No yoga. Cookies & crap food. And gag gifts.

Since I haven't practiced since Sunday (and that was a Bikram class) and there is no yoga in my near future, I might as well talk about food. Well, food and illness.

In the middle of the night Sunday, Will ralphed in his bed. UGH. I had a breakfast meeting on Monday morning, so Lee took Michael to school, went by his office to pick up some work, then came home to stay with Will while I went to my meeting and to Toys "r" Us (or, as Will calls it, Toys For Us) for the last of the Christmas presents.

At my meeting I had a latte and two plain scrambled eggs, and by the time I left there I was starting to feel a bit yucky. I thought I had bad indigestion or something, but couldn't imagine how from my breakfast. I ran my errands and came home so that Lee could go into the office for a few hours, then get Michael at 2:45.

By the time he got home with Michael, I had gotten in bed. My stomachache was getting worse and I was starting to feel nauseous. By the time Lee had fed the boys dinner, I was feeling achy and chilled and even more nauseous. I kept telling myself "if I threw up I'd feel better" but I couldn't get up to do it.

I slept in short spurts all night, unable to get comfortable, but when I got up on Tuesday my nausea was gone. I just felt very shaky and washed out. Monday morning, when I realized that I was going to be behind schedule due to Will being home, I emailed John and told him that I wouldn't be at Tuesday's primary series class, so he sent out an announcement cancelling it. I'm glad I went ahead and did that, so he could do something else with his morning, since I wouldn't have made it anyway.

I sat around for a while on Tuesday, trying to muster the energy to go to Target. I got there, got myself a diet coke, and did my shopping. By the time I got the boys from school, I was feeling much better. We got home and Will and I made a batch of the best and easiest holiday candy in the world, Almond Roca.

What we made was actually Walnut Roca, since that's the nut I had in the fridge.



This recipe came from the August 1998 Expecting Club message board at the long-defunct Parentsplace.com. I wasn't much of a member there, but I did print this recipe someone posted, and I've made it every Christmas since. It's super easy, very impressive looking, delicious, and great for giving. Last year I bought some chinese takeout-style boxes and filled them with almond roca to give to the kids' teachers.

You line a rimmed cookie sheet with heavy duty foil and spray it with cooking spray. Then you cover the cookie sheet with saltines so that the whole sheet is covered, breaking saltines to fit at the edges where a whole saltine won't fit. Last year I also tried this recipe using graham crackers instead of saltines and it turned out great.

While you're doing this, preheat your oven to 350 and melt together one cup of butter and one cup of brown sugar in a saucepan. Bring it to a boil and let it boil for about three minutes. Then pour the hot butter and sugar over the crackers and spread it so that they're all mostly covered. An offset spatula works great for this job.

Put the cookie sheet in the oven for five minutes. Watch carefully! The butter and sugar will be bubbly.

Pull the cookie sheet out of the oven and, working quickly, sprinkle 12 ounces of chocolate chips over the hot crackers. My kids love to help me with this part. As they fling the chips on, I spread them around, again with my offset spatula. The chocolate chips start to melt and I keep spreading until there is a smooth layer of chocolate covering the crackers. Then I sprinkle about a half cup or so of toasted chopped nuts on top - I've used both almonds and pecans. Slivered almonds are especially nice.

Then, if it's a cold day, just set your pan outside where varmints can't get to it, or else put it in the freezer for a while. Once everything has chilled and set completely, you simply lift up the foil and the entire sheet of candy will lift right up. Peel the foil off, break the candy into chunks, et voila! Easy roca.

Then today after school Michael and I made Monster Cookies from Paula Deen's Christmas Cookbook. The quantities called for in the recipe didn't really register with me until I we got started making them and discovered that the bowl with my Kitchen Aid mixer was not going to be large enough. What she calls for in her cookbook is double the amounts called for in the link to her recipe at the Food Network.

What I had to do before I added the oats was get out my extra mixing bowl and pour half the batter in, then pour half the oats and chocolate chips into each bowl.

Mass quantities aside, this is a tasty, kid-friendly cookie what with the evil green & red M&M's AND chocolate chips. It's peanut buttery and chewy because of the oats. I have a ziplock bag of them in the freezer, a small tin filled to give to a friend, and two large tins here at home, PLUS another container filled with cookies and roca to take to a family gathering on Sunday.



