Oh my my

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As much as I try and stay away from it, I love bread. When we lived in the Middle East, finding new and better bread vendors was a family sport.

The other day, I stumbled upon the blog of Nancy Shehata and her recipe for pita bread. It looked easy and delicious. She said she finds that the kind of pita bread you find in the store is too tough. I find that, too. It’s dry and bears no resemblance to the bread you find in the Middle East.

I thought I’d give the bread a try today only I turned it into Zatar as she instructs at the bottom of the blog. Oh my my. It was amazing! Delicious, soft. I could have eaten all of it all by myself.

I’m good at baking bread but this is not a difficult recipe and I believe anyone can make this amazing stuff!

Pita Bread

Ingredients

2+ cups of flour

1 tbs sugar

1 tsp salt

2 tbs yeast

2 tbs olive oil

1 cup very warm water

Add 1 cup of flour, sugar, salt, yeast and olive oil into the bowl of your mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Slowly add 1 cup of very warm water. Mix on medium for three minutes.

Add another cup (and possibly more to make a sticky but not stiff dough) of flour mix using dough hook for 10 minutes.

Take the dough out and knead for another minute or two by hand to make a smooth ball. Cut the ball into 8 pieces and form into balls. Cover with a towel and let rise for 10-20 minutes while the oven is heating to 550 degrees. If your oven doesn’t go up to 550, I’m sure that 500 is fine. Just be sure to check that it doesn’t burn! 🙂

Take each ball and roll into a 6 inch round, place two to three on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 3 minutes.

Make sure they don’t burn! Take them out of the oven and remove from sheet with a spatula. Be careful. If it poofed (to make the pocket) like you want, that steam inside will be HOT!

If you want to make zatar, prick all over with a fork to keep the pocket from forming, brush with olive oil and sprinkle with zatar spice mix before baking for 3 minutes.

Delicious! I’ll bet you’ll want to eat them all too. 🙂

Coastering

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One of the very first things I pinned on Pinterest was this:

I’m not a crafty person but I looked at that and thought, “I can do that!”. And, the beauty of it was, if it didn’t turn out it wasn’t going to be like I wasted a ton of money on it. It was a pretty economical project.

I decided I would make the coasters for the kids for Christmas using Brandon and Vanessa’s wedding logo and the design theme of Nikki and Geoff’s house. I gathered all of the things I needed to make the coasters and then I froze.

I was so afraid of making a mistake. But finally I got my courage up by telling myself that it’s no big deal if I DO make a mistake because they aren’t expecting the coasters and if I mess up, it will be okay.

So I cut the artwork out and started the modge podging. Is that a verb? 🙂

And it looked good!

I got all of the coasters created and put the felt circles on the back.

And then I was stuck. How to package them?

I went back to Hobby Lobby and wandered around looking for something I could put the coasters in. I eventually found these:

I thought all the way home about what I would do to them. I was clueless.

I painted the boxes black.

But that didn’t seem like enough.

I googled decoupage cardboard box and the instructions said that you could use anything to cover a box. Tissue paper, newspaper…ah ha! Newspaper!

Brandon and Vanessa met when they were working at the Tulsa World. So I covered their box with the Tulsa World and modge podge. I love the way it turned out!

For Nikki and Geoff’s box I was a little more stumped and I ended up just painting it with leopard spots.

I then wrapped the coasters in gold (Brandon and Vanessa) and cream (Geoff and Nikki) ribbon and put them in the boxes.

I added black drawer pulls that I attached with shorter screws and voila! I was finished.

I hope the kids like them. I had fun making them and was so happy that my first foray into modge podge without adult supervision turned out so well. 🙂

Born on date

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I feel like beer.

hee hee 😉

I woke up this a.m. to a tweet telling me it’s my third twitter birthday.

I clicked the link and it brought me to a page with a birthday certificate.

Cool. I don’t remember getting this last year so I’m guessing that by @starbucks being my Godfather, it’s probably the first person that I followed or who followed me back. For a coffee achiever like myself, that seems appropriate. But if I were choosing my Godfather, it would be my friend @ScottMTownsend.

