Tag: Latina

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Waiting for Superman

Every time I talk to my teacher friend about her underfunded school I’m enraged and saddened. Last week she couldn’t pass out worksheets because there was no paper and no one in her school knew when they would get any. One of the teachers lets students watch television during class. Another was allowed to continue teaching after an accident left the teacher brain damaged with emotional and psychological problems. This elementary school doesn’t have working computers. They have computers, but they are so old only a couple even turn on.

Why don’t they have paper and working computers when schools receive more money per student than ever before? Why are teachers that can’t function or are ineffectual allowed to continue teaching?

The documentary “Waiting for Superman” blames it on the teachers’ unions for keeping bad teachers.

There are bad teachers in every school and the parents, students and other teachers know it. DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee had it right to offer teachers incentives to do well instead of rewarding them for simply existing. Bad teachers shouldn’t be allowed to keep their jobs, just like a bad doctor or lawyer or police officer shouldn’t keep theirs.

It’s not that I don’t understand how difficult it is to be a teacher. I could never do it. It takes a special gift. My brother is a teacher and he is extremely dedicated. He loves math and he loves teaching. He’s been doing it 20 years and he’s done it well. My teacher friend is also a fabulous teacher who works hard to give her students as much as she can.

Speaking of my teacher friend. I know why, but I have to ask why there is absolutely no parental involvement in her school? I know the parents work more than one job and many don’t have any money to spare. But why does my overworked friend have to put on a fund raiser so her students can go on a field trip? Why isn’t there one parent, just one, who could step up and do it for her.

The school my kids go to is flush with parental involvement. We are very lucky to live in a nice neighborhood in Los Angeles where parents have chosen not send their kids to private school and instead put money and effort into a public one. Parent volunteers raise enough money to hire PE, Music, and Art teachers, a librarian, and fund some teacher positions.

But there are many middle class and wealthy neighborhoods where instead of donating anywhere from $500 to $1,500 a year to support their local school where everyone would benefit from the donation, parents pay $22,000 a year for their child to go to private school. Even Davis Guggenheim, the director of Waiting for Superman, decided against putting his kids in the local public school.

If the haves continue to abandon public schools the system is going to crumble even further. It’s pathetic that in America we have kids in middle school who can’t read. That kids are dropping out of high school in staggering rates. That high tech companies have to go abroad to hire qualified employees.

More money always helps, but we need to do a better job of spending the money that does go into public schools. We need to balance out the waste and inequities that exist in many school districts. If that means cleaning house in school districts across the country or abandoning the teachers union’s archaic system then so be it. There is nothing more important than educating our children. Parents need to get mad and organize and agitate for systemic change.

I went to a screening of “Waiting for Superman” paid for by the Charter School Group K12. Other bloggers who have written about the film include SoCalMom, Sarah Auerswald, Elise’sRamblings, Los Angelista, Pillowbook, and Queen of Spain.

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Existential Friday

Last Friday was one of those days when I asked myself, “Why am I here?” Not in the existential sense, but literally.

Why am I at a restaurant in West Hollywood in the middle of the day when I should be home doing real work?

I had been invited to interview Brooke Burke at Cecconi’s restaurant in West Hollywood. She is working with Oral B and Oral B is working with Operation Smile. In retrospect, Operation Smile on its own was a good reason to be there. Oral B is giving Operation Smile enough funds for 100 surgical procedures to correct facial deformities. It’s wonderful, but I didn’t know that when I said I would go.

In all honesty, I’m sort of fascinated by Brooke Burke. She’s my age and also from Tucson. She used to play with one of my good friends when they were kids. Brooke turned out to be very nice and honest about how it’s not easy to be a working mom with four kids. The interview went well, and as a bonus, I had a lovely breakfast and was able to chat with a group of interesting writers who had come for the interviews.

Later, after trying to run my family errands in West Hollywood and being stuck in traffic most of the morning, I picked up my kids from school and took them to a birthday party. After a couple of hours we picked up my husband and headed back to West Hollywood for another event where I was again posed with the question, “What am I doing here?”

