Political Debates Between Friends

My dear husband is a history and current events fanatic. He devours news of world events and absolutely LOVES to talk about them. He also loves to debate. He's actually pretty good at it, enough so that I avoid disagreeing with him at all costs. Not that I don't sometimes disagree with him, I've just learned not to talk about it with him, especially when he's feeling argumentative. Luckily for him, he has a couple of friends (with completely opposite political viewpoints) who will gladly spend hours discussing (arguing) the fine points of whatever issue du jour he decides to bring up. They get into quite heated debates, and I shrink into my chair, feeling like at any moment they will start throwing things. But it never happens. They usually conclude their little discussion with an agreement to disagree and hug each other and drink each other's wine. No harm, no foul.

The bad thing about it is that if you're one of the people at the table, or the bar, or whatever, who doesn't participate in the arguments, it becomes very uncomfortable. I really hate it when we have new people over, people who don't know my dear hubby, who think his protestations are really serious. They don't understand that he just likes to prove a point, or at least feel like he's proven HIS point. Now that we're in election time, and the economy is suffering, there are a myriad of things that will capture his attention and give him fodder for discussion.

This weekend we had another couple over to have takeout, drink wine, and play cards. It started out great. This couple are two of our oldest friends, and we laughed all night. Until an innocent comment became a point of debate. I felt it coming, that moment...when the banter became just a little too much. And suddenly, the evening was over. They got up, and left so quickly we almost didn't believe they were gone. What a disappointing ending to a fun night.

J. felt bad. He didn't sleep well that night, and decided that he's going to stop talking politics, because he doesn't like when it ends up like that, but he can't seem to stop it while it's happening. I love that he has such strong feelings, and most of the time we can have very informative and beneficial discussions about issues, but I dread the discussions that conclude with someone's feelings getting hurt.

I've always wondered how Mary Matalin and James Carver do it.

The search for THICK, CHEWY Chocolate Chip Cookies

At Neiman Marcus in Chicago, you can buy huge, thick, chewy, delicious chocolate chip cookies. They also have white chocolate/macademia nut, snickerdoodles, oatmeal cranberry, toffee, and several different types of chocolate chip. I LOVE them! I had always thought these were the famous Neiman Marcus cookies that are the source of the recipe urban myth. You know, where someone asked for the recipe and unknowingly signed a charge for some huge sum for it. But after failing to find them at Neiman's in other cities, I asked the Chicago sales clerk this summer about them. She said they're made by a local baker, and are only available in Chicago.

For the last few years I have tried to find a good, gourmet-type recipe for thick, chewy, flaky, chocolate chip cookies like the ones in Chicago. I say "chewy", but they're not really chewy, per se, but they're not crispy or cakey. They just kind of break off and melt in your mouth, and they're not too sweet, or too hard. I've researched how to keep cookies from spreading so much when they bake. You have to have the right ratio of butter/shortening to flour and the temperature must be JUST right...to bake them quickly before they spread. I've baked up recipes that I thought were going to be perfect, but they were all disappointing-they'd spread out too much, and taste good, but they weren't the thick, delicious cookies I was striving for.

This weekend I took a couple of interesting recipes that I had not tried before, and another one that I have tried, and looked at them side by side. I took some things from each recipe and kind of put them together into one batch of cookies. And you know what? They didn't spread too much, and they were delicious! They just weren't as thick as the ones from Neiman Marcus.

If you've ever had them, they are like 4 large cookies put together, they're so big. I was thinking about that, and decided to use the last part of the dough for an experiment. Instead of 12 regular sized cookies, I made 4 really large ones, abut 1/3 cup of dough for each.



And it worked! They baked up nice and thick, light brown, soft, flaky, and delicious.

Now I've got to go run a marathon or something to work off the calories. But they were so worth it.

Here's the recipe:

THICK, CHEWY, CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
Preheat convection oven to 375 degrees.

2/3 cup butter flavored shortening (chilled, cut into slices)
2/3 cup unsalted butter (cut in chunks)
1 cup white sugar
1 1/4 cup PACKED brown sugar
2 large eggs, ROOM TEMPERATURE
2 tsp. real vanilla extract
2 cups bread flour (spooned into cups and leveled off)
1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour (spooned into cups and leveled off)
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 cups milk chocolate chips
1 cup toffee chips (or butterscotch chips)
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

In stand mixer, cream the shortening, butter and both sugars until smooth. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then add vanilla.

