Why? Why? Why?

Why? Is there a more annoying question? For parents with little ones, there is not. Sometimes I heard “why?” so much I swear it was a conspiracy. Those kids didn’t even care why, they just wanted to see me sweat. Why? Why? Why?

“I don’t know. Here, have a cookie.”

Maybe THAT’S why I started baking.

Of course I don’t have little ones any more. Not that older kids don’t ask some pretty difficult “why” questions too. I’ve spent way too much time lately trying to explain why marijuana’s illegal here but drinking is legal. Oy. And, sadly, they’re no longer distracted by a cookie. I think they’re on to me.

Distraction, though. It worked before, I just need to up my game. Turn around is fair play, isn’t that how the saying goes? So now every time they ask a “why”, I ask one of my own. And guess what? I get it. It’s fun.

 

So boys:

*Why is water clear but snow is white?

*Why do necklace chains tie themselves in knots while sitting inside my jewelry box?

*Why do we draw hearts heart-shaped instead of in the shape of a heart?

*Why is Nancy Grace still on TV?

*Why does cookie end in “ie” instead of “y”.

Giant Fudgy Flourless Cookies

*Why does wool itch me but not itch the sheep? 

*Why do we use the same word, bark, for the silent outer coating of a tree and the loud yapping of a dog?

*Why does “i” come before “e” except after “c” or when sounding like “a” as in “neighbor” and “weigh”?

*Why does the garage door only break when it’s winter?

*Why are spiders silent? Shouldn’t we get some kind of warning?

I have to admit that they answered every single one. And not with a cookie either. More with their most epic eye roll and a “stop asking stupid questions”. Now WHY didn’t I think of that?

 

PS: I have been selected as one of the 100 nominees in Dedicated2Life's Passionate People of 2015 awards. If you'd like to vote for me, you can do that HERE.

Giant Fudgy Flourless Cookies

                                                                         ©www.BakingInATornado.com
 
Printable Recipe
 
Ingredients:
3 egg whites, room temperature
Dash salt
½ tsp vanilla
½ cup sugar
¼ cup baking cocoa powder
1/4 cup white chocolate chips
1/4 cup dark chocolate chips
 
Directions:
*Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
*Beat egg whites with salt and vanilla just until foamy. Add the sugar a little at a time and continue beating until soft peaks form.
*Sprinkle the cocoa powder over the top and beat until stiff peaks form.
*Fold in the chocolate chips.
*Drop by rounded teaspoon onto baking sheets. Leave plenty of room between them as they spread.
*Bake for 30 minutes. Turn oven off but leave the cookies inside for 20 minutes to allow them to dry out for a bit.
*Remove to counter to cool completely.

Secret Subject Swap: Can You Haiku?

Welcome to the April Secret Subject Swap. This month 15 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts. Read through mine and at the bottom you’ll find links to all of today’s other Secret Subject Swap posts.

My subject is: Write an Easter Haiku

It was submitted by: The Bergham's Life Chronicles

Oy . On a number of levels.

First, there’s the whole I-don’t-celebrate-Easter thing. So . . . pretty much my participation in this holiday consists of my memorizing the egg and bunny-shaped treat options in the candy aisle. Don’t underestimate that, it’s quite an accomplishment. I know where all the good stuff is kept.

Second, sadly, I’ve tried my hand at poetry before on this blog and in most cases they were failures of epic proportions.

A Haiku is a very specialized form of Japanese poetry. It’s written in three lines and sticks to a syllable count, generally 5 – 7 – 5. It’s also supposed to marry two different, often contrasting parts and is frequently about nature. That’s a lot to accomplish in seventeen syllables.

I guess I should start with a few apologies. The first one goes to my friends who really can write poetry. Even those who can’t but have an appreciation of it as an art form. I’m sorry.

I also want to apologize to all of my friends who celebrate Easter. I know that it’s a very holy and serious time, not really reflected in my latest attempt at poetry.

Apologies well established up front, an Easter Haiku for my friends back home in Boston:

It’s now Easter time?

Good thing colored eggs stick out

in mountains of snow.

It’s also Passover time, a time when, not to boil every holiday down to food or anything, I cannot eat anything with leavening. We have tasteless crackers that take the place of bread and instead of rolls we have something that if black would resemble coal. There’s no question that we struggle through the dietary restrictions of these 8 days.

