drive me crazy

oh mah gah, she did it!

the teen's appointment to earn her driver's license was yesterday.  i don't know who was more nervous, me or her.  heh.

we arrived at the DMV about ten minutes early and pulled into this lane. 

as we waited in line, a girl frantically scurried up to the car in front of us with a sheaf of paperwork in hand.  after a quick exchange with whoever was sitting in the driver's seat, they both ran at top speed into the building.  and then i figured it would be a good idea to have the teen go inside to see what we had to do. 

of course, there was a line to check in for the test.  damn.  when i got a text from her saying that it'd be a while, i pulled out of line, parked the car, and went inside to join her.  it was the usual government office chaos in there, and about 45 minutes after our appointment time we finally got checked in and headed back outside to get in the drive test line again.

while we waited, a thought occurred to me.  "did you bring your glasses with you?" i asked, as i scanned the permit paperwork.  and sure enough - it was flagged with the "corrective lens" restriction.  shit.  the glasses were sitting in their case, safely at home.  so when the examiner finally approached us and went through the checklist, we did what comes naturally.

we played dumb.

he had us pull the car up a bit and took the teen inside to give her a quick vision test.  and thank god, she passed.  good gracious.  it would have sucked balls to have to reschedule after all that waiting just because of those damn glasses she never wears anyway.

the test took about 20 minutes, with me standing in front of the DMV building hoping and praying that my faith in her as a great driver would pull her through.  i watched her drive slowly through the parking lot and come to a stop, trying to gauge from her facial expression whether or not she'd passed. 

they sat in the car for what seemed like an eternity before the examiner finally got out, followed closely by the teen.  and as she walked towards me, the grin on her face that mirrored my own told me all i needed to know.

passing = any score with 15 or less errors.  WOOHOO!!

and then it got even better as she was given this inside:

it took her maybe 10 minutes to complete the survey.  for $30!  yay!  although this security guard, drunk with power, was a total nazi as she constantly barked at everyone to move.  "you can't wait here!" "you have to be past the blue screen!" "there's no waiting here!"  good gracious.

all done!  the pressure's off (sort of)!

in the car (being chauffeured home, naturally), i giggled at this:

after sharing a quick lunch, she was super stoked to grab the keys and drive to her friend's house all by herself.

the bean and i watched her drive off.  i wasn't really nervous about it, because she wasn't going far and i knew she'd be okay. 

but just in case, we've got a new rule in place - anytime she goes somewhere by herself, she has to call or text when she gets there and before she gets back in the car to come home.  that's not too much to ask, right?

and now i'm the mother of a licensed driver.  holy shit, i am so freaking old.

such a tiny gesture of support

is it really bizarre to mourn for someone you never met?

i suppose maybe to some, it would be.  although when you hear sad stories that could pretty much happen to anyone, it's hard not to take that situation and turn it around in your head and imagine yourself going through something similar.  well, for me, anyway.

so when i read a tweet from justjenn about baking a pie in honor of a food blogger, i clicked on the link she posted.  it took about half a second after reading that story to pull out the simple ingredients in order to bake the pie the next morning. 

although i'd not seen nor heard of her before, jennifer perillo is pretty well-known in the foodie world.  and last weekend, the unthinkable happened:  her husband passed away quite unexpectedly from a heart attack.  in the heartbreaking post she published just days after, she included the recipe for a peanut butter pie that he'd loved.  for those who had been asking her how they could help, she asked them to make the pie on friday and share it with loved ones. 

since friday was my mom's birthday and we were taking her out to dinner to celebrate, it was the perfect time to make something delicious.  although i sure didn't want to put a downer on the evening, so i kept the backstory of the pie to myself.  but i gotta say - as i whipped the ingredients together, i was emotional as i reflected on my own life and how easily the happiness that we take for granted could be snatched away in an instant, just like that.  yikes.

the recipe called for a simple crust made with crushed chocolate cookies and butter.  for me, that meant oreos. 

the recipe makes enough to serve 10+ people.  since there were only going to be six of us for dinner, i halved the recipe and made mini, individually-sized pies.  not wanting to cart dishes around, i was happy to have an excuse to finally use these little tins, which had been languishing in my cupboard for ages.

on top of the crust went melted chocolate and chopped peanuts.  next time i make this, though, i'll make the layer of chocolate a bit thinner.  unthinkable, i know - but it made the pies a little challenging to eat.  you'll see what i mean in a minute.