@ScottMTownsend walking to work

I had heard of twitter before December 24, 2008 but I didn’t really get it. That day, I was here alone. I’m not sure which Muslim country David was in that year but I had time on my hands and Scott was nice enough to help me to figure out how twitter worked.

A couple of email exchanges and a monster was born. LOL!

To say I love twitter is probably an understatement. When I think of all of the amazing people I have met and all of the cool opportunities that have come to me in the past three years, it just blows my mind that twitter could be the cause of it all.

I love my twitter friends. I mean, I really love them. Many of the people I met via twitter are now my dearest friends IRL (in real life).

Two of my earliest twitter friends were @patrickallmond and @jonfisher. They remain my twitter friends but they are also amazing real life friends.

Through them I met their incredible wives @allographics

Angela and I riding the train at Cecil's first birthday party

and @a_fisher. And I am honorary grandma to the precious @cecilfisher who truly feels like family to me even though he doesn’t really know me. 🙂

Afton and Cecil

I have friends all over the world. I love that. And my goal is to meet all of them when I come to their state or country.

People come and go on twitter and I miss the ones that go. But there are always new friends to make and new relationships to form.

So, happy twitter birthday to me. Thank you to all of my friends (followers) for making my twitter experience so awesome!

Now, let’s eat cake. 🙂

Just be yourself

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Last night while I waited for David to get close to Tulsa so I could go pick him up, I was perusing my twitter stream. This is what I saw:

First I saw my friend Erin Patrick say that it takes courage to become who you really are. I barely even had time to let that roll around in my brain when I looked further down and saw my friend Bernice’s tweet about letting go of perfection.

And it hit me.

That was when I finally had the courage to be who I was always meant to be. When I finally let go of perfection.

No one is perfect but I spent so many, almost tortured, years of my life trying to be just that. It was only when I finally realized I wasn’t, and would never be, perfect that I was able to be me.

And guess what? I like me! 🙂

If you struggle with trying to be perfect all the time, you might want to read Bernice’s blog post. It’s good.

One of my favorite songs is The Middle by Jimmy Eat World. Some of the best words are:

Live right now, yeah, just be yourself
It doesn’t matter if it’s good enough for someone else

True, true, true!

Take it from me, letting go of the stress of feeling like you need to be perfect is such a relief. And it gives you the courage to be who you’re really meant to be.

Now go forth and be you! 🙂

Chicken Tikka Masala

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We adore Indian food. The couple of times I’ve tried to make it haven’t been very successful. It’s usually good but way, way, way too hot.

That’s why, when I stumbled upon this recipe, I wanted to try it. It didn’t look terribly difficult and I thought it sounded wonderful.

After querying my twitter friends on the use of fresh ginger, I forgot the ginger at the store but I did add my favorite cilantro which wasn’t called for in the original recipe.

I am a bad, bad blogger because I cannot find this recipe on the web again to attribute it. I will keep looking, though, since it makes me feel like a thief not to say where I found the recipe.

Chicken Tikka Masala

• 4 breast organic chicken in cubes

• 2 large red onion thinly sliced

• 2 tablespoons crushed garlic

• 2 tablespoons crushed ginger

• 1 can 28 oz. crushed tomatoes

• 1 cup of yogurt

• 1 cup heavy cream (optional)

• 2 tablespoons cumin

• 2 tablespoons garam masala

• 2 tablespoons turmeric

• 1 tablespoons chili powder

• 4 tablespoons cilantro

• Salt

Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Add in the onions and start caramelizing them until brown. Add the crushed ginger stir for 5 minutes,saute the garlic for 1 minute. Add cumin, garam masala, turmeric, chili powder, and mix well, until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Stir in tomatoes and yogurt. Add chicken and simmer, covered, on low heat until sauce thickens, about 25 minutes.  Season it with salt and transfer to a serving platter, garnished with cilantro. Serve with Bamati Rice or Naan.

How I love basmati rice and naan! But I served this with riced cauliflower which is healthier for us and also quite good.

