Dana Burland

Omg, my kids ate these! These chicken "kebabs", lightly seasoned with Mediterranean spices, with specks of fresh parsley visible. I will make these again, because they ate them. And they will not eat them that next time, but I will.  Sheet Pan Chicken Kebabs Ingredients 1 lb ground chicken  1/2 cup yellow onion 1/4 cup fresh parsley 3 cloves garlic 1 egg 1 T coriander 1 1/2 t cumin 1 t cinnamon 1 t salt 1 pinch cloves 1/4 t black pepper About 1.5 T olive oil Directions 1. Preheat oven to 425 2. In a small food processor grind the onion, parsley and garlic 3. In a medium bowl, combine ground chicken, onion/parsley/garlic mix, all spices and egg. Mix until combined 4. Add a glug of olive oil to a quarter baking sheet, then spread the chicken mixture into a full rectangle covering the full baking sheet, about 1/2 inch thick, flatten evenly 5. Use a knife or bench scraper, separate in lines about 1.5 inches thick. Drizzle remaining olive oil evenly on top to coat chicken complet...

Ok. This is it. This is THE recipe. No, my family will not settle for bread maker challah (which is good, but not AS good, and also not impressively braided). No, the original online recipe won’t do either, as it has resulted in burnt bottoms too many times for me in two different ovens. It has to be this way. Yes, you have to dedicate about a day of babysitting this recipe/bread. Yes, this simple recipe with few ingredients might cause you to sweat and swear up a storm wondering if anything is happening. Yes, once I did throw away the dough after rise one, because it looked like it was doing NOTHING, just to find in my perfectly warm and dark garbage can it had risen beautifully the next morning. Oy. Anyway. Here it is, saved for all time. Best Challah (Egg Bread) Adapted from Smitten Kitchen The original recipe author says three risings always makes for the tastiest loaves, even better if one of them is slowed down in the fridge. If you do one in the fridge, it can sit...

It was a REAL gamble to not make Auntie Rae ’s “brown slop in a bag” brisket for Rosh Hashanah this year. Her brisket was THE brisket growing up and don’t you dare tell my grandma I said that. Anyway, I strayed from the path and made Smitten Kitchen’s Braised Brisket with Onions instead, and AUNTIE RAE I’M SORRY! But THIS is it. It was easy, it was BETTER made 1-2 days in advance (omg, thank you), and it had amazing tenderness and depth of flavor. I do have recipe alteration notes… ones important enough to capture this in blog perpetuity. A blog post doesn’t have the same nostalgia as a 30 year old printed recipe with beef broth splatter on it, though. For all nostalgic moments, there’s a new core memory. This New Year it’s my 8 and 5 year old boys blowing the shofar, seated around a table they carefully helped set for family–complete with handmade name place markers, guest portraits on watercolored paper, AND Auntie Rae’s hand-me-down napkins. Boy would she be hysterically ye...

Writing to you freshly showered, kinda sore and very tired post my second EGR Reeds Lake Triathlon Relay.  I relayed with the same crew from last year --a current and former coworker, both who are LIGHTENING fast in their respected legs of the race. I, however, was the slow poke. Sort of.  Last year I trained up big time for the relay, and freaked myself out swimming at almost full hyperventilation for a crazy 10:24 PR. But the thing about open water swim courses is that it's just kinda different every year. The water current, the visibility, the traffic of other bodies in the water.  This year I swam 14:43. It definitely felt more in control and less frantic, more paced vs all out sprint, and admittedly I wasn't in as A+ swim shape. But what's interesting is results wise... there absolutely are some relay swimmers faster than me, but not a ton and very few drastically faster. Visibility this year was for sure rough. And last year the relay group was sent into the water i...

Did you also find yourself hiding in some prickly bushes today, or was it not your youngest's first day of Kindergarten? Look, I had to. Just like I had to follow the bus 3 years ago when my oldest went off to Kindergarten. How could you NOT need to visually confirm a sweet boy with chubby cheeks and a backpack covering shoulders to back of knees arrives to his new unknown of elementary school safely? Today it was my youngest guy's turn--day 1 of Kindergarten. So, I drove the opposite way from Daddy and both boys (they're drop off AM kids now) and returned to my elementary school parking lot bush hiding location. Out of sight from my kids, but not aggressively so that parents/teachers/other kids were freaked out by the emotional woman in the brush.  I watched both boys hop out of Daddy's car. Older bro hyping up younger bro. Holding his hand. Taking him to the pool of other freaked out Kindergarteners. Sticking with him and giving him a parting ways hug. Cue the parenta...

Reporting to you one degree shy of sunburnt, a bit lake smelly, and still unsure what day it is. That's right, we're freshly back from vacation, and it was sooo gooood. We rented a cottage for a week in the Canadian Lakes area--annoyingly not near, nor having anything to do with, Canada. We split our time there with B's family joining for a few days, then mine. Except for one rainy (REALLY rainy) day, every day was a wonderfully sunny repeat of the one before. Our cottage came equipped with two kayaks and two paddle boards. We had a small clear beach before the water got real weedy, and schools of bluegill fish plus a day of sighting the "king and queen"--two pike. We may have increased the fish sighting with consistent Cherrios feedings. Most days we splashed around at our beach and tooled around on the kayaks/paddle boards. Good lord is it cute seeing A in his life jacket sit at the end of the board and hunt for (plentiful) seaweed. There was LOTS of kid snorkel...

Sure I workout, but that's nothing compared to the endurance, stamina and strength built from parenting young boys. Nuthin. Truly I need that AM gym session to keep up with these guys. Case in point: Cam enjoys seeing my steps on my iPhone at the end of the day. Given I don't carry my phone around everywhere so it doesn't track everything, I do carry it when I run. If I go for a rare extra long run, then enter regular weekend parent mode, I can maybe get around 13K--but typically on weekends I'm around 8-10K.  So, Cam gets a kid's watch for his birthday, with a pedometer on it. And he wears it to day camp. That night I ask him like he asks me--how many steps? Reader. 12,284 steps. He clocked 5-6 miles. And was he tired at dinner reporting this? No. Did we go back out to play after dinner where he ran, threw a football around, wrestled? Yes. Was he overly exhausted at bedtime? Of course not.  His watch also tracks sleep, where he reported the next morning 10.5 hours ...