So after spending two hours dealing with monster (har) amounts of cookie dough, I was totally off my feed. I've been that way since Monday, and what I have eaten has mostly been crap. Monday I had nothing other than a few sips of coke since my breakfast. Tuesday morning I had a piece of toast and diet coke, then for lunch I had a little bit of chicken salad and a few crackers. My dinner was more diet coke, a few waffle fries (the boys had chick-fil-A) and some Trader Joe's peanut butter filled pretzels.

Today I had two pieces of turkey sausage and half a pumpkin muffin for breakfast, then when I ran home in between errands, I microwaved a piece of leftover cheese pizza and ate about two-thirds of it. I had a decent lunch, though - my friend Cindy had us all over for a really nice meal. She had appetizers, a lovely green salad, a poppyseed chicken casserole, steamed green beans with toasted pine nuts, rolls, a citrus tart with a gingersnap crust, and coffee, plus a "poinsettia" which is champagne, a splash of orange liqueur, and cranberry juice. It was so nice - she had out her holiday dishes, she lit the candles, the works.

Tonight at dinnertime I was too overloaded with cookie dough to be hungry, so Lee made pasta and sauce from a jar for the boys, and about 8:00 I microwaved myself a Hebrew National hotdog and ate it, bunless, standing there at the counter.

I have done nothing remotely resembling yoga, not even any stretching. I promised myself I was going to do some sun salutations at least, but I ran out of time.

At some point I have to go get a gift for someone in Lee's office. He has no idea what to get. What do you buy a Jewish Buddhist vegetarian who doesn't drive?

On a totally unrelated note, in the course of searching for booby prizes for the family Bingo game on Saturday, I have run across two items that I think are hysterically funny. One I saw at a gift shop in town:

Smoking Mittens

If I didn't think my mother would be highly insulted, I'd buy them for her. She has no sense of humor about her cancer stick habit.

The other item I saw at CVS pharmacy: Tater Mitts.

Omigosh! Is it the mere name or the actual product that is so funny? And who knew that handwear could be so amusing??

Trying to get my act together here.

Last week before Christmas, and the boys are out of school on Friday, so I've made myself lists and agendas for each day which need to be strictly adhered to. The last of the boys' gifts, teacher gifts, prizes for family bingo on Saturday, groceries and wine, all need to be bought this week. Tomorrow morning I have a breakfast meeting (PTA related), Wednesday one of my friends is having us all over for lunch, Thursday morning is a Parent Brunch at school and then a party in Will's room Thursday afternoon, and Thursday night I'm having friends over for cocktails and present wrapping. I wish I could add another day or two onto my week.

I have gone back and forth about practicing on Tuesday. Last week I was the only person for class, so John practiced instead of teaching, but he did his own thing and not so much of primary. I was kind of distracted, so not a great practice.

I suspect that if I emailed him and said I wouldn't be there, he'd cancel the class. However, I won't have any other opportunities to practice all week, unless I fit in a short practice at home.

I went to a Bikram class last Wednesday and again this afternoon, since the studio where I take hot classes is closed for renovation. I didn't make advanced primary on Saturday morning since I went out on Friday night and left Lee at home with the boys and a friend who was sleeping over. It didn't seem fair to go off again on Saturday morning, not like I felt like it anyway. I got in about 1:00, and about 5:00 Will got in bed with us. He was all on me like white on rice, and I was hot and thirsty, so I got some water and got in Will's bed by myself, and was just settling back in when I heard Michael get up, hurry into the bathroom, and throw up. So that was it for my night's sleep.

I managed some stretching on Saturday, but that was it. Actually, it was a nice day. Lee took Will out for a boys afternoon (hardware store, liquor store, library, and the neighborhood pub for lunch) and Michael lay on the sofa. I put on some quiet Christmas music and lit the fire and it was quite cozy. It rained off and on all day, which was also nice and much needed.

I did manage to start my holiday baking on Saturday. I made a batch of pumpkin-granola muffins for Michael's class snack on Monday, and I made almond-cherry bars based on a recipe for almond-apricot bars. I thought cherry would be more festive.



