Socal Mom by Donna Schwartz Mills

A Post That's NOT About the Dog

I haven't been posting as much as I'd like. It's not that I have nothing to talk about -- it's just that I've been busy LIVING my life (instead of writing about it). So this is an attempt to get somewhat caught up:

1. It took me all of last week, but I finished my for-hire website project, and I'm pretty pleased with myself. See it here.

It was a WordPress installation, something I've only done once before. But that time, I was stymied when it came to working with WP templates. This time around, I was fortunate enough to figure out that the Atahualpa theme was highly customizable. I guess that's why it's been downloaded like, a zillion times.

2. Even so, that modest little site kept me busy for the better part of a week, and then I had to go full steam into hosting mode, as my niece was in SoCal for the weekend... which meant her mom and dad - my sister and brother-in-law- also came down. So I had their family of five. Plus Carly's aunts and uncles from her dad's side of the family. And a few of their friends.

And we all know how well that turned out. (Yes, my previous post. About the dog.)

Aside from Sunday night's drama, I think everyone had a pretty good weekend.

3. I may have been mired in an alphabet soup of HTML and CSS -- but I still found time to eat. I returned to the Santa Monica Farmers Market on Wednesday (this time, with THREE friends in tow), and purchased a lot of goodies that were put to good use over the weekend. And I also made time to do a restaurant review.

4. My blog is not the only thing I've been neglecting lately. I have been mostly away from social networking sites - checking in with Facebook and Twitter sporadically (usually when I'm sitting in the car waiting for school to get out. WHATEVER did I do before I had a smartphone?) So when I started seeing a bunch of location tweets posted from foursquare, I didn't know WHAT that was. And when I investigated, I didn't know WHY I'd bother.

But then I saw my friends acquiring "badges" and getting named "Mayor" of places. And being something of a competitive jerk, I thought I'd give foursquare a try. And for the last couple of weeks, checking in has been something of a compulsion.

And I've even been named "Mayor" of a couple of places I frequent. The sad thing is, these are not cool restaurants and nightclubs. No, I'm "Mayor" of Gelson's in Northridge and Ralph's in Porter Ranch, which tells you that the most exciting thing I do most days is go to the supermarket.

I have a feeling that I'll soon add another grocery store to my list of mayorships: Yesterday, I attended the opening of the new Fresh and Easy store in Northridge. I've been waiting for this store to open for MONTHS. Years, really. You see, I'm a big fan of the chain's parent company, the UK grocery giant Tesco. So there's a confession for the books: I even end up hanging out in supermarkets when I visit other countries. In fact, one of the first things my husband and I do whenever we visit his family is head out to our favorite big Tesco Extra in Cardiff. I've even posted pictures of it on this blog. And we used to fantasize about how nice it would be to transplant a Tesco here in the States.

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So you can imagine how pleased we were to learn that the big grocery chain had decided to gain a foothold here with their concept of fresh and prepared foods. We've been following Fresh and Easy's progress since they broke ground on their first Los Angeles stores... and were downright excited when we noticed that one would finally open in our own part of town.

The Grand Opening was yesterday - and it did not disappoint. As I still have a ton of food left over from all those guests last weekend, I only purchased a few things (mostly fresh fruit). But I love the way the store is laid out and I KNOW I'll be back to pick up some of the prepared meals for those nights I don't have time to cook.

Now... if only we can get Marks and Spencer to open some Simply Food stores here, life might be perfect.

Healthy Eating the Farmers Market Way

One of the many self-improvement goals I've set for myself recently is to eat more sustainably, which is often at odds with the other big goal of being more economical.

Experts are always advising us that we can kill two organic free-range chickens with one stone by buying more locally grown food at farmers markets. This sounds great - in theory.

You see, up where I live (in the northern San Fernando Valley), we don't have a lot of great farmers markets to choose from. The most convenient one is in Northridge - but it's held on Wednesday nights... from April to October.

You can see the problem, right? It's January, and I don't have a good local farmers market to go to.

Yeah, I suppose I could hit ones held in Studio City or Encino on the weekend. But if I'm going to get in the car and drive that far, I may as well drive a little farther and visit the Grand Poobah of markets in the L.A. area: Santa Monica.