Whenever I get an invitation to an event I’m always skeptical because I automatically think of Woody Allen in Annie Hall quoting Groucho Marx. “I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.” Or, during my most insecure moments, “I would never want to go to a party that would have me on the exclusive guest list.” Wow, was I wrong here (like I am most of the time).

The family and I went to a giant, over the top, fabulous party for The Hub, a new network that is the joint venture of the Discovery Network and Hasbro toys. It launches Sunday, Oct. 10. I must say, I have mixed feelings about a network co-created by a toy company. There is already so much product placement in television shows. Now there are shows based on existing products including Transformers and GI Joe.

But on the other hand, they do sell Sesame Street, Dinosaur Train, and Sid the Science Kid Toys. What’s the difference? And not only that, the Hub is bringing back Fraggle Rock and Batman Beyond. And we do love the Discovery Channel. Already, my kids can’t get enough of a Hub show we previewed called “The Wot Wots.”

It was hard to ponder these questions too deeply with a glass of wine in one hand and a crab cake in the other. My kids didn’t know where to look or what do first. When we walked in to the outdoor party there was a giant Transformer next to a steep slide that my younger, daredevil son figured out was even faster if he took off his shoes. Next to that was a giant screen showing a loop of all of the Hub shows. After staring with their mouths open they soon were stuffing them with fruit on a stick and chocolate covered marshmallows.

Hopped up on sugar, my boys jumped in the ball pit and hopefully got a little exercise wading around.

As a family, we completely lost our minds. My husband has Celiac Disease and could only safely eat one hors d’ oeuvre so instead he feasted at the dessert and sundae bar. No gluten in ice cream, chocolate, raspberries, and (hopefully) M & Ms. My kids wouldn’t eat anything but sweets and I stuck to Chardonnay. But the worst part was when I left my husband and sons in a line to play a life-size Connect 4 (for the new show “Family Game Night”) while I stalked Eric McCormack. He was there to promote the original Hub show “Pound Puppies” where he is the voice of an animated puppy. After circling him for a few minutes I said something nonsensical and managed to blurt out that I wanted to have my picture taken with him. For what? My scrapbook. Oh, no for my blog. I’m now one of those people who post pictures of herself with celebrities. Nice.

At the end of the day I sat in my living room surrounded by the gifts that Hub and Oral B had presented me and my family. An electric toothbrush, a belly belt that will flatten my stomach, board games, toys. Most of it is going to the women’s shelter, but we’re keeping one of the board games, a “Wot Wot” toy for each child, and the belly buster for me.

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Harry Potter Birthday Cake

My creative skills are limited. I can knit a scarf, I can sew a hem, and I can paint designs on a wall as long as I have a stencil.

I definitely can’t draw or sculpt and that makes cake decorating a challenge.  For my younger son’s 5th birthday party I asked him what type of party he wanted. I was trying to avoid last year’s disaster and make a cake and party that he really loved. He was clear that he wanted a Harry Potter party.

Well, a castle cake sounded way too hard even with a cake mold and there was no way I could have decorated a round cake to look like Harry Potter’s face. I went with the easiest thing I could think of and that was a broomstick. At first I thought I would use one of my cake pans and cut the cake in the shape of a triangle. But I didn’t want to contaminate my baking pans (and i doubted my ability to cut a triangle. Sad, I know). I bake everything gluten-free in our house because my husband has Celiac. My kids and all of the guests can have wheat so I went out and bought a triangle cake mold and I planned to use cupcakes as the handle.

I made a double batch of vanilla butter cake that was too big to fit in my mixer. Luckily, I had a Bosch Universal Plus mixer that the company sent me a few months ago to try out. It worked perfectly for the big batch and I didn’t have to use gluten in my everyday mixer.

The cake turned out great after a little critique from the birthday boy. I frosted the triangle cake with Penuche frosting, which turned out a nice golden brown color. I made bristles by painting lines out of yellow frosting. I only applied them to the top and when my son saw it he said, “What is that?” I doctored it a little more, covering the cake with the yellow lines and adding green frosting that appears to hold the bristles together. I placed the chocolate frosted cupcakes in a line and wrote Nimbus 2000. The design was a big hit as was the Penuche frosting on the butter cake.

