What's Cooking

I'm a self-proclaimed chef. I'm the daughter of an actual chef - seriously, did you guys know that my mom had an affair with Emeril and that's why I have the dark hair and eyes that everyone else in my family lacks? Okay, kidding, though when I was born my uncle accused my mom of infidelity because I seriously looked nothing like my family. Don't worry, therapy and DNA testing has proved this wrong. Again, kidding, therapy never helped.

But, back to the chef thing ... my mom owned a bakery, The Gingerbread House, when we were kids. It was in Richmond Rosenberg, Texas, which, at the time, was nothing but country. There were horses in the back and we fed them sugar cubes and did very pastoral-type things. No, not cow tipping, but lots of ant squishing.

My mom's food was and is incredible. I joke that she can make a pb&j taste like it came from a five-star restaurant. In my mid 20s, I spent many months standing beside my mom in the kitchen of my childhood home. I learned the key to her amazing food - butter, and lots of it. And her delicate spicing and knowing exactly how much salt and pepper should go into anything. The woman is a genius.

Fast forward a few years, I meet P. and we fall in love, and we cook. All the time. We love cooking together, trying new recipes. I unfortunately let my control freak flag fly in the kitchen, so it's not as much fun for him, but I'm trying to work at it.

(Ed’s note: No comment).

All that is a roundabout way to introduce you to a feature of my blog called “What's cooking.” I'm going to post a new recipe and my take on said recipe (I very rarely follow a recipe) and more importantly P's reaction. He is an amazing taste-tester.

So, for the first post, I bring you ... drum roll ... banana coconut muffins. Coconut is a new obsession of mine. I thought I hated it until last summer I tried toasted coconut ice cream at Kilwin's Ice Cream Parlor in Petoskey. Let's just say I'm a changed woman and coconut is now my go-to menu item.

Without further ado, I bring you Banana Coconut Muffins

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 very ripe bananas, mashed (3/4 cup)
• 1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, melted
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 3/4 cup sweetened flaked coconut
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 2 tbs coconut milk

How I changed the recipe - I added cardamom and coconut milk to the recipe. I think this made the recipe.

Preheat the oven to 375. Mix bananas, sugar, egg, vanilla, butter and coconut milk in a mixer. Then fold in the sifted flour, baking soda, salt and spices. Last, fold in a 1/2 cup of coconut. Used lined muffin tins, sprinkle with remaining coconut and bake for 25 minutes. Let it cool for five before you burn your mouth off tasting the deliciousness. Good luck with that wait. I still can't say the word Yes without is sounding like Yeth thanks to my patience that only let me wait 2 minutes to try them.

Tips:

I mashed the bananas up. I do this with banana bread too so that you don't have to over mix the batter to get all the banana mashed up.

Also, I suggest that your sous chef look like this:



Here is the finished product, batch one. Batch two included putting coconut on the tops of the muffins and letting that get all toasty. I suggest this but watch that the coconut doesn't burn.

Finally, if someone could figure out how to get rid of this problem

...

P. has suggested an Alice from the Brady Bunch type houseguest. We'll see.

P's response: "Damn I'm glad I married you woman. Now get back in that kitchen and get me a beer." (Ed's note: Not really. Just the first part).

If I could be anyone, it would be Tina Fey

In her new book, Bossypants!, Tina Fey wrote a prayer for her daughter where she is poignant with such raw humor that you can't help sigh and laugh at the same time. I'm totally ripping her off here and applying this to my own daughter. Here is the prayer:

First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches.

May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty.

When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer.

Guide her, protect her
When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age.

Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels.

What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit.

May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers.

Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For childhood is short – a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day – And adulthood is long and dry-humping in cars will wait.

O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed.

And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it.

And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, that I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back.

“My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.

Amen.

Where we are we?

This title has little to do with the post, but it’s one of my favorite sayings from the toddler who roams the halls of my house. Anytime we pull up somewhere, new or familiar, the Bean looks at you and says, “Where we are we.” Not sure if its the saying, the way her sing-song inflection hits the words like its a musical score, but I’m already sad for the day when she just says “where are we.”

So, seriously, where we are we? If you are a Bigelow, you are somewhere between the here and there: a reality that you never thought about, never dreamed about and never ever fathomed. The reality of having three children under the age of three.