This is a winning recipe, easy to prepare, and I’ll make it again. It was DELICIOUS! 🙂

I hate everything about you

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If you’ve read this blog much at all, you know how much music is a part of my life. There is always music on in the car and I always sing along.

When the kids were small, they’d join in.

Today, I was driving to Tulsa and the song (I Hate) Everything About You by Ugly Kid Joe came on the radio. I love that song. It’s fun. :-)

Now you wouldn’t think a song about hating someone could be fun but the tune is bouncy, the lyrics are catchy, there is maniacal laughter and different sorts of vocal changes in it.

When I hear the song now, I literally laugh out loud.

The reason? The song was popular in 1992. Brandon was 10 and Geoff was 9. We sang it loud, word for word, in the car, on the way to…

church.

OMG!

What kind of a mother was I?

It’s this that makes me laugh. But we had fun. And we didn’t mean it. We just liked the fun.:-)

Pet friendly?

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Let me start out by saying that Boo Boo is the smartest, most well behaved dog we have ever had. He’s not a barker, he’s not a chewer, he’s had one accident in the house (when we first got him). He’s good. He’s good company and he’s a good traveler.

Shortly after we got Boo, we moved to Oklahoma. In his earliest days, he was staying at hotels like a champ. We stayed in La Quintas from Florida to Oklahoma, staying at the one in Tulsa for a week while we got our new house ready to live in.

On a trip to Washington to see my mom in 2008, I decided to book the Motel 6 on the way there since we would just be stopping to sleep. Well…the Motel 6 is a noisy place. We got no sleep because Boo was on alert. At the end of three long days of driving with virtually no sleep at night, we arrived like zombies in Forks, WA. Appropriate, I’m sure. 😉

On the way back from that trip, I booked us, once again, into the La Quintas. On that trip, we stopped one night at the hotel in Caldwell, ID. I was so touched to receive a dog biscuit for Boo along with a little poem saying how welcome he was.

Boo has stayed in the La Quinta in Nashville, TN and, most recently, Lincoln, NE. All good experiences.

When we got back to Little Rock last week, we chose to stay in the Studio Plus because we were going to be there for several days and, because traveling with a dog makes restaurant eating a little difficult, we were happy to have the availability of a kitchen.

The hotel was disgusting. I tried not to complain. As long as Boo and I were inside and didn’t touch too much in the kitchen, it was okay. But I was never so happy to leave a hotel!

When David checked out, the lady at the desk gave him grief about having a dog in the room. What? The hotel website said it was pet friendly.

It made me mad. To my way of thinking, that non-smoking hotel should be more concerned about the woman on the first floor who had taken her screen out of the window and was sitting in it smoking. Or emptying the many overflowing garbage cans (click the word disgusting above for photos) throughout the property.  Or maybe even about the other dogs that were barking endlessly. But Boo Boo? Boo was the least of her concerns.

In the future, we’ll be staying at the La Quinta hotels when we travel with Boo. We know he’s accepted and we like staying at this hotel brand. La Quinta truly is pet friendly. 🙂

Political endorsement

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I love this time of the year. No, not Christmas (although I do love Christmas) but the political season. I’m a junkie. I love to watch it all, listen to it all, see it all. I want to see who the people are that want to run our great country. Try and understand what they are all about.

From the beginning, I was fully on board the Cain Train.  I loved the way he talked about getting our country back on track. I’ve long thought that running the country like a business would be a good idea (i.e. let’s have a budget, dudes).

So the message that Herman Cain was sending was, in his word, resonating with me. Plus, I thought he seemed like a genuinely nice man with a really good heart. I liked that. To say I was disappointed in the way things have turned out is an understatement.

You know, what Lauri wants Lauri gets and in this case, that isn’t going to happen.

So, after much thought and research I have decided who I am endorsing for the 2012 Presidential nomination:

Yes, Boo Boo the Wonderdog is a large breed with a giant personality. He’s honest and smart and dedicated. I think he’ll be an amazing president. 🙂

Heaven is a bed

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So if you’ve known me for, oh say, an hour or so you will know how I feel about the beds they have at the Doubletree hotels.

