Just for fun

And you’ll finally see the truth that a cinnamon roll lies in you

About a month ago I decided that, much like Martin Luther King, Jr., I had a dream. I was going to include Mariah Carey in that sentence because I thought her song Love Takes Time began with the phrase “I had a dream but I let it slip away”. Sadly, I was mistaken. She sings, “I had it all but I let it slip away”.

So now I actually have two dreams. First, my original dream that I haven’t mentioned yet, and, secondly, the ability to accurately remember the lyrics to Mariah Carey songs.

I’ve always believed that if you’re going to dream, dream big.

Here’s my original dream.

Back in June, I spent the weekend at my friend Ree’s ranch. We had a great time and I had the opportunity to ride a horse named Peso in what was possibly the worst display of horsemanship ever exhibited on their land. It makes my bottom hurt just to think about it.

The morning we left to head back to the big city, Ree brought us four pans of her homemade cinnamon rolls. I’d seen the recipe on her website at least a year before but was all, whatever, I have a friend named Mrs. Baird who totally sells her cinnamon rolls at the grocery store in plastic packaging and why would I want to spend all kinds of time making homemade dough and hoeing crops in the hot sun?”

Not that you have to hoe crops in the hot sun to make the cinnamon rolls, but my thought was that if you’re willing to make your own dough then it’s not a stretch to assume you might hoe some crops.

But then came the fateful morning that I actually tasted one or eight of those cinnamon rolls and I knew my life would not be complete unless I could eat them whenever I wanted. And since the rising cost of fuel prohibits us from using our personal lear jet as much as we used to, I knew it wasn’t going to be an option to fly to the ranch every morning for fresh baked cinnamon rolls.

Also, I wasn’t invited to fly to the ranch every morning.

I told Ree I would love to make them but was frightened by the dough-making process because it seems to be a task that requires “skills” and “cooking ability”. She assured me that it was very simple, but I didn’t really believe her because she seriously has written her very own cookbook that’s about to be published and everything like a real piece of literature. I figured Ree telling me making dough is easy was the equivalent of Michelangelo listening to someone rave about the beauty of the Sistine Chapel and saying “What? That old thing? No big deal. I just had some extra time and paint on my hands. A monkey could have done it.”

Months passed since I’d had one of those cinnamon rolls, but I couldn’t quit thinking about them. And somewhere deep inside my soul or my stomach, a dream was born. A dream of making pans upon pans of those homemade cinnamon rolls, wrapping them in festive green and red cellophane tied with ribbon so sparkly it practically screams “MERRY CHRISTMAS”, and giving them out to every neighbor, garbage man, and UPS delivery man within a twenty-mile radius during the holidays.

I believe my feelings about it are best summed up in these classic words from Mariah, “I don’t want a lot for Christmas, there is just one thing I need.” The need to make homemade cinnamon rolls.

All I want for Christmas is you.

As with most lofty dreams, I had to conquer my fears. My fear of failure and packages of active dry yeast and recipes that call for nine cups of flour and use phrases like “if it starts to splurge out of the pan, just punch it down”.

I’m sorry, but I generally stay away from foods that may need to be wrestled to the ground. With the exception of Lifesaver Gummie Sours because everyone knows if you get two of those suckers stuck together, it’s going to take some effort to pull them apart.

I officially began my journey last Thursday when I went to HEB with a list of all the required ingredients. Everything was pretty straightforward until I began to peruse the selection of yeast. (There’s a sentence I never thought I’d use.)

I had no idea that yeast came in so many forms. Who are all these people making delicious things from scratch and why aren’t they bringing any of it over to my house?

Ultimately I decided to purchase the packages of Fleischmann’s Active Dry Yeast and you can imagine my delight when I got home and realized that’s exactly what Ree uses for her dough. I’m clearly a natural.

The only thing I couldn’t find was maple flavoring. HEB doesn’t believe its customers have any need to make anything with a hint of maple flavor. (They also don’t believe people need to purchase Tyson Roasted Chicken Breasts which is a whole other issue that I won’t get into right now) At times like this it would be really convenient to just run to another grocery store, but here in South Texas we don’t have another grocery store. Unless you count the Walmart.

Which I don’t.

Also, Walmart didn’t have the maple flavoring either.

