.i sh'love shellac.

i love to have my nails painted and do so all the time. mainly, my real nails are something awful. minorly, (yeah yeah) i am a wee obsessed with personal variety. i'm not the kind of girl who likes wearing the same thing a bunch, except for my favorite jeans, and that concept goes for my nails too. there's just one problem with me and nail polish. we don't get along. i've bought every brand out there...under coated, top coated, in between coated and still i will begin having chipped polish within 18 hours. it is an exact science.

i don't dig worms out of the ground for a living or soak my hands in scalding acid every night. my nails just want their freedom i suppose and i fight them every step of the way with reds, pinks, purples and grays. when i heard about shellacking nails for the first time last year, i was intrigued. however, it wasn't until a few weekends ago that i decided to finally fork over the green stuff and give it a whirl. let me show you my sh'journey with shellac.

there are only certain colors available from shellac, unlike the regular manicures with a whole wall of possibilities. this may be a good thing for someone like my nail-obsessed girlfriend who likes to ponder and question every color. and even knows their names. after looking through my choices, i went for an orange hue. just because. the process involved layering on coats of clear and colored shellac, much like a regular polish really. but, i had a drying process under a special light between each layer.

here i am on my first night. as you can see, the shellac is shiny..shiny, shiny shellac. that's fun. on this eve, i'm working on writing a blog about something sugary i'm sure.

on day two, i'm working out at the gym. i post this picture of my every day life and you must be impressed with my physical drive. don't be. it was the first time i'd been in weeks and i only lasted through half an episode of glee on my iphone. i measure my workouts in glee. not really, but maybe i should. i'm getting back on track though...really, i am.

here my nails are on day three grading papers. there are two things you should take note of at this point. thing one- my life
revolves around algebra much of the time. thing two- there is not even one teeny chip in any of my nails! hip, hip, shellac!

ok, so my picture a day project went a little off and i forgot to take one on day four. take my word for it that nothing exciting happened with my nails. but, here is day five. i am drinking raspberry crystal light which is a detour from my usual lemonade crystal light. more importantly, i am drinking it out of my tervis cup. this is a miraculous creation. trust me.

on day six, my shellacked nails are driving home from work. notice that they are way cooler than i am. evidently, they enjoy hangin' loose, dude. i have no idea how this happens.

on day seven, my nails rested. however, here they are on day eight getting ready for an outing. a little bronzer, anyone? take notice that they still look amazing. there isn't a chip. nope. they're in awesome shape.

stay tuned for the second installment of shellac sh'love where you can see the dramatic conclusion of how well this stuff holds up...or doesn't...you must be on the edge of your seat to find out!

.reflecting.

i had only been teaching for a month. twenty-one years old and trying my best to portray myself as an experienced mathematics teacher, i had structure, well-choreographed lessons and a bit of a hard edge to attempt to separate my youth from the youth of my high school students. it was early in the day, late morning for a school that starts at seven am, when the school-wide intercom cracked through the walls of each classroom and hallway.

my principal's deep southern drawl, that i later became so familiar with over a seven year period, pierced the air with a single sentence. 'teachers, you may want to turn on your t.v.s to the news." the numbers being scribbled on ever page in my classroom and flowing through my own lips ceased as i obediently walked over to my classroom television to press the on switch. with an air of control for the benefit of my children, i counteracted it with a slight breathlessness inside as i wondered what i would find on the other side of that television screen.

a plane had just crashed into a tower of the world trade center. as soon as the images flickered across the screen, a classroom full of teenagers were pummeling questions at me. what is going on? what is that? what is happening? was there a crash?

i was twenty-one years old and my best intentions to come across as an experienced math teacher left me quaking in the attempt to come across as capable of explaining and staying calm for twenty-five other people when i wasn't sure i could even do so for myself. as i steadily informed all of them about what we were watching together and tried my best to make sense of chaos, the news cameras simultaneously broke all our hearts. another plane hit the twin tower of the first in front of all our glazed eyes.

my students were scared, confused and the questions this time exploded exponentially. i assured each of them that we were all safe, not to worry and i remained calm for their sakes. inside my own head i too was at a loss for what was happening and the truth of our own security. i couldn't let these children see the fear written across my own countenance.

the bells for class changes rang as usual throughout that tuesday in 2001 and each time, i received a new set of wide eyes, troubled looks and all those questions. so many questions. math ceased to exist that day unless you count the times i multiplied my standard sentiments of reassurance. i remember one blond girl with glasses sitting on the floor by my desk in tears because she had family in pennsylvania she was worried about. i rubbed her back and promised her they were all fine. i prayed my promise would be kept.

many of us had an urgency to do something, to help, to make some sort of sense out of a day that felt like endless night. the news agencies encouraged people to donate blood because it would now be in great need in our country. for all the loss that day, that of lives and innocence, giving some of myself was the least i could do. as school finally concluded and the children went home to continue their questioning with their families, i drove to an emergency blood drive at a local bank where i donated my own.

the next few days were riddled with uncertainty and i drudged my way through as best i could. ten years later, i'm embarking on my eleventh year in the classroom, now thirty-one years old. i like to believe that with age comes wisdom. however, i'm not sure if something so devastating is ever able to be handled with perfection and complete grace. i did my best that day ten years ago with their fears and my own. it is hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that an entire decade has passed in a blink when that day still rests on the surface of all my senses.

