I have basically been waiting my entire life for this. I have been coveting
Nestle Toll House refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough for pretty much
forever and yet I never even looked at them twice in the supermarket because
never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that they were kosher.
It seems that my wildest dreams have come true. And every person that I have
mentioned this to since I came home from Shoprite the other morning has either
laughed at me or looked at me like I was crazy. Or both. Usually both.
My question though, is this: Why, oh why, has no one ever bothered to tell
me that this amazing food product has become kosher?! Am I really the last to
know?
I have very clear memories of being a little girl and watching a commercial
for ready-to-bake cookies. I can still see the girl surprising her mom by coming
home from college for the holidays a day early and her mom hugging her in the
entryway of their beautiful home. The story then switches to the two of them in
the kitchen, sharing memories and putting the cookies in the oven. They smile at
each other as the cookies bake. And even though they both wear a size two, I
just know that they will sit and eat all those cookies together as it starts to
snow outside.
Ahh, memories. And another commerical. Cue the emotional music as the little girl
comes to visit her grandma's house and together they put on aprons. It goes without
saying that the grandma keeps a child sized apron and a set of size small
oven mitts in her kitchen especially for her beloved grandchild.
Together, they slide the cookie trays into the preheated oven and watch through
the oven window as the cookies bake and get bigger and yummier by the second.
And then that little dough boy comes out and they poke him and laugh and sing
the best part of waking up is Folger's in your cup...*
Okay, wait, I just might be mixing commercial memories here a little. But so
what? I have always ALWAYS wanted to bake these cookies. And now we will. My
kids have only a half day of school today for reasons that I do not fully
understand, and so this will be the first of our afternoon activities. It's not
snowing out, just raining, so that will have to do. But we can certainly all put
on aprons and play some music in the background. And we will for sure be standing
in front of the oven window watching the cookies bake. And then we will all hug
and smile at each other.
And the most definite thing that we'll do? We're gonna eat all the
cookies. Go ahead and judge me, but really, I checked that little package. There
aren't that many servings in one thing of cookie dough and we're six people...
*So yeah, about old commercials, Do you remember that Folger's coffee commercial where the whole family is home for the holidays, except for one son?
And we understand this even though there is no dialogue in the commercial because the older woman, the mom of all the grown children in the scene, holds his
framed photo in her hands and looks at her husband with sad eyes.
Then they all go to bed. And then super early the next morning that son sneaks
into the house with a bag full of presents which he leaves in the living room
and goes into the kitchen to start the coffee for everyone. And the yummy smell of the coffee wafts up the stairs and wakes the mom up and she comes downstairs and they cry happy tears and drink coffee together. That just always gets me all teary-eyed. And even though that mom
looks like she knows how to bake from scratch, you just know that they are going
to be baking some cookies from refrigerated cookie dough later that day. I
just love the holidays. Don't you?
Don't be shy! If you like what you've read, leave a comment please!
Have you ever seen a yellow watermelon? Me neither. Until today.
I was in Shoprite this morning, saw a yellow watermelon and brought it
home. I didn't really think any of the kids would eat it because it's, you know,
different and we don't do different. And also, because once it's cut up, it
looks a lot like pineapple and no one in my house like pineapple, except Josh.
Which is kind of ironic because the kids all inhaled their yellow watermelon and
Josh was all, well, I don't know, maybe I won't like it. But like a good father
who is supposed to encourage his children to expand their healthy
food horizons, he tasted it and actually liked it. So there you go, the one and
only food (besides for chocolate ice cream) that all six people in this family
like. I think I might have to go back tomorrow for more - it's totally gone. I
mean, it wasn't like it was a whole watermelon - I can't bring those home, too
messy to cut up and way to heavy to lift out of the shopping cart without
falling in, but still, it's gone. All that's left is the rind and if I would
have let the baby have it, she would have licked it clean.
Yellow watermelon. Who knew?
So here's the deal with birthday parties in school - they're great because you don't really have to do anything except show up. The fabulous teachers play the party games, make the birthday crowns and provide general crowd control.
The downside? You have to do everything beforehand and then lug it all to school, and if you're me, you do all that lugging and dragging things while pushing the girls in the double stroller. Fun. Oh, and to make it even more fun, the first party - at 10am - is when the baby usually naps and the second party, at 11:30am is when my two year old naps. Just add two whiny girls (one with two skinned knees courtesy of walking to the car before the party) who've had more sugar in one morning than they normally have in a week and yeah, you know, it was a paartyyy.
