Take 1-December Secret Subject Swap

Welcome to Take 1 of December’s Secret Subject Swap, the first of two this month. This week, 14 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts. 

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

Baking In A Tornado
Raising Reagan
The Insomniac's Dream
Just a Little Nutty
Follow me home . . .
DeBie Hive
My Brain on Kids
Chewylicious
Life on the SONny Side
Sanity Waiting to Happen
Big A and little a
Sorry kid, Your Mom Doesn't Play Well With Others
The Mommy Chronicles
It's a Dome Life

My prompt is: share a photo of your life for each day in a typical week. It was submitted by: My Brain on Kids. Here goes:

Monday

Yay, Monday! Survived the weekend. Maybe a little worse for the wear and tear but I’m going to be optimistic about this day. After all, the kids just drove off to school. How bad could it be?  

I had to ask, didn’t I? The boys didn’t open the bathroom window. I better do it, they can literally peel the paper off the wall.

And while opening the window I made the mistake of looking out. Please tell me that’s not a possum digging up my back lawn.

I’m thinking my go-to fly swatter may not be enough firepower here.

Tuesday

OK, so I have access to all of the boys’ attendance, grades and missing assignments in their on-line grade books. I know better than to look, I know it.

Eggnog Toffee Squares

Baking.     Relieves.     Stress.

Wednesday

I’m three quarters of the way through a library book on my kindle and the book automatically returns itself tomorrow. Going to my bedroom to desperately try to finish it. Will I ever get to know the ending of a book or will something always come up that requires immediate attention?

Like so much dirty laundry it’s literally pushing the door of the laundry chute open:

and I’m kinda thinking that backpack sticking out of the locker there is something someone needed to take to school with him. Expecting the phone to ring in 3 . . .2 . . .1 . . . 

Thursday

“Mom, there’s nothing to eat”:

“Mom, there’s nothing to do”:

Friday

Aaaaah, fought the kids out the door and off to school and I’ve got dinner marinating. Before I jump in the shower and start my day I think I’ll just sit, have a nice cup of coffee, and contemplate a relaxing, uneventful weekend.

No, I'm not online. I'm almost never online. But maybe I'll just take a peek:

 Unless some turkey comes to the front door:

Voting ended a month ago buddy, give it up already.

Saturday

        Don’t ask.

Sunday

Click here for My Mai Tai recipe

        Again, don’t ask . . . 

Eggnog Toffee Squares

                                 ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Crust:

1 stick margarine, softened

1/2 stick butter, softened

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 egg yolk

1 1/2 cups flour

1/4 tsp salt

Toffee:

1/2 cup light corn syrup

1/2 stick butter

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup eggnog

1 tsp vanilla

Topping:

1 (10oz) package of semi sweet or dark chocolate chips

Directions:

*Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9 X 13 glass dish with non-stick spray.

*Beat butter, margarine, brown sugar and egg yolk for one minute. Mix in the flour and salt and form into a ball with your hands.

*Press this mixture into the bottom and just a little up the sides of the dish.

*Bake until it starts to get a little brown, approx. 15 minutes. Take out of oven and set aside.

*Microwave corn syrup, butter, brown sugar, eggnog and vanilla for 1 1/2 minutes, stir and then microwave another 2 minutes.

*Spread over the crust and bake for 20 minutes.

*Remove from oven and sprinkle the chocolate chips over the top of the toffee layer. Put back in oven for another minute or until the chocolate chips have melted enough to be spreadable.

*Remove from oven and using a knife, gently spread the melted chocolate chips over the top of the toffee layer.

*Cool for 15 minutes, then continue cooling in the refrigerator. Once it’s cooled, cut into squares.

Where did she go?

Where am I today?

Last week in my post Emergency Blogcast Test I mentioned another blog I’m involved it. I wanted to talk a little about that, as my post: Survival, Holiday Version is featured there today.

Although the site belongs to someone else, Tracy, she conceptualized it as a collaborative. She put together a group of writers, all of whom contribute work. She calls the blog The Epistolarians and describes it this way: The Epistolarians is a group of kick ass women writers, who are letting the world know what they think, one letter at a time, like the Pistol Annies of writing.

I also mentioned last week that I don’t like to do Guest Posts. There are two reasons for that: Ultimately I’m turning my work over to others, I do the writing and they get the blog credit. Second, I lose control over my own piece, both of where and how it’s published.