We started staying regularly at the Doubletree when I started directing the Mrs. Oklahoma International pageant. The Mrs. International Pageant is held every July at the Northshore Performing Arts Center in Skokie and the host hotel is the Skokie Doubletree.

A couple of years ago, we got a new bed. We decided on memory foam because David and I had done a mystery shop on the Sleep Number bed and had the same sleep number. So that didn’t seem like the bed we should get. I was so looking forward to the memory foam.

That lasted for one night sleeping on it. It hurt me. Seriously, it’s like sleeping on a brick in my opinion. I feel bruised (on my collarbone!) some mornings when I wake up. David likes it and can’t see what I’m complaining about.

Shortly after we got the memory foam bed, it was pageant time. I got to Chicago, slept one night on the Sweet Dreams® bed at the Doubletree. I called David the next day and told him it was SO heavenly. He wrote it off to the fact that we had just driven 12 hours to get to Chicago and I was extra tired. I told him he was wrong.

I was waxing rhapsodic about the bed the next day and the bellman, John, said, “You know you can buy one for your house?” Oh! I can????? He gave me the web address and I looked at it and began my campaign for the Doubletree mattress of my own.

David’s argument was that we had just spent quite a bit of money on the memory foam mattress that was a mere 30 days old.

I added a second pillow top to the existing pillow top.

Another year went by, I went to Chicago, and asked David for the Doubletree bed with renewed ferver.

David reminded me that the memory foam was only a year old.

I added a feather bed.

There was now so much stuff on top of the mattress to try and make it soft that I could barely get the sheets down over the corners. I felt like the Princess and the Pea.

David was out of the country for six months. He recently came back and had meetings in Little Rock. Although they had arranged a hotel for him, we decided that if we could get Boo Boo into Doc Davis’ Doggy Sleep Away Camp a day early, we’d go over and stay a night at the Doubletree.

We got Boo in and I made my reservation, using my Hilton Honors points. I requested an Executive Queen room and prepared for our trip. I was ridiculously excited to go and be just David and me in Little Rock, a place I’d never been before. The highlight, of course, sleeping on the fabu Doubletree bed.

I tweeted about it as I tweet about everything. I couldn’t contain my excitement about the visit to the Doubletree in Little Rock. In a little bit, I started receiving tweets from @doubletreelr. I didn’t even know they had a twitter account.

She asked if I wanted a city or river view. I didn’t even care. As long as there was a bed in the room, I was going to be happy. Then she asked and offered eating and sightseeing recommendations. Wowza! Seriously, I was beyond impressed. On any visit to the Doubletree, I’m just so happy to sleep on the bed that the free cookie seems like the max in great customer service.

We got to Little Rock after dark.

When we opened the door to our room, I saw a staircase. What?!?!

I had seen this room online when I was choosing which room we wanted to book and I knew it was a double story suite. Holy moly!

It was amazing. There was a gift basket on the table. David said, well this room comes with a gift basket. He went to look at it and was surprised that the gift basket had my name on it.

As we explored the gorgeous suite, David said, “Wow, I think I need to travel with you more often.” That made me smile. 🙂

The suite overlooked the river which was awesome. As you know, the one thing I miss about living in Florida or Chicago is the water.

But the highlight of the room was most certainly the awesome Doubletree bed!

We wandered down the street for dinner because the hotel restaurant had a 45 minute wait.  I loved the downtown at night. Everything was dressed up for Christmas.

The next morning, we had breakfast in the hotel. I had some fabu pancakes because you know, no road trip is complete without pancakes!

We then wandered around the downtown again, visiting the Old State House Museum before leaving for the next hotel, also a Hilton Hotel but not the Doubletree.

Many, many thanks to Mary Speed, Guest Services Manager for this amazing surprise and fabulous experience. I talked to the staff at the hotel and they love Mary. So, as well as having amazing beds, it’s clear that the Doubletree Little Rock is a great place to work.

I can’t wait for the next time we can go to Little Rock and stay in the Doubletree. If they were pet friendly, we’d be there every time!

P.S. As soon as I know we are going to be here long enough to receive it, I’m getting my own Doubletree bed for our house! I finally convinced David! 🙂