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5 tips for finding the right gifts to help kids dream big this holiday

Contest closed. This one’s a giveaway too! Special thanks to Mastermind Toys for sponsoring this post.

MastermindToys_GiftGuide

I am so stoked for the holidays this year that I’m surprising myself. The truth is I’d been lacking the seasonal spirit for the past couple years and I was worried it was gone for good, buried under deadlines and stress and all the obligations. Maybe it’s because I will actually be getting a proper work break this year. Maybe it’s because I’m looking forward to spending more time with family. Maybe it’s just that this year has felt so grey for the most part that I’m good and ready to put on some bloody cheer.

Whatever the reason, it’s the truth. I’m going to dress up my house (well, first I’m going to clean it!) and listen to carols and drink eggnog and I might even bake a batch of cookies. Who knows! And I want to get gifts for my kids that will light up their faces. I want to indulge their childhood fantasies and simply bask in the warmth and generosity of the season.

Let’s all make it the best holidays ever! Here are some tips for helping you find the perfect gifts for the kids in your life. (You are on your own with the cookies, though.)

1. Feed their imaginations.

The kids are so much smarter than us! They learn from playing, creating and imagining just as much as they do from sitting in a classroom. So I’m always on the lookout for toys, games and books that will spark creativity and facilitate learning.

2. Check out the Mastermind Toys Holiday Gift Guide

The buyers at Mastermind Toys have scoured the globe to find the very best toys, games and books to make kids’ dreams come true. You can find the holiday guide in and online. I love that it is laid out based on kids’ ages and interests, making it super-simple to find the perfect gift.

Look what I found in this year’s gift guide to feed the imagination of my puzzle-loving tween and my kindie kid!

Colour Cube Sudoku

Diner Play Set

3. Look for something that will help you connect as a family.

It’s always nice when the kids are excited to do something fun with you. But we’re busy! So I like to make sure I find something that we will all want to do together to make sure we find the time to hang out as a family. Depending on what you most enjoy doing, board games, outdoor activities, books and craft projects are all great options.

4. Shop online using Mastermind Toys’ new Gift Finder tool

It’s easier than ever to find the perfect gift at MastermindToys.com. Look for the Gift Finder link at the top of their home page and then easily filter your search by age, category, budget and more. For a  small fee, you can even choose wrapping paper and write a personalized tag for your gifts. This is perfect for shopping for far flung family.

How perfect is this for family game night? I just plugged in what I was looking for in the Gift Finder tool.

pictionary

5. Drop by your local Mastermind Toys store and pick the brain of a Toy Expert

My personal favourite! I love going into the stores, getting wonderful advice on gifts, and then having them wrapped for me free of charge. It’s my holiday and birthday go-to. Visit any of their 59 locations across Canada and chat with the friendly, knowledgeable staff. They’ll be able to offer great suggestions for kids of any age, stage and interest. Bonus: free festive gift-wrapping in every store, and that signature curly bow. Find a store near you: https://www.mastermindtoys.com/Stores

And…DRUM ROLL…here’s how you can win one $150 gift card from Mastermind just in time for the holidays. Fill in the Gleam entry box below and then leave a comment with a link to a product you found on mastermindtoys.com using one of the above tips. Good luck!

CONTEST CLOSED

Giveaway ends Thursday, November 23 at 11:59pm EST. No purchase necessary. One entry per family/household. Giveaway is open to Canadian residents only, excluding Quebec. Thanks again to Mastermind Toys for sponsoring this post.

Mastermind Toys gift card giveaway

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Don’t Forget To Add This To Your Back-to-School Checklist

 

This post was developed in association with the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. The opinions of the author are her own.

Vaccines Up To Date

The school year was already in full swing when I got the letter. I almost ignored it at first, tossing it onto the stack of mail piling up in the front hall. You know the one. It’s next to the pile of shoes, jackets and hats; across the room from Lego mountain; and down the hall from the pile of school forms yet to be signed.