Combine the flours, baking soda and salt, stir into the creamed mixture. Stir in chips and nuts. Use a large tablespoon to round dough into balls. Don't roll the balls, just make them rounded. Place onto parchment paper on ungreased baking sheets.

Bake 10-12 minutes in preheated oven. (I use convection oven and bake two pans at one time). Don't overbake. Slide parchment paper with cookies off of pan, and let pan cool before scooping out next batch.

Wearing uniforms to school

My daughter loves to put together outfits. For several years now, she has spent a huge amount of time picking out clothes to wear, or planning which outfits look cute enough for whatever occasion is on the horizon. Bedtime always included time for "picking out" the clothes for school the next day. She says she wants to major in fashion, and even takes her sketch pad on trips with us to draw the ideas she has for cute clothes.

So she decides that she wants to change schools...to a school that has a very strict uniform. Go figure.

Today was the first day of school. Last night I went up to say good night and she had her clothes all lined up. Skirt, oxford cloth shirt, knee socks (they had to be the exact right length), shoes, and headband. The shoes and headband are pretty much the only way she can "individualize" her look. She can wear either Wallabees (she won't even touch those, so that's not an option for her), or white athletic shoes. Not a lot of options there, either. But, when we were in Paris this summer we walked by a sports store on the Champs Elysees, and she found the cutest pair of white patent leather Nikes.

So this morning we took pictures of her in her uniform, all cute and everything, and drove her to school (5 minutes instead of 30...yeah!). She didn't tuck in her shirt, because she thought someone had told her that was O.K. But just to make sure she texted about 6 friends this morning, but no one got back to her. We drove up to the drop-off, and all the girls were walking to class with shirts tucked in. So now, instead of making an "entrance", she walked in with her backpack, her computer case, and both hands frantically tucking her skirt in. Hopefully they'll give her a break on the demerits since it's her first day.

Good luck, my sweet girl!

Is this the way it's going to be?

H starts school tomorrow. Which means that last week she finished up her summer reading and started working on the written portion of the assignment. As usual, she waits until the veeerrryy last minute to do it. Sunday afternoon I came into my office and she was emailing all her files to my computer so that she could print them out. Something wasn't right. Oh yeah.

"Do you want me to proofread for you?"

"No, Mom, I've got it."

What? Not that reading over her assignments is something I enjoy, or particularly want to do, but she always asks me to do it.

She finished up her business, loaded up her laptop, and left.

Then, as soon as I sat down, she was back.

"Mom, close all those files for me, O.K.?"

And she stood there while I closed them all.

Later, she brought down the "project" to show me, with her fancy cover sheets and plastic report cover. I reached for it. She pulled it back.

"Let me read it!"

"No, that's o.k..."

"Please, I just want to read it."

(I had read two of her books so I wanted to see her take on them).

She looked at me in the eyes, stuttered a little, and said,

"I don't want you to read it. I'm happy with it, and I don't want you to suggest any changes."

I guess my baby's growing up. Welcome to High School.

Blip FM

Summer's over for us.  H starts school officially next week, but has stuff starting tomorrow, so no more late nights and sleeping in.  She doesn't drive yet, so unfortunately I have to wake up when she does.  (Although she'll be 15 next month so those days are numbered...yikes).


I really should get off the computer now.


Seriously.


People keep turning me onto new blogs, or websites, that just feed the addiction.  Here's the latest.  It's so cool!

Blip FM!

That link takes you to my "station". I only have a few songs (so far), but you can add other "DJs" to your station, search for songs, add them to your playlist.

But don't go there if you need to go do something, or work on something else. I sat down about an hour ago to try to write an actual post...something I've been thinking about all week and after playing around with this for far too long I think I just need to give it up.

Hopefully I'll write something good later.

Until then, I've got some more Squeeze to listen to.

How much is a private plane?