i topped the peanut butter cream mixture with a drizzle of chocolate and more peanuts, mostly because they looked too plain without it.

even after i'd filled those tins as much as i possibly could, i still had a whole lotta leftover filling.  so i did what any of you would do - made more crust and prepped a bigger pan.  after all, i couldn't let all that gooey goodness go to waste.

when it was time to go, i filled a cooler with ice and then individually wrapped them with wax paper AND foil.  and because i'm just crazy like that, i ziploc-ed the mini pies for the drive down to manhattan beach. 

and yay - they survived the trip!

except that when we tried to scoop bites of pie out, the thick layer of chocolate had hardened so much that the crust was impenetrable.  seriously, it was hard as a rock!  i was slightly mortified until i popped that sucker out of the tin whole and found that it was easier to use my hands and just take bites out of it, kind of like a cookie.  i was too afraid that trying to cut it with the spoon would only result in flinging chunks of goo-covered crust across the room.  no bueno.

i think the cream needed more time to set in a cold fridge, though.  it was super creamy, which made for a pretty messy dessert plate (and fingers!).  but i can see why jennifer's mikey loved it so - it's magically delicious.

it was a happy birthday indeed.  i love my mom, and it was nice to share this love-filled treat with her and my stepdad, plus the hub and my girls.

i'm sending jennifer and her own girls a lot of love and strength as they go through this awful, tough, sad time of mourning.  i'm proud to have joined the blogging community in their show of support for one of their own, and i hope that this small gesture, made by so many, will be of some comfort to her. 

and now i'm going to schedule a full physical for the hub.  and me, too.  it sure can't hurt.  gotta make sure we stay healthy for our family - and each other.

under the sea

first of all - happy birthday to my mommy!  love you, see you tonight!

ooh, and i got to contribute my first article for a local parenting website.  it's run by one of the girls i met in the JLP, and she asked me if i had time to write a little suh-in' suh-in' for national chocolate chip cookie day.  well, hell - more exposure for this little ol' blog?  sure!  i decided to share my experience with those fantastic oreo-stuffed chocolate chip cookies, and if you're bored enough, the article is here.

another of my JLP buddies had contacted me several months ago to see if i'd be interested in making the cookie favors for her cousin's baby shower.  she was even willing to track down the cookie cutters she wanted and have them shipped to me.  there were two fish cutters, a seashell and a crab.  easy peasy, lemon squeezy. 

i'd overestimated how much dough i needed and found myself with a good amount of it leftover.  and so because the hub was going to a BBQ with his cigar-smoking buddies, i thought i'd make him a plate of fun cookies to take along with the homemade ice cream i had chilling in the freezer.  i took a doggy bone-shaped cutter, bent it a little, and ended up with the perfect shape.

yeah, yeah, i know.  I KNOW.  but the bean had other ideas - she took one look and asked me why i was making cookies shaped like a pickle.  i almost pissed myself.

decorating the sea-themed cookies was fun.

except that the next morning, like the bachelorette cookies - the icing was still tacky and would most definitely stick to the bags i was going to package them in.  crapola.  i'd even left them in the oven with the light on overnight, but apparently that still wasn't enough to dry completely (cookiers, WTF am i doing wrong?  i've been thinning and tinting my royal icing the same way for months now!).  but since i was semi-prepared for it this time, i busted out some sanding sugar and put the bean to work.  she was more than happy to help me fix "nemo."

 

and then i realized that i didn't have any red sanding sugar for the crab-shaped cookies.  bah!  so i took a tip from one of my favorite cookiemakers and dyed my own.

after letting the sugar dry for a while, i was pleased to see that it turned out just fine.

except that there were a couple of casualties as i packed them in the bags and tied the ribbons on.  oops.

and those cigar cookies - still not the best, but fairly recognizable, don'tcha think?

i'd had so much fun making those eyes on the crab cookies that i decided to make some for use another time with the shitton of leftover royal icing i had.

i always feel like...somebody's waaaaaaaaaatching meeeeeee...

let me call you sweet-tart

although i haven't been super active on pinterest lately, i have a nice stash of recipes that i want to get through and test out.  no particular reason, just for fun.  and last week with the teen home, i busted out one that sounded light and refreshing:  strawberry lemonade bars.