But the official-looking envelope caught my eye and I opened it. It said that my daughter was behind on her shots and would be expelled from school if we didn’t get caught up asap. What? I have always been steadfastly and vocally in favour of vaccinating my children. How did this happen?

So my first reaction was that there was some sort of mistake. Obviously.

Pshaw. My kids have had all their shots. This is just some sort of mix-up.

I would just need to dig up that yellow vaccination record to clear it all up. Easy peasy. So easy, in fact, that I can safely put it off to do later, you know, when I get around to it.

Ahem. So eventually I got a second letter that was basically all, like, we already warned you so now we are for real going to kick your kid out of school if you don’t prove her shots are up to date by this specific date in the very near future.

Oops.

So I went down to my basement office and found the vaccination records of all three kids and realized that I hadn’t bothered bringing them in to get updated by the doctor for several years. They were no help at all.

I called the doctor’s office and was able to get my daughter’s actual record emailed to me. I cross checked it against the shots she was supposed to have received and discovered that she really was missing one. I was actually shocked.

As it turns out, that particular shot had only recently been made mandatory and had somehow slipped through the cracks. Perhaps if I had been bringing in my yellow card for regular updating, my doctor would have noticed. But let’s not point fingers!

In the end, I managed to squeeze in an appointment to get the shot before the quickly approaching deadline and had the doctor update all three of my kids’ vaccination records while we were there. Then I hopped online and updated the public health records and all was right with the world.

Well, I could still use some help with the piles of stuff in the front hall, truth be told.

BUT THE GOOD NEWS IS YOU CAN LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES.

Scheduling regular check ups and making sure our vaccination records are up-to-date is now part of my back-to-school routine. Add it to your own checklist and cross another worry off your list. This Ontario vaccination schedule is super helpful for keeping track of your kids’ Immunizations.

This post was developed in association with the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. The opinions of the author are her own.

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Moments like these are what team sports are all about

I have partnered with YMC and Danone and have received compensation for this post. All opinions in the post are my own.

t-ball moments

The ballpark lights blinked on in the waning daylight, the worst of the summer heat evaporating into the twilight. We scrambled to get the girls ready for the game, cleats laced up, shirts tucked into pants and hair braided. The coaches called them over for a pregame talk, and the rest of us parents packed the last of the deli meats, veggie sticks and yogurt tubes from our communal picnic dinner back into coolers.

They had announcers for this night game on the big diamond, and when they called out her name just before she stepped up to the plate I got chills. She stepped carefully up to the tee and hit the ball hard and straight down the third base line where the third baseman fumbled the play for just long enough for her to round first base and beat the throw to second.

Extra extra, read all about it! Irene got a double and we’re gonna to shout it! IRENE GOT A DOUBLE! Told you we would shout it. No doubt about it. Nana nana nana hit.”

They cheer as hard as they play.

On the field these girls stare down the next batter, call out the play and stand ready. They catch fly balls in the air, field grounders, throw the ball hard and fast, and make double plays. The smallest girls play outfield, snapping up whatever gets past the infielders and throwing it back.

Back in the dugout, she pressed her nose up against the chain link enclosure. “Mommy, did you see? Did you see my hit?”

And now they are all spilling out onto the field jumping and cheering. They’d won! This wasn’t the championship game for the whole tournament, but it was the game that meant the most to our girls. It was the girls championship in which the only two all-girls teams enrolled in the co-ed tournament competed for the title (and the trophey!).

It had been a showcase of skill, determination, sportsmanship and camaraderie, and we all streamed out onto the field after them—parents and players alike—grinning so hard our cheeks hurt.

The girls had already played three games earlier that day and went on to play in the actual final the next day. One frustrated parent from the other side called, “C’mon, are you going to let those girls beat you?” We took that as a compliment.

These memories from last year are flooding in as I pack up for our first tournament of this season. One daughter is playing her final year of t-ball while her little sister plays her very first as a junior member of the team, while I gently cradle the ball of emotion that all these intersecting milestones evoke.

We already know that team sports are such a great way for kids to stay healthy and active, develop healthy attitudes about winning and losing, make friends and build confidence. But I was still not prepared for the positive impact this girls rep team has had on my daughter and our entire family.

