"Ermahgerd! It's a Frenkunsterm!!"
This is a post about poop, a hurricane, and apple cake.
You're welcome! :-)
So you may have heard...we have this Hurricane named Sandy that decided to blow through this week. We've been through a few hurricanes in our area, but this monster, nicknamed "Frankenstorm," was shaping up to hit up the East Coast in a major way.
Everyone started freaking out this weekend. I chose not to worry about it, because I love weekends, and I'm not going to waste my weekend worrying about something out of my control.
(That's not the real reason, the real reason is because I'm a procrastinator.)
:-)
So my friend Kerri moved this weekend, and I had offered to watch Sean for her Friday night til Saturday whenever she was finished. I was going to take the kids to their soccer game on Saturday morning, and then Lauren and Rene's Halloween Party in the afternoon. It was going to be a great day! Everything was going well, until...
...Sean woke up Saturday morning with...a runny poop problem.
(He's gonna kill me for this post one day.)
Like, he killed three pairs of undies in 20 minutes kind of a problem.
So let me walk you through this...
I'm dressing two kids for soccer. It's colder weather now, so they have to wear an under layer too to keep them warm. So we've got a long sleeved shirt, and leggings (for Sadie) and thermals (for Sean) on the bottom, soccer uniform over that, socks on feet, topped with shin guards, topped with black tube socks, with feet shoved into soccer cleats.
I get both of them dressed, and that's when Sean says, "Nassy...I think I pooped in my pants."
Shit. (Literally)
I didn't want him to feel bad, or embarrassed, so I tried to make light of it, "no problem buddy, let's go upstairs and change your clothes."
I'll spare you the details, but I sat him on the potty for as long as possible. Then we get dressed again.
(And it happened again.)
Poor guy :-(
He said his tummy didn't hurt and he wasn't running a fever, so we tried again. Sit on that potty as long as possible. Finally he told me, "Nassy, my hiney's empty."
Alright.
I asked the kids if they wanted to go to soccer or stay home, but they wanted to go. I took a deep breath, threw some wet wipes and spare undies in my purse and off we went.
Miraculously we made it through soccer with no issues!
(I know you're probably wondering, "what in the world does this have to do with the storm?" Don't worry...we're getting there.)
So now soccer is over and I'm thinking we're in the clear! Sean was feeling better, no poop problems, and everyone was in a good mood. That's when I remembered, "Nasrene, you have no food in the house, two children to feed, and an impending storm on the way. Perhaps you should hit up the grocery store before it becomes super crazy on Sunday." So we swung though the Harris Teeter on the way home.
That's when things got REAL.
So we're walking through the store, and I'm trying to think to myself, "what do I need to get to prepare for this hurricane?" and I've just managed to throw some bananas, apples, and oranges in the cart when Sean goes, "Nassy!! I gotta go potty!"
Crap! (Literally)
So I grabbed him by the hand and raced to the bathroom (practically leaving poor Sadie behind) where we made it...just in time.
Whew.
Alright, so it's time to try again. We're meandering through the store, and I'm trying to make some sort of sense of what I should buy, but it's so HARD for me under than kind of pressure you know? There's the whole milk/eggs/toilet paper thing, but I figured if the power went out the milk would just go bad. We already had eggs in the house, and plenty of TP, but with the runny poop issue I grabbed a 12 pack anyway.
And a case of water, since it seemed like the thing to do.
The whole time we're walking around the store I'm saying things like, "Sean, how's your hiney?" "Anything going on in your butt, Sean?" "Hey Sean, do you wanna stop in the bathroom really quickly?"
He told me he was good. On we went.
It's bad enough, me trying to stock the kitchen prior to a hurricane, but add to that the distraction of a potential kid diarrhea explosion, and I JUST. CAN'T. FOCUS!
I ended up with a cart full of fruit, water, toilet paper, US Weekly, trail mix, brownie mix, frozen waffles, yogurt, a mexican cheese blend and iced tea. This is the best I could do. (How this will prepare me for a hurricane I do not know.)
So we're in line to check out and all is going well when Sean says, "uh oh, Nassy...I gotta potty again!"
Shitty crap! (Literally)
So I push the cart to the side and race him to the bathroom, again stranding poor Sadira, and yelling, "come on Sades! Try to hold it in, Sean!"
