CAVandy

Recipes, Parenting, Finance-adjacent, but not (!) a mommy blog

[cavandy]

For Dad on his 82nd Birthday

For Dad on his 82nd Birthday

So it’s my dad, Gerald Makuch’s 82nd birthday today. I recently found this letter he wrote to me and my sister and brother on NYE 1985. His penmanship was always *unique,* so I transcribed it.

It’s a real over-the-top, exceedingly boastful and laudatory note to my siblings and me, who grew up being the source of his pride for every accomplishment large and small. As much as it makes us look like…

View On WordPress

[cavandy]

Penne alla Vodka

Recipe amended from Tasty.com. I doubled it, mixed in 1/3 pork to 2/3 ground beef, and added a whole lot more salt and extra herbs. It was outstanding.

Ingredients – Serves 6 as an entrée or 4 with plenty left over.

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 small white onion, chopped

2 medium shallots, chopped

1 tbsp chopped garlic (jar is fine)

1 ½ lbs ground sirloin

½ lb ground pork

sea salt flakes and crushed ground pepper, to taste

2 teaspoons dried basil

2 teaspoons dried oregano

1 tbsp fresh basil, finely chopped  

2 28-oz cans crushed tomatoes

1 cup vodka

1 teaspoon red chili flakes

1 cup heavy cream

1 lb penne pasta rigate, cooked fully or slightly al dente

 Preparation – all in one pot (except penne)

1.   In a Dutch oven, add onion, shallots and garlic plus a big pinch of salt flakes and ground pepper to olive oil over high heat; sauté until translucent.

2.   Add beef, pork, salt, and pepper, cooking until all the moisture has evaporated and the meat is browned/cooked all the way through.

3.   Stir in crushed tomatoes, vodka, dried basil and oregano and chili flakes, cooking until half of the liquid has evaporated and the sauce has reduced. Add another dash of salt and pepper if desired. The reduction could take 15 or more minutes, keep the lid off and heat on medium-high. Stir occasionally.

4.   Midway through reducing, add fresh basil.

5.   Add cream, stirring until evenly incorporated.

6.   Stir in cooked pasta until evenly coated.

7.   Serve immediately with shaved parmesan

Recommended brands: Cento crushed tomatoes, de Cecco pasta, and Maldon sea salt flakes

[cavandy]

Do the Right Thing

Do the Right Thing

I recently had a conversation with each of my sons about what it means to do the right thing. To me, it means demonstrating integrity and compassion and grace, especially when no one is watching. It pays to be specific about such things, because no doubt they will encounter the exact opposite in their lives. They will see lying, cheating people get ahead, who will succeed by doing the wrong…

View On WordPress

[cavandy]

What I Want For Mother's Day

What I Want For Mother’s Day

Four years ago a friend posted this wonderful Mother’s Day letter from Mary Carpenter on FB. I re-posted it on Tumblr 2 years ago, and I just might keep posting it in perpetuity because it boils down what I consider the essentials of raising children. I hope it’s noticeable that there is no mention of what kind of job or study they should pursue, nor any insinuation that their success on a field…

View On WordPress

[cavandy]

The Unbearable Bittersweetness of Parenting

The Unbearable Bittersweetness of Parenting

I have always said that I don’t “miss” when my boys were babies, because they are such wonderful young men today. To want them to be that helpless—if adorable—little baby in my arms means they are not the person I can share slightly off-color jokes with, who I can explain how interest rates work, who I can share a story about myself that does not paint me in such a great light, but will inform…

View On WordPress

[cavandy]

Slow-Cooked Short Ribs with Gremolata from Bon Appétit™

I saw this recipe on Twitter and immediately had to try. I’ve only made it once, so I’ll update this after I test future batches.  My first rec would be to trim some of the fat before seasoning, and use as little water as possible, which is probably less than the 1 cup called for. But the topping is 💯 as is, maybe even make more.

Ingredients 8 servings

6 (six) 10” English-style bone-in beef short ribs (about 10 lb.)

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

¼ cup coarse fresh breadcrumbs

2 garlic cloves, finely grated (or 1 Tbsp. of garlic paste)

1 cup finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

¼ cup grated peeled horseradish or 2 Tbsp. prepared horseradish

1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

3 tablespoons olive oil, divided

4 lemons, halved

Preparation

Season short ribs generously with salt and pepper; place in a large roasting pan. If you have time, chill, uncovered, 12 hours

Preheat oven to 325°. Toast breadcrumbs on a rimmed baking sheet, tossing halfway through, until golden brown, 8–10 minutes. Let cool.