Anyway, in a misguided attempt at efficiency, I scheduled birthday parties for both of my boys on the same day, this past Friday. My older son requested ice cream cones instead of a birthday cake. No problem. I packed all the ice cream in the cooler and the cones, the chocolate syrup, and the sprinkles in my backpack. I even remembered napkins and an ice cream scooper. I was mommy of the year. Until I got to school and dang it to heck! The sprinkles had the following printed in teeny-tiny letters on the back: "Manufactured on the same machinery as peanuts, tree nuts, milk, eggs, soy and wheat". Our school is nut-free. So really, I probably could have taken out a sizable percentage of the school with these rainbow sprinkles. Sheesh. So no sprinkles for us. So sad. So were the kids. And the insane part, no one would have even asked for sprinkles had I not brought them, but once they saw them, they wanted 'em. We placated them with seconds on the ice cream.
My younger son had a simpler request. Doughnuts. The girls and I had made a Dunkin Donuts run that morning after we dropped the boys at school. There are 16 kids in my son's class but I counted on two teachers and my girls eating doughnuts too. So that made twenty. Okay, fine, who I am kidding, I wanted one too. So 21 doughnuts. And 21 is a weird number, but 24 - that's two boxes of doughnuts. Perfect.
I ordered my two dozen doughnuts from the nice Dunkin Donuts lady, and knowing that when I order four donuts for my kids I pay four dollars, I handed her a twenty and a ten while talking to another mommy who was ordering her own stuff at the same time and I guess I wasn't listening to the price.
The Dunkin Donuts lady handed me back the ten - and then a nice amount of change from the twenty! Yahoo! Apparently it's so so so much cheaper to order doughnuts by the dozen than it is to order singles. Who knew? Live and learn.
So anyway, what is my point here? The point here was my party favors. I really dislike regular party bags filled with lollipops and candy and some small plastic choking hazard of a toy that winds up in the baby's mouth.
And the part I dislike the most - you might think it's the choking hazards, but really it's the actual party bag. It hurts me to buy these plastic bags. They wind up right in the garbage and yet they are so expensive because they are printed with the characters from Toy Story 3. Seriously.
So like last year, I went a different way. Last year, I spent a buck per kid and handed out full size shovels and pails for the beach. I painted each kid's name on them with a paint pen and they were a huge hit.
This year though, there are way more kids and a dollar a kid seemed like a lot - it would have been over $50. I wasn't sure what to do, but when I went to the Dollar Store for inspiration, I found it.
22 ounce plastic cups in bright colors - and, and, they were 4 for a dollar. Yeah, you heard me right, four for a buck. Go get some. They're at the Dollar Tree. Go now, I'll wait.
Are you back? Good. So once again, using my trusty box of paint pens, I wrote each kid's name on a cup and filled it with a small bag of potato chips and two licorice sticks. Yeah, I know, I don't like to give out candy, but I also can't have my child being the weird kid who doesn't have any nosh in his party favor. Man alive, the neuroses of being a mom.
What's the best party favor you ever gave out?
Thanks so much for reading!
For the past week or so, I have been working very hard trying to come up with ideas to entertain my kids during the seder. I don't really remember anyone entertaining me or my brother during the seder when we were younger, but maybe we didn't need formal forms of entertainment. Maybe my Bobby Toby laughing so hard that her drink came out of her nose was all we needed. But Bobby Toby isn't with us anymore and the Pesach seders have not been the same since.
Last year Josh and I hosted my whole family for Pesach and we thought it went well. They, apparently, didn't quite agree with us because coming back to our house didn't even seem to be one of the cards on the table this year. I mean, I ask you, was it our fault that the weather turned freezing out of nowhere and the heat was set at a degree that was just a half a degree too low to click itself on or that it rained for 48 hours straight, so hard that we actually saw a (full) garbage can float down the street? And my street is not on a hill. I'm just saying.
So this year, we are going to my parents. If you have been following along, you will know that we generally avoid going anywhere with the kids overnight, ever, anywhere. We just don't. But the kids reallllly wanna go to my parents, and it's only two days, and everyone else is going away and how can we say no and pleaaase mommmmyy... So we're going.