Kids sports would be financially out of reach for most families if it weren’t for generous corporate sponsors that hold community involvement and active lifestyles as a core value. So I am incredibly grateful for how much Danone has done for children’s soccer in Canada and internationally.

The Danone Nations Cup is the world’s biggest soccer tournament for children aged 10 to 12, creating a unique opportunity for young soccer players in local communities. Soccer is great sport: it’s accessible, builds skills, and develops positive attitudes related to teamwork and determination.

Canada has participated in the Danone Nations Cup for 17 years, but this year, for the first time in Canada, Danone is bringing separate boys and girls teams to the international field. (Yay!) More than 65,000 budding soccer players have tried to make Team Canada through the years and hundreds have gone on to represent Canada at the international final.

This year, the national final will be on July 6, in Boucherville, Quebec. Then, 12 girls and 12 boys will be selected to play for Team Canada at the international final in New York.

Can you imagine how that must feel? Can you imagine how their parents must feel?

Good luck to them all.

I have partnered with YMC and Danone and have received compensation for this post. All opinions in the post are my own.

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How to make peace with your kids’ mess

kids scissors mess

I was tidying up the main floor of the house the other day and noticed that it wasn’t that bad!

Sure, there were toys left out, stray socks shoved behind couch cushions and assorted piles of books, papers and ball caps strewn about, but it was a relatively painless tidy. I made a quick sweep of the space and tucked everything away into it’s proper place in under half an hour.

Then I felt a deep and powerful sense of calm come over me. It was like I had reached the end of a long, spiritual journey usually reserved for monks and gurus. I don’t know what nirvana is like, but I couldn’t imagine it was better than this.

For eleven years I’ve been taking care of babies, toddler, preschoolers and kindie kids while working from home. That’s eleven years of toy bins emptied out, snacks spilled onto the floor, board game pieces scattered across three floors, elaborate games and crafts, and countless other messes before we even get into bodily fluids.

Most recently, my five-year-old has been on a years-long avid scissors kick, cutting out snippets of paper, pictures from colouring books, magazines, flyers, and drawing her own creations just so she could cut them out. On the one hand I encouraged this because it kept her productively occupied for hours on end. On the other, it made for a constant and chronic epic mess of snippets, papers, wrappers and all imaginable art supplies.

But then she stopped.

*blink*

I realized she seemed to be over it. She was doing other things now: drawing, building, playing with toys and watching her brother play video games (at least it’s tidy!). It had been days (maybe weeks) since I’d swept up paper snippets. And the older kids didn’t make the same messes that they used to either. (Or they made them in their own rooms at least.) I could suddenly keep up with the daily disorder! There was still clutter (c’mon) but it was manageable.

So I may have gotten carried away. I may have started imagining how I would be able to tackle the drawers and corners of the main floor. I would go on a prolonged and intensive purge—an hour a day!—and reclaim the playroom and the basement storage/junk room as well. I’d reorganize my office! And repaint the kids rooms! And build a new addition … okay, maybe not that.

I was so caught up in my new sense of impending order that I didn’t see the signs at first.

“Mommy, it’s baby turtle’s birfday and there’s going to be a big party. You’re invited!”

“That’s nice, sweetie,” I said as I started to prep for dinner.

I didn’t notice, then, how quiet she’d become. I stepped over lines upon lines of stuffed animals without barely noticing them. It didn’t register when her big sister brought out the paper supplies.

The turtle’s party was all set to happen just as dinner was ready. So I made the kids eat first and that’s when I realized her plan. We were all to hide from the little plastic turtle and then jump out all at the same time. We’d all yell, “Surprise!” and then my five-year-old would …

… She would throw up all the confetti she’d been painstakingly cutting out for the past several hours.

Confetti.

The grand climax to her hours-in-the-making party planning.

So I clenched my fist and willed myself a small taste of that zen-like serenity I’d known just earlier that day.