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5 Tips to Prepare You for “Back to School"

When my older son started kindergarten last year I thought I was so prepared. I had bought him a cool backpack from REI, a lunch box that I was sure wouldn’t smell after a week, and a collared shirt for the first day.

Well, I thought I was prepared, but when the first day rolled around, I quickly learned it wasn’t true. Here are the five things I learned:

1)   Don’t buy everything you think you need before school starts.

I went to the back to school sales in the summer and bought my son the cutest blue colored shirt, a couple pairs of shorts, jeans and shoes. The first time I washed the shirt it shrunk an entire size and was even too small for the 4-year-old to wear. Then the 5-year-old went through a crazy growth spurt where he ate everything in sight. So much for the shorts. I bought them one size too big, but they shrunk a bit, too. And I didn’t take my son with me to buy his shoes because until then he really didn’t care. When I showed him the awesome hiking shoes I got him he said, ““These are not cool and I need to be cool!” I hate to break it to you honey, but with these genes, cool is unlikely no matter what you’re wearing.

2)    Find out from a parent with older kids exactly what you need.

The one thing I was excited to buy my son was his backpack because it came from REI and gave me an excuse to go shopping at my favorite store. I love gear and my son’s backpack was super cool – black, sleek with mesh water bottle holders. It’s Kelty so I knew it was good quality. It’s absolutely fabulous except that it doesn’t hold anything. In retrospect, it’s tiny. It needed to fit a lunch box, folder, books, a snack bag and possibly a jacket. But I could barely get the lunch box inside. It survived the year, but I have to go get another one for 1st grade. I’m contemplating a suitcase.

3)    All lunch boxes are disgusting

I looked everywhere for a lunch box that had no fabric so I could wipe it out every night to avoid the moldy, rotten food smell. I found one that seemed perfect, but after a week it smelled like a homeless man used it as a pillow. I had tried the sack lunch boxes from Whole Foods, which cost around $3 and were great because I could wash them, but they fell apart after a couple of weeks. I ended up washing the Kindergartener’s lunch box even though the instructions said not to. Hopefully I did not release toxic chemicals into the box. At least it smells good.

4)    Don’t think because your son or daughter starts school that life will suddenly become easier.

After many years as a stay-at-home mom, I imagined that when my son started school I could start to seriously concentrate on my business. It was the light at the end of the tunnel and I was finally there. Wrong again. It was harder to get any work done. There was homework for my son to do (yes, there’s homework in kindergarten), field trips to go on, and volunteering to be done. Because I had a flexible work schedule I felt I should do as much as I could for the school. In addition to all those, the kids got out early once a week and some days they were off completely.

5)    Don’t say yes to everything. You’ll burn out quickly

On the first day of school, the parents got a questionnaire asking what we would like to do to help volunteer. I checked almost everything off not knowing that I would get a call or email every week asking me to volunteer. At first, I did until I realized it was okay to say no. My plan for the Fall is to volunteer for only the things I’m able to do.

This year, I’m doing very little advance shopping. We’ll figure out what we need as we go.

This post was inspired by the  Yahoo! Motherboard.

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New York Adventure: Day 1

A scary plane ride, a disturbing event on the subway, and an evening of fabulous theatre marked my first day in New York for the Blogher 10 conference.

I do not like to fly and it makes me nervous to be so far away from  my kids. So a long and turbulent flight with nothing but time to think about how far we were from Los Angeles was not fun for me. The first part of yesterday’s flight was actually great, I slept a little and then read about 100 pages of “This is Where I Leave You.” (Don’t worry, no foreshadowing there)

About 3 hours along the flight became pretty turbulent and at one point, “Poof!”, the televisions went off. I told my husband that losing power to the television could not be a good sign. He looked at me puzzled. “Are you wearing the noise cancelling headphones to cancel out the sound of my voice?” I asked him. I was still slightly annoyed that the flight attendant had to physically take his upgraded business class ticket out of his hand so we could sit together back in coach. The flight attendant said, “You love birds need to sit together.” The husband gave me a look that said, “If I have to.”

