Eff You and Your "Balance"

Here is a selection of comments my female friends had to Gwyneth Paltrow's GOOP newsletter about “finding a good balance between having a career and being a mom”...

"their habits upset me!"

"i first thought, oh, it's not that bad, but then the bits about getting a blow out, and having food delivered, and going out after your kids are in bed... totally vom."

"yikes. so self important. 'let me impart all of my wisdom upon you!'"

"It made me realize why the iPad was invented. For nut jobs who can't unplug long enough to do cardio with their personal trainers."

"Gah! I can't even read it. My first thought was...'ok, you get up between 5:30-6am for "ME" time which equates to working or wasting time doing social media, right? then you work out. Who the fuck gets up with your kids?? Like you have time to help your 3 year old get dressed before you make her sliced steel oats? Your nanny does it.'. Then I wanted to puke so I stopped reading. WOW! Thank god I'm not self-obsessed and a neurotic freak who has a personal trainer and food delivered. (unless it's Chinese and I'm high)"

That last remark was from a friend who actually has a small child and is very much in the midst of figuring out how to balance being a mom with being a wife and being, you know, herself. It's a challenge which is not terribly far down the road for me, now that I've got the wife role in action. And I have to say, I'm terrified to add the needs of a little person to the mix when I'm already struggling every day to balance my own happiness with my husband's happiness with the 1,000,000 things on my to-do list.

One of the reasons I started writing Home Sweet Homewrecker was to counteract the glut of blogs out there that celebrate the triumphs of being a homemaker, or a cook, or a crafter. Sure, I frequently celebrate the times I get it right -- because I need to remember those moments -- but I often write about the times I screw it all up. Just so everyone can remember that we're not all Martha Stewart (or Gwyneth Paltrow for that matter).

I was having an email chat with my girlfriends about this idea of "balance" recently. It started because of a blog link one of us had circulated on the topic which included this quote:

"The problem is, when you’re competent, you know how well you could play every part in your life."

That really struck home with me because I'm constantly feeling frustrated that I'm not able to create more, make more, write more, play more, cook more, read more, DO more. I know I could do so many things if I had unlimited time and resources. But the reality is, we just don't. The day is only so long, and it takes time to make things from scratch, and commute from your job, and wait for the laundry to dry, and the time just gets sucked away.

Unlike Gwyneth and her rich friends, most of us don't have personal assistants or trainers to keep us on track or take care of the little details. Still somehow I forget this when I don't get to see my friends as often as I'd like, and I get the false impression from Facebook that they are all raising well-adjusted babies and climbing mountains and baking fresh muffins and running successful etsy shops. So it was good to check in with my lady friends and discover that we all feel frustrated and under pressure, and we all are struggling to find balance in our busy lives, whether it's with kids, or husbands or as single women.

And why do we all feel this way? Because we are competent women! We are painfully aware of all that we could be doing.

After several emails where we all barred our new year anxieties, this was how one friend responded, and I couldn't agree more:

Holy shit ladies. You are all amazingly strong, talented and ambitious women. Reading through this chain gave me so many different emotions...and I feel weird saying that one of those was RELIEF. Relief in hearing that a group of women who I admire are not without their own anxieties and self-doubt. I guess that sort of thing is just a constant realization for me. I doubt myself and second-guess myself in nearly everything I do and I just need to be reminded that that is just another hurdle.

I hope some of you read this and can get a little perspective. We don't have to live up to any standards set by power celeb moms, only the standards we set for ourselves. And for christssake, it's ok to lower your standards a little. There's only 24 hours in the day to do "your best."

...anyway, as a nod to nurturing my atrophied creative side in 2011, I set up an etsy store this weekend. Not that I have time for that.

I Just Made The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

Look at this cookie! Its circumference is perfect, the chocolate chips are evenly distributed, and yes, it was delicious. Finally after several failed holiday dessert attempts, I at least get this old classic right. Thank you, once again, Baked cookbook.

Burnt Brittle

I decided to kick off my Christmas season cookie baking by trying something new this year, which actually wasn't cookies at all -- Bacon Peanut Brittle! I found the recipe on, of all places, the Mint.com blog, a blog which has nothing to do with lamb chops or mojitos, but rather personal budgeting. Bacon peanut brittle promised to be a low cost holiday treat, and while it didn't require any fancy ingredients, it did require some close attention.

This was my first time making brittle, or any kind of homemade candy, but everything was going smoothly -- I was fascinated to watch the corn syrup bubble and the heat on the candy thermometer rise... but apparently I was a little more fascinated by the scheme unfolding at the hands of Little J, Vanessa and Juliet on Gossip Girl to dethrone Serena as queen of the UES, because the candy got a little scorched in the saucepan.

That explains why it's so much darker than the photo on MyMansBelly.com. If you're the kind of person who likes their bacon extra crispy, or their drip coffee from Starbucks, you might still like my brittle. I know I'll still eat it. But maybe I'm best off sticking to safe standards like my Christmas Balls.

Sweet & Spicy Halloween

Tried something sweet & spicy for this year's pumpkin seeds.

Caramelized Spicy Pumpkin Seeds from AllRecipes.com

I'm not sure I actually caramelized anything, but they are sweet and they are spicy and they are delicious!

