What happens when its 95 degrees outside and there's not enough ice cream in the freezer for four kids? 

You make milkshakes. 

These were delicious - and I can say that because I sucked up the last of all the kids' cups.
And no, these are not even a little bit Whole30 approved, but it was good. Very good. And I made a choice to eat it and I'm okay with that. I mean, I did down six cups of water after I had it, so the water probably flushed all that sugar out of me, right?

Here's what I did:
Put some ice cream in the blender.
Add some almond (soy, real, whatever) milk.
Press the milkshake button and yum.

Add straws and it's almost as much fun as actually going to Carvel. Except for me, it was more fun because I didn't have to put four kids in the van, wait for the air to cool it off and then drive to Carvel. Yahoo!

And on a totally unrelated note, did you see my kitchen floor in the milkshake picture?
It's sparkly and clean and beautiful and it's all because of this:

My new floor steamer. I think it's a Shark brand. 
I am so in love with it, I want to buy it a shiny present. Or take it for ice cream.

If you're not so good with a mop and a bucket (like me) and have broken many (many) Swiffers, this little guy will be your new best friend. It requires no soap or chemicals, you just add water and plug it in. 

And the sponge-mop-kind-of-thing that cleans the floor? It's reusable. Just use it, toss it in the wash and use it again. I really find that concept to be so wonderful - I was always running out of the Swiffer type stick-on pads and then I couldn't mop. And then I'd forget to get more and then I couldn't mop some more. Wash, rinse, repeat, and you know how that song goes. It always ends with a dirty floor.

But no more, my friends!
Go. Get yourself one. It's one of the best $100 I have spent in a very very long time. 

Getting nervous?
In less than one week, we will all be sitting down to the first seder. Are you tired just reading that? Cause I yawned just from typing that.

Today was (besides for take the six-year-old with the ear infection to the doctor day) oven cleaning day.

I'll just say it - my oven was gross. I always mean to clean it, but I forget. It has a door that closes so it's not like I see the mess when I walk by, and whenever I am near it and thinking about cleaning it, it's hot. Also, it's a not a self-cleaning oven so it's not so simple. And I really don't like the smell and the chemicals and the yuckiness of something like Easy-Off, so the oven rarely gets done.

Wanna see? It's gross, don't say I didn't warn you.

But take a look now.

I know. Such a difference. And that was only after the initial baking soda wipe-off. I did it again and it's totally clean now.

And I did it without poisoning myself with oven cleaner fumes. I poured baking soda all over the oven, sprayed vinegar over the baking soda, let it all sit for a while - and while I wish I could say poof! the stuff wiped right off - it didn't. It did take some scrubbing with a wet sponge but it wasn't too bad and my arm isn't that achey now so all in all, totally worth it.

(Where did I find this idea? Pinterest. Love that place. And I wish I could tell you where on pinterest I first saw it, but sadly, whoever pinned it didn't also link to it. Pinterest etiquette, people!)

Normally, when we clean the oven before Pesach, we'll wait until the kids are asleep and then open the windows in the kitchen and clean. But this year, I did it while they were having dinner, two feet away. They didn't even flinch from the smell of the vinegar, but that could totally be because they were having Italian dressing and salad with supper.

Anyway, now that you have a clean oven, you can kasher it and start baking, because what's more important than dessert? That's right. Nothing.

Here, some desserts from years past:
Brownies that have passed the test: the husband who is beyond loyal to Dunkin Hines and can't imagine why anyone would ever bake anything else, liked these - or at least Pesach-liked them, which, really, is saying a lot.

Blondies worth eating even though it's Pesach. It's true.

Coconut-Chocolate Macaroons.
Are they good? Yes.
Are they healthy? With all that sugar, I can't really say yes, but they're much healthier than anything you'll find in a store.

Go. Bake. Freeze. Because I can't see Pesach desserts being any good after sitting out for a week.

I turned my back for two minutes tonight, during dinner, and I'm not really sure what happened, but I do know that when I turned back, the seven-year-old was standing on a chair at the sink with the six-year-old at his elbow, the older explaining to the younger how to get water to flow through half of his yolk-less hard boiled egg.

Could you just gag? Me too.

Shockingly, to my children, I got upset.

Some might think that the whole wasting of the food is what got me upset and yeah, I really do not like when the kids waste food, but this time, what really got me? The flood. The water running everywhere, down the side of the counter, onto the boys' socks, all over the floor, making a wet and slippery and hard-boiled-egg-scented-mess. And we all know what hard boiled eggs smell like.

In light of my new policy of having the punishment fit the crime - proper consequences and all that, as opposed to the standard go to your room - I told the little one that he'd have to clean the water on the floor and the older one, he'd have to wash the dishes tonight.
The 6 year old grumbled but the 7 year old? He jumped for joy. Sheer excitement.
Apparently, I have been holding him back from the funnest thing ever!

Who knew?

After dinner, I set him up at the sink, showed him how to use the sponge and soap (just a little soap; it's a hard concept for a kid who delights in squeezing a bottle of Elmer's glue) and off he went.

And he didn't do a half bad job either.

I stood there, trying not to smile, or worse, laugh, because this was, you know, a consequence and all but inside, I was giddy and dancing and laughing and doing all kinds of cheerleader type stuff.