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." -Martin Luther King Jr.

.junk cookies.

the new school year had just begun and i had 170 teenagers, before 5 am alarm clocks and so many other numbers practically falling out of my mathematical teaching mind. to say i was exhausted that first week is an understatement. i had just come home to find my non-work life waiting for me. my fur babies needed lots of attention, the laundry was squealing my name, there were some dishes dancing in the sink and i had my first set of papers waiting anxiously to be graded in my bag. i made the mistake of sitting on my sofa and closing my eyes for a second. really, just a second. almost as soon as i did, i remembered that one of our math teachers was retiring and her party would be the following day. and i was supposed to bring something.

did i mention how exhausted i was? sitting on that sofa in my most comfortable p.j.s, the very last, really, the very last thing i wanted to do would be to go to the grocery store. leaving to pump gas would come in a close second and i had already done so an hour prior. instead, i closed my eyes and began picturing what i had in the pantry. enough chocolate chips to make cookies? no. any frosting in the freezer to add to a basic cupcake? no. enough oatmeal for oatmeal cookies? no. what i'm getting at here is that i had nothing but odds and ends ingredients and not one single ounce of motivation.

what am i gonna do with all that junk, all that junk inside my....er, my pantry? i took the last bit of energy left in my bones and began throwing every quarter of a bag of leftover ingredients i had onto my counter until it became a ridiculous amount. shall i name these my everylittlething cookies? leftover cookies? scrap cookies? a little bit of this a little bit of that cookies? no, i shall call these....

junk cookies.

i start by creaming 3/4 cups of white sugar and 1 cup of brown sugar together with 1.5 sticks of butter. to this, i add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and 2 large eggs. once all the wet ingredients have had their turn frolicking around the mixer, it is time to add the dry ingredients.

with 2 cups of flour, 2 teaspoons of baking soda, and 1/2 a teaspoon of salt added to the mixing bowl, i set it on medium speed and let it get to work. the dough is very heavy so i have to stop it several times.

now the variety pack of yummies are about to be thrown in. with the bowl still in the mixer, i add a cup of oats and almost a cup of pecan granola. it was all i had left in the bag. mixing on low, i quickly found that this dough was too heavy and had to say goodbye to the mixer.

with the bowl now resting firmly on the counter, old-fashioned style, i started adding my hodgepodge of other ingredients. a little coconut? sure...how about 1/2 a cup of that.

with my hands i mix and knead as they work much better than my spoons. next comes the remaining white chocolate chips in my bag, about 3/4 of a cup worth. why are my hands so freckled? oh yeah, that's just how my skin rolls.

(please ignore how awful this picture is)

next on the chopping block is some already chopped walnuts and i dazzle my crazy dough with between 1/2-3/4 cup of these. with as much junk as i could fit in the batter, it was time to bake the cookies.

i scoop rounded spoonfuls onto a wax-lined cookie sheet and place them in my pre-heated to 375 degree oven. after baking for ten minutes, i bring them out with my fingers crossed (inside my oven-mitt of course).

it is not love at first bite, but i persevere and fall in great-like. when my husband comes home, i ask him to taste one. he tells me they are so bad that i shouldn't take them to the retirement party at all and should leave all of them at home. nice try, eye guy.

if i had to do it over again, i'd aim to make them a little fluffier. but it was hard for the batter to do much with all those additions in its way. all in all, the cookies are full of some good junk and i'm pretty pleased.

*update* they were a big, junky hit at the retirement party!

my junk cookies
ingredients
1 1/2 sticks butter
3/4 cups sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 whole eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup oats
1 cup maple pecan granola
1/2-3/4 cups walnuts
1/2 cups shredded coconut
1 cup white chocolate chips

directions
in a mixer, cream the butter and both sugars together. add in your eggs and vanilla, mixing another minute until well blended. add your basics: flour, baking soda and salt. once all of those components are blended well together, mix in your junk. i would mix your junk in with a spoon because the batter gets too heavy for the mixer.
use a small scooper to drop cookie dough on a parchment papered or sprayed cookie sheet. bake them for 8-10 minutes at 375 degrees f.
eat and enjoy.