Wedding Crafts & Gifts in Action

Check it out, my DIY hair piece totally worked! And stayed put even during this serious dance party to Pulp's "Common People."

Following the wedding we took three days to just RELAX right here in Brooklyn. Good bye wedding diet! Hellooo egg creams...

We visited the MoMA where there is an exhibit called Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen. Tupperware was featured prominently, and I was tickled to spy the very same popsicle molds I own, passed down from Mom and used in my popsicle test kitchen post last summer.

And while we made the rule not to touch the kitchen during our post-wedding staycation, Mr Homewrecker was super psyched to try out one of our wedding presents, a Moroccan-style tagine from the Brooklyn Kitchen. This is a photo of lamb shoulder tagine with apricots, chick peas and slivered almonds. Mmmm nom nom nom. Being married to a great cook rules!

DIY Wedding Wednesday: Crafts!

Holy crap, it's only days until matrimony. Wedding crafts are in full swing and I wanted to just take a moment to share what I've been working on.

We wanted to give our guests some kind of personalized favor more unique than a baggie of chocolate almonds without spending a bundle. After seeing this blog post from Once Wed*, I got the idea to borrow the button maker at my office to make our own wearable favors. My friend Toby came over and we cut out something like 200 buttons from metallic paper printed on our home printer plus some abstract buttons made from scrapbooking paper that matched our color scheme. Cute, right?

After bookmarking several Etsy boutiques with feathered hair pieces for my maids, it occurred to me that I own a glue gun -- I can do this myself! Instead I bought "blank" hair combs and headbands from Etsy and glued on peacock feathers and silver embellishments. For my bride hair comb, I used bleached peacock feathers from Jamali Garden (a haven for DIY brides!) and added a 1950's vintage brooch I found at Pippin Vintage Jewelry in Manhattan. I'll share some more impressive photos after the pro takes pics at the wedding with our hair done did up.

Next? Glue several yards of silver decorative fringe onto my cardboard cupcake stand...

When you hear from me next, I'll be married -- wish us luck!!

*Footnote: I grabbed a lot of inspiration from Kim & Zac's wedding, whoever they are. I believe it's also where I got the idea to shop at Unique Vintage for my dress and where I got the idea to buy turquoise shoes. Which I did. Thanks Kim & Zac & Once Wed!

An Ode to Summer Sweets

On this last unofficial day of summer, I felt it was time for an ode to summer desserts.

Earlier this summer I got a cherry pitter, a blogger gift from Cookware.com, an online source for every conceivable kitchen item be it a coffee maker or an ice cream scooper. After a sloppy but delicious attempt at apple pie, I decided for the cherry pie to try a more traditional pie crust recipe from Joy of Cooking that relied on vegetable shortening. While the fresh sweet cherry insides were delicious, and the pitter a huge help, I gotta say the crust was greasy, too salty, and even more impossible to roll out and cut than the recipe I used for the apple pie.

But the real problem was my lack of a proper pie pan. As you can see in the photo above, the disposable aluminum pan I used leaked all over, effectively fusing my cherry pie to my baking sheet. I'm pretty sure much of this pie was consumed with a spoon directly over the sink.

My next summer dessert endeavor was much more successful. Down in Red Hook, Brooklyn is a whimsical spot called Steve's Authentic Key Lime Pies. Steve's has these crazy delicious things called Swingles which are tart-sized key limes pies, dipped in dark chocolate and frozen on a stick.

[Pauses while you drool] Yeah, I know.

So when I received a set of tart pans as a wedding shower gift, the first thing I thought to bake was homemade Swingles. Luckily I found the actual Steve's Authentic key lime pie recipe on the Food Network's website, and it was surprisingly simple. Figuring out how to dip the tarts in dark chocolate, however, was much more challenging. Without a double boiler big enough to dip a whole tart into, I simply melted dark chocolate baking bars in the microwave and poured it over the top of the tarts, spreading it out with a rubber spatula. After freezing them for awhile, I flipped the pies and poured chocolate over the other side, then returned them to the freezer. Somehow it worked!

When I visited Steve's later in the summer, I realized that my Swingles were about 50% larger and I probably didn't need to melt an entire chocolate bar over each one, but hey, my decadent DIY Swingles sure made Mr. Homewrecker happy.

With the success of the Swingles, I confidently decided to wing it with another tart pan creation. My mom had given me a bag of rhubarb from her garden, so I improvised rhubarb blackberry tarts using the same graham cracker crust from the Steve's recipe. And whatta you know, it worked!

Of course no summer dessert ode would be complete without a nod to ice cream. And since I have not yet attempted to make my own, I would like to give a shout out to my favorite, local, hand-crafted ice cream -- Greene Ice Cream. Last summer the proprietors of The General Greene, a great restaurant in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, built an ice cream cart and started peddling kick ass Philadelphia-style (eggless) ice cream made in small batches from seasonal ingredients. Locals rave about the Salted Carmel Pretzel and I'm crazy for the Bitter Chocolate Mint. If you are ever in the neighborhood, run don't walk to The General Greene before ice cream season is over!

Bidding farewell to summer is as bittersweet as those Swingles, because the only thing I love more than summer treats, are the pumpkin and spice desserts of fall. Keep an eye out for another product review from Cookware.com or another of the CSN network of online shops -- perhaps it's time for a proper pie pan.