After I got the husband to take off the headphones, the pilot, who sounded a little sleepy, announced to the cabin that one of the three generators blew out. But not to worry because he only needed two to fly the plane and they had started up an auxiliary one to provide adequate power to the cabin. This did not stop me from worrying.

We landed just fine and I was relieved to get off the plane. Yay! Our fun was starting! And then we got on the subway.

I love the subway and thought it was a much better alternative than paying for a taxi. I was wrong. I sat down 2 seats away from a woman on a train heading for Manhattan. A small Indian woman sat down in between us. The woman on the left shoved her and said the train wasn’t just for her. The Indian woman shoved her back and said she didn’t think it was just for her. The first woman started yelling and swearing and said the Indian woman couldn’t talk right and she should get the hell out of America.  She continued by saying that if the Indian woman didn’t learn her place “I will cut you.”

The Indian woman and I became very still until the first woman got off of the train. I asked her if she was okay and she said, “It happens all the time.” Really? “Yes, all the time. You cannot change things.”

I know how the world works, and also know that racism is alive and well and thriving (take Arizona’s immigration law), but it was very disturbing to see first-hand. And I can’t get the look the Indian woman gave me out of my head – sad, resigned.

Because this is New York, the day can change on a dime and that’s what happened. The husband and I made it to our hotel, checked in, cleaned ourselves up, and headed to the theatre.

I had the hardest time buying our Broadway tickets. I wanted to see something really fun and it came down to “How could anyone be more fun than Kristin Chenoweth?” I love her in everything she’s ever done.  So, we went to see “Promises, Promises”.

The show was AMAZING!!! Sean Hayes was funny and had a surprisingly good voice. Chenoweth’s voice was incredible to hear live. It was funny, well acted, and the whole cast was great!! Some of the songs weren’t great, but all in all, it was fantastic.

What a strange and interesting day. Can’t wait to see what the conference is like tomorrow.

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Sisterly Love

My sister gave her partner and me strict instructions; don’t let her give in to an epidural. I never imagined it would be an issue. My sister is one of the most unflappable people I have ever known. She’s a criminal defense attorney, a triathlete, and fiercely independent. She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t show fear. She swims in the San Francisco Bay, which means she literally swims with sharks. When she said she didn’t need an epidural I pictured her biting down on a strap of leather during 12 hours of hard labor.

The month before her due date, we had lengthy discussions about whether she should have the baby at home (I threw a lot of worst case scenarios her way). She opted for a hospital. And after absorbing the equivalent of a master’s degree of information on child birth, she decided to have it naturally, with no drugs.

I went to a couple of long, detailed birthing classes with my sister and her partner. It was all very Berkeley. We watched videos of women in under developed countries working in the fields, taking a break, squatting down and giving birth with no pain killers and no hospitals. At the time, I did not have children, or even give them a passing thought, so the class was fairly traumatizing. There was no talk of an epidural in any scenario. But what those classes did give us was a plan.

I was living (or some might say freeloading) at my sister and her partner’s house when my sister announced that she was in labor. It was 11 pm and I had just stumbled home. I ran around grabbing my stuff and yelling, “let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.” I thought it would be like a movie where if we didn’t hurry and get there in time, she would give birth in the back of my Volkswagen Jetta. But if it was a movie, it was more like the “Sound of Music” than “Run, Lola, Run.” We stared at each other for a while and then went to bed. We got up not-so-early and moseyed on over to the hospital, but not before stopping for lattes and pastries. “This seems wrong,” I remember telling them as we slowly walked into the hospital carrying our coffees.

Wrong it was. It was deathly quiet, like the hospital had gone out of business. I asked the nurse why there weren’t pregnant ladies waddling around huffing out of their mouths and she said the full moon the night before caused many women to go into labor. The place had been packed and women were forced to suffer through their contractions in the waiting room.

We settled into our quiet room and my sister read us the part of the book about what to do if she asked for an epidural. She said to talk her through it, but be encouraging so she didn’t give in. The anesthesiologist walked in carrying a toolbox and said hello in a loud southern accent. This was a little disconcerting to hear in the Oakland Hospital, but not as much as the bright orange tackle box he was holding. My sister told him she didn’t want to go fishing, but would call him if she did. He said he would check in later.