So why did I join? Because not only am I (surprised and) pleased to be included in this particular group of writers, but Tracy provided an outlet for all of us to write not only in our comfort zone (as I did with my piece today), but she’s also offered a safe haven for trying out different styles of expressing ourselves, something I find intriguing. So I’m over at my vacation home today, sort of semi-incognito, not writing as:

             but as:

           
             one of the:

Please click here to check out my post there today: The Epistolarians

Because the Epistolarians, to know us is to laugh with us.

Are You –ish?

It’s holiday time. Truth is, I’m sorry to say, this year the holiday season started (in commercials anyway) even before Halloween. I’m more of the “to everything a season” subscriber. Meaning October is for Halloween. November should focus on Thanksgiving, and the build-up for the December holidays shouldn’t start till the Thanksgiving dishes are being cleared.

Like everyone else, I’ve been thinking about the December holidays, which are more fluid for me as I’m Jewish and Chanukah is celebrated according to the Jewish calendar, landing on different dates each year. From that thought, my brain took a sharp left turn (as it tends to do) and I started thinking about that word: Jewish. It always bothered me, as words go, and it’s the “ish” I’m stuck on. “Ish” infers “not quite”. If I really give it some thought, most people these days do not follow every law, tenant, tradition, expectation of their religion. They have a belief, an identity, but they make it work within the context of their lives. I’m not even in the same zip code of what people would call a traditional Jew, so Jew -ish it is.

And it seems, as I think it through, I’m an awful lot of –ishes.

I bake to relieve stress. Unless you’re new here, this is not a revelation. I do develop my own recipes, but frequently I start out with a recipe and adapt it to my skill level and taste. Rarely do my attempts come out beautiful, but stress relief isn’t about beauty. I bake, a lot, but I’m hardly what I’d call a Baker. I’m more Baker  -ish.

And I remember fondly, bundling up my kids to take them to the hill behind my house to go sledding. What joy watching those kids slide and scream and laugh down that hill. But at about the 45th time I dragged that sled back up the hill, toes numb and nose running, when my kids would ask “Mom, isn’t this fun?”, no matter what I said out loud, in my head it was fun -ish.

As the sun was going down on a day of sledding, I’d come inside and we’d be frozen to the bone. I’d light a fire in the fireplace but my ears would still be red and my fingers stiff. I’d make the kids some hot chocolate and sit them at the counter with their cocoa and cookies .  . .

 Chocolate and Strawberry Pinwheel Cookies

. . . and I’d move to the living room with a steaming cup of coffee laced with a good shot of Irish Creme. And when that coffee went down, from the inside out, I’d finally start to feel warm -ish.

Another –ish, I remember calling my husband at the office and telling him I had cut my hair. When asked why I’d say “it was getting long -ish”. He’d say “oh no, is it short?” Well, short -ish.

And how many of us have been asked “we’re late, are you ready?” and answered with “another few minutes, I’m ready -ish."

My kids, like most, don’t keep their rooms clean. I gently remind them frequently, but every few weeks I insist. When they’ve hidden enough of their crap in drawers that no longer close, or moved enough junk to another position on their dresser, they’d tell me their room is clean. But they’re not fooling me. The best I can give them: clean -ish.

Pinwheel Cookies
                                      ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Ingredients, base recipe:  
1 stick butter, softened
1 stick margarine, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

Ingredients, Chocolate:

2 TBSP baking cocoa

Ingredients, Strawberry:

1/2 tsp strawberry extract

red food coloring

1 TBSP flour

Ingredients, Decorations:

chocolate jimmies (sprinkles)
multicolored jimmies (sprinkles)

Directions:
*Beat butter, margarine and sugar. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Add flour, baking powder and salt.
*Divide dough into 4 fairly equal sections. Leave 2 quarters as is.
*To one of the other quarters, add the baking cocoa. To the other, add the strawberry extract, red food coloring and 1 TBSP flour.
*Roll out each dough segment (separately) between 2 pieces of wax paper to about 9 X 11 inches.
*Carefully flip the chocolate layer on top of one of the plain layers and the strawberry layer on top of the other plain layer. Lay them flat in the refrigerator and chill approximately 1 hour.
*Using the wax paper to help you, roll up (the long side) until you have 2 tube shaped rounds, one chocolate and plain and the other strawberry and plain.
*Wrap each round in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about an hour.
*Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Put parchment paper onto baking sheet.
*Slice rolls into approximately 1/4 inch slices. Bake for approximately 12 minutes. Let sit on baking sheet for 2 minutes before removing to cool completely.