The crust is a shortbread cookie dough with finely chopped almonds. Part of the dough is reserved and sprinkled on top of the preserves. I used a jar of Bonne Maman brand cherry preserves. The buttery cookie and tart preserves make a nice contrast.

The original recipe called for fruitcake fruit to be finely chopped and added to the cookie dough, but, UGH. Honestly, is there anything more vile than that candied, garishly colored fruit found in fruitcakes? I think not.

The recipe comes from a circa-mid-70's cookbook I bought at Goodwill a couple of years ago for a buck.



I have made several recipes from this cookbook and they've all been successful. It's got all kinds of recipes: bar cookies, brownies, holiday cookies, slice and bake cookies, cookies for gift giving, you name it. Despite the predominant harvest gold theme in the photos, I guess that just shows that cookbook fashions come and go, but cookies are timeless.

Can somebody please explain Pokemon to me?

I know it's Japanese but...my knowledge ends there. My five-year-old has gotten into it lately. I ask my mom friends to tell me what it's all about, and they just shrug and look helpless.

I know the cards are for trading. Are they also for games? Are there action figures? Is it just a spinoff of direct to DVD movies?

This morning Will dragged out all the beanie babies he used to sleep with and call his "friends". He gave them all Pokemon names and had them smashing into each other with loud explosive noises. Whether that's actual Pokemon action, I don't know. But I assume there is some conflict involved.

The Scholastic Book Fair is at school this week. Will came home with his "wish list" which consists of The Pokemon Handbook, Avatar, a Pirates of the Caribbean novel (???) and, for something I might actually buy, the Magic Tree House: Monday with a Mad Magician. His teacher told me that all the boys were wish-listing Pokemon books or else things like "How To Play Nintendo" and all the girls were wish-listing Barbie books. I ask you, can Scholastic not do better than Barbie and Nintendo at a school book fair?

Second-day soreness is the worst. I put down my mat this morning and did some glacially slow surya namaskar a's, taking several breaths at each point. The hardest part was stepping back up to my hands! The tops of my thighs were killing me. (Sitting down on the toilet is worse!) After five a's and three b's, I felt a bit more loosened up and did part of standing, then sat in supta vajrasana (Bikram style) and baddha konasana for awhile. Then I moved my mat by the wall and did some headstanding. I've been playing around with the shift of weight between my arms and head, and also working on really pushing into my shoulders. If I can strike that right balance between my shoulders and the crown of my head, I can hold headstand for as long as I want, whereas if it's mostly my shoulders, I can only manage about fifteen breaths before I have to come (crashing) down. I have never used the wall before, but I wanted to be close to it so that I could play around with headstand without worrying about falling backward. Also, I am still learning to raise my legs into headstand without that little pushing-off motion from my feet. Not there yet! Again, I think it all comes back to upper body and core strength.

The boys have been bugging me to start baking cookies with them. It is hard to feel like cranking up the holiday baking machine when it is 75 degrees outside! I wore sandals today, for crying out loud. Maybe I'll make some popsicles instead.

Well, that was a crummy birthday.

My birthday was Friday. That morning my cat was killed by a dog (as I blogged about previously). What a shitty day. I went to Community Circle at school, a very sweet monthly ritual that all the children attend. They sing, and the grades alternate spotlighting different students for various things, and talking about their expeditions. The singing is my favorite part, but I was feeling so emotional on Friday morning that the singing had me sobbing into a tissue.

I had planned to buy myself some shoes for my birthday with a DSW Shoe coupon I had, and I went, but my heart was so not in it. Some friends took me out for lunch, and late that afternoon I went for a pedicure, which I enjoyed, but the rest of the evening I spent feeling very tearful for Max, and I had a terrible headache to boot.

Saturday morning I went to advanced primary as planned, but I felt on the verge of tears and very fragile the entire time. It was crowded and with a student teacher who for some reason focused on me for her adjustments. It's indicative of my mood that I felt very picked-on instead of enjoying the adjustments. John took over when we got to seated, and he picked up the pace, and then threw in some extra stuff which he loves to do, like at Navasana, he had us all get up and form a line, then do sets of lunges back and forth across the room. Then we resumed the series with ten Navasanas and some core work, then on through the rest of the series to urdva dhanurasana, which I could barely manage because my legs were so fatigued from the lunges. Then he wanted us to hold our headstands for thirty breaths, then lift our heads off the floor. I really felt unable to cope with the challenge. During savasana, I put my towel over my eyes and had a little cry, and then felt better.