I decided to move forward in spite of this little hitch in the process, especially because it wasn’t going to be an issue until I got to the part where I make the icing and I wasn’t really sure I’d ever get that far because the dough might beat me to a pulp and leave me hanging on to a very thin thread of sanity in my kitchen.

Here is how I spent Friday morning in what is truly a horrendous food pictorial.

I started by scalding some stuff in a pan.

Once it was scalded, I added eight cups of flour. EIGHT CUPS.

And then I covered it up and left to go to Target for about an hour. I came home to this.

I can’t lie. It scared me. I’ve never dealt with foods that grow of their own free will. Other than vegetables obviously, but they don’t grow in a pot in my kitchen while I’m looking at Mossimo merchandise.

But I didn’t let it get the best of me. I punched it down, grabbed half the dough and began to roll it into a rectangular formation on a well-floured surface just like the recipe said.

I can’t even explain how much I had to fight my desire to cut it into a perfect rectangle. A rectangle that would make geometry teachers everywhere weep with joy. But I fought my OCD tendencies and just went with it.

I poured butter over the surface of the not-at-all-shaped-like-a-rectangle shaped rectangle of dough.

And that’s when tragedy almost struck.

I came within millimeters of sprinkling my precious dough covered in butter and sugar with a healthy dose of cumin instead of cinnamon. Something tells me it wouldn’t have been the start of a new taste sensation because it’s so rare that you hear anyone say, “You know what would taste great? A sweet pastry that tastes like taco meat.”

Fortunately, it all turned out okay and I began to roll up the rectangle into a big roll.

And made one heck of a mess in the process. I think I used a superfluous amount of butter if that’s even possible.

Then I began to cut the dough and, next thing I knew, I had this.

And, ultimately, I had these.

P sampled them when they were fresh out of the oven and declared them to be delicious. His only complaint was the icing was so sweet that it kind of made his teeth hurt. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it might be because I substituted Aunt Jemima maple syrup for maple flavoring.

I was desperate.

SInce I still had half the dough left, I decided to wait until Saturday to make the rest of the rolls and figure out a solution to the shortage of maple flavoring in my area. Sophie suggested that I might want to try Whole Foods and, sure enough, I was able to find all-natural, completely organic maple flavoring that had been harvested by beavers just that morning for approximately the cost of Caroline’s college tuition.

I baked the rest of the rolls and iced half of them with Ree’s icing that calls for the maple flavoring. And then, because I am totally adventurous, I iced the other half with a recipe that called for 2 cups confectioners’ sugar, 1 (3 ounce) package cream cheese, 1 tablespoon butter, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract and 3 tablespoons milk.

Either way, they were delicious.

By Saturday evening I had eight pans of cinnamon rolls when all was said and done. I’ll never tell how many we ate as opposed to how many I gave away.

Ree was right, they’re actually pretty easy to make. I mean, I did it and I’m a person who spent thirty minutes trying to make a decision about active dry yeast and jumped back in fear when I saw dough rising out of a pot.

In the words of Mariah Carey, I had a vision of love (or cinnamon rolls) and it was all that they’ve given to me.

You can find Ree’s recipe by clicking here.
Where there’s smoke, there isn’t always fire. Or even smoke.

I hate to speak ill of anyone and certainly hate to spread rumors, but yesterday I decided it was time to clean out the playroom because Caroline was out shopping for new hunting boots with P and the time was right to throw away some Polly Pocket accessories whose matches long ago became victims of the vacuum cleaner. In the midst of the cleaning out process I discovered that by all appearances, Barbie has opened a nudist colony in the large yellow bin and invited all of her friends. I haven’t seen that many plastic boobs since the last time I watched an episode of Real Housewives of Orange County.

The rest of our weekend was decidedly less sordid. On Friday afternoon we attended a birthday party at the Country Club for W and E’s two-year-old twin girls. Caroline was by far the biggest kid there which still manages to surprise me because wasn’t it just yesterday that she was peeing in the baby pool with all the other toddlers?