The boy was standing at the sink, up to his elbows in water and soap, saying things like:
This is awesome, I love this!
Maybe when I grow up, I can get a job doing this and actually get paid!
I wish I could do this every single night!

Well now. This just got interesting.
Could I really have him wash the dishes every night?
Is that even legal?
There must be some sort of child labor law in this country, right?
Maybe. Maybe not.
But I'm not going to look into that.
Let him be happy and wash dishes, right?
And also, I really don't like to do dishes.
So you know, it's win-win for everyone. 

I really hope they wait a while because I'm not ready for Pesach, but I have been informed by my very delicious four-year-old that the chametz police are coming and really, mommy, we have to start cleaning. 

This hat, pictured above, came home from kindergarten yesterday and it's been looking at me ever since. Wherever I go, it's there and I'm starting to get a complex. 

I tried to tell it that I started and finished the basement for Pesach yesterday, but I don't think it's good enough. I'm not sure what my childrens' beloved teachers have been saying in school, but my children were not at all impressed with my basement announcement - and in fact, (yeah, the oldest used the phrase 'in fact, mommy' (what is that about?)) there are some other mommies who are all finished cleaning and are only sending Pesach-friendly snacks to school. 

And to that, I say a big fat whatever. In a nice way, of course. 

Pesach. It's coming. You can run and you can hide, although I don't recommend hiding because you will most likely end up in a closet or under a bed and then you will find dust. And Pesach has nothing to do with dust, only crumbs.

Say it with me: Now is not the time to start Spring cleaning!  
Pesach is so early this year, it's not even Spring yet, so let it go, let the dust bunnies be and we'll all be much happier.

Too many people (women) make Pesach into a huge deal, and it's really not.

Do you eat on top of your ceiling fans? No? We don't either, and that's what ours will not be cleaned before Pesach.

Do you eat under the bed? I hope not. Although I will be giving my kids' underbeds (is that even a word?) a quick once over with a flashlight, just to make sure. But the eating upstairs ended the after Purim. I know, no one should ever eat upstairs and we really don't - except I recently learned that my children hoard candy they get in school (lovely, right?) in their dresser drawers. The day after Purim, Josh marched them around their bedrooms, they pointed out all the hiding places and all the candy was dumped into a Shoprite bag that now lives in the pantry.

By now you are surely asking yourself what my point is.
I'll explain.
Way more important than cleaning things that don't need to be cleaned right now and organizing things that can be organized after Pesach - or never - is deciding what you will be eating on Pesach, desserts obviously being the most important. And the most Pesach-y dessert I could think of? Macaroons.

I'm reading an awesome book now called A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg. I have been very into food memoirs lately and hers in the latest in a string and possibly the best I have read so far.

One of the recipes she shares is for Chocolate Covered Coconut Macaroons and I tried them last night - with some changes. I did not have vanilla so I left that out and I also did not make the chocolate ganache as she did because I was not sure that there was any heavy cream with a kosher for pesach certification - and even though my kitchen is far from being ready for Pesach, I did want to try out the recipe as if it was already Pesach. I only used ingredients that I had on hand that are also sold with a KP.

This recipe made 24 nice sized macaroons. Molly's recipe indicated 14-18 macaroons so I can only imagine how large and yummy hers are.

Start by pouring 3 cups of unsweetened* shredded coconut into a pan.
Add 3/4 cup sugar.
Add 5 egg whites.

Mix all very well and heat over a low heat for 10 minutes, mixing almost the entire time. I stopped mixing here and there but I did wind up with some brown coconut and I think that was not supposed to happen, so just keep mixing. Your sculpted arms will thank you later.

After mixing for ten minutes, pour the coconut mixture into a 9x13 pan and spread it out over the bottom of the whole pan. It doesn't need to be pretty, it just needs to cool off, so stick that pan in the fridge and let it do it's thing - mine took about twenty minutes, the perfect amount of time to do homework with a first grader.

Once the coconut has cooled, preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper (not wax paper - bad things happen when you bake wax paper) or foil. Roll the coconut mixture into small balls and place them on the baking sheet. My coconut balls were probably about an inch big, maybe the size of a walnut.

I was able to squeeze all 24 onto one baking sheet but had I known that I was going to get 24 coconut balls out of the recipe, I probably would have sucked it up, let them breathe a little and just used another piece of parchment paper on a second pan.

Bake for about 25 minutes or until they are a golden brown color. Mine did not take a full 25 minutes, but my oven runs hot. Keep checking them, you'll know when they're ready.

Let the coconut balls - we can now call them macaroons - cool.

I melted a handful of chocolate chips, dipped the macaroons halfway into the chocolate and then let them set up on a cooling rack.

I found the best part of this recipe to be the simplicity - no preservatives, no unhealthy fat from bad Pesach oils, like cottonseed and the like. I may not love the amount of sugar in these little guys, but at least I know what's in them. 

Josh (and the kids who like coconut) found them to be quite tasty, straight from the oven last night and were equally pleased with them this morning. The other kids and me? Not so much. But it's a coconut thing in general, not a commentary on this recipe.

But here is a commentary on these macaroons: If you look carefully at the chocolate covered ones above, it kind of looks like they are wearing chocolate toupees on their heads. 

Do you see it? I had to hold myself back from using the rest of the chocolate and a toothpick to create faces on each one, like a bunch of old guys on a bench.

*The original recipe called for sweetened but that, combined with the sugar seemed over the top to me.