Sheldon Does the Salsa

Nicknames are a funny thing. When your little bundle of joy arrives you coo out little terms of endearment, Sugar, Sweet Pea, Baby Girl. My Dad embarrassingly saddled me with Pooh for my love of A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh. This was prior to them being trademarked by Disney and other forms of over animation and glitz. Here I’ll mention this was a man whose own mama called him Buzz until the day she died.

A little innocent comparison to someone evolves in to something that sticks no matter how much you try and shake it. I once knew a kid named Nimrod who tried to convince me it meant mighty hunter. Snort, yeah right.

So what about Sheldon? Why pick such a nerdy name for our strikingly beautiful daughter? She is a born and bred overachieving smarty pants. Her favorite day, March 14th, Pi Day (3.14159265), math geeks unite. She was the kid who was having lunch everyday with the guidance counselor in 6th grade to figure what she needed to do to get her hands on scholarship dough. When I was twelve, I was happy to find my classroom and a seat in the back of the room.

When the television show “The Big Bang Theory” came out, the most intellectual guy was Sheldon. She thought we called her that since she was so smart, in reality it was his desire to have only order in his life and color only in the lines. Assigned seating and color coordinated food became our norm. Sheldon begged us for a Periodic Table shower curtain just like the cast. Actually snorted when they told funny inside math jokes. Who are you? Were you switched at birth?

But she makes a mean Salsa, I mean the stuff is like heroin, I can drink it from a cup, why bother with chips.

Sheldon’s Salsa

28 ounce can whole tomatoes
Juice from 1 medium lemon
4 green onions
1 cup cilantro
½ white onion
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
5 jalapeños
1 whole tomato, cut X on ends
1 ¾ reserved liquid.

Place 5 jalapenos and tomato in a sauce pan with 3 cups of water, bring to a boil for 15 minutes, reserve liquid. Seed peppers and skin the tomato and liquefy with reserved liquid in a blender. I should mention it should be done in a well ventilated area and those darn peppers should be handled carefully. I once thought I blinded myself when I scratched my eye while handling. Run the remaining ingredients in a food processor and place in bowl, pour in pepper combination. If you’re inspired you can cut up a few avocados and throw in. Serve with tortilla chips.

But the Big Tuna and I are proud of our little flower, she graduated 44th of 808 kids in her class with a pretty darn good scholarship to ASU where she is triple majoring in secondary education, math and Geek. All I got left for those of you in the Big Bang Fan Club, Bazinga!!!

We’re Not in Arizona Anymore Toto

This past weekend we were off to the land of big hair and spray tans. A return to the homeland, New Jersey for the Big Tuna’s nephew’s wedding. Fast talking, no nonsense people with lots to say and take no prisoner attitude. Boy I miss that.

The Big Tuna is the tallest Tuna for fifty generations. Sheldon and I feel like giraffes amongst the in laws or Dorothy and the Good Witch surrounded by the little people. Nothing like drawing attention to myself with my condor like wing span during the dancing rendition of Love Shack. In honor of the Polish Polka wedding crew, the national recipe…..Stuffed Cabbage with a few short cuts but still more of a pain in the a*** then the usual fare. But tasty.

Stuffed Cabbage
1 Large Head Cabbage
1 medium onion diced
1 clove garlic minced
½ teaspoon dill
2 teaspoons fresh parsley
½ bay leaf crushed
1 ¼ pound ground beef
1 cup cooked rice
1 egg
3 cans tomato soup
½ water
4 tablespoons sugar

Cook cabbage until done, I usually do a few leaves at a time in boiling water, hence the pain. While leaves cool, mix remaining ingredients except for two of the cans of soup, water and sugar. Fold the meat mixture into the cooked leaves and arrange in rows in a baking pan. Combine remaining tomato soup, water and sugar and pour over cabbage rolls. Cover with foil and cook at 400 degrees for an hour and 15 minutes.