There are so many scary things about being pregnant with twins and I will save that for later fodder, but today, after a particularly rough week of tantrums, stomach flus, and crazed work schedules, I’m terrified of the “How.” How are we going to do it? How are we going to raise three children under the age of three and not guarantee that at least one, if not all, will end up in analysis because I forgot them all at Target one day because my head was so full of to-do lists and the line at Starbucks was too long for toddlers so I didn’t get a venti-whatever-cracked-out-caffeine drink I needed.

I realize that we are not unique. We have not cracked the mold here. We are not reinventing the American family. We are just two people who got lucky as hell with their fertility and are going to have a much larger family than anticipated. But, still, I just don’t know HOW we are going to do it.

So to bring you along in our journey, I share with you my top ten list of “how the hell will that happen?”

1. Quick trip to the grocery store on the way home from daycare. You have a toddler who refuses to sit in a cart and two infants. My solution – drive-through grocery stores.

2. How are we ever going to cook something beyond noodles and steamed veggies. It has to be a 1-2 process or we will all end up eating ramen uncooked.

3. The Gym? Oh, you old friend, I bet we will reunite in 2029. (For the record, I call that our magic year – it will be the year the twins go to college), but for now, I have to hope the amount of times that I’m asked to go upstairs and retrieve a certain toy will suffice for all types of cardio health needs.

4. My house will undoubtedly begin to resemble the fraternity houses of our college years. Don’t believe me. Read this. This is my house now – in a few years I will live in that house on steroids.

5. Date nights? Connecting with your spouse? There are too many reasons to write on why I fell in love with my husband – at the very top of my list has to be the incredible conversations we have. Since Bean was born, those conversations have lulled but they have not died out. I fear the death of our verse due to sheer exhaustion, not interest.

6. Speaking of exhaustion – am I always going to look like I just rolled out of bed? I only have one child now and I feel that way because I’m just so darn tired. This really is never going to end, so how am I going to get through a day that includes getting three children out the door, work, work and more work and then picking those same children up and somehow feeding them (see 1 & 2)

7. My car used to explode in the sounds of NPR and good music. Now I have to listen to “Hello Everybody” on f-ing repeat. Sometimes I want to kill small furry animals after I listen to a children’s cd on repeat. I mean would it kill the kid to listen to at least one other song on the CD?!?! How can I drive with my ipod in my ears and still pretend to pay attention to my children?

8. Swagger Wagon USA. We will only have one car between the 2 of us that will cart the three children around. That is going to take some serious coordination. Do you know when coordination falls apart at the seams? (see number 6 for the answer)

9. How do you nurse two babies at once? I was told recently by a very famous person (seriously, this person has won an emmy and happens to have twins herself) that nursing twins is easy – “it’s why you have two boobs.” Aaaaand scene.

10. And, finally, the “how” that keeps me up at night... How the hell am I not going to mix my children up and one day give poor Pancho’s schoolwork to Lefty’s teacher and then poor Pancho fails first grade because when I abandoned poor Lefty in Target, he was never able to catch up. Pete’s brilliant answer to this is: tattoos. So, readers, what sort of tattoos should each boy have so we can forever tell them apart? (please don’t report me to cps here – I really am half joking). (Ed’s note: I’m not).

I know we will figure it out. It will be the only reality we know. But, man, oh man, am I scared.

I'm baaackkk....well, we'll see.

Yes, it's been, oh almost three years since my last blog post. But, a lot has happened in those three years. I had a baby, changed jobs, said baby didn't sleep, husband's newspaper shut down, husband got a new job, I started traveling insanely for work, said baby still didn't sleep, but we somehow managed to get knocked up again, only to find out that we are having twins...oh, and said baby is still not sleeping.

Wait, Whaaaaaat? Did she say she is having twins?

Yes, you read that right. The Bigelows will be welcoming identical twin boys this August. Now pick yourselves up from the floor and come back to my blog. Why? Because I'm going to try a little harder to update it. By harder, I mean at least three posts before the babies are born and then maybe one or two before they turn 18. I will make it easy on you, though, and become one of those people who posts their blog to facebook to prove how very witty and amazing I am. Sound good? Okay!

I actually have been writing a lot lately to help wrap my brain around the incredibly scary yet exciting journey we are about to embark upon. It's going to be a marathon people and I really look forward to seeing you all again in, say, 2029 when the twins go to college.

More to come...