We had a great time swimming until dark clouds rolled in and what can only be described as an air raid siren worthy of WWII began blaring loudly. I was certain we were under some sort of attack and began searching for the nearest bomb shelter, only to discover the siren was merely an indicator that lightning had been spotted in the area and everyone needed to get out of the pool. Those Country Club members really get their money’s worth because at our neighborhood pool all we get is Coach whistling with his fingers and yelling “Whoa now, y’all get on outta the pool before you fry”. Granted, it’s a lot less jarring but it lacks the drama of an air raid siren that can be heard sixty miles away and makes you fear that your life is in imminent danger.

On Saturday, P and Caroline decided to go dove hunting and while they were gone I spent my time doing important things like catching up on all the DVRed television that wasn’t going to watch itself and flipping back and forth between various college football games. Finally, at 6:00 p.m. it was time for the Aggie game to start and I discovered the beauty that is CBS gametracker. I mean, watching digital men play football on a computerized football screen isn’t quite as good as the real thing, but it’s better than just following along on the radio like I was forced to do in ye olden days.

By the time my people arrived home, the Aggies were on their way to certain victory and I managed to get Caroline fed, bathed and in the bed in about thirty-five minutes which is a new personal record. It helped that she was exhausted and just did what I told her to do without debating the unfairness of life and bedtimes.

It also didn’t hurt that I let her sleep in our bed, which turned out to be a good thing because at 4:34 a.m. the smoke alarms in our house began BLARING. BLARING LOUDLY. BLARING in a way that makes you sit straight up and look at the clock because you want to remember what time it was when your life came to an end.

For the second time in a 48 hour period I was having WWII flashbacks and the urge to scream “RUN FOR COVER”. It didn’t help the situation that we’d watched a little bit of Band of Brothers only hours earlier. Which probably explains my WWII flashbacks since I wasn’t actually alive during WWII.

Anyway, P jumped up and grabbed the flashlight he always keeps next to his bed because he is the safety police and is ALWAYS PREPARED for an emergency. He and his flashlight searched the entire house trying to detect any signs of fire and/or smoke and/or German soldiers, but there was nothing. Plus, the smoke alarm quit going off about ten seconds after it started so everything seemed okay. Maybe it was just a random occurrence.

We all curled back up and peacefully dozed for eight minutes before it did it again. Repeat entire previous scenario. And then six minutes later it did it again. Rinse and repeat.

P got out of bed and flipped the breaker that controls the smoke alarms. Problem solved.

Until four minutes later.

(By the way, these intervals are my best guess because I was somewhere in between an adrenaline-fueled state and dead asleep. Basically, the same state I’m in almost every day.)

Apparently, one of the detectors is faulty and was causing all its hard-wired brethren to go off every time it went off. P got out of bed for good at 5:00 a.m. and solved the problem by taking down every last smoke detector and smashing them all in the middle of the street.

Actually, he didn’t smash them in the street but I know him well enough to know that he wanted to. Instead, they were all lined up in a row on our dining room table when Caroline and I finally woke up at 9:00 on Sunday morning.

Currently, they are spread out in different locations while we try to pinpoint which one is the rogue alarm that was causing all the problems. And when I say we are trying to pinpoint the rogue alarm, what I actually mean is I am trying to ignore the fact that there are smoke detectors all over my kitchen counters and dining room table.

But on the bright side, if we figure out which one it is that was causing all the horrendous racket then we can probably sell it to the Country Club.

Or maybe Barbie might need it for her nudist colony because they all enjoy the occasional dip in the Barbie pool and this Texas weather can be unpredictable.

Much like smoke alarms.
Some stuff and also some things

Since school has started and I’m back to cooking frozen waffles and making ham sandwiches at an hour that I believe to be decent only for those who grow crops and work the land for a living, it’s become more and more apparent to me that my ideal schedule would be one that allows me to stay up until around 2 a.m. every night and sleep until about 11:00 a.m.

Okay, noon.

In other words, the same schedule I kept in college.

However, in college I didn’t have to worry about getting someone dressed and off to school except for myself and, let’s be honest, how often did that really happen? I always considered it an accomplishment if I made it on campus in time to meet some friends for chicken fingers at the MSC. And as it turns out, I don’t even regret skipping all those early morning Business Math classes because I don’t believe business and math should intermingle.

Unfortunately, by the time I’m back to a point in my life where I can keep my ideal schedule, I’ll be on the verge of becoming a senior citizen and will probably be ready to phone it in around 8:30 p.m. every night because 4:30 a.m. comes early.