One of the most glaring differences between the Garden State and the Valley of the Sun is here in Arizona we’re all about the personal “freedom”. Having a bit of time to kill between the wedding and the reception we invited some of the cousins back for a cocktail at the motel. I said, heck, we’ll stop at the grocery store and pick up some beer and wine. Apparently, that’s a big no no, you can only buy booze at an official liquor store. Say what? Shoot in Phoenix we can buy all the liquor, guns and fish sticks we want as a one stop experience. This leads to Sheldon sharing that she passed the concealed weapons test and once she turned twenty one they’d mail it right to her. Great, math teacher by day, sniper by night.

Faux Camping and the Fourth

Let’s start off with, I don’t do camping. Who in their right mind would, all that nature gives me the heepy jeepies. I do all my hunting and gathering at Safeway, not the wilderness. My earliest memories of camping are not pretty. Picture a ton of kids, two adults and four wet dogs in a tent that needed to be put up in the pouring rain by an impatient daddy. Nuff said.

But Bebe was coming back from Elko, Nevada for the 4th of July and how could I refuse to spend quality time with my BFF since she moved to points north. When we went “camping” with our nature survivalists when the kids were preschoolers it showed what polar opposites we are. Team Tuna stayed in a travel trailer while the B’s stayed in a pop up trailer. The most fascinating difference is while we were practically hosing down the woods with liquid, their little family of four survived on a coffee cup of water. I am not cut out to conserve.

Bebe and Bubba have a little place in Show Low and the Big Tuna was giddy to take his new (at least to us) and shiny RV for its inaugural run. Riding shotgun in the big rig was a weird visual experience. So much windshield, it was like riding in a 1978 AMC Pacer, another stellar purchase my parents made in my youth. The interior was sort of an uncanny twilight zone experience. The upholstery was identical and I mean identical to a sofa we’d retired about 10 years ago. All the built ins and fixtures were ¾ quarter scale. I felt like Alice in Wonderland who ate the cake and grew big. So a quick and easy recipe for the Mad Hatter and crew.

Easy One Dish Tortellini
28 ounces chicken broth
9 ounces cheese tortellini
4 ounces onion and chive cream cheese
1 can undiluted tomato soup

Bring broth to boil, add tortellini and simmer for 5 minutes. Ladle out a little broth into a bowl, add cream cheese and whisk until blended, return to pot. Add the can of tomato soup and heat thoroughly.

Living in the west, wild fire capitol of the world, makes me a little nervous about lighting fireworks. We compromised by flicking lighters inside the RV. But in the end, RV, $30,000, filling it with gas, $300, not peeing in the woods…….priceless.

Grandma and the Iron Curtin

A recent sibling weekend brought to mind how differently you remember your childhood. Those nearest and dearest are happy to burst your bubble, usually in front of your husband and children and recount those discrepancies with glee. Of course Mommy never broke curfew, why she even came home early so as not to worry her own dear parents. Underage drinking? She wouldn’t think of it, that would have just been so wrong.

When I was in 4th grade, my Aunt passed away suddenly. Overnight we went from a family of four to a family of eleven. My parents adopted my five cousins and brought in my grandparents for reinforcements. We moved into the biggest house in a nearby town with a small separate apartment. Grandma and Grandpa moved into the apartment and put the two littlest boys in the connecting dining room.

My folks were young adults in the sixties, let’s just say they had a pretty laid back approach to kids. The innocent grandparents never knew what hit them. As retired schoolteachers they expected us to use our indoor voices, never run in the house and clean our plates. We of course behaved like we were raised by wolves playing wild made up games involving danger. The favorite was Dark House, a warped game of hide and seek. You’d turn off every light in the house and wait to be found. Best hiding places, the top shelf of the linen closet, and the built in clothes hamper, that is if the seeker didn’t lose interest after the first hour. Those spaces seem impossibly small now, I have no idea how we squeezed in.

