It happened so fast, in fact, that it wasn’t until Friday that it really and truly hit me that after four years of working from home and getting to be with Milo all day, we’re going to be separated.

snow day

I know that it will be harder on me than it will be on him. He will be home with Matt, and they will be having adventures, going to preschool, running errands, playing, going on walks… his day-to-day life will hardly change at all.

walking in the snow

But I will miss him so much.

I have been trying to soak it all up. I have taken him on some mom-and-son dates in the last few days. Friday, we went to the library, followed by happy hour pizza slices at Pizza Fino:

goofy

Saturday, we were lucky enough to be invited to a complimentary meal at the opening weekend of a new vegan restaurant here in the Portland area, Veggie Grill.

We were given a cool product to play with, Wikki Stix, while we waited for our food, so of course we spelled Milo’s name.

milo spelled in wikki stix

I had been told by friends that I had to try the buffalo wings, and sure enough: they were spicy and delicious!

Veggie Grill buffalo wings

I had the Santa Fe Chickin’ sandwich and Milo had the Chickin’ Nuggets:

Santa Fe Chickin' Sandwich

Milo eats his nuggets

I think that Milo enjoyed his sweet potato fries more than the nuggets themselves, no surprise there.

This afternoon, I have some low-key family time in mind. I might give Milo’s hair a trim. If it stays dry, we might go for a hike or a scooter ride (Milo) and walk (Matt and me). If Milo has his say, there will be at least one game of Candyland played. I will take way too many pictures. Milo will put up with it so long as I show them to him on the iPhone afterward. It will be just another afternoon for him. Hopefully he won’t notice me sniffling and wiping at my eyes.

I loved it and wanted to pass it on to you.

office and craft room

Remember my goals for the holidays? So far I have managed to do well on all of them…except for finding a sitter for Matt’s and my anniversary. But that’s okay! We don’t have any money, anyway, so I will probably just make a nice dinner and we’ll drink the beer left over from our annual cookie party (and cookies, to boot) and watch a movie on Netflix instant, curled up together on the couch. That’s the thing about having your anniversary fall two days after Christmas: by the time that it rolls around every year, we are kind of over going out.

But that’s not why I’m here! I’m here to tell you about the holiday discount on Yellow Rose Greatest Hits! Between now and the last day of Hanukkah (December 28th), Yellow Rose Greatest Hits will be 15% off! Hot damn!

Here is what international tastemaker and trendsetter My Mom had to say about Yellow Rose Greatest Hits:

I also have now had a chance to really look through Yellow Rose Greatest Hits, and it’s just wonderful. As in your first book, it reads as though you’re a friend and you’re standing right beside the cook and chatting through the recipe as a friend would. It’s definitely a must-have, even if one has Yellow Rose (Recipes).

I’d say that’s a pretty strong endorsement. She said “must-have,” and My Mom doesn’t just throw around language like that about books her daughter writes.

I hope you’re having a wonderful holiday season with plenty of days off and a seemingly neverending cup of cocoa.

I snapped these while at the Alberta Coop:

dark chocolate covered sandwich cookies with peppermint

Christmas fir potpourri

the elusive vegan caramels

stroopwaffels

Nikki McClure calendar

The photos that I snapped while at Back to Eden are all crappy because my mind wasn’t exactly on photography. It was on the mint chocolate soft serve that was being prepared for me. Regardless:

peppermint patties

Go Max Jokers

And here are a few I took at New Seasons the other night while I was waiting for my wok bowl. I love both the Moonstruck product line and their beautiful packaging:

chocolate-covered almonds and cranberries

dark chocolate espresso and chile bars

hot cocoa

If chocolate doesn’t do it for you, how about these fantastic ornaments, many of which are locally made?

ornaments at New Seasons

more ornaments

Of course, now that I’m looking at all of these, I can see that there is a strong emphasis on chocolate, but really: isn’t that the way that it should be?

I’m still trying to figure out what I’m making for our stocking stuffer snacks this year. Last year, I made a variety of sweet and savory treats, but we ran out of the snack mixes long before anything else. I’m starting to think that I should just make snack mixes, spiced nuts, and maybe this peanut butter popcorn recipe I’ve been wanting to try.

If you’re a holiday baker, how’s it coming? Do you stick to your family favorites every year or branch out?

Can you even believe that four years ago, this guy…

…looked like this?

Neither can I!

We’re having a wonderful quiet birthday at home today. I don’t know how many more years I will be able to get away with the small family celebrations, but I plan to milk it for as long as possible. Milo did have his best pal Jack over for some birthday cake, but otherwise, we’re attempting to keep it as low-key as possible.

Milo’s favorite birthday present was a coin-sorting bank which his granddad sent him. He keeps looking around the house for more change to put in it.

I am thrilled to tell you that my newest cookbook, Yellow Rose Greatest Hits, is finished, available to buy, and is discounted this weekend!