There was a whole lot of nothing going on until my sister suddenly shrieked in pain. She asked to lie down and the pain got progressively worse. Soon after, my sister asked for an epidural.

My sister-in-law and I looked at each other and she grabbed the book. “What are we supposed to do again?” I asked as she frantically flipped the pages.

I heard a voice that sounded like it rose up from the depths of hell. “I want an epidural.”

“But, umm, are you sure, uhh, that you really want this because, you know, you might regret it later?” I mumbled.

“Go get Gomer! Now!” That’s funny, I thought, I wonder if she’s saying that because he has a southern accent like Gomer Pyle. Gomer Pyle, I hadn’t thought about him in a… “Go get him now!!”

I was off, but he was busy helping someone else, although I couldn’t figure out who, because the hospital was a ghost town.

When I got back to the room, she was in more excruciating pain and swearing like she was in a rap video. After what felt like days of my sister berating us for denying her the one thing she had ever wanted, Gomer came back. She had a few choice words for him, too, poor man. He did manage to get her the pain medication through the flying expletives and the real action started.

I won’t share with you the most graphic details, but I was there to photograph the birth, and let me tell you, it was graphic. Because I failed so miserably at stopping her from getting an epidural I took a thousand up-close-and-personal pictures to capture the amazing moment.

“Why, why, why did I agree to do this?” I thought about a half hour into the action. We kept telling her that she was amazing, that she was strong, that she could do it, over and over and over. Then with one big push the head came out and seconds later my niece’s tiny little body came shooting out (and almost dropped on the floor by the doctor). My sister started crying and doctor plopped the baby right down on my sister’s chest. The baby started nursing immediately and then we were all crying.

It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Years later, when I had my boys, my sister was right there taking pictures. I had an epidural right away.

This is my blog entry for the Sisterly Love contest on TLC’s DC Cupcakes. Thanks TLC. I’ve been wanting to tell this story for a long time.

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Just One More Point About Arizona…

I’ve talked to several people in the last week about Arizona’s immigration law, and I wrote this post for LA Moms Blog. Some people said they didn’t have a problem with the law because when a person is illegal that means he or she is doing something illegal and should be punished.

But it’s not that simple. I read this LA Times article last night about two Arizona police officers who felt so strongly that the law would inhibit them from doing their jobs that they filed separate lawsuits against the state of Arizona. And they worried about what would happen to law abiding legal citizens like them, Mexican Americans who could be mistaken for illegal.

And that’s my biggest problem with the law is that it claims to be against anyone in the country illegally, but really it hurts all Latinos in the state. Not only could a legal immigrant be unjustly questioned, but it could have many more unintended consequences such as reduced ability to fight crime.

Someone who is in the country illegally isn’t going to be as willing to talk to the police if they have information about a crime. If you don’t trust the justice system you’re not going to use it. One of the officers in the article talked about how it took years to get the people of the South Tucson neighborhood he patrols to trust him. And those years of work could be for nothing.

When I say that the law will lead to racial profiling, I’m not saying that all police are biased. I can’t believe I’m going to admit this, but I was watching “Police Women of Maricopa County” on TLC, which is set in Phoenix. One of the deputies pulled over a man in an extended cab truck with dark tinted windows for something to do with his license plate. When she approached the driver, he accused her of pulling him over because he’s Mexican. She told him to look at the deputy to his right and look at her, that he’s Mexican and she’s Mexican. And how is she supposed to tell who’s driving the truck when the windows are so dark?

It must be incredibly offensive to be unfairly accused of racial profiling and the deputy was visibly angry. This law will make it even harder for the police to do their jobs and for people who are illegal or legal to live their lives.

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Bobby Flay and Green Chile Enchiladas

new mexican green chiles mom blogger los angeles

A couple of years ago, three journalism friends and I went to Vegas. I really wanted to try Bobby Flay’s restaurant Mesa Grill, but one of the women didn’t want to go because she loves Anthony Bourdain and he doesn’t like Bobby Flay. Normally I’m all for irrational hatred of celebrities, but the menu looked so good. We strong-armed her into going, but it didn’t stop her from berating “The Flay.”