So since I’m having a little trouble adapting to our new non-summer schedule, I’m going to just write a quick list of things so I can get to bed at a reasonable hour.

1. I was delighted at the number of you who weren’t sure if a flux capacitor is a real car part. It’s not. It’s just a general term I like to throw around when discussing auto mechanics because I was slightly obsessed with Michael J. Fox and his acid-washed denim jacket in Back to the Future.

2. The turtles didn’t necessarily need killing. We believe in equal rights for ducks and turtles. The only thing we’re opposed to are Grass Carp and P has been on a one man quest to rid the world of them, which really is a story in itself.

3. The duck is gone for good and Caroline is okay with it. As a matter of fact, she looked outside before dinner last night and told us she thought she saw some duck bones in the backyard. Thankfully, she was mistaken and it was just an old dog toy.

4. Just a reminder that if you wanted to join me in reading the Bible in a year, yesterday was the first day. If you forgot, all you’ve missed is Genesis 1-3, otherwise known as the beginning.

5. I desperately need some new boots for Fall because the ones I bought from Target two years ago need to be put out of their misery to put me out of my misery. They look great but could not be more uncomfortable if they were filled with nails and fire ants. I just can’t decide between black boots or brown boots because I only need to buy one pair. I’m leaning towards brown. Any thoughts on that?

6. Speaking of boots, I saw a picture of these on someone’s blog yesterday (I’m sorry I can’t remember where. I have a dreadful memory.) How cute are those?

I think I need something a little more simple, but if I had money to burn like the government, then I would buy those and a farm in Africa.

(I wouldn’t really buy a farm in Africa but for some reason those boots look like something Meryl Streep wore in Out of Africa and my mind just went there)

(I mean, I’m not opposed to a farm in Africa but it would take a long time to get there and I hear it can be hot, hence the phrase “It’s Africa hot”)

See? I need to start going to bed earlier because I’m not in college anymore and my mind doesn’t function well on just a few hours of sleep every night. There’s no way I’d ever maintain that straight C average these days.

Y’all have a lovely day.
A bunch of rambling that ends with a duck

Last Friday, Gulley and I took the kids to a local candy store for a treat to celebrate a successful first week of school. We were all so excited to be together because we hadn’t seen each other all week and had a lot to catch up on. Gulley decided last Spring to teach at a local preschool this year leaving her unavailable to meet me at Starbucks on Tuesday mornings and to answer the phone all fourteen times I call in an average day.

Truthfully, when I got my new iPhone and compiled my list of “Favorites” on my phone list, Gulley was first on my list. I realize it probably should be P, but he shows little to no enthusiasm when I call to let him know that I just found a sweater on sale at Banana Republic and it’s a must have. Instead, he just tells me I need to quit spending money which is really not the reaction I’m looking for.

But when I call Gulley to tell her about some boots I just discovered at DSW Shoes or my thoughts on last night’s episode of The Rachel Zoe Project, she is genuinely interested and contributes to the conversation. I have been known to call her to let her know HEB has pork tenderloin on sale and she has been known to call me so I can give her the ingredients to a recipe while she’s at the grocery store.

My point is WE TALK. A LOT.

By Thursday of last week I felt like I was about to explode with trivial information that I hadn’t been able to share. In fact, when my home phone rang early Thursday afternoon for the first time all week, I almost fell off the couch in fear because I’d grown so accustomed to the silence. What’s worse, I almost answered it even though it was a toll-free number calling. I finally decided whoever was on the other end was more interested in getting me to contribute to a fund to save the white-tailed salamander from extinction than they were about listening to who got voted off Top Chef last night and how I have a phobia of seeing scallops on a plate because they are unnaturally spongy and white, like little seafood-flavored marshmallows.

So the whole back to school thing has been a bit of an adjustment. I actually have plenty of productive things I can do during the day to fill my time, but I spent most of last week in a state of shock over all the time I had at my disposal and completely forgot the list of 8,987 things needing to be done that I compiled over the course of the summer. This week promises to be better, even though I spent most of yesterday lying on the couch and complaining about a horrible sinus headache. But in the words of Scarlett O’Hara, tomorrow is another day.

