• Confessions,  Food,  Friends

    Another “Duh” Moment, Brought To You By BlogHer Food.

    I have written about how much fun we have around here, making the family meal plan. Meal planning is not difficult, but it takes time. Then, after you’ve been doing it for a while it takes even more time because even if you come up with creative names for what you’re making and you’re crazy about the recipes you’re using, the desire to come up with new dinner ideas takes over. If you’re a busy person especially, the idea of spending hours combing through cookbooks or searching the web for who-knows-what can be a little overwhelming. I have a confession. It never occurred to me to regularly follow any food…

  • Food,  Friends,  Travels

    My #BlogHerFood In Pictures

    Although I have attended BlogHer’s annual conference for the past four years, this was my first BlogHer Food conference, and my first conference as a member of the BlogHer team. The Super Special Bonus of my weekend was that I got to work and play almost every minute right alongside one of my BFFs. I had a great time and the experience only made me more excited about next month’s annual conference in my hometown. I have gathered some pictures together to try and give you the essence of my weekend. Here goes: Momo and I attended an event with The Pioneer Woman and, while sitting on a couch across…

  • Food,  Review

    Outback Steakhouse, Operation Homefront, & Tim McGraw Honor Military

    I had the honor of being invited to a special luncheon last week, sponsored by Outback Steakhouse and in conjunction with Operation Homefront, which is a great organization that “assists military families during difficult financial times by providing food assistance in the form of food boxes and gift certificates to grocery stores.” (Disclosure: I received a gift bag from Outback Steakhouse on the way out of the luncheon and was not compensated financially for attending OR for writing this post. Writing this post–all words and opinions are mine, by the way–was not required as a condition of attending.) The event was lovely, and I was one of only a few…

  • Food,  Tough Questions

    The “Problem” of Lunch

    In light of the events of this week in both Boston and West, Texas, and after our school district closed schools for the second consecutive day due to the massive flooding the entire area of Chicago has been dealing with (but of course mainly due to some of our hyper-local roads, which are still impassable), I decided that today would be a good day to take J out to lunch so we can count our blessings together. This conversation just happened and is very typical when it comes to deciding on stupidly simple things like where to go for lunch: Me: “Where do you want to go for lunch?” J:…

  • Confessions,  Food,  Jew Stuff

    Eating Easter Candy Does Not Equal Celebrating Easter

    I’ve had some odd encounters lately, and I thought I’d write a quick post about why that’s been happening as a public service announcement of sorts. Here’s what’s up: 1.My family is Jewish AND 2. We have been seen enjoying Easter-exclusive candies like Reeses Peanut Butter Eggs, Cadbury Cream Eggs (the caramel ones, too), Hershey Eggs, and several others. For years, actually. There seems to be a belief among some out there in society that it’s weird for Jews to eat Easter candy because Jews aren’t supposed to celebrate Easter. We aren’t celebrating Easter. The truth is, we just like the candy. I understand that it was totally natural for…

  • Food,  Travels

    I Care Deeply About What’s Going On In The Overseas Markets

    I have this odd quirk that makes me a really cheap date (and easily entertained) when I’m on vacation in another country: I love foreign grocery stores. I can’t explain why. It’s just a part of my life-long foreign fetish, I guess, but there’s just something about checking out what foods are popular in other countries, how they’re priced, what the packaging looks like, and anything else that pops up as I stroll up and down the aisles. A worldwide tour of grocery stores sounds like a great kind of vacation to me. I’m weird like that. When we went to Germany in 2010 I had a great visit to…

  • Confessions,  Do I Really Want My Readers To Know This?,  Family Fun,  Food,  My Kid Has Mad Skillz,  Too Funny To Ignore

    It Runs In The Family

    The big birthday celebration on Sunday was pretty awesome: J had a really great day overall, which makes me happy. The one thing that didn’t go as planned was that Jim didn’t join us for lunch due to the fact that he was really sick. It was not only a bummer because it was J’s eighteenth, but also because we had reservations at our favorite, only-eat-there-on-special-occasions Brazilian steakhouse. For those of you who aren’t familiar, what makes this kind of restaurant unique is that there is no menu; rather everyone gets to enjoy the “salad bar” first, which is huge and actually has very little salad on it. It’s got…