For the Love of Cupcakes!

Caramel Cappuccino Cupcakes

Now who doesn't love cupcakes?!

Well, for one, ME!  Well at least I used to not love cupcakes.  I know, I know, I can't believe it myself either.

I mean, it's not like I hated cupcakes.  I enjoyed a good cupcake here and there, Red Velvet being my favorite, but I was one of those who got into the cupcake hype a lot too late.

My husband has been asking for cupcakes to come out of my kitchen for years now, BUT all the work that went into making a single cupcake that I would probably get sick of after eating a couple only to be left with a bunch leftover that I would probably throw away or end up keeping in the fridge for weeks....well that wasn't my cup of tea.

Oh and I wasn't in the slightest convinced that baking up a cake "in a cup" would make any culinary difference.  So I stayed away from making cupcakes. Notice I said, stayed away from making them.  That didn't stop me from eating them though :-).  

This Mom's Cinnamon Rolls

This blog is dedicated to my great friend Dominique, who requested this particular post. 

When am I ever NOT in the mood for cinnamon rolls?  Like right now...I want cinnamon rolls.  *Waits 5 minutes*.  Yep, I still want cinnamon rolls.

I have always loved this doughy, baked roll of deliciousness as a child.  But the only place I could get them was at school, when the cooks were in a good enough of a mood to bake up pans of delicious cinnamon rolls that we could smell all the way from our classrooms.  Who else remembers eating these at school growing up in American Samoa?

And those cooks could bake up a mean batch of these babies!  But unfortunately we could only have just ONE roll, at breakfast, maybe once every month, IF we were lucky.  I would always envy the students who were related to the cooks.  Because they always got extra helpings of cinnamon buns.  I always tried to befriend those lucky kids, but somehow my spur of the moment friendliness seemed to never stick.  Meh.  I tried.

Bakeries around the island made and sold cinnamon rolls, but Mom and Dad couldn't afford to buy all 8 of us a cinnamon roll each.  Which made the once a month cinnamon rolls at school that much more magical!

This Mom's Chicken Noodle Soup

My kids just got over a round of the cold, but thankfully, this one did not last long.  And just as we thought we were in the clear, my 4 year-old daughter comes down with another bug and has been sick for the past couple of days.  Her fever spikes worried me so yesterday had to be a work-from-home type of day so I could nurse my baby back to health.

And what other better way to kick the cold (or flu) in the butt than with Chicken Noodle Soup!  She also asked for buttermilk pancakes for breakfast yesterday which probably didn't do much for her cold but if it made her smile and cheer up, then it's a win in my book :-).

So I always have 2 versions of everything in my head: "Supermom goals" and "What really happens/happened".  So here are those two versions that we all sometimes struggle with

Supermom goals - make homemade chicken noodle soup EVERY SINGLE TIME the kids or hubby comes down with a cold.  That would be a LOT of soup!  And I would never leave the kitchen..yikes!

What really happens/happened - soup from a can. And when I'm feeling fancy, everyone is in for a treat with the stars noodle variety :-).

My Heart Clicks For You - Part 3

Catch up first if you haven't already by reading Part 1 & Part 2.

Hours later and I'm still in the ER. My blood pressure continued to register critically low as the monitors persisted in their relentless alarm alerts. And my heart was still racing as if I was running a marathon.

As the minutes slowly ticked away, I went in and out of consciousness, taking short naps as I continued to wait.  Minutes turned into hours and finally almost 6 hours later, the nurse starts prepping me for my move upstairs.  She unhooks me from the wall monitors and then reconnects me to a portable monitor that gets placed at the foot of my bed.

"It's protocol for heart patients" she says.  

I guess she saw the quizzical look on my face when I was staring at the "box" monitor that I learned later had to go with me everywhere I went.

Heart Patient.  

Those two little words now defined me inside the walls of this hospital.  And I couldn't help but wonder if those two little words will continue to define me outside of here...outside there...where my life awaited me.

This Mom's Chili

Beef chili with beans in the making :-)

Looking for a quick, easy meal that you cook just once but will continue to feed your family all week long?  My go to dish is CHILI!  It's...