Anyway, Caroline and I spent most of our weekend over at Gulley’s house. Her husband was out of town and P was working at the ranch so we spent Friday and Saturday catching up on things like our thoughts on universal healthcare and the skinny jean with boots. Meanwhile, the kids played in her backyard for hours, only coming in to grab their sixth or tenth popsicle.

Around 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, P called on his way in from the ranch to inform me that the flux capacitor had gone out in his truck and he was stranded on the side of the road needing to be rescued. He gave me a list of things to go purchase from the Auto Parts store before heading his way. I used my handy “Where To” app on my iPhone to locate the auto parts store nearest Gulley’s house and, I’ll be honest, felt a little bit like I had a bat phone because I had instant access and directions to every auto parts store in a fifteen mile radius.

Unfortunately, some of the supercool Batman factor faded after I pretended I knew what I was doing when I walked in the auto parts store and ultimately had to make the walk of shame up to the counter to just hand the salesman the list of things P dictated to me because he needed a blah blah and another blah with an extra gallon of blah.

However, I did save the day by showing up with all the right stuff, not to be confused with All The Right Moves starring a young Tom Cruise.

On Sunday after church, (Wow. Is this the most boring recap of a weekend ever?) P and Caroline headed down to the ranch because she wanted to shoot her new pink gun and rumor had it there were some turtles that needed killing. They took my car, which is totally appropriate for the ranch roads except not at all. Not to mention that the floorboards were covered in South Texas dirt and crushed Cheeto Puffs upon its return.

They got back home late in the afternoon and, as they turned the corner by our house, saw a baby duck walking by itself across the street. On further inspection, it was determined that the duck was all alone and on a self-destructive path to becoming cat food. P and Caroline decided to rescue the duck from a certain grisly death.

This is the dog kennel where the duck resided for approximately twelve hours.

You will notice, thanks to my superb gift of photography, you can’t actually see the duck, but rather the bottom of an old Christmas tree stand that was used as a faux pond.

Yesterday morning, P went to Home Depot to get some chicken wire to secure the area on the side of our house for the duck until it could survive on its own. He worked on it for about an hour, even filling up a little black tub with water instead of a Christmas tree stand. Caroline was so excited to have her very own duck, even though we warned her it would just be for a few days until he could fly.

Long story short, the duck escaped around 3:00 p.m. yesterday. P feels that the hours he spent trying to save a duck are hours of his life he’ll never get back. Caroline was a little sad, but I assured her the duck probably just flew off to meet his family.

Or possibly his maker.

Either way he’s in a better place than swimming in a Christmas tree stand.
And now I’ll never ride in a taxi with a rabid dog

Guess what? Today is the twelfth anniversary of the second day after I was married.

Seriously, I realize it’s enough of all the celebrations. It’s just what happens when you choose to cram all your major life events into a two week window. I’ll tell you what else happens, it causes a little bit of the melancholy to set in because it’s like BAM! my baby is a year older, BAM! I’m a year older, BAM! P and I have been married another year, and, finally, BAM! it’s time to start another school year.

Apparently, along with all these milestones, I have also turned into Emeril Lagasse.

It’s all enough to make me feel like I need some type of mild sedative and a clock that can, in the words of Cher, turn back time.

On Friday night, P, Caroline and I went to eat Mexican food with Mimi, Bops, Gulley and Will. There is really no other way to celebrate a birthday than by consuming large amounts of guacamole and chips. After dinner, Caroline went home to spend the night with Mimi and Bops and P told me we could stop on the way home and buy my birthday present.

Look what I got.

Complete with a really cute hot pink case.

It’s made out of hard plastic because my friend AJ cautioned me against buying the gel case because your hair gets caught in it when you talk on the phone. I cannot tell you how much I value any advice that relates to the care and maintenance of my hair.

I don’t know how on earth P knew I wanted an iPhone other than the fact that I’ve dropped subtle hints approximately every day for the last two months. And by subtle, I mean things like “Wow, I really want an iPhone for my birthday.”

Actually, I almost went and bought one for myself in mid-July but then, the night before I was planning on making the purchase, I went shopping with Gulley and Steph at Nordstrom Rack and found some white jeans that fulfilled every dream I have long held in the pursuit of white denim. Naturally, I had to buy them because a good pair of white jeans are like the mythical unicorn, rare to the point of non-existent.