Yellow Rose Greatest Hits features roughly 100 updated and improved fan favorites from Yellow Rose Recipes, Potluck Mania, and this website: all killer, no filler.

I did an informal poll on Facebook and asked if I should print the cookbook in full color or in black and white, given that the color version would be almost twice as much as the black and white. Every single commenter said that they would be willing to pay extra for color, but I decided to give the choice of a black and white copy, anyway. That’s the exciting thing about self-publishing! I have the choice, and so do you.

This weekend—November 24-28—I will be offering a 10% discount on the color copy and a 5% discount on the black and white copy.

Here they are:

♥ Yellow Rose Greatest Hits (full color)
♥ Yellow Rose Greatest Hits (black and white)

Thank you so much for all of the emails, tweets, and Facebook messages asking me if and when I was going to republish Yellow Rose Recipes. Knowing that there was a demand has really motivated me to get this out there. I feel blessed to be part of a community which is so supportive. This Thanksgiving, I am giving thanks for all of you.

Happy holidays from Portland!

(photo template courtesy of the amazing puglypixel)

This is my favorite time of year. I spend eight months wishing that it were October through December, and then it comes, and I’m so busy rushing around that it all happens in a blur of Vegan MoFo-Halloween-Thanksgiving-Milo’s birthday-Christmas-Our Anniversary-New-Years, followed by the two most depressing months to live in the Pacific Northwest: January and February, aka Cold and Grey and Somehow Colder and Greyer.

Tonight, while I was going over my Thanksgiving shopping list, I wrote on a scrap of paper a few goals for my holiday season, and I’ve decided to share them with you:

♥ Dress up for Thanksgiving dinner…but bring a change of clothes for post-dinner video game playing
♥ Watch lots of movies with Milo, snuggled under blankets
♥ Reread the entire Harry Potter series
♥ Involve Milo in the baking and decorating of his birthday cake
♥ Attend the Mississippi and St. Johns Christmas tree lightings with my family
♥ When talking with Milo, keep the emphasis on tradition, family, kindness, and goodwill and downplay the acquisition of stuff as much as possible
♥ Send hand-written cards
♥ Watch the Christmas Ship Parade—we kept missing it last year
♥ Shop exclusively at local, independent businesses
♥ Bake, bake, bake
♥ Get a sitter for our anniversary and do something special with Matt
♥ Take lots of pictures
♥ Spend as little money as possible

I’ve compiled three, count ‘em, three playlists of Christmas music:

christmas: coffee ♥ a playlist of mellow tunes to listen to while you’re drinking your coffee and watching the lights blink on the tree
christmas: crafting and cooking ♥ a mix of old and new songs to play in the background while you glue sequins and roll dough
christmas: cocktail party ♥ classics, heavy on the crooners

What are your goals for the season?

The parenting books all talk about your preschooler asserting his independence, and how you should be so glad that he’s forming his own opinions and identity separate from yours, because you don’t want a child who is a conformist, who mindlessly follows every instruction given to him and complies with every request made of him. Yes, sure. That is all well and good when I’m reading a book, but when we’re on the third tantrum of the day and it’s not even 9 AM, I’m thinking: “Compliance would be nice occasionally. You know, just for a change.”

Matt checked out the book Your Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy¹ from the library, and when I read this paragraph, I actually exclaimed: “YES!” outloud:

Three is a conforming age. Three-and-a-half is just the opposite. Refusing to obey is perhaps the key aspect of this turbulent, troubled period in the life of a young child. It sometimes seems to his mother that his main concern is to strengthen his will, and he strengthens this will by going against whatever is demanded of him by that still most important person in his life, his mother.

The authors have identified that young children go in patterns of six months of equilbrium followed by six months of disequilibrium which tend to correspond roughly to their age. This has definitely been the case for Milo. When he was two years old, Matt and I often commented to each other: “Why do people say Terrible Twos? This is the easiest time we’ve ever had with him. So much easier than 18 months…” Then, about 4 months before his third birthday, he felt very out-of-control to us. It seemed to even out a month or so after his third birthday, and it was smooth sailing until… a couple of months ago. Equilibrium. Disequilibrium. Just when you’re starting to exhale and relax and accept the relative calm as the new normal, things go haywire again.

It was reassuring to read that his behavior is 100% in line with where he should be developmentally for his age group, and that he was just acting like a normal three-and-a-half-year-old. But truthfully, it was even more reassuring to know that this too shall pass, and soon. His fourth birthday is only three weeks away. We just have to be patient, allow him to be himself, use parenting techniques to handle the tantrums as they occur—this usually involves my repeating: “Composure. Composure.” to myself in my head when I can see him gearing up for a meltdown—breathe, and…did I mention be patient yet?