This week is the last week of the summer for us. H starts her new school next week, as a high school freshman. (OMG! How did that happen?) We're in North Carolina at our little lake house, eking out the last few days before we have to go home to sticky hot, humid Nashville. Seriously, if summer is supposed to be OVER, why do we still have a month (or two) of blistering temperatures in the Middle Tennessee valley, the steam bath of the South? North Carolina has been so incredibly beautiful these last few days that the thought of going back home just rips out our hearts. It's funny, we built our "dream home" in Nashville and moved in a little over a year ago. It's a great house, with a wonderful kitchen that I love, lots of storage, and his and her closets (which, if you know me and my tendency to be a little messy, is the saving grace of our marriage). Our house in North Carolina is half the size of our Nashville house, has a tiny kitchen with a tiny island, only one closet in the master, and one vanity that we share (another mess), but we never want to leave here. Just sitting outside on the balcony, watching the sunset over the lake, and feeling the soft warm (NOT HOT) air, is like a drug. It makes everything else feel unimportant.

Our dog, Rosie, becomes a mountain dog when she's here. She hikes with us, covering two to three times as much area, because she runs ahead, and back, then down to the water, and back up, and I swear, I can tell she's smiling.

I love the hiking, too. There are a zillion waterfalls in this area...at least four within this community and over 30 within a few miles. Today we saw wild raspberries, and J's cousin and aunt ate a ton of them. Hopefully they weren't poisonous.

We also saw a TON of butterflies today, and I'm thinking maybe it's mating season, because they were just piling on top of each other and didn't move, even when the dog went over to sniff around them.

This summer, after H had three weeks of summer basketball at the beginning of the break, we spent three weeks here. Home for a little while, and back here for the last week. It's the first time we were able to stay for more than a long weekend in the eight years we've been coming. It's a private lake at the top of a mountain (at 4500 feet) in a very small community-very secluded. No shopping, no theaters, not even a grocery store within 30 minutes. So we wondered if we'd get bored, or anxious, being so far away from a city. The answer is a resounding NO!. We have golf, tennis, boating, fishing, hiking, biking, canoeing, swimming, and just relaxing, so now we are frantically trying to carve out as many four day weekends as we can, so we can come back. High school and basketball are kind of cramping that plan, at least for the next few months. It's a six hour drive, so it's too far to come for regular weekends.

I need a jet.

French people don't get fat...seriously

Just got back from a wonderful trip to Paris and Barcelona, and I'm surrounded by laundry, suitcases that need to be unpacked, phone calls that need to be made or returned, office that needs to be cleaned, and mail that needs to be sorted. Combine all that with the fact that I've been home about 24 hours and it's 4:30 a.m. in Barcelona, and I can barely type a legible sentence, so I'm going to do a proper post or two about the trip later. I just want to mention the one thing that struck me when I got home-the fact that the only fat people we saw in those two cities were tourists. Seriously, we noticed it a few days after we got to Paris, so we started trying to find French or Spanish people who were fat. Sure, there were a few soft bodies, maybe a couple of bellies, but nothing like the obesity that you see here everywhere you go. It can't be because they eat low carb, or low sugar, or low fat, or eliminate alcohol, because that stuff is everywhere. From the chocolate croissants at breakfast, the basket of bread that appears at every table whether you order it or not, the unbelievable butter and cheese in Paris, the fat-laden sausages in Barcelona, and the wine that flows freely from mid-day on, you don't see any signs of French or Spanish people doing any sort of Oprah-endorsed cleanse.



This morning, J and I did the thing I HATE to do. We weighed ourselves and neither one of us gained any weight on this trip. And let me tell you...we ate. Boy, did we eat. Jambon et fromage with frites at lunch,

Ice cream for dessert...

Lots of Spanish Ham in Barcelona...

Many tapas...which we thought were supposed to be tiny so we ordered too many of them at first...

and more wine that I want to admit to. But we walked all over the place, and we never ate between meals because we just didn't have time. We were pretty religious about fitting in a workout every day, but still felt like we'd eaten so much more than usual that we had to have put on a few lbs. Even if we had, it would have been worth it! But so far, we're good.



In my opinion, I think it's two things. More movement and portion control. No super-sized plates of anything. They walk everywhere. But they enjoy life, and good food. Real food.



Maybe they're onto something.