I hid behind a doorway and then 1, 2, 3! SURPRISE! And she threw the confetti up in the air, running back and forth, covering floors and furniture alike. Then we all sat down to eat the slices of birthday cake she’d cut out of construction paper. I pretended to eat mine, breaking out my best mouth-smacking, fake eating sounds.

“No, Mommy. This is how you eat it.”

She picked up a pair of scissors and proceeded to snip the cake slice up into a million little pieces while she ate. Then she handed me the scissors and I did the same. Because now I know that there is an end in sight, and maybe we don’t have to rush toward it quite so fast.

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We also bought a run-down rooming house, but we just kind of moved in

In this week’s spirit of sharing our brave “rooming house turned family home” sagas Ă  la the Toronto Life crack house story, I thought I’d share ours. You see, just like the young family who bought a dilapidated Parkdale rooming house in 2010, we bought a ramshackle rooming house in the Junction in that very same year! Oh, the parallels. How nice to read about such kindred spirits. Except … well, I guess there are a few differences.

Front lawn couchMe and our first two kids when we were “fixing up” the new house.

Lets break ’em down for kicks.

Same same
We both had to act fast. Catherine Jheon and her husband had to quickly put in an offer (before they’d even taken a good look at the house) to buy their rooming house before the owners realized what it was actually worth. We had two days to decide to outbid several others in a power-of-sale situation.

That’s different!
The actual value of the fully detached 4000-square-foot Victorian house in Parkdale had a market value much higher than the $560,000 they paid for it. Our three-bedroom semi on a main street was worth no more than the meager mortgage we just barely qualified for.

Same same
The people who were living in both our houses when the sale closed were reluctant to leave.

That’s different!
Jheon and her husband gave some squatters who didn’t want to leave an extra two months and ultimately paid one $3000 to vacate the premises. We just told the old tenants they had to get the hell out and they left.

Same same
We both had young families and didn’t want to have to live in a construction site. Jheon’s son was two and she was pregnant. We had a four-year-old and one-year-old.

That’s different!
Jheon and her husband sold the house they were living in which freed up $200,000 of money for renovations. When they realized they didn’t want to live through the renos with a young child and another on the way, Jheon writes,”Luckily, we still owned the two-bedroom condo at King and Bathurst.”

We had a total of $20,000 left on our line of credit with which to make our place liveable and one month before we had to give up our rental apartment. It was still very much a construction zone when we moved in.

Restore findThe kitchen island we found at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore for $500.

Same same
I can relate to Jheon’s description of cat pee-soaked and nicotine-stained walls and general filth and grime.

That’s different!
While Jheon and her husband decided to gut their entire house so that all that was left of the original was the exterior brick and front door, we mostly made do with scrubbing and painting.

They squandered hundreds of thousands of dollars on an inept contractor and were still able to finish their high-end reno thanks to a large personal loan from a generous godfather.

We definitely bought a couple cans of paint we didn’t end up using (they are still in a basement closet, I’m pretty sure) and were only able to put in a kitchen on the main floor (where there had only been an empty room) thanks to some some sweet finds at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore and the hard work and expertise of my father-in-law.

They now live in a beautiful, fully renovated home with radiant in-floor heating, a custom kitchen, roomy bedrooms, walk-in closets and all the bells and whistles. We did put in our “reclaimed” kitchen and sprang for such luxury items as a new furnace, water heater and front shingles. The next lump of money we sink into this house might even go toward fixing our water pressure! So fun.

Of course, “Young family buys crappy house because that’s all they can afford, paints” is not much of a story because people do this all the time. It’s much more fun to gawk at rich people who foolishly waded in over their heads and became overwhelmed by the scope of the job. But, of course, that story’s a lie, too, isn’t it?

The plight of Jheon and her husband trying to renovate their crack home is being played out as yet another example of how the Toronto real estate market is making people reckless. They are cast as naive suckers who paid for a house sight unseen and were lucky they didn’t lose their shirts in the process. The truth is that they knew exactly what they were doing, from the very first moment they had their agent friend knocking on doors to see if they could negotiate a quick sale. They didn’t care what state the house was in because they planned to gut it completely all along. When the reno stalled, they moved into the fallback condo they already owned. And when all is told they ended up with a three million dollar house for a third of the price.