Last year when Passover ended, my boys drove to a local sub shop known for making subs using French bread they bake in the shop throughout the day. It was fine with me if they wanted to buy themselves subs for dinner. But imagine my surprise when they got home, sat down at the counter and started eating French bread. No meat, cheese or veggies, they just sat there gnawing on loaves of warm bread.

Since I wrote an Easter Haiku, in the name of fair play here’s my Passover Haiku:

I’ve got my boys beat

not bread when Passover ends,

dinner will be pie.

Yeah, yeah, I know, don’t quit my day job. Got it.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Cookie Pie

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup and check them all out. See you there:

The Bergham's Life Chronicles

Spatulas on Parade

Dinosaur Superhero Mommy

The Momisodes

More Than Cheese and Beer

Southern Belle Charm

Confessions of a part-time working mom

The Lieber Family

Someone Else's Genius
Climaxed
 Stacy Sews and Schools
Sparkly Poetic Weirdo 
 Searching for Sanity
Silence of the Mom  

Peanut Butter and Jelly Cookie Pie

                                                                       ©www.BakingInATornado.com
 
Printable Recipe
 
Ingredients:
1 stick butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup baking cocoa
 
2 cups heavy cream
¼ cup powdered sugar
 
4 oz cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup chocolate wafer cookie crumbs
 
1/4 cup seedless blackberry jam
 
Directions:
*Cream the butter, sugars, egg and vanilla. Carefully, on the lowest setting at first, beat in the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour.
*Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 10 inch pie plate.
*Place the dough in the plate and evenly spread out on the bottom and up the sides of the pie plate. *Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until it’s mostly set. Remove from oven and immediately, using a heat proof spatula, press down the center and along the sides to form the cookie into a pie crust.
*Cool on the counter for 20 minutes, then move to refrigerator to cool completely.
*Whip the heavy cream until soft peaks form. Add the powdered sugar and beat until stiff peaks hold. Remove and divide evenly into two separate bowls.
*Beat peanut butter and cream cheese for one minute. Mix in the cookie crumbs, then add half of the whipped cream. Beat on the lowest speed for just a few seconds until it’s all mixed together. Place into the cooled cookie crust and put into the refrigerator.
*Beat the jam for one minute. Add the rest of the whipped cream and beat just until mixed together. Top the pie and refrigerate.

Treasure Box

When I was growing up, whenever I went into my grandmother’s (Alava Shalom) kitchen, there on the window sill was a pushke. It was just a tin box with a picture on the front and a slot in the top.

A pushke is a collection box. Coins were put in and when full the money would be donated to a worthy cause and the collection would start again.

Although I think pushkes were a Jewish thing, giving in some form or another is part of most peoples’ lives and certainly not specific to any religion. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t try to teach their kids about compassion and charity. I think, though, that the times that we give are sometimes specific to us and the way we were raised. Sometimes adding coins to the tin box felt like a superstitious ritual. In times of good luck, Nana would be sure to drop a coin into the pushke. In retrospect I think this served a moral purpose as well; to ground us and add perspective to good times. A “there but for the grace of G-d” type thing.

Although not through a tin box, giving was always tied to memorable occasions as well. When there’s a bar mitzvah, wedding, birth, even funeral, it’s traditional to give to a favorite charity in the name of the person you’re honoring.

I don’t know when the pushke became extinct but as far as I know it is. I haven’t seen one in many years. The value of giving, of course, lives on, but mostly in check form these days. And we also give our time and energy, even our blood and platelets. Tzedakah, the act of giving is seen as an obligation in Judaism and in many other faiths as well. And now, in place of the pushke, I do sometimes see tzedakah boxes.

I believe that the values we want our children to incorporate into their lives; honesty, sharing, healthy eating, giving, they all have the capacity to become a habit if introduced early enough. But how do you explain some of these concepts to young ones?

Fudgy Pie

When the boys were almost 3 and 4, I took them to one of those pottery places where you purchase the pottery, paint it there (ha, genius, leave your mess for someone else) and they glaze and fire it for you. We bought tzedakah boxes, lots of them. There would be one for each of the boys, one for my husband and I, and holiday gifts for all the grandparents and even for my Nana, their great-grandmother.

The boys sat down with a line of pottery and paints and paint brushes and went at it. I made sure each “box” was worked on by both of the boys. I then painted the word Tzedakah on the front and put their names and the date on the bottom. They came out exactly as you’d expect them to, having been painted by two toddlers I don’t need to tell you that I loved them.