And once again, by miraculous intervention, we made it to the restroom in time.
OMG.
Now we're in the bathroom, and I happen to mention to Sean what a great job he did telling me he had to go potty, and what a big boy he is, and blah blah blah, and he's looking super proud of himself while he's sitting on the toilet, and that's when Sadie bursts into tears.
"Mommy, you're not paying any attention to me at all today!!!!!" while she's crying big alligator tears.
So just to recap, I'm comforting my crying daughter in the bathroom, as her best friend is pooping his guts out, while my groceries are out in the checkout line somewhere, and a hurricane's on the way.
My life is WAAAAAAY glamorous, y'all.
We finally made it out of the grocery store with our (paid for) groceries, and headed home. I stuffed Sean full of cheese sticks, and bananas, and peanut butter sandwich, and every other "binding food" I could think of, and it seemed to do the trick, so off to Lauren and Rene's Halloween party we went.
See? (Two Minnies and a poop-free Ninja!)
(And just in case you're curious, we had no more pooping problems. Though his mother did tell me that much later that night after I had returned Sean to her and she was running one last errand they had to pull over to the side of the road so Sean could poop in a bucket.)
Her life is super glamorous too, y'all. ;-)
Okay, so the next day was Sunday (the day before the hurricane) and Sadira and I decided to do the next logical thing when a hurricane is on the way...we went shopping at the mall!
Monday inevitably came, and so did Sandy. School was cancelled, work was cancelled, and as the rain started coming down more and more, we started cooking A LOT. First baked ziti, then a pot of chili, then an apple cake and then brownies.
(That was my segue into the apple cake portion of this post, in case you were wondering).
In my opinion, baking when a natural disaster is on the way, is just the obvious thing to do. If your life and belongings are going to be at risk, you might as well use up what you've got and enjoy it in the process. Not to mention is takes up times, and distracts you from the situation at hand.
I figured I'd share the apple cake recipe, since this is probably the only recipe you'll ever find on my blog, EVER.
So here we go, Jewish Apple Cake. Thank you Jewish friends...you gave us Jesus, and this apple cake recipe apparently. We owe you.
Actually I got this recipe from my mom. She's not Jewish. But Sadira is on occasion.
But I digress.
Ingredients:
6 apples, (while Honeycrisp and Gala are my favorite, I usually use Red Delicious for this recipe)
2 tablespoons cinnamon
5 tablespoons sugar
2 3/4 cups flour, sifted
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup orange juice, (or you can just squeeze two oranges of their juice, that's what I do)
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla, (I always ALWAYS add more. Maybe like double the amount? I love vanilla!)
4 eggs
Also assemble your mixer and tube pan or bundt pan (or as Sadie calls it, "butt pan.")
Oh, and one cute baking assistant:
Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees, and grease up your pan. Set that aside.
Core, peel, and slice your apples like this:
Stir together the 2 tablespoons cinnamon and 5 tablespoons sugar, then use this mixture to coat the apples.
(Sadira photobomb.)
Next, stir together flour, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl.
In a separate bowl, whisk together oil, orange juice, sugar and vanilla.
Mix wet ingredients into the dry ones, then add eggs, one at a time.
(Adding a little extra vanilla...sneaky sneaky..)
Once all of the ingredients are incorporated, assembled all of your parts again. To recap, you should have a bowl of cinnamon sugar apples, a greased cake pan, and the batter:
Next, pour half of the batter into pan. Spread half of the apples over it.
Sneak eat a few pieces of apple when you think your Mommy's not paying attention, tsk tsk...
Pour the remaining batter over the apples and arrange the remaining apples on top.
Bake for 90 minutes. Your house will smell amazing.
The finished product:
Seriously y'all, OMG, this cake is so delicious.
You need to let it cool FOR-EV-ER, so just heads up. But the good thing is, since there are half a dozen apples in this bad boy, you can fool yourself into thinking it can count as a breakfast food.
Which is exactly what we did this morning, in Day Two of Hurricane Sandy:
All in all, we were exceptionally lucky during this hurricane. Our power only flickered on and off a few times, and we had no flooding or structural damage. Others in our area and north of us obviously didn't fare as well.
And that concludes my post on hurricane preparedness, poop, and apple cake. ;-)
Happy Halloween everyone!