But because my kids will not have their thousands of toys with them for two days, I feel the need to intervene in the entertainment department. During the day we can go for a walk, play in the park, jump around the backyard, but at night - like say, during the seder - things might not go as smoothly. I already informed my three older ones that the only way they will even have a prayer of staying up for the seder is if they take a nap - and not a "five minute, I'm done resting nap", but a "long, wow, I haven't felt this refreshed in like ever nap" - the afternoon before the seder. And so I'm hedging my bets and trying to come up with some stuff that will keep everyone entertained and at the same time, will not prevent the seder from moving right along.
I'm working on some games, and while trying to gather all my art supplies, it occurred to me that a grab bag of little prizes would be a good idea to have around. So I mosied on over to the Oriental Trading website - because while their shipping rates are pretty high, their prices are pretty low - and found these.They're nativity hats, shhh. I'll admit, I will be using these for an altogether different purpose than their intended use, but hey, why not? I feel like maybe I have seen The Ten Commandments movie one too many times, but I am pretty sure the Jews and Egyptians all wore these things on their heads. So why not at the seder too? Exactly.  Just so you know, this is not one of my kids. Our headgear has not arrived yet. This is just a stock photo, but you get the idea.
So like I told all my friends last night when I forwarded them the email, I really never do this, but I just had to pass this on... www.papergoodsdirect.com is having a promotion where if you spend $25 on a first order, you get a $10 coupon to use on that same order, so you are essentially getting $25 worth of stuff for $15. Shipping is a flat $5 for anything under $49 and free for anything over that same $49. The referral code to receive the discount is: 35aj3fk366qt58xon I'm pretty sure I entered the code on the checkout page, but only after the website prompted me to sign up for an account. Apparently you too can sign up and get a referral code to share with friends and get a credit on their site for the stuff they sell. I don't work for this company, I don't work anywhere these days. My only employer is my pack of kids. I only share this because Pesach is coming and in the spirit of blogging and loving, I feel like if I can avoid getting in the car with the kids and still get cheap plastic bowls and plates and spoons and stuff for Pesach, then so should you. And from what I can tell, this place seems to have many items (not all, but many) cheaper than Amazing Savings, at least the Amazing Savings I was in last week. I will update when the package arrives and we can all see if the stuff they sell is cheap, but not in the nicest sense of the word or if we have a new online palce for amazing savings - at least for the paper stuff. Amazing Savings still has a very very good puzzle aisle.
I have a confession to make. I bought some ornaments.
I was in AC Moore last night and they had a whole entire aisle devoted to 70% off everything Christmas, so I looked. It was 70% off, how could I not?
The cookie tins were calling my name but they were a little too red and green for my taste. The little foamie Santa shapes were reaching out to me, so much so that I had a fleeting thought that maybe, just maybe we could somehow turn them into a project for Zaidy, of Zaidy, or someone's Zaidy, anyone's Zaidy. If you squint, Zaidys all kind of looks like Santa. But no. And not because it was Santa but because at 70% off they were still $3 each and I would need several for my kids to make a project with, and that's still expensive.
So I kept moving, pushing my little cart (and those carts are so little in AC Moore, why is that? It's so hard to fit everything in) to the end of the aisle, and there they were. Ornaments. And the angels sang. Well, not really, but I have a theme going here.
 They're just so pretty. If I could, I would put up a tree in my living room and hang pretty glittery balls from it. And I'm betting you would too. And I'm betting I'm not the only one who shops the ornament aisle (as a matter of fact, I know I'm not the only one. I won't name names or anything but you know who you are - you're my good friend so you won't get mad when I say your name rhymes with moldie. I'm just saying). And why not? There's no other word for them but pretty. I don't need the little lights, I don't need the heirloom figurines, I just need the spheres of shimmery glitter.
So I bought two of them. I really wanted purple ones to use as a centerpiece in my purple dining room, but there were none. So I bought two blue ones to go with the walls in the my living room. I hung them on either side of the big living room window, on the curtain rod. So pretty. Not sure this will be their permanent home, but it's a start - at least the kids can't reach them all the way up there.
And just as a followup - after inspecting them, I realized that the ornaments are nothing more than dressed up styrofoam balls. I could so make these. I'll file this away for next time the 70% sale visits the styrofoam aisle.
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