.yes, white after labor day.

in the past two weeks, i saw more white pants worn by the women at work than on a whole little league baseball team. it eventually dawned on me that my co-workers were making great use of their wardrobe deadline. labor day.

according to a long-standing fashion rule, wearing white after labor day was a faux-pas (loosely translated as a no-no). wearing white in the summer months served a practical purpose to keep women cool in the hotter months. as labor day symbolized the official end of summer, so did the need to wear white for ladies.

cooler times are upon us once labor day hits. if you're one of my friends in the southern states, you're surely balking at this notion. it's hot down there well after labor day arrives.

having a pair of white pants i love, i refuse to be relegated to when i am allowed to wear them. furthermore, the entire notion of having a style all one's own enables rules to be set, not broken. on the last days of the week before labor day weekend, i saw handfuls of white pants every day. how sad to wave the white flag to this old, boring rule.

the very day after labor day, i donned my freshly ironed crisp white pants to work and dared someone to give me a fashion ticket. making a point? maybe. you create the rules. in your fashion and in your life's style. so join me ladies- i dare you to wear your white this week.

as pee-wee herman once said, "i'm a loner dotty. a rebel." but with this, i don't have to be alone. no color is off limits. live your life out loud.

.flatbread pizza , my way.

do you ever have something come over you at 9:00 in the morning that you know you won't be able to shake unless you give in to it? well, maybe i'm the only one. but when i started thinking one morning about a goat cheese flatbread pizza, i just couldn't let it go. as the day progressed, my mental recipe typewriter was adding and subtracting ingredients until i had completely worn out the ribbon.

by the time i got off work that afternoon, there was no option but to head straight to my local supermarket to pick up what i needed. i loaded my cart with fresh goods and maybe even drooled a little bit when i found the goat cheese i wanted. can you blame me?

as soon as i got home from work, i immediately began working on the olive oil dough, adapted from the artisan bread in five minutes recipe. measuring out the necessary ingredients and mixing them together was as easy as (pizza) pie. i'm not really sure why that expression exists.

for the two hours it took my dough to rise and fall like a great starchy empire, i managed to do some normal home things like laundry, dog chasing, counter cleaning, ironing...you get the point.

to top the pizza dough is to layer on the flavor and beauty. if you don't think food is a beautiful thing, this may not be the post for you. i'm a fan of onions. i think that they are a strong player in the flavor field. for this pizza, i decided to take the pungency of the onion and sweeten it by caramelizing.

meanwhile, in the oven, i roasted my thinly sliced zucchini rounds with a little olive oil, salt, pepper and italian herbs at 400 degrees F.

while both of those toppings were doing their thang, i unveiled the covered dough and saw that it was ready. on a very floured surface, i rolled out the dough.

although i was sure the flatbread itself would be delicious, i'm not good at just letting things be. so, i added cracked black pepper along the edges for the crust; as well as rosemary, thyme, and oregano to the whole surface of the pizza dough.

then, it was time to start layering on the toppings. both the roasted zucchini and caramelized onions were tempting me to eat them before they made their way to the pizza, but proudly, i resisted. this is a rarity.

next, i unwrapped the mound of goat cheese i'd purchased and began to crumble it over the pizza. there were a few pieces that fell on the counter. those, i had no choice but to eat.

as if goat cheese wasn't special enough, i scattered some pine nuts across the flatbread- which by now should be called hillybread due to the mounds of toppings climbing on that flat surface.

with all the ingredients in place, into the oven it went at 375 degrees F for about twelve to fifteen minutes.

when i pulled it out, i almost keeled over right then and there. it smelled good. it looked good. it even sounded good. wait, what? i got carried away.

taking some fresh basil from our garden that i'd cut, i let it float down over the pizza and land on little clouds of goat cheese.

if you're looking for a pizza dough, this stuff is where's it at. you can dress it up however you like or you can be just like me and create a flat bread so delicious you'll want to shout about it from the rooftops.

OLIVE OIL DOUGH
ADAPTED FROM: ARTISAN BREAD IN FIVE MINUTES A DAY
INGREDIENTS
1-3/8 cups lukewarm water
3/4 tablespoon granulated yeast (1 packet)
3/4 tablespoons Kosher salt
1/2 tablespoon sugar
1/8 cup extra virgin olive oil
3-1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
DIRECTIONS
1. In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment, or in a large (5 quart) bowl working with a wooden spoon, mix the yeast, salt, sugar, and olive oil with the water.
2. Mix in the flour without kneading. If you are not using a machine, you may need to wet your hands in order to incorporate the bit of flour.
2. Transfer dough to large (5 quart) bowl or lidded food container. Cover (not airtight), and allow to rest at room temperature until dough rises and collapses (or flattens on top), approximately 2 hours.
3. The dough can be used immediately after the initial rise, though it is easier to handle when cold. Refrigerate in a lidded (not airtight) container and use over the next 12 days.