I mean, they could even afford to make an impulse purchase on a run-down cabin on its own private island while they were renovating that house. Maybe we’ll be able to buy a piece of land next to a highway somewhere to pitch a tent. But probably not.

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To all of the girls on the cusp of the cusp of adolescence

preteen ponytail

Over the weekend my eight-year-old daughter asked for my phone or tablet to bring up to her room so she could listen to music while she cleaned. I thought for second and then said, “Hold on. I think I have just the thing.”

I did a deep dive into the most remote and forsaken corner of the basement and surfaced some time later with a bonafide boom box. Score!

After wiping off two decades worth of dust and grime, I brought it up to her room and turned on the radio. A familiar static crackled from the speakers interspersed with an inaudible voice.

“It doesn’t work, Mommy. It’s glitching so badly!”

“Oh, sweetie. We just need to use this dial to tune into a station.”

After a few rage-inducing misses—ohmigosh, no, I hate this music—the dial settled on a top 40 station. She perked right up. “Oh, I like this. This is good. Thank you. You can go now.”

And I left her there to sort through piles of DIY plastic jewelry, sketch books full of her own “fashion girls,” diaries, peel off nail polish, and Shopkins, teddy bears and other relics of a childhood not-yet passed. She bopped around to pop lyrics she doesn’t quite understand and looked onward with stars in her eyes toward days spent loafing around with friends, gossiping about boys and clothes.

She’s on the cusp of being on the cusp of adolescence. There’s still so much innocence here. It’s a world full of glitter, lip gloss and giggles where your dreams might come true at an Ariana Grande concert.

And so today my heart goes out to all the girls who are flirting with what it means to become a woman. It goes out to all the young women who will dawdle in front of the mirror trying to get their hair just right (even if they can take on this world with their brains alone.)  And also to those of us who can only just barely remember the prickly excitement of our first taste of preteen freedom.

It’s hard not to take this personally. Don’t tell me these attacks aren’t personal.

All I can hope is for them to keep on shining on in their cut-off jean shorts and sequined shirts and Rainbow Brite hair and plastic bangles and sparkly lip gloss and high higher highest ponytails. Shine on.

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Self-employed parents: Will you be ready to retire? I won’t.

Big thanks to TD for sponsoring this post and giving me the kick in the butt to start thinking about retirement that I needed. 

I’m going to be completely honest. As a work-from-home, self-employed mother, planning for my retirement is the last thing on my mind. I’m not ready to retire at all! I worry about making mortgage payments, paying the kids’ camp fees, planning family vacations and managing my taxes instead. I know I’m not alone.

But retirement should be on our minds. Because we could very well be the most ill-prepared generation ever.

Okay, so maybe not ever.

But I do see a lot of families that look like mine. We’re taking work-life balance into our own hands by opting out of a traditional dual full-time income situation. You know what I mean. We’ve quit our regular jobs in order to start our own businesses or to take on freelance or contract gigs and be able to work from home. This gives us the freedom to be there for school pickups, sick days and school holidays. We make our own schedules and figure out how to juggle work and family responsibilities in a way that makes the most sense for us.

Mila Kunis breakfast scene in Bad Moms

I had been working a lower-rung job for a big telecommunications company when I had my first baby. I took my one-year maternity leave, mulled over the prospect of a long commute and longer work day, crunched some numbers, and decided to stay home for a few more months. My husband’s salary and benefits could (just barely) support us in the short term. When my son was about 18-months old I naively wheeled his stroller into a posh local daycare and wondered about their part-time rates. I thought I’d like to start working again, maybe three days a week. They laughed me out of the building. Part-time? They didn’t even offer that. Besides, there was a two-year wait list for full-time spots and the rates would cost me nearly all of my salary.