Today I am sore as hell from all those lunges.

Yesterday my sweet friend Gwen offered to take the boys for the evening so that Lee and I could go out for my birthday, so we took them to her house, then went to eat at a place we really like called Brick Store Pub. They have tons of obscure beers, especially Belgian ones, and we had sandwiches and beer. I got a dark Belgian seasonal ale that was yummy, also 10.5%, so after one of those I was feeling a bit looped. I also had a glass of, I forget what it's called, but it Belgian ale fermented in the champagne method. Very different, but delicious.

We headed back toward Gwen's, and on the way stopped in at a wine bar for another drink, then onto Gwen's, where we hung out with her and her husband and split a bottle of red wine while the boys finished watching "Home Alone".

This morning I didn't feel hung over exactly, but rather toxic.

We drove to Macon late this morning to take my mother-in-law out to lunch for her 85th birthday at Longhorn's Steakhouse. I had an overpriced steak salad and in the process of stealing one of Will's french fries, I dropped a huge glob of ketchup down the front of my white shirt.

My sister-in-law and her husband met us for lunch. She makes pottery, and she said she'd make us a nice little marker for Max's grave, plus one for our dog, who Max is buried next to.

I am feeling much better, but I do miss my kitty. I keep thinking I hear his tag jingling on his collar.

He was a good cat.

We got him in 1994, shortly after we got married, from the county animal shelter. He had been taken there from a vet's office, where his owners had dropped him off, claiming he had eaten baby aspirin, then never returned to claim him. My sister-in-law and I picked him out, discovering that he was supposed to have been euthanized twice already, but had been missed. When we brought him home, we named him "Max", and he spent the next three days hiding in our guest room closet, peeing on the luggage stored there.

He adjusted to us eventually and we kept him inside, though we wondered about his intelligence when he began pooping next to his litterbox instead of inside it. The day I came home from work and found cat poop on our kitchen table, we decided he was trying to let us know that he wasn't happy inside, so we booted him out into our fenced yard, where he stayed.

We moved to another house where he lived out back with our dog, Shine, coming to join us inside in the evenings. There was a holly tree inside the fence that Max, when he was feeling frisky, would leap onto and cling by his claws to a low branch. One night, when Michael was a baby, he climbed over the wooden fence and was attacked during the night by three dogs and they ripped a hole in his side. He recovered after a few weeks, though he always walked with a limp after that.

When we moved to the house where we live now, we kept him inside until we got a fence built around our deck, then he lived out there, spending the nights inside the garage. One winter he slept for weeks inside a plastic trash can on top of a bag of pine bark nuggets. When we put down a couple of towels on top of the bag, trying to make his bed more comfy and warm, he quit sleeping there.

He was mostly indifferent to our dog, though occasionally he deigned to take a swipe at him with a paw. He was never aggressive with any other animal unless they messed with him first, and he never chased birds or squirrels. Time and time again I saw him sitting by his dish, watching birds eat crunchies from it, but he never even tried to catch them. Recently a possum has been coming on our front porch to eat out of Max's dish, and Max usually just sat there watching him eat, probably thinking "whoa, sorry about that ugly tail of yours, pal."

Last year he used up two more of his lives: one morning, he ran under the garage door after it had lowered past the saftey sensor, and the door closed on his back. He howled and tried to escape while Lee sprinted around to open the door again. Miraculously, he was fine. Then one day in the spring, he was snoozing under the neighbors' Japanese maple when two leashed dogs - one a big yellow lab, the other a rescued greyhound - came by. One of them slipped her leash and attacked Max, and the other lunged so hard the dog walker (who we knew) lost her grip on the leash. It turned out that the two dogs got the worst end of the deal, because their owner called me to apologize profusely for the attack, and said they had both needed treatment for multiple cat scratches! It took hours for Max to come out of hiding, but when he did, I swear he had a "yeah, I kicked some dog butt" look on his face.