Meanwhile, I am trying to stay present and enjoy this time. Because even on the hardest of days, we still have so much fun, and the last thing that I want to do is sweep the good under the rug with the bad. I have been lucky enough to stay home with Milo for the first 4 years of his life, but that’s about to change, and I know that I will miss it desperately: making pancakes for him in the morning while dancing to music, helping him pick out his clothes for the day, snuggling with him in bed on the days where he wakes up before I do.

The other morning, he crawled into bed with us and the very first words he said to me were: “I love you so much, Mommy. You are the loveliest girl in this whole wide world.”

“I love you so much, too, buddy.”

¹ I should say that as far as parenting advice goes, this series leaves a lot to be desired. It was written in the 1980s and boy is it antiquated. But while parents have changed in the last 25 years, children have not, so if you read it purely as a case study of children age by age, it’s a good resource.

Mine is the passive-aggressive status update. We have all been guilty of this one from time to time. However, I belong to a community of people who are notorious for the passive-aggressive status update. Sometimes it gets so bad that I start to suspect that they are secretly trying to out-obnoxious one other.

That’s right, vegans: I’m talking to you.

My personal favorite vegan passive-aggressive status update¹ is: “I don’t understand how someone who eats animals can call himself an animal lover.” (If it’s Facebook, this is sometimes accompanied by a link to an article about factory farming or animal cruelty.) I see that one in my feed at least a dozen times a year. Another one which gets a lot of use during fundraising campaigns is: “How is it that people have no problem spending ___ on ____, but they won’t donate money to save the animals?” My feelings about this can best be summed up by Dawson:

The biggest problem with the passive-aggressive status update is that if you are a frequent offender, your “target audience” will unfollow you so as not to be offended or annoyed by you on a daily basis, which will just leave all of the people who agree with you, or who are too nice to unfollow you. You will be preaching to the choir. And as a member of the choir, allow me to be the first to say: I’m good! No need! Save your breath! ²

There seems to be a pervasive belief in the vegan community that guilt and shame are the best ways to motivate someone to listen to you, donate money to your cause, or go vegan. I don’t know why so many people cling to this belief, but I do know that it is false.

Someone might be motivated to take an initial action as a response to guilt or shame—this is the foundation of all New Year’s resolutions, after all—but unless there is real conviction behind those actions, he will go back to whatever is easiest for him. That doesn’t make him a bad person—just like how you’re not a bad person when you occasionally buy clothes from Target or Old Navy even though you know that they use sweatshop labor.

We are all just doing our best.

Let’s move on to the positive action! This is the easy part!

• When you are angry or irritated, resist the urge to vent those feelings over social media.
• Ask yourself: Would I be comfortable saying this to this person’s face? If the answer is truly yes, then maybe you should! If you care that much and you really want him to hear what you have to say, then I would say definitely you should, because speaking directly to someone is the only way to actually get his attention.
• If you wouldn’t be comfortable saying it to her face, then I would suggest an alternate form of venting: write about in a journal, post about it on a private forum of like-minded individuals, send an email to a friend, talk about it with your roommate or significant other.

Ta-da!

¹ One that makes me want to punch walls

² Actually, I will unfollow you, too. I don’t want to read that shit, either.

When you go to Ikea, do you swing by the food section? I confess that I used to stop only long enough to grab a bag of Swedish Fish for Milo, but last year, I started to poke around and read ingredients list, and I’m so glad that I did.

A surprisingly large percentage of Ikea food products are vegan! I don’t know if it’s intentional or not, but I’m grateful for it.

These are our current favorites:

The product is called “Pepparkakor,” although Milo calls them “flower cookies.” They’re a thin ginger wafer cookie, a knockoff of the brand Anna’s Swedish Thins (which Ikea also carries), and they’re awesome. According to Wikipedia, pepparkakor is the Scandinavian take on the traditional Christmas gingerbread. Scandinavia, you and I are so sympatico. As much as I love fat, tender pieces of gingerbread, I prefer to roll my gingerbread cut-out cookies super-thin so that they get really crispy.

I happened to notice on my way out that Ikea’s gingerbread houses are also vegan! Hooray! I can’t wait to pick some up in a month and decorate some killer gingerbread houses with Milo.

Yesterday, I tried my hand at fermentation. I made a batch of fennel and apple sauerkraut!

Before:

During:

As for the after: I’m going to let it ferment for a full 21 days before trying it, so check back in a few weeks!

• Submitted without commentary: Mark Bittman printed George Faison’s letter to fellow chefs encouraging them to spend the extra money to use antiobiotic- and hormone-free meat—although he noted that Faison himself doesn’t use these meats exclusively.
• Two words: Apple Nachos. from Manifest Vegan.
• Have you ever cooked pasta in a frying pan? There’s a video tutorial at Chow.
• Did you see Isa’s Peanut Butter Caramel Apples? I think that Milo and I will be giving them a try this Sunday.
• This pepperoni pizza quick bread at Chow looks like it would be a cinch to veganize.