Motherhood

My Foodie Kid’s Day with John Currence

March 25, 2014 by Robin

If you receive my blog posts via email, you’ll have to go to www.robinschicks.com in order to view the video links properly. (AHEM– Dad.)

If you’re wondering how Emma, my 7 year old, ended up spending the day with a James Beard Award Winning chef– here’s the backstory. Honestly, I thought it was really nice of him to respond to the column I wrote and to send a tweet to Emma. I thought it was going WAY beyond nice when he invited her to come back to City Grocery to cook with him.

But there are no words for the level of awesome I got to watch Emma experience yesterday. I tried to capture as many photos and videos as I could, because I wanted y’all to see it and experience it first hand. My words could never describe the sheer joy on Emma’s face yesterday.

I wanted to edit all of me out of these videos but it sort of took away from one of the many things that makes John an awesome person. When I was getting all, “CHOP, CHOP, Emma! He’s a busy man– ask your next question,” and trying to hurry her along, John never once lost interest in a single word that came out of Emma’s mouth. And there were SO. many. words.

The night before…

She picked out the perfect outfit.

And went over her list of interview questions.

She was rip-roarin’ and ready to go.

You KNOW Alex Guarnaschelli?!?

We met at John’s main office where they handle catering for special events and also process almost all of the meat for all five of his restaurants. We walked into the walk-in fridge and John pointed to more bacon than I’ve ever seen at one time in my life. He asked Emma if she knew what it was.

Em: Beef?

John: No, it’s pork, can you guess…

Em: BACON!

John: Yep, that’s right. Do you know what part of the pig bacon comes from?

Em: The belly.

No idea how she knows this stuff.

The main office is also where the pastry chef makes desserts for all five restaurants. Emma was basically the happiest she’s ever been– she was surrounded by chocolate and bacon and people kept handing her foods to try: pickled okra, homemade Polish sausage, handmade caramels– you’d be happy too.

We loaded up in my Patty Peck Honda Odyssey. My mom was going to sit in the back to let John sit in the front but Emma said, “Can he please sit back here with me?”

John didn’t even pause. He hopped in the backseat and I tried not to laugh out loud when I closed the automatic door for him. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him reach for his seatbelt. Emma who is used to buckling her little sister in, reached over and grabbed the buckle and snapped it in place for him.

“Thanks,” he said matter of factly. And a few stray tears squeaked out of my eyes– it was too precious and too hilarious.

Some highlights of the day…

We went to all FIVE of John’s restaurants: City Grocery, Big Bad Breakfast (one is opening on 280 in Bham very soon!) Snackbar, Boure, and Lamar Lounge and every single person who was working stopped what they were doing and gave Emma their complete attention. Not in a patronizing, “let’s get this over with” kind of way. They were precious and willing to talk and listen as long as she was there. We’d walk in a kitchen, John would say, “This is Emma,” and everybody in the room would speak to her.

We ended the day at City Grocery with a cooking lesson and lunch.

Then John got a phone call…

While Emma was on the phone with Alex Guarnaschelli, John saw an opportunity and stole a bite of Emma’s chocolate chess pie.

If you weren’t you, I’d fight you for that bite of pie.

Oxford’s City Grocery with my Foodie Kid

February 10, 2014 by Robin

After battling The Stomach Virus of 2013 and emerging victorious, I have spent the last two weeks battling my seven-year-old’s asthma. We have driven all over the state of Mississippi, chasing her allergist from office to office like Thelma and Louise, minus the convertible.

Emma is an excellent patient and even in the middle of a coughing fit, red faced and hacking away, she’ll give you a thumbs up to let you know she’s hanging in there.

Last week we headed to Oxford, MS for a doctor’s appointment, afterwards I asked Emma, “Baby, what do you want for lunch? There’s a Chick-Fil-a here…”

“Can we go to a restaurant? Like someplace fancy?” She asked.

I like to eat good food, so this wasn’t really a hard sell but Baby Girl had been so sick and so sweet for so long, it was a done deal. We headed to the reknowned City Grocery on Oxford Square.