The next day I told P about my white jeans and he informed me that I was now wearing my new iPhone. I’ll be honest, the white jeans are great but they are totally useless when it comes to texting.

So, I was thrilled to walk into the AT&T store on Friday night to pick up my new precious and made sure to let P know how much more efficiently I’ll run my faux media empire now that I have the proper technology. Not to mention that I couldn’t wait to download the app that makes real live tooting noises because it will keep Caroline entertained for HOURS.

As we walked out of the store, I was completely hypnotized by the screen. I was sliding my finger across the screen trying out everything in sight and attempting to send text messages that read, “I’m texting you from my new iPhone, SUCKERS” to everyone I know, even though most of them have had iPhones for the last two years. I felt that after years of suffering through the archaic predictive texting on my Motorola Razr and being mocked by people who liked to tell me they had my exact same phone back when they were in high school, I deserved just a small moment of Apple glory.

I was totally caught up in the fabulousness when P had to grab me to keep me from walking right into someone and said, “I feel like I just bought you an accident for your birthday”.

He is hilarious.

After we got home I spent most of the night playing with all the different features and searching the Apps store for important applications, such as being able to receive information about a weird law from different parts of the world every day. How did I live thirty-eight years without knowing it’s illegal to carry a rabid dog in a taxicab in London? Now, thanks to modern technology and people with way too much time on their hands, I can get that kind of useful information on a daily basis.

In the interest of full disclosure, I feel compelled to share that we also spent part of Friday night going through P’s jar of change. He was concerned about having enough quarters to run his truck through the car wash on a weekly basis so he poured out all his change and we transformed into two nerdy coin collectors sorting quarters by state.

“Oh LOOK! We have three from Idaho!”

“WOW! I just found one from Wyoming?”

“Do we have a Texas?”

And so I spent my thirty-eighth birthday learning fancy new technology and counting change. Then I took out my teeth and went to bed.

On Saturday morning, Gulley called me because our friend Jen was in town and we needed to figure out our plans for the day. Once we figured out what we were doing, I told her I’d call Jen to let her know the plans and what time to meet us. I decided to use my new phone to call her, so I picked it up, scrolled through my contacts to find her number and then, I KID YOU NOT, realized I had no idea how to actually make a call on the phone, which is kind of important since it is A PHONE.

I have never been so glad that P wasn’t around because if he had witnessed me going to Apple.com to watch the iPhone instruction video so that I could actually use it for its intended purpose?

Well, let’s just say there are some embarrassments too great to endure.
There’s a reason Elvis didn’t make “Blue Port Aransas”

We made it home yesterday afternoon and I am currently buried under fifty-eight pounds of laundry and six bags of half-eaten chips that probably need to be thrown away because I’m the only one in my family who thinks it might not be the best idea to play with live bait and then promptly help myself to a Frito covered in bean dip.

Also, today is my 38th birthday.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to mention my birthday because it feels like a desperate ploy to get y’all to leave me lots of comments saying “Happy Birthday!”, but considering there’s a good chance that later today I’ll spontaneously announce “It’s my birthday!” to the cashier at HEB in a desperate ploy to get her to wish me happy birthday, it only seems natural that I do the same thing here.

Last night, P offered to write a guest birthday post about ten things I do that get on his nerves, but when I questioned him further about what those things could possibly be, he couldn’t come up with anything.

I don’t think it had anything to do with the fact he knows I’m suffering from PMS and was holding a sharp knife at the time. And, honestly, the sharp knife was to cut up the barbecued turkey we were having for dinner.

So, in honor of my birthday, here’s a video of Caroline. Which has nothing at all to do with my birthday unless you count the fact that if I hadn’t been born thirty-eight years ago today, then she wouldn’t be here either.

The Beach from Big Mama on Vimeo.

A few quick notes:

I think “It’s almost like Hawaii” should be Port Aransas’ new ad campaign, even though it’s not at all like Hawaii except they both involve the ocean and sand.

Apparently, being in a tropical locale makes her want to employ her limited Spanish vocabulary.

She knows how to enjoy a piece of bubblegum. I think she gets it from me, which might be one of the ten things I do that gets on P’s nerves.

I mean, if I actually did anything that gets on his nerves.

Which I don’t.

Except for when I do.

Y’all have a great Friday.