LeBron is the Real Deal!

Group shot...my daughter, Becca, is on the left. She did this amazing event for Dick's. Thanks, Becca!

Thanks to my daughter, Becca, I got to meet LeBron James!

LeBron is an amazing basketball player and I thanked him for bringing a championship to Cleveland! He is not just a great basketball player but a man who is committed to his home town of Akron. He is a man who hasn’t forgotten where he has come from nor the hometown or the people who supported him as he grew up. I also met his mother. I had to go up to her and tell her that she did a wonderful job in raising LeBron. She simply thanked me for it and appreciated my words.

As a mother, I know how I used to feel when people complimented me on my children and tell me what a great job I did in raising them. I also know that when I always would hear something negative from the nuns who taught them. It was easier to find fault with how one raises their kids. The nuns and teachers and some parents would always manage to let you know what they thought. When the compliments would come…I held on to them.

I was always a Cleveland fan because I was raised in Cleveland and attended schools there. I loved the Cleveland Browns, the Cleveland Indians and the Cleveland Cavaliers. I was a fan of the CAVS way before a player named LeBron James showed up on the team. But when he did, he was worth watching. He was and is the real deal. He made watching the CAVS fun. With the ball in his hands, he made records and new records. He helped the CAVS to playoff games but the team always came up short.

I’ll be honest; I was upset when he left Cleveland to play for the Miami Heat. He would help them to a few NBA Championships. Then one day, he announced that he would return to Cleveland. He came back and promised the fans that he would win them an NBA championship. He kept his promise and brought back a championship win in 2016. The town was elated and overcome and that included me. I watched that championship game and when it was over, I believed. Then I promptly watched the game that I had recorded over and over and basked in the win.

LeBron kept his promise. He also kept his promise to his hometown of Akron. No matter where he lives or how far away he has gone, he always returns to his home. He always uplifts the people of Akron. He is a hero and is looked up to by the children of the town.

I got to meet him and he is a nice man. He is the kind of person who cares about others and he doesn’t have a chip on his shoulder or any type of attitude. I heard him talk to the school children and he is a man who is committed to the youth. He cares about them and in his manner and speech it is noted.

Meeting him was on my Bucket List and it was the high point of my life. I have two things to say…

Thank you, LeBron!

Thank you, Becca…I owe you big time!!!

Berry-Sage Thumbprints

Yesterday, along with my regular baking, I baked two extra sweet treats for a women’s event for 45.

I made Dried Cherry Scones with chocolate chips and white chips. After mixing the dough, I made a rectangular log and made cuts in it straight across. Then I cut three mini scones from each of the cuts. I ended up with 54 mini scones.

I placed the scones on a cookie sheet and sprinkled each with sanding sugar. I placed the sheet trays in the Walk In refrigerator to get firm. I pulled them out and baked them. When the scones cooled down, I made vanilla icing, thinned it out, and I drizzled each scone with it. I’ll be honest, I was starving and grabbed one of the scones and sampled it. They were so good that I decided next week I would make full sized ones for the Erin's Deli.

I checked that job off and went to my next one. I needed to make 6 dozen Berry-Sage Thumbprint Cookies.  I tripled the recipe, mixed everything, and used the small ice cream scooper. I place a dozen of the dough balls on each cookie sheet. My next step was to use my knuckle to make an indent and then I put the blackberry preserves in a pastry bag, and filled each indent.

I placed the sheets in the Walk In and when I was ready, I baked them for 10 minutes and let them cool on the racks.

Unfortunately, one of the cookies had the preserves running over the indent.

Fortunately for me, I had to sample it. Yep, it was awesome from the tasty blackberry preserves, to the crunchiness of the cornmeal, and the freshness of the savory sage.

This recipe is easy to make and it is a keeper. The blackberry preserves, cornmeal and fresh savory are the secrets in the recipe!

Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies

My daughter’s downtown Deli has been open for almost five years. When Cinco de Mayo occurs she has an idea as how to celebrate both the day and her five year mark. Last year, I found two good recipes to use; Double Feature Cupcakes with Mexican Chocolate Frosting, and the other was Aaron Sanchez Mexican Brownies. The Mexican Brownies were a big hit and usually are available all year long at the Deli.

This year, I looked for another recipe for something special for Cinco de Mayo and found a delicious cookie recipe…Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies. I tried it out at home and made a double recipe of these cookies. Wow…they were delicious. I asked my friend, who is a cookie connoisseur to sample one of the cookies. She tasted it and said that it was the best cookie that she had ever tasted. Coming from her, I knew it was good. My daughter, the chef also tried it and decided that it was delicious and is going to use the recipe.