Add 1 cup water to roasting pan. Cover pan with foil and cook until meat is tender, 2½–3 hours. Uncover pan and increase oven temperature to 400°. Roast until ribs are browned on top, 25–30 minutes longer.

When short ribs are almost done, mix garlic, parsley, horseradish, lemon zest and juice, breadcrumbs, and 2 Tbsp. oil in a small bowl; season gremolata with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, heat remaining 1 Tbsp. oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook lemons, cut side down, until golden brown, about 4 minutes. Top short ribs with gremolata and serve with seared lemons.

[cavandy]

All The President's Cash

All The President’s Cash

While the current part-time occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue uses the office of the Presidency as his reality-TV set while lining the coffers of his family businesses around the world (and in Florida), the Left will do what it does best: beat up on one of its own. This ridiculous post by Vox decrying the purported $400,000 former President Obama is set to receive from investment bank Canter…

View On WordPress

[cavandy]

No Regrets

An acquaintance posted this very provocative article on Facebook today, Mothers Who Regret Having Kids, and as much as I didn’t want to click on it, I just did, because I was genuinely curious what they meant by that. What follows is an edited version of my comment on that post. I had my kids when I was 30 and 32 and now they are almost in college. I worked full-time until they were 7 and 9 years…

View On WordPress

[cavandy]

Drinking Alone (with a woman)

Drinking Alone (with a woman)

Mike Pence has made some waves with some unearthed comments he made about never dining alone with a woman who’s not his wife. And not attending events where alcohol is served if his wife is not there, but other women are.  The theory that “I respect my wife too much to do this” really strikes a positive chord with some people, I get that. But this reduces men and women, in whatever professional…

View On WordPress

[cavandy]

Starting.

In the past several years, I’ve started and stopped a few blogs.  My tumblr was supposed to be the one that would make me take it seriously, to start posting and gathering a “following.”  That was after the one on Posterous (doesn’t exist anymore) but before Medium, where I had written a few anti-T***p blogs but then feverishly deleted them on election night when I thought Pinochet had just risen…

View On WordPress

[cavandy]

Public vs Private

We live in the city of Chicago.  You may have heard, we have been having some, um... financial issues.  Our public school district is so broke I’m not sure it will ever see breakeven in my lifetime (partly due to the way the state underfunds our students vs the rest of the state, but I digress).  Which is part of the reason I sent my kids to private school for 8 years.  They had cute uniforms, they performed dutifully for the parents several times a year, they had a gorgeous, brightly lit building with white boards in every class.  It made me feel good knowing they were in a place of such bounty while I was at work, and not in some under-funded, crowded public school class.

However, in our experience, the teachers and headmaster really could not have cared less about them. All my sons represented to them were numbers on a page, seats to be filled, smiling faces to adorn marketing materials, and bonuses to be bagged from their private equity owners.

Meetings with parents were strictly avoided, as was most interaction that didn’t involve us sitting in a gym watching the children perform. But when one of my sons was struggling, I had the nerve to request a meeting with the headmaster.  In a most spectacular fashion I was blown off and ignored. He sent in two teachers who were in no position to help my son, and after I cried literal tears about my worries, I still never heard from the leaders of the school. Your son needs extra help?  Hire a tutor.  You want to speak to a teacher about your child? That’s what conferences are for.  And don’t forget to write your ever-climbing tuition check on your way out!

Contrast that with the broke, urban high schools my sons go to now. Today’s example is my interaction with my son’s AP Physics teacher. Today I sent her an email with a number of specific questions about the material, the homework and resources for my son in her class, which he’s been in for 3 weeks.  Within an hour, she had not only responded to me, she responded thoroughly and succinctly (with links!) about what was available, what expectations were, and the number of times she was available throughout the day—both during and after school—for students to come for extra help.  

She thanked me for contacting her.  She responded to a concerned parent with useful information.  She welcomed the dialogue to help my son reach his goals in her class.  She cared.

I’m not saying all private schools are awful, and all public schools are great.  I bet there are plenty of $45k-a-year schools that don’t disregard parents and offer tons of resources.  And it does pain me that my kids each attend school in 75- to 100-year-old facilities that are chronically under-funded. They don’t have all the bells and whistles the expensive private or suburban schools have. They’ve even had bad (OK, “less effective”) teachers in some of their classes—but that’s just like they had in private school! 