Once we got our food she couldn’t help but shut up. She thought it was fantastic. We all did. She ended the meal by yelling, “I love the Flay.”

And now, after meeting him, I do, too! On Monday, The Flay was shooting a video for Hellman’s mayonnaise with a young mother who needed help finding a quick meal for her family.

After the shoot, I was able to ask Bobby some questions. I always make the same things. Green Chile Enchiladas, picadillo, calabasitas, and they’re all the dishes my mother made me growing up. I asked him what I could to make my meals different, more interesting?

He started with the enchiladas and recommended I try adding tomatillos to my green chile sauce. The result is tart, not hot, he said. “It gives it another dimension.”

I decided to try out the recipe on Wednesday. It gave me an excuse to go to Top Valu in Culver City, the best Mexican grocery store around. (I got a bag full of produce for $8!). I bought green chiles, tomatillos, onions, garlic, and cilantro.

new mexican green chiles mom blogger los angeles

The Flay gave me general directions, but this is what I ended up doing and the enchiladas were very good.

Ingredients:

1 lb pork shoulder, cubed

½ medium onion, diced

1 tbls minced garlic

Chicken stock, enough to cover the pork in the pot

1 lb. tomatillo chiles,

1 ½ pound poblanos chiles

One onion, cut in strips

5 garlic cloves

1 bunch cilantro

6 corn tortillas

Jack Cheese

Directions:

Cook cubed pork, minced garlic, and diced onion in chicken stock, filling until stock just covers the meat and vegetables. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 2 to 3 hours. (I did 2)

Lightly spray or grease long pan with olive oil. Cut pasillas in half and take out top and seeds. Clean tomatillos(they’re sticky and look like small green pumpkins!) and cut out the top. Spread the poblanos, tomatillos, onion and garlic on the pan and roast at 450 degrees for 10 minutes turning once or until the chiles start to turn black.

While that’s cooking, pull cilantro from stems. Take pork out of the liquid and shred.

Once the vegetables are cooled, puree the vegetables in a food processer with the cilantro until it looks like this:

Lightly spray corn tortillas on both sides with olive or corn oil and bake at 350 degrees for 5 minutes or until soft.

Once the tortillas are cooled, place the pork and a spoonful of green chile sauce in a line on the center of the tortilla and roll. Place in a 9 by 3 casserole dish. Repeat with the rest of the tortillas placing the enchiladas close together. Sprinkle with Jack cheese and then pour green chile sauce over the top until covered.

Bake at 350 degrees until the cheese is melted (about 15 minutes). Serve with beans or rice.

Bobby said the leftover sauce can be saved and used for other dishes. Tonight we had the sauce as salsa over tacos made with the leftover pork and sautéed garlic spinach. He suggested mixing it with mayonnaise and using it on fish or making a salad dressing out of it.

I can’t wait to try those. He also gave me a good suggestion for making my picadillo more authentic. I’ll try that next week. 

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Our Disney Week

This was the reluctant week of Disney for my two boys. It started when I dragged them to see the Princess and the Frog and ended at the Staples Center watching Disney on Ice.

It was not easy to get my boys to these two events. I really, really wanted to see the Princess and the Frog. I had read that it was like an old-school Disney movie with hand-drawn animation and great music. I showed my boys a preview online and the 4-year-old laughed hysterically. The 5-year-old was not impressed. “I don’t want to see it,” he declared with a vehemence he usually reserves for talking about Star Wars. “I only like Red Eyed Tree Frogs.”

Translation: “I don’t like Princesses.” But he knew better than to say that he doesn’t like girls, or even princesses in front of me. I knew they would like it if I just got them into the theater.

So I did what any loving mother would do: I tricked them. They got out early from school one day last week and I surprised them with a trip to The Grove to see Santa. If you’ve never been to The Grove, it’s an over-the-top so-totally-LA outdoor shopping mall. It has had more visitors per year than Disneyland (in 2006 according to LA Magazine) and the Christmas Tree sitting in the faux park is the tallest in LA. Santa’s house is fabulous and has about the same square footage as mine. We were lucky enough to be the third group in line and it took us only about 10 minutes to see Santa, spend too much money buying pictures and a video (why did I buy the video? why?), and get a complimentary mini bag of mini marshmallows.