The recipe itself uses bittersweet chocolate, flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, salt, black pepper, chili powder, sugar, butter egg, vanilla extract, and honey. The secret to the cookies softness is adding a few chocolate chips to the center of the dough and rolling it into a ball, placing it on the cookie sheet, and baking.

The cookies need to bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes, or until the appearance of the cookies change and the surface appears crackled. Remove from the oven and cool.

Powder sugar can be sprinkled on the top after the cookies cool. For the sample cookies, I used a gold sanding sugar. Instead, when I make the cookies for the Deli, I am going to use sanding sugar and sprinkling it on the cookies before I bake them.

These cookies are soft and chewy and the chocolate chips in the center of the cookie make it taste even better.

If you are around Erin’s Deli on Cinco de Mayo, stop in for a free Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookie…it’s on the house!

Chinese Five-Spice

I was bored and started to watch a cooking show on Prime. The show was how to make different cupcakes. Since I am baking for my daughter’s Deli, I thought this video would be helpful. It was and I picked up some more tips about making cupcakes and more.

The baker started out by showing how to make basic vanilla cupcakes and then the vanilla icing. Since I already knew most of that, I didn’t get any new tips. Then she showed how to make chocolate cupcakes. That was where I learned something new. Her secret was to add ½ tsp of cinnamon and ½ tsp of Chinese Five-Spice. I never used this in my cupcakes. If one doesn’t have the Chinese Five-Spice blend, chili pepper can be substituted. 

I should have let go of the Chinese Spice. But no, I was intrigued and wanted to use it. God knows that I already had the chili pepper. I decided to google the spice and found out where it was sold. I didn’t want to drive to Cranberry to the Walmart. I noticed that Giant Eagle had it. It would have been so much easier to get into my car and check it out but I didn’t. I googled Giant Eagle and keyed in Chinese Five-Spice and came up empty handed.

The next step, I just went to amazon and found it. I ordered a bottle and received it two days later. But before that, I found myself in Giant Eagle looked over the spice rack and lo and behold, I found a small bottle of Chinese Five-Spice and bought it.

The next day, I received my amazon order. I opened it up and found an 18 oz. bottle of the spice. I figured that I would bring it into the catering kitchen and give it to my daughter.

My daughter looked at it and said that it was one of her least favorite spices to use.

Now…I have an oversized jar and a smaller jar of the Chinese Five-Spice blend. All I needed at the most was ½ tsp. of Chinese Five-Spice. At the rate that I will use the spice, I will be dead and the spice will be outdated and thrown away.

Maybe I should learn a lesson in patience and restraint. Yeah, that would have helped.

Life of the Party

                                                                                           

There is a movie on cable called Life of the Party starring Melissa McCarthy. I saw the movie on television at least four times. I’ve watched it alone and then I have watched it with my daughter and with one of my granddaughters. I know that I have downloaded it on my DVR. Today while I was in Target, I saw it on the shelf and promptly picked it up, purchased it, and bought it.

To me, this movie spoke volumes. It’s so funny, despite at times being unbelievable.  The opening scene where the husband and wife dropped off their daughter at college really resonant with me. I had nine children and each time that one would go off to college, a small part of me died when I had to say goodbye. The part that really resonated was when the couple drove off and the husband stopped the car, looked at his wife and announces that he wants a divorce. The confused look and then the disbelief and then the hurt on the woman’s face are gut wrenching to say the least.  I felt the same way the main character did and still remember it. That scene hit close to my life because my ex left me after our youngest child went to college.

The wife could have bottomed out, taken drugs or alcohol, but instead after a few days, she enrolls in college; the same college where her daughter is attending. That was pretty ironical because I did the same thing; I enrolled in a master’s program in one of the area colleges. None of my children attended that college.

Unlike a few things that were similar, the main character and I had a number of differences. She probably was in her early 40s while I was in my mid-50s.  She had that school spirit and was eager to attend college even to the point of living on campus, and buying ever school spirit shirt, hat, sweatshirt and more.

I didn’t live on campus. I was a commuter. I was nervous but I wanted a degree in writing. I also hadn’t set foot on campus for over 35 years. Things had really changed; even to how young the students, the instructors, and my own advisor. I realized that I could easily have been their mother. It didn’t help that my advisor was cute…that just made me tongue tied and uncomfortable. My writing was good but my advisor was a poet and he liked the works of the younger writers. It seemed vulgar language and sex was high on his preferential list. My life in comparison was dull; it was filled with kids, grandkids, animals, and self-doubt.

