Blog Challenge No. 1: Love.

Karen Caterson, of Square-Peg Reflections, recently forwarded a blog challenge to her blog readers, which stems from Dian Reid's recent post entitled "Authenticity Blog Challenge". While this isn't necessarily "foodie" related, it sparked my interest and so I've decided to join the challenge during the month of June. Yes, dear readers, we have reached the halfway mark of 2010. Hard to believe really.

Dian Reid challenges bloggers to "share your thoughts, images, creative juices around one or all of the thirteen topics" - these topics include:

Compassion Intention Self-Awareness Courage Love Fairness Laughter Optimism Truth Vision Wilderness Wisdom Authenticity

So in no apparent order, I chose LOVE as today's topic. There are two people in my life, who I know without, a shadow of a doubt, love me. And while their "styles" may vary when it comes to showing how much they love me, I still know it to be true. Let the record show Exhibit "A" - my mom. If you haven't visited Bada-Bling, then you are missing out on the artistic and authentic journey my mom is sharing with all of you in cyberland. She's come a long way, heck, I'd say the last ten years alone have been transformational for her in various ways.

Exhibit "B" - my dad. He's an enigma, no doubt about that. He has a good heart and truly wants the best for me and my brother, Benjamin. And while he may not vocalize it all the time, it's real. In the photo above, my pops is pictured on the left.

There's no doubt, that I am oh so lucky to have them both as my parents. I've got the best of both worlds in many respects and it's fair (and I think accurate) to say that I've got a good mix of both of them (good and bad). And the older I get, I find out more and more, how much I resemble them both. I know alot of people out there can't say too many nice things about their parents, hell, some don't even have relationship with their parents. But I do. And I truly am grateful for them both. A parent's love is priceless. I only hope, that if I have a child of my own one day, I can pass on all of the love that's been bestowed upon me, to him/her. Every child deserves and is worthy of love.

my funny valentine.

Valentine's Day 2009 - all by myself...don't want to be all by myself....yes I'm singing Celine Dion as I type this post! In all seriousness, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I treated myself to a matinee of He's Just Not That Into You, it was rather entertaining. A post earlier in the week (on The Wednesday Chef) motivated me to try and make this "no-knead" pizza dough. I had some left over mozzarella and feta cheese. I made a simple tomato pizza sauce thanks to Tyler Florence's recipe on Food Network (Super simple, 1-2 garlic cloves, minced, 2 tbs. evoo, 1-28 ounce can tomato puree, 1 tsp. dried marjoram, 1 tsp. dried basil (Note I substituted Italian seasoning for both dried herbs) and simmer for at least 30 minutes once you bring it to a boil). I'm not the most adept at tossing the pizza dough, but the texture of it was magnificent! Now if I could only master....how thick or thin....without losing the air bubbles, which create lovely air pockets for the dough. The crust was super duper! Rustic indeed, but I think with a little practice, I could become good at this.