Emma fancies herself a foodie. Since she was old enough to stand on a stool beside me in the kitchen, she has been enthralled with the art of cooking. As I reach for spices to add to a recipe, I open them and let her smell them and tell her their names. We’ve done this for years, so I trust the child when she tells me my chili needs more cumin.

She is obsessed with cooking shows like Top Chef, Chopped and the Youtube hit “Nerdy Nummies.” For Christmas everything she asked for was related to cooking, she has her own basket of kitchen utensils in the kitchen and her very own cooking show on Youtube, “The Very Serious Cooking Show.” If you haven’t seen it, you are missing out.

Recently we were walking through Tuesday Morning, Emma had $20 of her own money to spend and instead of finding her on the toy aisle, I found her holding a full set of stainless steel flatware. She’s committed.

We were seated at City Grocery and Emma was pleased to have a “real” menu placed in front of her. You’ve never seen eyes roll until you’ve seen someone hand this kid a children’s menu. Emma and my mother looked over the menu trying to decide what they wanted. (I didn’t have to look: Shrimp & Grits, y’all.)

Shuggie, my mom, asked, “What do you think Emma?”

“I want the Grilled Shoulder Tender,” she answered.

I glanced at the menu:

Grilled Shoulder Tender

Grilled teres major medallions, potato puree, fried brussel sprouts, charmoula

Mom and I laughed.

“Do you even know what that is?” I asked.

“Nope, but I’m gonna try it.” She grinned.

Our waitress, Jennifer, came back for our orders and raised her eyebrows a little at Emma’s.

“I’m serious. The kid will eat anything,” I explained.

“Excuse me, where is the restroom?” Emma asked.

“Go straight back towards the kitchen then take a left,” Jennifer said. “Just don’t go in the kitchen!” She joked.

Emma’s eyes got huge and she could barely walk for staring back into that glorious vortex of steam, stainless steel and sweat.

I laughed, “You’d better watch her! That’d be a dream come true for her, the kid is crazy about food and cooking.”

Mom and I talked to Jennifer and told her about Emma’s love and appreciation for cooking, good food and about The Very Serious Cooking Show.

“I love it! So many kids just want chicken fingers and fries!” She said.

Emma wandered back to the table, still looking over her shoulder towards the kitchen and finally sat down. She sipped her water and tapped her fingers on the table, “What’s taking so long?”

She answered herself before I could say a word, “They’re probably working on the presentation,” she mused.

A few moments later Jennifer brought our entrees to the table and Emma’s eyes were bigger than her plate. She ate with glee and abandon, only stopping to mutter between bites, “Mmm, so much flavor. So juicy. Mmmm, this is amazing. Amazing. Mmmm, the flavors!”

We shared bites from each other’s plates and Emma almost cleaned hers.

“Can we get desert? My Shoulder Tender tank is full but my desert tank is still empty.”

I snickered as she told Jennifer, “We’re going to share the Chocolate Chess Pie.”

By “share,” she meant two bites for me, one bite for her grandmother and the rest of the bites for her.

As she was licking the chocolate syrup off the plate, Jennifer came back to the table, “I have a little surprise for you. I checked with the kitchen and they would love for you to come back and see them.”

Y’all.

You could’ve knocked that kid over with a feather.

“Really?! Really!” She squealed, shoveling the last bite of pie into her mouth. She wiped her face and leapt to her feet and I followed the two of them to the kitchen.

Jennifer walked her down the line, explaining everyone’s jobs and pointing out the grill top where Eric had just cooked her Grilled Shoulder Tender, Emma leaned across the counter, gave him a thumbs up and said, “It wasAMAZING.”

“Who’s the Top Chef?” Emma asked.

“Well, Brian is in charge of lunch,” Jennifer explained.

Emma grinned from ear to ear as we left the kitchen. She thanked Jennifer and we headed back out into the cold with our bellies, and our hearts filled to the brim.