.incredible chocolate chip cookies.

when you get into baking with a sense of urgency and fury like i have, you inherit a great desire to make everything you can get your whisk and spatula on. from pies to cakes to pops to cookies, i've aimed to conquer them all. some recipes have been great successes while others have been just pretty good.

most of the time, i look for something unique to make with the comforting qualities that ingredients like chocolate, vanilla or lemon bring to us. the week i was slated to start teaching my new batch of students, we were due for some family company. dustin's cousin has a child that is a st. jude patient here in memphis.

when their family travels to the city for his appointments, they sometimes have a couple out of the five of them stay with us. knowing that they'd be our guests, i hoped baking a treat for the three boys would add a little sweetness to their trip. when baking for little boys, somehow a souffle or a crumble, a fancy tart or a big layered cake somehow didn't seem to be a good fit.

what do all little boys like? chocolate chip cookies. they're traditional. they're classic. they're delicious.

with so many variations of this widely-used recipe in existence, i went to my go-to-gal's site for her take on this cookie. thanks to the pioneer woman, i discovered a recipe that took your basic chocolate chip cookie recipe and made it really, really good.

luckily, the recipe made dozens and dozens of cookies. it made so many that i was able to bring a little smile to the first day of school as well. individually bagging a cookie with a little happy note, i tucked them in to my teacher friends' mailboxes very early on that first monday morning.

i hope that the cookie brought a bright a smile to the their first day because giving the cookies brought one to mine.

chocolate chip cookies 
adapted from the pioneer woman   
ingredients 
1/2 cup Margarine (i used 1 cup of butter and no margarine)
1/2 cup Butter, Softened 
1 cup Firmly Packed Brown Sugar 
1/2 cup White Sugar 
2 whole Eggs 
2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract 
2-1/4 cups Plus 2 Tablespoons, All-purpose Flour 
1 teaspoon (heaping) Instant Coffee Granules 
1 teaspoon Baking Soda 
1-1/2 teaspoon Salt 
2 Tablespoons Flax Seed, Slightly Crushed With Rolling Pin (i skipped this ingredient)
3/4 cups Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips 
1 cup (heaping) Milk Chocolate Chips 
directions 
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a bowl, stir together butter, margarine, brown sugar, and white sugar until combined. Add eggs and vanilla and stir together. 
In a separate bowl, stir together flour, instant coffee, baking soda, and salt. Add to wet ingredients in batches, stirring gently after each addition. Stir in flax seed if desired. Stir in chocolate chips. 
Drop balls of dough on a cookie sheet and bake for 11 to 13 minutes. Remove from cookie sheet and eat warm.

.barbecue onion rings.

i've had a craving for onion rings lately. i assume this fits into my eating more vegetables category. in the past, i'd tried frying up onion rings and hadn't had much success with making the batter stick to the onion. but, i was willing to try again.

after seeing some yellow onions at the local farmer's market, i took that as my indication to fry them up. now, my husband doesn't eat onions. he really, really hates onions. except as onion rings or caramelized or cooked in dishes like chili, and so on. see, he really, really hates them.

for my batter, i added mostly flour, some bread crumbs, a few dashes of paprika, a little salt and pepper and a sprinkling of hope.

oh, did i mention i was making barbecue onion rings?

yep, i tossed the sliced onions in barbecue sauce, some buttermilk, and a little bit of whisked egg. with the onions soaking in this barbecue flavored medley and the awaiting batter seasoned with paprika, these babies were bound to be barbeculicious!

with my previous failed attempts at onion rings having taken place in a pan of hot oil, i finally gave in to my eye guy's nudging to use our deep fryer. why do we own a deep fryer?, you ask. because everything that comes out of there is delicious. and healthy, super healthy.

after dredging the barbecue soaked onions in the dry ingredients, they were ready to throw into the 350 degree oil. the whole time they were swimming in their own private hot tub, i was doing an onion ring dance. the onion ring dance is quite similar to the rain dance but with less fancy footwork and a little more chanting.

after approximately two to three long minutes, i pulled them out and flipped them onto the pile of paper towels i had laid out for the finished product. i was as happy as can be when i saw that my barbecue onion rings actually looked like a finished product for the first time.

the final test was to see if they actually tasted good and both my husband and i were quite willing to be the judges. on first bite, they were crunchy with a juicy, soft center. there was a lingering smokiness on the palette from the barbecue, but it wasn't an overwhelming flavor component. both of us judges gave the rings a thumbs up.

the next time i make these barbecue onion rings for me and my onion-hating husband, i'm going to come up with an accompanying dipping sauce. oh, the options...