• Easy - make it in a crockpot to save you even more time and effort!
• Healthy - 99% of my chilis are Paleo
• Quick - one pot meal that is as easy as dumping all the ingredients into one pot and you are done!
• Delicious the next day - leftovers are delicious and gets better over time!
• Versatile - on hot rice, by itself, in a wrap, or toss it in with cooked spaghetti noodles!
• Cheap Eats! - use whatever you have on hand, so its great to make use of leftover chicken, odds and ends of vegetables you have that might go bad soon, and if you have beans and like them, toss those in too!  
• Toppable! - add toppings like shredded cheese, crushed up tortilla chips, diced onions, and don't forget that squeeze of lemon!
• And best of all...Customizeable! - if chili is all you will learn to cook, fear not because there are a million different ways you can make it :-).  Chili is customizable through what you put in it. You can go meat or meatless, bean or beanless, tomato based or not, and mild or spicy.  

Pagipopo! (Samoan Coconut Cream Buns!)

Delicious. Fluffy, Coconut-ty Pagipopo - Samoan coconut cream buns!

My passion for making pagipopo stemmed from my pregnancy cravings for the delicious dessert pastry we as Samoans all grew up loving.  As a Sunday afternoon treat after a long, breezy ride in the back of our pick-up trucks, accompaniment to evening tea and koko Samoa with family and friends, or as a decadent dessert anytime of the week, Pagipopo is a Samoan classic that I will always have a special place for in my heart (and tummy :-)).

At one time, all bakeries in Samoa carried pagipopo, so growing up we never really had the need to make it ourselves.  A quick trip to the village bakery right down the road and we could have ourselves any amount of pagipopo we desired.  There was nothing quite like smelling the sweet aroma of pagipopo wafting all throughout the house even before seeing it, and then opening up that aluminum foil covering, breaking off a bun or three from the pan, and then ladling on the warm, sweet coconut sauce all over the pagipopo!

My Heart Clicks For You - Part 2

I've gathered myself together enough to continue this story :-).  And as much as I would like to take credit for being strategic in my "suspense" technique (lol), I can assure you all, that breaking up this story into parts has nothing to do with suspense but everything to do with how much telling it takes a massive toll on me.  So here goes the continuation :-).

If you have not read Part 1, STOP and read it here before continuing.

My Heart Clicks For You - Part 2...
That day was made specially for me, because the ER was empty, a sight that is very rarely seen.  It was a Monday afternoon, around 3pm, and if it were not for my heart murmur, the ER receptionist would have had a pretty chill afternoon shift.

Kinda eerie I remember thinking.  ER, on a Monday afternoon, felt all too familiar.  Insert Deja Vu moment.  Oh that's right, we were just here a little over a year ago, on a Monday afternoon too.  It was August 11, 2014, but instead of my walking in alone, I had accompanied my 6 year-old son on a stretcher, holding his leg up while tears and screams of agony rang loud and clear throughout the ER lobby.  And the ER wasn't empty, like it was now.  It was full and I remember seeing so many faces as we went through the ominous double doors that led to where all the action happens.  I will never forget that day and here I was again, same day of the week, around the same time, same ER.  But instead it was September 21, 2015, and my family was already miles away from me.

My Heart Clicks For You

A foot long scar is forever a part of me now :-).  A reminder of God's miraculous work in my life. 

This morning I wake up to my husband with his head on my chest, a happy sight that always makes my heart flutter.  And as a smile slowly makes it away across my face, he looks up to me and says,

"I can hear your heart babe."  

To this I reply,

"It clicks for you.  And for our kids." 

Today's blog is a difficult one for me.  It will be the first time I openly talk about the details of that horrid day that led to my "ticker" being transformed to a "clicker".  You will know more about what I mean as you read on.  This blog is titled, "My Heart Clicks for You", in dedication to my Superman husband who assumed all of my roles at home in addition to his own, when I was temporarily out of commission :-).   And by temporarily I mean 3 months.  Yes all men of the world...my husband took care of business and did an incredibly fine job of it!

My Heart Clicks For You.
I always get a kick out of nurses and doctors when they listen to my heart.  The very shocked looks on their faces as they jerk away their stethoscope from my chest, trying hard to keep their professional composure so as not to let me in on their brief moment of unnerved "surprise"...

"Oh wait, let me listen to that again!"..

"Umm...hang on let me check your medical record." 

"Wait...is that a..er..ahem..a pacemaker...yeah that's a pacemaker right?"

LOL.

Every chance I get, I purposefully leave out the little tidbit about having an artificial heart valve.  It's one of the tiny and very few perks of having gone through double bypass open heart surgery to replace my aortic valve with a mechanical one, thus the "clicking" sound created every time blood whooshes through my aorta to get pumped to the rest of my body.  Did I mention that I was only 33 years old, healthy as a horse all of my life, birthed 4 children into this world, and did not have a single mar or even the tiniest of blips on my medical record that indicated otherwise?