when i was younger, i made a similar recipe for lemon bars that involved cutting cold butter into flour and sugar with two forks to make the crust.  the process was such a pain in the ass, although the results were always worth it.  and so i've not really made another batch of lemon bars since then (though i love them) due to sheer laziness.  yup.  but the crust for these bars was much, much easier to make as it called for softened butter and a mixer.  woohoo!  homemade crumbly crust in minutes.

while that baked up, i got the stuff ready for the filling.  my microplane made short work of zesting the lemons, and juicing them always seems easier after scraping all that stuff off.  not wanting to drag out the full-sized food processor, i made do with the baby food maker to puree the strawberries.  the kitchen smelled so fresh and lovely.

it was a little weird pouring all that liquid on top of the hot crust, but i'm good at following directions.  mostly.

i think i could have easily baked these for a couple of minutes longer, but the filling was pretty much set and i'm always paranoid about overbaking stuff.  after letting them cool completely and then chilling in the fridge, i cut the pan into bars and sprinkled some powdered sugar on top.

the teen LOVED these.  surprisingly, the hub did too.  they're a shade too tart for my liking, but i found that piling on more powdered sugar did the trick. 

heh.  sugar fixes everything.

gonna drive me to drink

the teen is oh-so-close to getting her driver's license!

last week, she finally got started on her official behind-the-wheel training with a licensed instructor.  oh, and i learned that all the practicing she's been doing over the last almost 6 months was totally illegal.  apparently, the permit isn't actually valid until the first session is over and the instructor has signed the darn thing.  oops.  luckily, she's a good driver and never did anything to attract the attention of local law enforcement.

despite what my friends said about preferring a crappy but unmarked car, the teen was pretty stoked to drive this rather gaudy but still way cool mini cooper.

i warned the instructor that i'd be taking a few pictures, and she laughed.  "most parents take a ton of pictures, and some of them bust out a video camera, too," she shared.  well, i wasn't gonna go that far, and really only took a few.  how many pictures of a car does one really need, anyway?

and then they were off.

she's already blazed through two of her three sessions, and her instructor thinks that she'll pass the test with flying colors.  we're both a little concerned about the parallel parking bit, although we learned that a decent attempt that's too far from the curb is only a 1-point markdown - but hitting the curb is an automatic fail. 

her last session is scheduled three days before DMV-day.  woohoo!  i'm so excited!  i'm so excited!  i'm so...SCARED.

the more you know

are you tired of the texas trip recaps?  i promise, this is the very last one.  i just had to share a handful of things i learned while visiting the lone star state.  well, at least in the parts of it that we got to see, anyway.

as much land as they've got out there, the homes are still built so close to each other that you could probably spit in your neighbor's window.  and damn near all of the houses look like this:

horseplay on air mattresses is not a good idea when a toddler wants to join in the fun.  oh, and gashes on said toddler's head result in a pretty significant gush of blood.  i also learned that while the sight of the stuff (even my own) usually makes my knees buckle and i either pass out, barf or run, when it's my kid's blood and she's bawling, the mom instinct overrides the gag reflex and makes me focus on nothing other than making her feel better.  this cut may not look too bad in these pictures, but trust me - it was pretty scary and this is after a solid 12 hours of being coated in neosporin.  it's actually just now finally cleared up, more than 3 weeks later.

cornfields are freaky as hell.  and even more so when there's a cemetery right next to it.

water towers.  lots of them.  and they're kinda handy, because they're usually adorned with the town's name so you can tell where the hell you are.

texas loves 'em some bush.  george bush, of course.  heh.

rock-ell and i both inexplicably despised their streetlights.  they're crooked.

speaking of the teen's BFF, we all learned that girl can sleep.  anytime, anywhere, and for any length of time.  good gracious.  she even out-slept brother wan, and we thought he was the sleep king.  don't kill me for this picture, rock-ell.  i had to.  HAD TO.

something else them texans love to death?  their state flag.  it was errrrrrywhere.

one thing i loved looking at - the blue sky with those puffy white clouds.  more than once, the bean pointed up and said "look, it's just like toy story!"

when i asked MIL what FM meant on these signs, she said it stood for "farm to market."  i still didn't get it, so my friend google filled me in - they're state or county roads that connect rural areas to market towns.  i guess back in the day these were created to make it easier for the farmers to truck their goods to more populated areas.

and this concludes my list of "lessons learned in texas."  see?  you learn stuff every day.  well, at least i try to.