He was about seventeen years old, and I was suprised that he still remained so spry. He spent most days snoozing in either a secluded shady spot in the summer, or a sunny spot in the winter, though he came around several times a day for loving, and was always around for breakfast. He had spent a lot of time lately across the street with our 89 year old neighbor, and she confessed to me recently that she had been feeding him canned tuna. He would join us inside in the evenings, and often I would find dirty paw prints on the toilet seat where he had been drinking out of the bowl. He also used to to splash around in his water dish every morning, getting himself soaked and wetting the area all around his bowl.



He was part Maine coon, part something else. We used to call him Big Max, because in his younger years he weighed about eighteen pounds. As he got older, he was extremely skinny, though he still looked fairly big because of all his fur.

He wasn't the smartest cat in the world, but we loved him.

This morning we let him in for some loving, and when he went back outside, and onto the sidewalk in front of our house, a dog on a leash attacked him, and, we think, broke his back. I didn't see it but Lee did, and Max was trying to run away after the dog let go, but was unable to use his back legs. Lee knelt down next to him by the sidewalk, and said after about a minute, while he was petting him, he died.

He was a good cat. We buried him in the back yard next to our dog. He still has his collar and tag on, so that when he gets to the animal afterlife, they'll know who he is.

Backbends and coffeecake.

I think I have started a new tradition for the fam wherein we kick off the month of December with festivities. That's the day we get out the Advent calendar, and the boys were all excited, so I got them each a Christmas book and told them we would go to the Christmas parade downtown. Since all this was going to happen on Saturday morning, on Friday I made a coffeecake to have for breakfast the next day.

All you real bakers out there, just go ahead and throw rocks at me because I made the dough in my bread machine. I love that thing! I put the ingredients in and plugged it up in the other room, and it mixed away while I had a glass of wine and made dinner. When it was ready, I patted out the dough into my baking pan, then topped it with a streusel mixture of oats, butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. The recipe called for nuts but I get too many complaints about them (Will says "they're too bumpy!") so I left them out. I put the pan in the fridge and let it rise overnight.

The next morning while it was baking I made a glaze of powdered sugar, half & half and a few drops of vanilla and drizzled it over the top while it was still warm.



Holy cow, it was good. The dough was barely sweet but the topping and glaze was a nice contrast. It's too bad I have to shun carbs, for the most part. I love to bake and this kind of thing, along with layer cakes, are my absolute favorite things to bake and eat.

The parade was okay. It would have felt more Christmassy if it hadn't been sixty degrees. The boys had a good time, not that you could tell by looking at them:





They look like they're in the waiting room at the dentist.

Since this is supposed to be a yoga blog, at least in part, I guess I should talk about my practice. I went to primary series on Tuesday, not having practiced (except for a Bikram class) since the previous Tuesday. What I lacked in strength, I made up for in flexibility. Maybe it was because I felt low energy that I just relaxed and did what I could.

It was the first time I got myself fully into garba pindasana without sustaining bruises on the insides of my elbows, and I did six perfect rolls around the mat then popped right up into kukkatasana. I also got myself into supta kurmasana. Then I had some great backbends. John left us on our own for them, and my first one felt okay on my lower back, so I pushed and pushed into my armpits. I stayed up for about ten breaths, then lowered onto the crown of my head. I lowered my elbows onto the floor and was able to clasp my hands behind my head, for the first time, after several weeks of attempts on my "good backbending days". Now I need to work on really pushing into my legs so that I can get my head off the floor.

This entry sounds kind of like it was written by my third grader. Lee has been out of town since Sunday and I'm feeling a bit stunted, creatively speaking. Massive doses of caffeine notwithstanding.

Caffeine intoxication.

I went to an hourlong Hot Power Fusion class this morning in the Hot room. It was super hot this morning, and I sweated buckets. Afterward, I walked over to Dancing Goats and got myself a large latte, because this morning I didn't brew a fresh pot of coffee. Lee is out of town and I just reheated a cup that had been in the fridge for about a week. So, good god. I am almost out of my mind with the caffeine buzz!

My friend Beth called when I got home and I was talking about a hundred miles an hour. I told her I'd overdosed on caffeine after a Hot class and she said "I'm hanging up now so you can go eat something." A nice benefit of all that caffeine is that I'm not hungry in the least! Whee! I feel like it's the night before a big exam in college!