How I Fell in Love with a Dog

December 23, 2013 by Robin

I am not an animal person. I don’t think this a secret to anyone who knows me, or anyone who has been reading my column for any length of time. There was the Goldfish Massacre of 2010, where in only 48 hours, the lives of countless fish were lost by my unskilled hand. (And a two-year-old who felt strongly that they should eat six to seven times a day.)

I was terrified of dogs as a child and never really had a pet. I was against animals in general but most specifically about animals that lived in houses with people because— gross.

But as soon as my oldest daughter, Aubrey, started talking, she began praying for her very own dog.

“Dear God, thank you for my Mommy, Daddy and sister and dis house and for my dog. Amen.” She’d solemnly pray.

“Aubrey you don’t have a dog.” I gently reminded her, never saying outloud, “AND YOU NEVER WILL.”

“I know, Momma! That’s why I pray for it!”

For years she has quietly asked for a dog. A dog would make all of her dreams come true. She could only be fulfilled in life if she had a dog. I was firmly against the dog idea, as you may have gathered. But she found support in her little sister and in her daddy.

Zeb and Emma joined her in a full court press to get a dog and I finally relented. A friend shared a picture of a litter of lab mix puppies on Facebook and said they needed a home, and I caved. Sadie, my youngest was only three at the time and was as terrified of dogs as I was as a child. I knew we were going to have to get a small dog or a puppy so that it would be smaller than her so she could get used to him.

We threw around a slew of names— James Earl Jones being my top pick. I just really wanted to yell out my screen door, “JAMES EARL JONES, YOU GET BACK HERE.” But I was once again outnumbered, Moses was chosen by Zeb and the girls.

He was a playful puppy, he nipped at Aubrey and Emma and chased them around the yard but somehow he seemed to understand that Sadie was afraid of him. (Prolly all that shrieking and the way she scaled all the way up my legs anytime he came within ten feet of her.) So Moses began gently courting Sadie, and I slowly started to like him.

Only a few weeks after we got Moses, he was in the house playing with Aubrey in the kitchen. Sadie had taken a nap on a pallete in the middle of our sunroom and when I heard her waking up I went to lie down with her. I kissed her squishy cheeks and we snuggled up together. That’s when I noticed Moses standing at the office door. Sheepishly, he poked his nose around the door. I called him to me and he took a few tentative steps into the room but paused a few feet away. Then he laid down on his belly and crawled the rest of the way to our pile of blankets. He was quiet and still and peering at Sadie, wrapped in my arms, she wasn’t shrieking with fear so slowly, Moses dropped his head onto her arm. And just like that, my heart melted.

Last week, Zeb was away on business and one evening the girls and I came home to see Moses shivering in the driveway. I let him come into the kitchen for a few minutes before we were out the door again. We ran a few errands and decided to get him a bed to keep him off the ground at night but when we came home, the girls dropped the bed in the kitchen, Moses walked straight to it and collapsed with a gleeful grin on his face.

The girls begged me to let him sleep there for the night and against my better judgement I agreed. He’s a chewer and there are a lot of things in my kitchen I didn’t want destroyed.

Moses stayed put that night, and the next. And the next. And the next. And the night after that, the girls found an old towel and tucked him into bed, several hours later I walked in the kitchen to find him passed out, still under the blanket with only his little doggy head hanging out.

As I type this, Moses is laying on his memory foam bed in a patch of sunshine falling through the kitchen window. And beyond the fact that:

1) I HAVE a dog.

2) I actually love said dog, and

3) Said dog has been sleeping in my house for weeks— I just wrote an entire column about my love for this dog.

I am, apparently, a changed woman.

My Elf on the Shelf Has Seasonal Affective Disorder

December 16, 2013 by Robin

I’m not sure if you’ve heard about this new thing that Santa has been up to for the last few years. Apparently, he needed a little help keeping tabs on who was naughty and nice and started sending elves to kids’ houses to monitor their behavior 24/7. You may think the elves look like small stuffed dolls but you would be wrong, my friend.