When I pulled them out of private, I have to admit I was worried.  I didn’t think this would turn out this way. I was hopeful that the CPS selective enrollment / double-honors programs that my sons each got into would offer them both a challenging curriculum and a more diverse student body, but I was not expecting their teachers to care so much. Granted, over the years we’ve had a couple of knuckleheads, but for the most part we worked with the school to overcome whatever shortcomings a teacher may have had, and sometimes we had to realize my kids just weren’t trying as hard as they should.  But the main takeaway was that once you connected, they responded.  They did what they could with what they had, and that was often more than we got when we were in the “fancy school.”

So I guess I’ll just leave it with this.  Your kids will rise or fall primarily on their own efforts and abilities.  But the truth is sometimes you need to nudge them along and sometimes you have to involve a team.  It helps when the team you’re on actually wants to be there, and wants to help.  I’m sure I’ve done a lot of things wrong raising my sons, but I’m pretty confident that sending them to public school is not one of them.  They’re more resourceful, they’re less isolated, they’re less likely to be trying to keep up with some “affluenza”-based ideal of success.  And when I need help, I’ve got a great team to call.

[cavandy]

Beef, Pork & Fennel Meatballs

Makes about 60-65 meatballs ... enough for leftovers if your teenagers don’t eat them all

Ingredients

2 lbs ground sirloin, 1 lb ground pork

1 1/2 cup milk

1 1/2 cup Italian-seasoned fine breadcrumbs (Cento™ or similar)

3 large eggs

3 tsp sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 1/2 cup finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese

3/4 cup minced parsley

3/4 cup finely chopped fennel

1 small yellow onion - or 3 medium-sized shallots - or a combination of both, finely chopped (I use the Cuisinart Mini-Prep™ to avoid as many tears as possible)

3 cloves garlic, finely minced (or 1 tbsp chopped garlic from the jar)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 400º

2. Combine the milk and the breadcrumbs, set aside.  The breadcrumbs will absorb the milk and become paste-like

3. Sauté the fennel: After all the chopping is complete, add the fennel and a dash of salt and pepper to a small amount of olive oil over medium heat; sauté until soft, roughly 4-5 minutes.  Set aside.

4. Whisk the egg, salt, pepper, Parmigiano, parsley, onion and fennel: Whisk the egg first, then add in the salt, pepper and garlic until well blended. Then whisk in the cheese and parsley.  Finally whisk in the onion and sautéed fennel.

5.  Combine the egg mixture and the ground meat:  To ensure pork is well blended with beef, mix them together for a bit before adding.  Use your hands to make sure to mix the egg mixture evenly throughout the ground meat.

6.  Add the breadcrumbs to the mixture: Try not to overwork the meat but again, make sure the breadcrumbs are evenly mixed.

7.  Form the meat into meatballs:  Pinch off a piece of the meat mixture and gently roll between your hands to form 1 1/2″ meatballs.  You should be able to fit between 15 and 20 on a parchment-lined cookie sheet.

8. Bake for 25-30 minutes in a 400º oven, turning at least once.  They are done when the outsides are browned and/or they are 165º in the middle of the meatball.

Options:

You can cook them in a marinara sauce without pre-baking, or just throw a few in after they have spent time in the oven.  There will likely be many more than will fit in a standard amount of sauce so I recommend baking all of them.  See below for a quick marinara recipe.

Marinara Sauce:

Ingredients

1 large can (28 oz) each Cento certified San Marzano crushed and puréed tomatoes (the combo provides texture)

1 large or 2 medium shallots, finely chopped

1-2 cloves crushed garlic, or 1 1/2 tsp chopped garlic from the jar

1 cup red wine

Salt 

Fresh ground pepper

Dried basil and oregano, to taste (approx 1 tsp each)

Optional: red pepper flakes

Instructions

In a Dutch oven, sauté the shallots and garlic in olive oil over medium heat.  Add a pinch of salt (to taste) and some fresh ground pepper.  Once translucent (about 3-5 minutes), add the red wine, big dash of basil and oregano and reduce.  This should take about 4-5 minutes over medium heat.  Feel free to add more salt and pepper at this stage (I use Maldon Sea Salt Flakes).  