That left us the rest of the afternoon. “Look, a movie theater,” I said to them in a surprised voice. “I..am..not..seeing..that..movie,” my 5-year-old said. Come on! It’s going to be great. There are alligators, fireflies, Cajun music, voodoo. It’s going to be great!! I bought a giant bag of popcorn and dragged them kicking and whining into the movie. The first 15 minutes the whining continued but by the end, both boys were laughing and they both said they loved it. And so did I.

By Thursday, our crazy week of holiday activity was literally making me ill. I had baked all night Saturday, did a farmers market and catered a party Sunday, made 150 cookies on Monday, did a cooking demo at 5-year-old’s school Tuesday, tried to clean my house and get work done on Wednesday. On Thursday, I was sick.

But I was given 4 free tickets to see Disney on Ice Worlds of Fantasy at the Staples Center and had committed to going. Other than seeing Santa, we hadn’t had much holiday fun this season. I didn’t tell the boys what we were doing until that afternoon, but I said it was going to be great!! We listened to Christmas music during the long drive downtown and oohed and aahed at the holiday lights around the Staples Center.

I hadn’t been to an ice show in decades and I didn’t know what to expect, although I admit my expectations were pretty low. The show started with Mickey,Minnie, Goofy, and Donald skating and then the Cars drove onto the ice. There was a cute Little Mermaid segment and then came the best part of the whole show, The Lion King. The skating was amazing.

The second half was a bit confusing for me because I’ve never seen the Tinker Bell movies. I couldn’t figure out why Tinker Bell came out looking like a cross between Brittany Spears and a buxom Goldie Hawn from “Laugh In”. She eventually changed into Tinker Bell. None of that mattered because it made perfect sense to my boys. Near the end my 5-year-old yelled that he had to go to the bathroom and ended up getting sick (might have had something to do with the slushy and fries at 8:30 at night). When he came back I asked him if he was okay and all he could say was, “How did Tinker Bell save Spring?” Good Times.

Yes, our Disney week was a success.

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Gluten-Free Mexican Wedding Cakes with Dried Cranberries

My son had multicultural week at his school and I volunteered to help out. I thought about what I had to offer: I’m Mexican, I bake, I’m a writer. OK, I decided to bake Mexican Wedding Cakes and write about their history.

I scoured the internet and found…nothing!! There’s no history to Mexican Wedding Cakes. There’s no cute story about a Mexican wedding or some dramatic link to history. I knew the cookies were basically the same as Russian Tea Cakes and a slew of other nut and butter cookies, but I thought they had to have some story behind them. Not the case. They just started appearing in cookbooks in the 1950s for no dramatic reason whatsoever.

That story would not enthrall the children, so I decided to do a straight cooking demonstration and talk to the kids about why the cookies are a big part of my family’s holiday tradition.
Every Christmas my mom would make these delicate little cookies with butter, powdered sugar, flour, pecans, and vanilla. We would roll them into little balls and drop them onto the cookie sheet. You’re supposed to wait until the cookies are cool before you roll them in powdered sugar, but we rarely did. I only liked them if they were warm and the powdered sugar was moist like frosting.

After we made the cookies, the entire extended family would come over and we’d have a late dinner. The kids would unwillingly go to midnight mass and when we came home we’d open our presents. (While at mass, All I could think about was that someone was breaking into our house and stealing the presents, like in that episode of “Eight is Enough.”) It was the best night of the year, I told the kids, because we were allowed to stay up all night, eat cookies, and play with toys.

The cookies I made for my son’s school were very different than the ones I grew up with. I made them gluten-free, vegan, and without nuts. I used dried cranberries and Earth Balance vegan butter. They came out delicate and buttery and the kids seemed to like them.

After the demo I read my new favorite Christmas book, N is for Navidad, by Susan Midlleton Elya and Merry Banks. It’s illustrated by Joe Cepeda, who also did Mice and Beans, another favorite around here.

Here’s the recipe. Happy Holidays!