No as legend tells it, these elves have magical powers. Every night while the children sleep, the little elves fly back to the North Pole to tattle to the Big Man about the kids to which they are assigned. But you know elves— so full of life, so full of mischief.

Those little elves are so busy that my Facebook feed is full of other people’s elves: taking a marshmallow bubble bath in the sink with Barbie, hanging the family’s underpants by the chimney instead of stockings, hanging upside day from the family Christmas tree.

Apparently, those little elves are SO busy that their behaviour is quite the hot topic around the lunch table at my girls’ school. Sadie, Aubrey & Emma come home everyday recounting the new adventures of their friends’ elves.

Which may explain why my kids are a bit disgruntled with Santa this year.

While he did send an elf to keep an eye on them, poor Chippy seems to be struggling with Seasonal Affective Disorder. He’s listless throughout the day and while their friends’ elves get into all sorts of hijinks at night, Chippy tends to spend entirely too much time on Netflix bingeing on his favorite shows. He lays around the house, sipping on a glass of Merlot, eating gluten free chocolate chip cookies and wearing yesterday’s yoga pants.

Occasionally, Chippy makes a half-hearted attempt to climb the Christmas tree, but it’s just so much work.

Chippy recognizes the total insanity of making a mess in someone else’s house and is smart enough to know, if I was left to clean up after a night of elfish escapades, he could expect to be our dog’s new chew toy before I poured my first cup of coffee. I’m pretty sure what Chippy needs is a little vitamin D– A long vacation somewhere where the sands are white, the water is cool, the sun still knows how to shine and the drinks are served in coconuts— and if he wanted to take me with him, well, that’d be okay, too.

I’m A Grown Up Lady

November 18, 2013 by Robin

I’m not sure why I’ve been thinking a lot about getting older recently. Maybe it’s because my birthday is coming up and I can’t remember if I’m going to be 35 or 36? Maybe it’s because I’m seeing how much my girls are growing up and it makes me realize that we’re all getting older (and in my opinion, better). Maybe it’s because I’m watching from afar as my mom helps an elderly friend move into assisted living. I can’t really put my finger on what’s got me thinking about aging so much, but it’s been on my mind.

I’ll say this– I’m not sure if I’m 34 or 35 (pretty sure I’m 35. I could do the math but I’ve got other stuff to do.) But I AM sure of this: I love life right where I am.

I wouldn’t go back to 30 for a million dollars.

I wouldn’t go back to my 20s for ten million dollars.

And for a magic genie and unlimited wishes there is no way in HELL I’d go back to my teens. Ain’t no way.

I’m content.

I make faces at myself in the mirror to scrunch up the wrinkles on my face and see where that first round of Botox is going to to go in a few years (right between my eyes) but so far– getting older is pretty kick ass. My kids all sleep through the night, unless they are sick or have a nightmare. Everyone can put their poopoo and peepee in the potty (Glory to God in the Highest) and, best of all? They can all use words!! No more screaming and crying for inexplicable reasons. My four-year-old can simply say, “Momma, my ear hurts,” and BOOM, just like that, I know we need to go to the doctor. I don’t have to wait it out, call my friends, call my mom, call my pediatrician… wait, did she pull her ear??? Nope. We just use our words.

I was in this sort of “HOORAY for getting older” phase when my friend Mandy Rose from one of my fave blogs, House of Rose, posted on her Instagram that she was going to start wearing real lipstick.

She’s adorable without a speck of makeup but her post made me realize that I never wear real lipstick. Even when I get dressed up all fancy to go somewhere with full make-up, I usually just wear lipgloss AND– this is the worst part– it’s the same color I wore in 8th grade. That’s not to say that Clinique’s Black Honey isn’t a timeless classic, because obviously– it is. But I realized that if I was really a Grown Ass Lady– I’d wear real lipstick. Dark and dramatic lipstick.

I remember a conversation I had with my Momma once. She was trying on lipstick in Sephora, something she only does when I make her, and she put on a dark wine color. I gasped. It was stunning with her gray-blue eyes and silver hair.

“It’s too dark!” She argued, wiping it off.