Holiday time came and the boys got to give a gift representative of the philosophy of giving.

our tzedakah boxes

If you know my boys at all, it won’t surprise you to learn that one of them has his box full to the brim and will most likely get around to emptying it when I tell him to. The other’s box is somewhere in his room under all the debris, I’m sure.

And mine, I know exactly where mine is. Because this box is not just a means to giving and it’s not just a reminder that tzedakah should start early, but it is a valued piece of art; a true treasure box in every sense of the word.

                                                                             

Fudgy Pie

                                  ©www.BakingInATornado.com

 
Printable Recipe
 
Ingredients, Crust (can be replaced with any graham cracker or chocolate pie crust:
1 stick butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup pecan pieces
1/4 cup matzo meal
2 TBSP matzo cake meal
1 tsp instant coffee granules
 
Ingredients, Pie:
3/4 cup chocolate chips
1 stick butter, softened
1 cup sugar 
2 eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup matzo cake meal (can be replaced with 3/4 cup flour)

 
Directions:
*In a food processor, pulse all crust ingredients until it starts to form a ball. Place into a 10 inch pie plate and evenly pat into the bottom and up the sides. Refrigerate while making pie.
*Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
*Melt the chocolate chips and stir until completely smooth.
*Beat the butter, sugar and eggs until smooth. Beat in the melted chocolate chips. Mix in the matzo cake meal (or flour if using).
*Pour into the pie crust and even the filling out. Bake for 45 minutes. Top will crack and inside will be fudgy.
*Cool completely. Store in the refrigerator. Bring to room temperature for serving. 

The Ten Commandments

Since it’s one of the times of the year when most everyone I know is celebrating something religious, I thought it would be fitting to do a post with some religious undertones.

Exodus tells the story of how the Jews, having escaped slavery in Egypt, were wandering the dessert. Moses got word to climb Mount Sinai where he was given the Ten Commandments, a list of expected behaviors for all.

This got me thinking. In my house, I have a list of expected behaviors too. I, by no means consider myself to be divine. Nor do I mean any disrespect to my religion or any other. But through all this Bible talk, I’ve had an epiphany. What my household needs is not just the Ten Commandments from the Bible, but additionally our own Ten Commandments.

So I’m starting with G-d’s, because they are a perfect example of the expectations of the morals and values I, too, expect in my home. But I need to change them, just a little, to fit the circumstances.

The Ten Commandments, my version:
1. I am your Mother. I went through hell to conceive you, used all the toilet paper in the land while carrying you, and suffered a lengthy and excruciating ordeal to have you. You will accept me as your Mother or I will farm you out into bondage.
2. Thou shalt have no other Mother besides me. I do not care how much nicer you think every other Mother on the planet is, I am yours and you are stuck with me and only me.
3. Thou shalt not take the name of your Mother in vain. Just so we’re clear, this means you can’t swear at me, OR call anyone else a Mother. . . anything.
4. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Give me a break, at the very least on the weekends.
5. Honor thy Father and thy Mother. Notice how I’ve generously included Dad in this one.
6. Thou shalt not kill. No matter what consequences you’ve suffered for whatever action you decided to take, you cannot have murderous thoughts towards me. Change your behavior ‘cause I’m here to stay.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery. If you even know what this is, you’re grounded for life.
8. Thou shalt not steal. That means that what’s mine is mine. You cannot take my things and then try to pretend I never had it. I KNOW it was there yesterday.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor. STOP blaming your brother. I’m not stupid, I know it was you.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house. Do well in school, get into college, get a good job and buy a bigger one.
And thou shalt love thy Mother with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

Or there will be an exodus. And it will not be mine.

Charoses

This article was also posted on Huffington Post Parents as The Ten Commandments, Mom Style on 3-30-15. 

Charoses
                                     ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

*NOTE: Charoses is used as part of the Passover Seder. My family eats the leftovers on (matzo) crackers, as a side dish with lunch or dinner, and I also bake it into (Passover) muffins.

Ingredients:
1 Delicious apple, cored, peeled and chopped
1 Braeburn apple,cored, peeled and chopped
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
3 TBSP honey
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 TBSP red wine

Directions:
*Mix all ingredients the day before serving.
*Place in a sealed container in the fridge.
*Stir the ingredients every now and then.