If we wanted to go over to the inner sanctum of their side we had to knock politely and wait to be invited in. We referred to this as going behind the Iron Curtin. We had to show our passports and our clean hands in order to cross the border. The little boys seemed impossibly polite and tidy, the five oldest looked like we’d been running wild in the neighborhood, playing in the creek and rolling in mud. Likely we had been. My grandparents had to protect them from those hooligans, hmmmm….I think they mean us. It goes to show it nurture versus nature. The boys have grown up into fine sensitive men, essentially ads for tall-dark-handsome-with-big-white-teeth.com.

Grandma baked fresh bread every week for the family. My parents didn’t do dessert, but the grandparents liked a little sweet after dinner.

Grandma’s Apple Crumble
Fill a shallow, buttered baking dish with thinly sliced apples. Blueberries, peaches are other fruit may be used instead. Sprinkle lightly with a tablespoon brown sugar mixed with a dash of cinnamon. Combine:
½ cup flour
½ cup sugar
½ quick oats uncooked
1/3 cup butter.

Mix until crumbly and spread over fruit. Bake at 350 degrees until apples are tender. Serve warm with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. Blueberries, peaches are other fruit may be used instead.

But we know they loved us, admired our crummy art projects, came to our off key choral concerts, made sure we didn’t burn down the house when our parents were at work. Taught us that thank you notes and hard work will take you everywhere. So thank you Grandma and Grandpa for being just the way you are.

What's The Skinny

Now that I’m officially the parent of an adult I’ve begun to notice a very ugly body issue that can only be contained by high waisted jeans. In my head I still feel like the slim waif of decades past, so when I drift by a full length mirror I think, there must be a body pod around with my real self. With Sheldon off a college it was time to take matters into my own hands.

I’d never used the gym membership provided by my office, I didn’t want to sweat with the people I worked with but it was after all free. Who would I possibly see at 6 AM? Just Hitler’s girlfriend, Eva Braun, the resident personal trainer? Ve vell vork out this morning no? Um sure…..the first work left my arms dangling at my sides. I couldn’t raise my limbs to blow dry my bangs and had to resort to using the hand dryer leaving me with more of a Lassie look. Where’s that darn Timmy when you need him.

The following is a true accounting of our company quarter group hug. Just as I sat down with my free sub sandwich and a Dr. Pepper, Eva strolled past 80 people, walked right up to me and asked, “What are you drinking, if you swallow that I’m going to make you regret it.” Uh oh. Apparently Gyms R Us was showing the exercise benefits to the troops.

The problem with diet cookbooks is by the time you’ve added a few innocent things to make it stop tasting like cardboard it’s no longer low cal.

Jambalaya
1 Tablespoon Olive Oil (so okay the original recipe called for cooking spray, off to a bad start already)
1 medium onion chopped
2 cloves garlic minced
2 stalks celery chopped
1 green pepper chopped (you could substitute yellow or red)
2/3 cup uncooked rice
2 cups chicken broth
3/4 pound Italian sausage cooked (are you seeing a substitute trend)
1 ½ cups cooked chicken
16 ounce stewed tomatoes
1 ½ cups frozen shrimp (that is of course if there is any left after the BP oil spill)
1 tablespoon jalapeño Tabasco sauce (it’s a bit more mild)

Cook onion, garlic, celery and pepper in olive oil until tender. Stir in remaining ingredients except for the shrimp. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes stirring occasionally. Add frozen shrimp and cook additional 5 minutes or until rice is done. The joy of this meal is it cooks in a single oversized skillet. If you cook it without the sausage, in theory, it’s less than 300 calories.

I thought this past week she’d tortured me so much I was having a heart attack. I even went so far as to drive myself to the doctor when the chest pains didn’t back down after the diet lunch. After telling me I was putting on weight nicely for a woman my age, with a little giggle told me I’d just pulled a muscle in my chest. I’ve decided if my double A bra could be revised to a double D, my stomach would look flatter since they would stick out further. I’m thinking it would just be easier to get a boob job.