“Are you kidding?” I scoffed. “Wearing lipstick like that is one of the reasons I’m looking forward to getting old! It would look cheap, trashy and sort of goth on me, but you just look classy! I can’t wait to get old so I can wear bright red lipstick and huge diamond earrings. Hell, they’ll probably be CZs but when you get older, everybody assumes they’re real.”

All of this was still rattling around in my brain when my friend Cecily posted on Babble with her top makeup tips for women over 40. I clicked through her slide show and read all of her tips and I thought she was beautiful. Her lipstick was bright and spoke to me.

It said, “I’m not afraid of bright colors because I am a sassy and fabulous Grown Up Lady.”

Later that afternoon I was at the grocery store and I thought to myself, “Dadgumit. I’m gonna buy some real Grown Ass Lady Lipstick.”

I wheeled over to the makeup aisle and trusting Cecily’s recommendation of Revlon’s Colorstay Overtime, I bought the reddest red on the shelf (Forever Scarlet.) I checked out and once I was in my car, I whipped out the new lipstick and put it on. I checked my reflection in the mirror and I’m not going to lie, my heart skipped a beat– I looked just like The Joker. I fiddled around with my phone for a minute, responding to a few texts then checked the mirror again. It wasn’t that bad, I guess after 20+ years of the same lipgloss, it just seemed, so dramatic.

But the more I sat there and stared at myself, the more I realized that was exactly the reason I had bought it. Because I LOVE being 35. (Or 34.) I care less each day what other people think about me and this lipstick was bold and kind of awesome. I also realized that it was 2:30 pm and I was still wearing the workout clothes I wore to hot yoga at 8am. It was highly probable that with a shower and a full face of makeup, my Grown Up Lady lipstick wouldn’t be quite so out of place.

Regardless, I decided, I wasn’t just going to wear red lipstick– I was going to rock the hell out of it, you know, the next time I was going to go somewhere which required underwire and makeup. I reached for a tissue and wiped it across my lips and was a little surprised when there was NOTHING on the tissue. That’s when I noticed that the packaging promised it would last 16 hours.

SIXTEEN. HOURS.

I was committed but I was planning on pulling out the big guns for special occasions only– not for running carpool. Which, as it happened, was exactly what I was supposed to be doing, I cranked my Patty Peck Honda Odyssey (wink) and headed to school to pick up Sadie. As soon as she got in the van she yelled, “WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR WIPS MOMMA? DAT’S SO PETTY! Kiss me!”

None of it rubbed off on her, so I feel like Revlon was pretty damn serious about it lasting 16 hours. I posted on Facebook:

Shortly after, people began offering me tips on how to remove the lipstick. I was running errands with my kids and I felt pretty freaking suspicious in my sweatshirt, yoga pants, dirty ponytail and bright red lipstick. I considered swinging by my house and trying some of the suggestions but then I thought, “Screw it. I’m a Grown Ass Lady and I’ll wear red lipstick with dirty sweats and greasy hair if I damn well want to.”

And I do.

Thank God the Internet isn’t Scratch N’ Sniff, yet.

Getting older is awesome. I can’t wait to be 36 (or 35 again.)

The Very Serious Cooking Show Ep 3

November 5, 2013 by Robin

One day I will blog again. I will write all the words and all the feelings and tell ALL the stories here. But for now I am finishing up the copyedits on the new version of “Ketchup”, taking care of two sick kids (WHICH two rotates on a weekly basis), trying not to get sick myself and editing cooking shows.

What with all the free time I have these days, I spent most of the day today editing down 18 minutes of video to 4. Editing video is sort of time consuming– somebody in this house needs learn how to use iMovie (besides me) or this show is gettin’ cancelled.

Nuggets to listen for:

Sadie saying that her Daddy will kill you if you come to his house because he “HATES” people being here. (I have no idea.)

Sadie telling Emma to quit being silly that this is serious. Then, JUST KIDDING, it’s silly. I mean, serious. I mean– WAIT, what are we doing?

Emma begging Sadie to make it stop because they have been recording for 17 minutes.