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Fortunately, my foodie friend Deena agrees with me. So yesterday, after dropping our kids at school, we journeyed down the 405 to the Third Street Promenade, where we ooh'd and aah'd over some of the most gorgeous fruits and vegetables I've ever seen. I went there without any kind of agenda or meal plan in mind. All I knew was that I had some chicken breasts I wanted to use. I was hoping for some inspiration... ...which I found at a stand featuring all kinds of Asian greens. I picked up a bag of baby bok choy and took it from there. I grabbed a bag of fresh scallions (75 cents) and some garlic (three bulbs for $1.00). In addition to the chicken, I already had broccoli and carrots (a shame, because the Costco veggies in my fridge didn't hold a candle to the beautiful produce in Santa Monica). Unrelated to dinner, I also grabbed a three-pack of raspberries and blueberries. And Deena and I split a similar pack of strawberries.

We made it back to the Valley around noon - which gave us plenty of time to put our bounty away before school got out.

This was such an easy and fun way to shop, we are planning to do it more often. Weekly might be difficult - but at least, we can get there on a monthly basis.

Glee for Steaz Teaz - and a Sample for Free

Until I had my little traffic incident, it had been a wonderful day. An esthetician friend had given me a free waxing service ("So you don't have to worry about that when you go into the hospital")...

...and I'd enjoyed a lovely brunch with two of my favorite LA blogging friends: Cynthia Liu (@Cyn3matic) and Liz Dwyer (@losangelista)... and Eric Schnell, one of the founders of the natural beverage company that makes Steaz Teaz. 

To be perfectly honest, I'd never before heard of the product... but I was dreading my hospital visit and the meeting was the perfect excuse to have a little fun before I submitted myself to the UFE procedure. Besides, it was set up by the fabulous Kim Moldofsky, who works with several food companies. She's the one who hooked us up with the diet-busting Eli's cheesecake we enjoyed at our Inaugural viewing party back in January -- so if she says a product is good, I tend to believe her. Besides, she assured me that "lunch with [Eric] would be quite interesting."

And he was:

Eric and his staff told me that Steaz has been available for some time in Whole Foods Markets and locally at high end stores like Gelson's. These are places I shop regularly, so I wondered why they weren't on my radar. Then I looked at the tea labels and saw that most of the flavors are sweetened with pure cane sugar. That's a wonderful thing for taste -- but it was a no-no when I was on my weight-loss regimen and I still shy away from any beverage that isn't labeled "diet." And Whole Foods doesn't sell beverages containing NutraSweet or Splenda.

Then I was handed a new Steaz product: a zero calorie sparkling tea drink that's sweetened with natural Stevia. And it was good.

Now, I've never been particularly picky about food. I have always seen the virtues of buying healthy/organic, but was skeptical about claims that natural foods are necessarily superior. I have never been shy about using packaged shortcuts. Most of the time, I'm just happy to get dinner on the table.

But after six months without a kitchen, I may have developed a new attitude. I am sick of pre-packaged, frozen, and take-out meals. I long to be part of the slow food movement, even though I realize I'm too time-constrained for that to ever happen. While biding my time during our home renovation, I've been busy plotting new meal strategies that rely on visits to farmer's markets. I'm even planning to do more vegetarian/vegan meals. I don't think I'd ever go that route completely, but intellectually, I understand why vegan makes sense for the planet. If I cut down on meat consumption just once a week, it's a contribution. A small one, but a start.

As for meat, the one kind of home-cooked meal we have allowed ourselves these last six months is chicken cooked on the outdoor grill, and I recently came to the conclusion that free-range organic DOES taste better than Foster Farms.

So I'm coming around.

Eric described Steaz as a "triple bottom-line company." By that, he means their long-term objective goes beyond mere Profits. They aspire to benefit People by only purchasing commodities that are Fair Trade (and providing the farmers who grow their tea with a living wage), and they have created manufacturing and distribution systems that are carbon-neutral, thereby helping the Planet.  I find this business philosophy very appealing, and would like to see more companies try it. That will only happen if the business model proves to be profitable.

And Steaz is on its way: They've gone big-time this month with a national distribution deal at Target.

We left the brunch with a little goodie bag of Steaz samples. I enjoyed the unsweetened tea drink so much that I made my husband buy me more while I was recuperating from my hospital stay. And my daughter really loved the sugar-sweetened drinks.