The main character in the movie seemed to fit into the college scene well. She even went to a frat party, where her daughter upgraded her mother’s looks. The Mom looked great and younger and eventually she would end up with one of the frat guys and do the so called ‘walk of shame’ out of the fraternity house. That scene was uncontrollably hilarious and now I know why depends are the in thing.

There is also a scene in the movie, where the main character ate her fill of chocolate bark, only to be informed it was medical marijuana. I sampled a chocolate candy and like the main character my eyes felt like those comic book googly eyes. The world felt different and waves of uncontrollable laughter assaulted me. Going up was great, coming down was not so much fun. By the way – when I sampled this edible treat I was in a state where it was legal.

Yes, she graduated with her daughter. Her future seemed pretty good and positive. I graduated as well and am plying my trade as a writer. Sometimes I come out on the winning end, despite writing and researching places to send my stories, and being rejected.

So, every so often when I need a good laugh or I need to pick myself up…I put on Life of the Party and laugh my way up.

The Dead and Cherry Garcia

Going to my doctor for a check-up is just part of life. It is hard to see your former doctor retire. I enjoyed the old camaraderie with her. She retired and now I have a new one and that doctor happens to be so young…that he can actually be my son. No more explanation is needed.

In the past, I usually had some rapport with my physician. I could joke and she would joke in return. Joking and laughter was pretty much how I handle most things in life. It helps. But my latest doctor is so serious or he would rather deal with younger patients. Every time I go and have a check-up, I leave with a feeling of being so old; older than dirt. I am in good health. My weight is normal, I exercise, I work a few times a week, I drive my grandchild a few days a week back and forth to school, and hang out with my grandchildren.

But some of the questions that I am asked by the nurse or doctor makes me roll my eyes and not want to respond. When I do…I act feel a complete idiot. Well, how do you answer your physician when he says, “So, if you were to drop to the ground, here…what would you want me to do?” I thought he was talking about my living will, or did I drop because I had done more than a day fast for the blood test this day, or did he want me to do a set of push-ups?

I was confused and said something like, “Well, I have a living will.”

Which he responded, “No, this is different. What if something happened and you dropped to the office floor?”

I assumed my heart gave out or I passed out and said in a dry voice, “Nudge me with your toe and give it the old college try and see if you can revive me.” But in my mind I was thinking, “What the hell!”

By the time I leave the doctor’s office, I am grateful that I am in good health. I hate going to see my doctor but I have to have my blood checked every six months. So, the next time when I am asked some of these questions, hopefully, I can respond with something much better. Or maybe I can say, “What if you drop to the floor, what you would like me to do, Doc?”

I’m not quite sure how doctors are being trained but I hope when my time comes…I will just drop over and no one will be around to ask me, “What do you want me to do?” But maybe my response should be, “Just play a Grateful Dead song and eat a container of Cherry Garcia in my honor.”

Pets are Much More...

I usually go through FB. Today, I saw a picture of my niece’s dog, Sadie. Sadie became her dog after her father died. Her dad was my brother. I know how Julie must feel. Pets are special and more.

The night my brother died, I stayed at his house and slept in his bed with Sadie. Sadie knew something was wrong. She slept with me and gave me a lot of comfort that night. I needed it. Oddly, I slept well that night.

There were another times that an animal gave me comfort. The first time was when I took a kitten from our greenhouse because they were going to take her to the Human Society. The kitten was black and white and fluffy. I drove home with the kitten sitting on my lap, meowing at the highest decibel possible. At first, I named the kitten Fluffy but later changed it to Scraps, when it kept grabbing food out of my hand. Scraps comforted me when my marriage ended. She was my constant companion until she passed away.

The next day after Scraps died…I went into the greenhouse to work. I was sad and as I entered the greenhouse, I saw the greenhouse cat, Tonka sleeping in her bed. I went over and Tonka woke up and meowed. I petted her for a long time and looked at him, and then I went to plant in another greenhouse. Tonka followed me that day and slept on my work bench, close by. Every time I looked over and talked to him, he meowed, as if to say, "Everything is going to be okay." When the day was over, I petted Tonka and said, “You know. Thank you.”

Animals become substitutes. We have a special bond with them. They are like lightning rods. They seem to know when we are happy, down, or totally sad.

I am truly sorry for my niece’s loss of Sadie. Sadie was a pleasant reminder of her Dad; a close connection.  If I have any advice to give…give it time and then get another pet. They need a home; a loving home and they give back a hundredfold.