Sadie telling Emma, “We’re best friends.” Emma saying, “Well, we’re sisters.”

Enjoy. And leave them comments. They lurve it.

Near Divorce by Skeeter Slap

October 20, 2013 by Robin

I love my husband. I feel like I should get that out there before I tell you how I almost killed him in cold blood this weekend— I love him. I’d marry him all over again. I like to hold his hand and sit really close to him in church. Sometimes I miss him when he goes to work and occasionally, after almost 16 years of marriage, I still get butterflies in my stomach when I’m going to see him after one of us has been traveling for a few days.

So now that I’ve got my deep and endearing love for Zebulicious out there, let me tell you a story.

The door that enters our house from the carport is apparently the place to be if you are a mosquito. Every day there are mosquitos swarming in the doorway. If the screen door is opened for even a split second, it is unavoidable that our house will soon be teeming with skeeters. Zeb and I are both constantly screaming at our kids and anyone else who dares to open the door, “SHUT THE DOOR! THE SKEETERS!”

Here’s something you don’t know— Zeb is an insect assasin. There really isn’t another way to put it. He doesn’t simply end a mosquito’s life— he murders it and gets joy out of watching them fall to the earth. It’s not uncommon for him to scale furniture to slap at a mosquito lurking in the corner of the girls’ bedroom, or hop on top of the kitchen counter to slap one down with a dish towel. I actually appreciate his enthusiam for exterminating the little blood suckers, I hate waking up to bites on my shoulders and feel terrible when I notice a fresh crop of bites on the girls during breakfast.

But every once in awhile, Zeb’s enthusiasm for wiping out every mosquito on our property can be… well… frightening. Let me set the scene:

A quiet house. Three blonde babies tucked soundly into their beds, pink rounded cheeks at rest. A young(-ish and hell, hot-ish) mother gets out of the shower and puts on her pajamas, she walks through the house flipping off light switches and makes her way to her bedroom where she finds that her husband is already sleeping. The young mother climbs into bed, turns on her bedside lamp and grabs the book on her night table, she hears the faint buzz of a mosquito across the room but ignores it. She settles into bed and loses herself in the story. Minutes pass, engrossed in the drama she turns the page when suddenly her husband leaps to his feet on the bed and slaps his hands together so loudly her heart briefly stops beating.

“HA! How you like that?!” Her husband cackles maniacially at the dead mosquito in his hands.

Honest to God, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I really couldn’t be mad because, I mean— DANG, those are some ninja-like reflexes! He was lying completely still on the bed and on his FEET in a nanonsecond. But you get the idea— you never know when and where Zeb’s Exterminator Ninja is going to show himself and you need to be prepared for your heart to skip a few beats.

This past week, Zeb took a day off of work for a little staycation. He was working on building a bicycle shed in the backyard. A few times throughout the day, I’d gone out to check on his progress.

I was standing in the backyard being eaten alive by swarms of mosquitos and said as much, “I’m going inside. My legs are getting eaten up.”

What happened next will be a source of disagreement for us for years to come.

What I remember happening was that he yelled, “MOSQUITO!” as I was walking away and naturally, AS YOU DO, when someone screams something at your back, I turned just in time to get smacked in the forehead by his hand slapping at a skeeter.

What Zeb says happened is that he saw a mosquito biting my shoulder and by him yelling, “MOSQUITO!” he was warning me that he was going in for the kill shot and I wasn’t supposed to turn my head.

Regardless, he smacked me in an attempt to save me from a skeeter and I reacted just like one of my girls would have and whacked his arm.

“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?” I yelled at him.

“Why did you hit me!?” He yelled at the same time.

“WHY DID YOU HIT ME!?” I yelled back.

I have no idea what my neighbors would have thought had they looked out the window at that moment and seen us swatting at each like two toddlers fighting over a toy. We were both incredulous. Zeb couldn’t understand that I’d rather get bitten by a skeeter than randomly smacked upside my head. And I couldn’t understand why I had expected any less from Zeb, the Ninja Exterminator.