So I wound up picking up a couple evening and weekend shifts at a busy downtown restaurant instead, and found a daycare spot for my son just in time for me to clock enough employment hours working for a temp agency to take my second maternity leave. There I was, at home with a toddler and a newborn, my meager mat leave payments a ticking time bomb pressuring me to figure out some way to make it all work. Restaurant shift work and temp gigs were increasingly more difficult to arrange and, what’s more, they weren’t getting me anywhere.

So I started writing. I mean, I’ve always been writing, for as long as I can remember. But I had published a few freelance articles before I had kids, so I thought if I could make just enough money to make ends meet, I could have the best of both worlds. I started blogging, pitching story ideas, networking, and found just enough income to make it work. We bought a house and had a third baby. I worked harder, earned more, and had somehow — against all odds — carved out a career path for myself.

Work-from-home mom

My early work-from-home days.

Not once did I seriously consider opening up an RRSP. I didn’t even consider how to be ready to retire at all.

This is how we do it. We hit pause on retirement savings while we’re coping with diapers and daycare. (We actually use our retirement savings as down payments on a house, don’t we?) But then daycare fees turn into hockey tournaments and summer camps and university applications, and we’ve forgotten to plan for our own futures at all.

It’s now been over a decade since I’ve had a job that paid into any sort of retirement plan, not even the Canadian Pension Plan. My husband does have a job with all the good perks: dental benefits, a drug plan, and a pension. But is that enough? What if something happens? What about me? 

The good news is that it’s not too late. Even if you’re ten or 15 years older than me, it’s still not too late. With the right strategies, you can prepare for the retirement you want even just 15 years before retiring. Of course, what we want to do with our retirement is just as different as what we did before we got there. Do you dream of escaping from the city and settling down somewhere quiet? I know I want to be able to travel as much as possible.

The first step for me (and you, too, I hope) is to sit down with a TD advisor for a free TD goals-based assessment. They will listen to what is most important to me, and look beyond the numbers to figure out how to make that happen. You can even get started by going over your retirement goals with a TD advisor over the phone.

And when I really stop to think about it, being prepared for my retirement will be a gift for my children down the road anyway.

Disclosure: This post is part of the YummyMummyClub.ca and TD #RetireReady sponsored program. I received compensation as a thank you for my participation. This post reflects my personal opinion about the information provided by the sponsors.

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Five reasons why my slow cooker is ruining dinner

Bad slow cooker meal

My slow cooker is ruining my life! Or, okay fine. But it’s at least messing with dinner.

There I am, all chopping and dicing first thing in the morning before I’ve even had my third coffee, thinking about how much I am totally owning this Wednesday. That’s right, people. Give me your best shot. Deadlines? Appointments? Meetings? Lunches? Sick kids? Two hockey practices, a subway delay, and a freaking blizzard? NICE TRY. But, sorry, you can’t get me down because I have dinner made. Better luck next time.

And then. And then. You have got to be kidding me.  The stew I made for dinner had that god-awful, gag-me-now, unidentified slow cooker flavour. Again this has happened? For real? How is a woman supposed to take over the world and feed her family at this same time when dinner keeps getting sabotaged?

The taste is hard to pin point. It’s definitely an undertone that permeates the entire dish rather than one element or another. It’s not-quite metallic, but I almost want to use that description for lack of a better word. It certainly doesn’t remind me of any other food flavour I’ve experienced other than “slow cooker.” Dishes with more or stronger seasoning and less liquid seem to have less of this flavour and chicken dishes, especially any kind of chicken soup, chowder, or stew seem to have the most.

At first, I thought it was just a bad recipe. Then I got hip and realized this was a problem for me with slow cooking in general. But what I couldn’t figure out was why so many people swear by their slow cookers. Don’t they have the same problem? Then, after last night’s slow-cooking-tainted dinner, something snapped and I became downright obsessed. WHAT IS THIS TASTE?

So I used the tried-and-true method of asking around and googling a bunch and here’s what I came up with. It’s gotta be one of these five things.