Sangria and the Stand Up Comedienne

Statistics are still sucking, big time. Spent an amusing time with my main homies this weekend between reckless study sessions so once again, a repost based on my girls.

My girlfriends call me the funniest person they ever met. The question becomes is that a compliment or a criticism, you be the judge. Maybe it’s the because I was scarred as the middle child of seven with only an eight year difference from the youngest to oldest . Perhaps resulting in snappy one liners that make them scream with laughter so as not to be ignored. My parents, in addition to raising a tribe of comics, breed standard poodles, not those yappy future coyote bait pups, but the great big ones. The trouble with poodles is that if they do something funny and you laugh they will do it continually to the point it is no longer amusing, I am Fifi, hear me roar.



Periodically, the Big Tuna gets tired of my endless babbling and encourages me to have a Girls Weekend in order to wear out my sharp tongue. I went this past weekend to a cabin with the usual suspects, naturally Bebe, Lady Godiva who cuts all of our hair and the Sitter, who not only watched our children growing up, but now keeps us under control so we don’t run with scissors. The more we drink the more outrageous things spew out of my mouth. I keep thinking , this will be the thing that makes them gasp in horror, but it never happens. The only quiet they got from me was on the forced nature walk/death march and that was primarily to keep from tripping over a rock by not paying attention.

It all starts with an innocent glass of wine, but Sangria, oh so much smoother going down.

1 Bottle White Wine
½ Cup Peach Schnapps
2 Tablespoons Orange Liquor
2 Tablespoons Sugar
2 Cinnamon Sticks
1 Lemon Sliced
1 Orange Sliced
1 Peach Sliced
20 Ounces Club Soda
1 Tray Ice Cubes

You can substitute other fruit for the peach, I’ve used strawberries or even blueberries. Perfect drink on the deck overlooking the wilderness. A few glasses and we all got a bit giddy. I’d heard from Sheldon that if you take shots from above it makes you look thinner, standing on top of the deck railing taking downward shots is filled with its own peril. I also did a fine imitation of Helga, the yoga instructor, “you there, tall girl, have you never taken a yoga class before? Widen your flamingo legs and get closer to the floor”.

Just remember, “What happens at girl’s camp stays at girl’s camp”. That is of course until I post it on my blog.

&%#^&*^%^, Whew, Glad I Got that Off My Chest

We all have those awful days, you know the one, husband backs the new RV into the restored 1968 Pontiac Firebird (this week), dog devoured a sofa and a paycheck, (in one sitting) or you get on the mirrored elevator on the 30th floor and realize your skirt has been tucked into your pantyhose (for who knows how long). Sadly these are all stories that have happened to yours truly. After days like this you want to open the refrigerator door and inhale anything that doesn’t have scary fuzz on it. But we all have our special comfort food that soothes the savage stress beast. My go to food is macaroni and cheese, with extra, extra cheese, Aiken’s Diet be damned. The following was forwarded to me by a NY Times cookbook junkie, my mom.


NY Times Macaroni and Cheese

2 Tablespoons of Butter
1 cup Cottage Cheese
2 cups Whole Milk
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 pinch cayenne pepper
1 pinch nutmeg
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 pound shredded cheddar cheese
½ pound elbow macaroni, uncooked

Heat oven to 375 degrees, grease casserole dish with butter. In blender, puree cottage cheese, milk, mustard, cayenne, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Reserve ¼ cup cheese. Combine rest of cheese, milk mixture and uncooked pasta. Pour into prepared pan, cover tightly with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Uncover pan, stir, sprinkle remaining cheese and cook uncovered another 30 minutes.

While this is baking away, sit down, pour a GIANT glass of wine. It will restore your good humor and bring you back to center. Big breaths, tomorrow is a new day, hopefully Saturday so you can recoup and start the new week with a carbohydrate high.