Once reduced by approximately half, add the puréed and crushed tomatoes and stir until well blended.  Add additional basil, oregano, salt and pepper and the optional red pepper flakes if you want some heat.  

Simmer for at least 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

[cavandy]

Not sure why this goose was so bothered but I was legit nervous 😳 he might come at us! #Chicago #nature #scared (at Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool)

[dogswithtonguestickingoutalittle]

Lucy from Chicago!

[cavandy]

Lucy made it to the blog 😍🐾💕😍🐾💕

[thebestoftumbling]

This guy spent over a year throwing eggs to his unsuspecting mum (x)

[cavandy]

Red Wine Braised Short Ribs

The weather is turning, and the slow cooker has come back into the kitchen.  One of my all-time favorite slow-cooked dishes is short ribs. After several iterations of this recipe, tonight’s was good enough to write down.  

For reference, I started with this recipe, from Williams-Sonoma.

Ingredients:

5.5-6.0 lbs boneless beef short ribs, trimmed of as much fat as possible

Coarsely ground sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

1-1.5 cups all-purpose flour

3 tbsp grapeseed oil, plus more as needed (or switch to olive oil after browning meat)

2-3 large shallots, finely chopped or sliced 

3 large carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks on the diagonal

1.5 tbsp minced garlic from the jar, or 4 fresh cloves crushed (more if you really love garlic)

1 cup coarsely chopped fennel (about one medium bulb)

1 bottle (750 ml) full-bodied red wine, such as Cabernet Sauvignon

1 standard can (6 oz) tomato paste

4 fresh thyme sprigs or 1 tbsp dried thyme leaves

3 fresh rosemary sprigs or 1 tbsp dried rosemary

2 dried bay leaves

up to 1.5 cups unsalted beef stock

1 tbsp (or several big dashes) Worcestershire Sauce 

Omaha Steak Natural Steak Seasoning

Corn starch

Directions: Mix the flour and salt and pepper in a shallow dish and don’t skimp on the salt and pepper. Cut the short ribs into 3 to 4″ pieces and coat completely with the flour mixture, shaking off the excess.

In a Dutch oven over medium-high heat, warm the 3 tbsp grapeseed oil until hot (grapeseed oil reduces the amount of excess smoke from the browning process). Working in batches, brown the meat on all sides, about 10-15 minutes total. Transfer to a slow cooker, then add the Worcestershire and sprinkle a tablespoon or so of the steak seasoning over the meat, if desired.

Add more grapeseed oil to the Dutch oven (or switch to olive oil here). Reduce the heat to medium then add the onions and shallots, carrots, fennel and garlic and cook until soft, about 10 minutes while stirring occasionally. Don’t forget to salt and pepper as you go while cooking. Transfer to the slow cooker.

Add the entire bottle of wine to the Dutch oven and heat, stirring to scrape up the browned bits. Add the tomato paste (mashing any large chunks with a spoon), thyme, rosemary and bay leaf, and add one more big dash of salt and pepper. Increase the heat to medium-high and cook until thickened and reduced by half, 8 to 10 minutes. Add the wine mixture to the slow cooker along with enough stock to come three-fourths up the sides of the ribs. 

Cover and cook on low for a minimum of 9 hours, but up to 20-24 hours for the most tender.  If after 5 hours sauce is too thin, add a little corn starch to thicken, but not too much.  A little goes a long way.

Discard the herb sprigs and bay leaf. Transfer to shallow bowls or plates, served over farfalle or shell-shaped pasta, or on top of any type of potatoes.  Warm, crunchy fresh bread for dipping is a must.

ALTERNATIVE: add 2 cups of any type of sliced/diced potatoes under the meat in the slow cooker. No need to add starch at the end.

Serves 6 with plenty of leftovers. 

[cavandy]

So I went on Facebook hiatus and didn’t die

I went dark on Facebook last May.  I didn’t delete my account, I didn’t mass-unfriend all but my tightest squad, I didn’t make a declaration, “I’m leaving Facebook!” on Facebook, but I left.  I just stopped going on.  Wait, let me amend that, I posted 4 times since mid-May, but I’ll talk about that later.

The reason I left, I think, was first to see if I could. Heretofore, I’d been a prolific (ahem) poster.  I prided myself on not just “look at me!” posts but often thoughtful articles or commentary on what was going on in the world.  Or at least I hoped they were.  But make no mistake, the “look at me!” posts were aplenty and will likely come back when I inevitably come back to FB. Because there’s no way I can stay off forever, right?