My slow cooker is the worst. I have a seven or eight-year-old Crock-Pot with a stoneware insert that could be, maybe, absorbing flavours. Maybe it has absorbed enough weird tastes that it taints all the dishes made in it. Maybe the stoneware itself is leaching some sort of off-tasting substance into the food! Maybe I’ve thought about this possibility on and off for years, but then went, “Eh, but it’s probably fine,” and kept on using it and now the guilt is driving me insane and I am hallucinating the flavour.

I’m doing it wrong. This is the crowd favourite and, really, who can blame them? After all, everybody else likes their slow cooker! They make wonderful and delicious meals that are hot and ready for their family AND they kick butt all day not standing over the stove. I’m probably an idiot; some kind of savant who can work a stove top, oven, barbecue, broiler, and waffle maker, but just cannot wrap my head around a frigging crock pot. Listen! I’m not saying they’re wrong. It’s entirely possible. They tell me to choose a recipe that actually needs a long cooking time, to avoid ingredients that will turn bitter like garlic and peppers, and to sear meat before adding it, and, by god, I will try to do those things better.

I’m cooking the food to death. Here’s a wild idea. PERHAPS slow cooking most food on low for 7 to 8 hours is an insanely long time and finally my dinner has to roll over and surrender. “I already died around the five hour mark, lady. Now I am actually rotting. That flavour you can’t put your finger on is decomposition.” Right. That almost actually makes sense. Like, maybe anything short of a braised shoulder roast which does, in fact, require a small eternity to break down, should just be thrown in on high for three to four hours instead. Better yet, I could simply use a pot.

I should use a liner. Hold up. Say again? You can buy disposable heat-safe plastic liners that you can dump all your food into so you never have to wash another Crock-Pot in your life?!? Sign. Me. Up. Hey, maybe that’ll even help with the flavour.

I am one of the chosen ones. Or just maybe every dish ever cooked in a slow cooker tastes like garbage, but only people with an *ahem* refined enough palette can pick up on it. But seriously! Maybe it’s like how some people gag on cilantro while the rest of us are getting fat off guacamole. Maybe not everyone can taste it. My husband, for example, thought last night meal was “pretty good.” Half the people I talk to are all, “I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU MEAN,” while the other half just shrug and say, “I can give you a recipe if you want.”

Now that we’ve narrowed down the possibilities, the only thing left is to see how many more slow cooker dinners I can stomach trying to get to the bottom of this. Oh yes, I am way too crazy invested to let this drop now. Let’s see which of these theories holds water.

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Visit the ROM for the Holidays

Giveaway closed. This post is also a giveaway! Enter to win a family membership to the ROM.

Families visit the ROM.

The kids are off school for a full two weeks after Christmas this year and you will be wanting something to do. Don’t worry, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto has got us covered. This year they have put together 14 days of programming for families to enjoy throughout the winter break.

From Monday, December 26th to Sunday, January 8, the ROM will become a winter wonderland, displaying glowing lights, festive traditions, exclusive galleries, and the last chance to visit the breathtaking glass sculptures of the CHIHULY exhibit. Other highlights include inflatable balloon sculptures, touchable objects like volcanic glass or a polar bear skull, a musical show with Sonshine and Broccoli, and decorating a holiday tree. The museum is also open for extended hours; 10 to 7 most days (10 to 5:30 on Dec. 31 and Jan. 8).

And know that if you have young kids and live in Toronto, a family membership to the ROM is a veritable lifeline. How wonderful to have a warm and enriching place to escape from the cold or duck into for a couple hours on a rainy afternoon. The ROM has a great hands-on kids area as well as, you know, a large display of dinosaur bones and actual Egyptian mummies. ROM Members get express entry and unlimited free access to exhibitions and galleries, attend exclusive previews, enjoy members-only discounts, plus much more. Now is the time to pounce on this for yourself or as a gift. Until December 31, save $20 on a Family/Dual Membership for up to two named adults and four kids under 17. Visit rom.on.ca/membership and enter the promo code HOLIDAY.

Giveaway closed. Enter below for a chance to win (1) ROM Family Membership that is valid for one year.

Playground Confidential ROM Family Membership giveaway

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