I'm now a Steaz believer, and I liked the product so much that I asked Kim if I could do a giveaway here on the blog. So here are the details: I'm going to keep comments open on this post for the rest of the week, and on Monday, I'll select one commenter at random to receive a Steaz gift box and a $10 gift card you can use to buy more Steaz at Target.

In the meantime, Steaz is running a buy one, get one free promotion. Download the coupon here.

DISCLOSURE: I did not receive any monetary compensation for this post. I did receive about a dozen cans of beverage products. I made no promises or guarantees about the content of this post, nor did I promise anyone to expect a positive review. The opinions expressed in this post are my own.

NOVEMBER 24: WE HAVE A WINNER! CONGRATULATIONS, COMMENTER MARY ELLEN. A STEAZ GIFT PACK IS COMING YOUR WAY.

Friday the 13th

I hadn't noted yesterday's date until I was buying groceries that morning. I chuckled silently to myself as the checker and the shopper in front of me talked about the perils of leaving the house.

When I look back at 2009, I'm going to think of it as the year when EVERY day was Friday the 13th.

Of course, that's an exaggeration. The Mills family has had some good days this year -- even some that could be described as "fun."

But I had a really hard time finding happy posts to link to in the last sentence. I struggle with keeping a positive attitude in the best of times, and thanks to the triple whammy of problems with health and home and recession, 2009 could not even remotely be described as a good year.

Megan was feeling the same way on Thursday. For one thing, I had to get her out of school a little early to go the dentist. But her sad mood was deeper than dental dread.

"You're going to be mad at me," she said.

That got me worried.

"My new shoes were stolen," she said, nearly choking back tears.

She loved those shoes. We spent a lot of time shopping, and when we couldn't find the pair she wanted, she went online to the Converse website and created a custom pair that was just her own. It cost about twice what I would have paid at Target.

Our middle school has a uniform requirement, which is one of the things we parents like about it. I feel we've had an easy time of school shopping because of it. But Megan is finally starting to think about expressing herself through clothes. I know that will sound funny to moms of kindergarteners who always want to dress up in fairy princess costumes, but my daughter never went through that phase. She wasn't the kind of kid who cared for wearing fancy dresses; she never played with makeup. (Although she did love to make a mess in the bathroom, creating new "perfumes" by mixing together all the scented shampoo/bath oil/body wash/etc. she could get her hands on.)

I think all that time she spent in gymnastics left her with little energy to contemplate the image she was projecting to the world. Now, she's got plenty of time -- but little opportunity. The only items where the school allows her some creativity are in her choice of backpack... and shoes. So I gave in.

It took about three weeks for the shoes to arrive. Thursday was only the second day she wore them. When she finished PE class, she discovered that someone had taken them out of her locker. No, it was not locked.

"I never lock it. No one ever takes anything," she said. She knows now that some people do, if you come to school with something they want.

"It doesn't matter if they lock it up," our dental hygienist said sympathetically. "My niece has had two cellphones and an iPod lifted from her locked locker. These kids are criminals. They know exactly what to take and how to take it."

We're shopping for shoes again. This time, she's going to settle for whatever is on sale.

Cabazon: Desert Shopping and Swimming

My plan for today's post was to write about the Palm Springs area and what a bargain it is for travelers in the summer months (when demand for desert uh, warmth is on the low side).

Megan and I were going to leave the house early, check in to our Rancho Mirage hotel and then check out the local sights, like the Aerial Tramway and...

...well, that was the only activity I was aware of here. I figured we woud spend the rest of the day shopping at the River complex, and hanging out at the pool.

That was before Megan turned on her newly charged cell phone and found a text message from a friend, who happened to be staying at the Morongo Casino and Resort, out in Cabazon... which we would be passing by on our way to Palm Springs. The Desert Hills Premium Outlet mall is located right next to the resort... I had always wanted to check it out (for some reason, my husband never seems to want to stop and shop when we're traveling) and Leesa and her family were planning on having lunch there. So why not?

While there, Leesa's family invited us to come and hang out with them at the resort's fabulous pool. So instead of an awesome aerial view, we ended up spending the afternoon at an Indian casino... and it was good.