But before you declare me one of those super-obnoxious people who claim “I don’t even have a TV!” as if that makes them magical, better-than-you-shitty-TV-watching apes, let me be perfectly clear: I did not leave social media.  I just left the venue that most of my family and friends use.  

Twitter and Instagram have filled the void.  And there are plenty of close friends and family that are on IG so it’s not like I cut everyone off completely.  But Twitter, in spite of being the social network most of my friends hate because it’s so hard to get and stay engaged, is where I get the most satisfaction, mostly because of what it doesn’t ask of me. Facebook is filled with IRL social obligations: liking the 20th pic of your acquaintance’s daughter’s birthday party, or oohing and ahhing over Bobby’s accomplishments on the [insert sport here] field and Sally’s induction in the National Honor Society, or congratulating the new job/move/marriage/divorce/new sofa of that person you can’t recall how you know. It’s exhausting, even if you like or love these people, many of whom I do.  And believe me I’ve asked for those obligations time and again to be shown to me, every time I post a self-congratulatory thing about my kids or myself.  I am not immune to hating to do the things I wanted desperately (if I’m being honest) people to do for me.  The hate-spiral was inevitable.  

So why Twitter? Personally, I think it’s because most of the people I interact with are strangers. It wasn’t super hard for me to figure out why having pseudo-relationships with perfect strangers is sometimes better than the real ones on FB.  It basically comes down to obligations and interests.  Not knowing most of these people IRL means I don’t have to “like” every little thing they post, I don’t have to bring out the false merriment I sometimes do on Facebook.  I interact with whom and what interests me, or what I feel I can comment intelligently (or humorously) on. My particular corner of Twitter is called FinTwit, because it’s an amalgamation of all the finance nerds, most of whom fall into one of these broad camps:

tourists: a/k/a people retired from the biz (like me) or who just have an interest in investing

actual investment professionals: often, but not always, anonymous; some run hundreds of billions of dollars in assets, others are smart men and women at small shops looking to connect with a larger cohort

the Finance Journo cabal: the dozens of venue-hopping journalists (Business Insider to Bloomberg to Reuters to WSJ to NYT etc) or analysts who provide us with all the data and opinions to chew over en masse. 

So this hodge-podge of people, literally from around the world, coalesces around one somewhat serious topic, and then, as humans are wont to do, finds the (gallows?) humor, the irony, the community of actual thought and creates what feel like real friendships.  Ideas are exchanged and challenged, mostly in a pretty civil manner because it’s a public forum, and I learn a lot from really smart people, and maybe teach a few things.  For those living in the same city, these Twitter relationships do absolutely turn into real friendships, and on my travels or at home I’ve had the pleasure of actually meeting a handful of my “Tweeps” (feel free to laugh loudly, Twitter has all sorts of doofus-y sounding in-jokes—alas yet another thing that prevents new users from feeling welcome).  It’s a strange yet comfortable way to meet new people.  My husband, bless his heart, is as open-minded as I am and even though he’s not active on Twitter, he’s come with me every time to meet these “familiar strangers” and does so without irony. 

So what to do about Facebook?  I mentioned that I posted 4 times since I “left.” Three of those were to post on my sons’ and husband’s walls for their birthdays (even I can’t ignore all protocols) and once was to share my excitement for my youngest son’s trip to Thailand.  That kind of boasting (“Look at me! I have a kid willing to travel 15,000 miles without his Mom and Dad!”) is the exact thing I said I loathed, yet there I went ahead and did it.  I make no claims to being above anyone else.  And I’ve had a few people reach out IRL to ask where I’ve been, to express that they miss me on FB. Don’t think I didn’t enjoy that bit of “you’ll miss me when I’m gone” but it hasn’t been enough to make me wanna come back for good.  And the upcoming election?  Hooooo boy that also seems like a great time to sit out, what with all the adoration for xenophobic narcissists and other opinions I don’t need to know you share.  So I’m on the fence.  

Gonna walk the dog and think about what to do.  It might take me another 3 or 4 months to figure it out, and by then maybe I’ll have something really juicy to share so I’ll run to the mutual-admiration-feedback-loop like a horse to water. Or I’ll just continue to stay in my tiny corner of #FinTwit (and sometimes #MomTwitter) and type away.