until I have about 2 C of liquid. Tonight I used 1 can of golden mushroom flavored soup which has a beef broth base and 1 cup of beef bullion, I also added in one of these small bottles of Sutter Home red wines which are fantastic for cooking, plus a tiny can of V8 vegetable juice which I would rather die than drink, but works marvelously well in soup bases. If you were adding potatoes to this soup, now would be a good time to add them. You could also throw in a bay leaf or two. Let everything come to a good boil and mix a 1/4 C or so of the broth to 1 TB of corn starch, make a slurry and then pour it back into the soup. Turn the heat down and let everything come together for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile chop your leftover roast into bite sized pieces, add it to the soup and allow everything to simmer until the meat is heated through and the vegetables are tender. If your leftover roast has leftover veggies with it (more carrots, celery, onions etc) go ahead and add them in when you add in the meat. Also add any drippings or juices from the container where you stored the roast.

And there you have it, roast re-used, and dinner on the table in about 30 minutes.

Other ideas for leftover roast beef.

*Thinly slice the beef, make a gravy from reserved drippings, make a hot open-faced roast beef sandwich.

*Grind together leftover roast with raw potatoes and onion and fry in a cast iron skillet to make beef hash.

*Chop the beef small, mix with frozen mixed veggies, make gravy from drippings and top with uncooked biscuits. Bake until biscuits are done for a sort of "pot pie".

*Thinly slice beef against the grain. Cook thinly sliced bell peppers and onions on oil and worcestershire, sprinkle with chili powder and cumin, when soft and fragrant, add slices of leftover roast beef and fry together with pepper mixture. Serve as fajitas in tortillas or on top of salad greens.

Easter Improvisations

So, Easter somehow or another crept up on me this year. I managed to get some cute things for the kids' baskets while they were at a birthday party, but I didn't buy actual baskets until the Saturday before the big day. When I inquired at the grocery store where I was buying the fixings for our Easter feast if they had any egg dyeing kits I was met with an amused laugh and "No."

When we got home my husband and I used a cheesecake recipe from YumSugar to make a classic New York style cheesecake. I also had some strawberries that needed using up so I made a basic compote with them, the general idea for compotes is to combine berries, water, lemon juice, sugar and a wee bit of cornstarch in a pan and heat on medium until thickened. For bigger berries, cut them in half and then proceed. We poured the cheesecake mixture into the spring form pan and realized to our horror that it was WAAAAAAY too full, so we pulled some of the mixture out and put it into buttered ramekins which we then baked as miniature cheesecakes alongside our main cake. Winning!

Saturday night was our night to dye eggs, but I think I mentioned before that I had forgotten to get any of the dye kits? I hadn't panicked about it because I thought, "Oh, I have food coloring at home." Yeah, turns out I was down to red and green food coloring, which I made the usual way, 1 tsp of white vinegar in ceramic ramekins, 1/4 tsp dye and 1/2 C warm water. My daughter Sarah suggested we try using orange Gatorade to dye the eggs, so we added a heaping spoonful of the powdered drink mix to our water and vinegar mixture. Perhaps unsurprisingly this worked very well. I cannot say the same for yellow Jello mixture. It looked great in the cup, but didn't dye the egg at all. I crushed some blueberries in a small amount of water and that gave the eggs a sort of lavender/grey color that was very beautiful. I taught the kids that we could use a white crayon to mark the egg with their initials or to make designs, which gave me the opportunity to teach them the term "wax resistance". Raspberry tea makes a lovely color in the mug, but didn't give the eggs much color. Yellow or purple onion skins make a fantastic egg dye, but I was out of the right color onions. Egg kits usually come with little paper collars that you place the eggs on to dry. I improvised some by cutting a paper towel tube into rings. After the eggs were dry, the kids colored on them with food coloring markers and they looked great.




My husband and I had tickets to go see Jersey Boys on Saturday night, and bless that baby sitter, she did a fantastic job helping the kids clean up the egg dyeing mess. All we needed to do was get the kitchen in order and set and decorate the table for breakfast. We used stuff we had around the house and tried to make things look Spring-y and festive. The stuffed animals are pulled right out of the playroom and placed in a basket we already had.

Christopher Walken, terrifying master of the dance

This is the best way to spend the next 5 minutes.

ENJOY!