• Food,  How To,  I've Got Mad Skillz,  Uncategorized

    A Crisis Of Epic Proportions

    I had a crisis of epic proportions the other day. My stomach dropped, my breathing intensified, and I started having heart palpitations. An anxiety attack was on the horizon. You see, I ran out of chocolate chips. I know; I couldn’t believe it either. I have posted on Facebook several times about how I “get nervous” when I run out of chocolate chips, but most people think I’m just trying to be funny. Sadly, I’m not. I truly have a physical reaction to the news that I have zero bags of those little semi-sweet teardrops in my freezer*. Granted, I hardly use them anymore: I don’t make chocolate chip banana…

  • Best Thing Ever,  Food,  How To

    How To Make Portillo’s Chopped Salad At Home (& Dazzle Your Family!)

    I am not–and never will be–a food blogger. (I’m guessing you’re not here for the recipes, anyway. So we’re good.) That said, I do enjoy food, and I am pretty good at making delicious things to eat. Sometimes I will prepare a family favorite for dinner and think, “I should share this on the blog.” Then I think, “But I’m not a food blogger, and the idea of staging the food for the pretty pictures makes me feel a little nauseous,” so I don’t share. Except just this once. I happen to have created a family favorite when I started making Portillo’s chopped salad at home, and I think you…

  • How To,  The Dailey Method,  Working On My Fitness

    Get Moving!

    As everyone knows, January is the month in which people make New Year’s resolutions. I don’t have numbers (and am too lazy to look them up), but the majority of people fail after a short attempt at trying to make changes: that’s why the health clubs are packed to the gills from the first of January until about February fifteenth. On February sixteenth, all of us gym rats get the place to ourselves again, like clockwork. If you have a resolution to work on your fitness this year, I’ve got some suggestions for you. 1. Make small goals. If you’re starting a brand-new exercise program, it would be silly and…

  • How To,  My Kids Have Mad Skillz,  Pretty Pictures

    Displaying Artwork For Geniuses

    When the boys were little, the amount of papers and artwork they used to bring home from school (not to mention what they produced at home) was ridiculous. I bought a plastic storage container for each of them and put select items in them to save for posterity. Every now and then, I’d come across something that I didn’t want to put in a time capsule. Of course, I didn’t want it laying around the house, either. I needed a place where I could look at it whenever I wanted to, but it was out of the way at all other times. Enter my kitchen cabinets. The insides of the…

  • How To,  Jew Stuff

    From The Archives, Because It’s THAT Time Of Year

    With the calendar being flipped to December again (that always seems to happen this time of year!), I thought I’d republish this post from last year, because I’m sure it will be useful…again. This was originally posted here on December 6, 2011. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, or something else? I have written about this topic twice before, but alas, it’s that time of year once again, and I always get questions. (Plus, one of my better posts on the topic was a whole three years ago, and many of you weren’t readers back then, so…time for a refresher.) Let me start out with my disclaimer: though I naturally think that…