Category: Uncategorized

A few weeks ago, Jenny and I (along with our friend Katie from Domestic Debacle) had the opportunity to speak on a panel at New Media Dayton. We were talking about brands and bloggers – why brands are interested in working with bloggers (because we are COOL, obviously! Yeah, probably not.), and what makes a good relationship between PR/brands and bloggers.

We cited many of our favorite companies to work with (like Disney, Lands’ End and Intel, to name a few), but one particular story was of interest and unique to us – how we became Frigidaire Test Drive moms. You’ve probably read the story already (and if you haven’t, you can do so here and here), but you haven’t actually heard Jenny tell it, so I thought it would be nice to post this video. Because, really, how often do you get teary when hearing about ovens and washers?

Isn’t that great?

So we’re giving a big shout out to Frigidaire and to Mom Central for looking beyond SEO and page views and all that stuff that makes Jenny’s and my eyes glaze over (wait, I don’t think I was supposed to admit that), and recognizing the value of our personal connection with the company and also with you, our fabulous readers.

Jenny’s post regarding her baby’s gender got me thinking about her obsession with finding out if both her kids were boys or girls… as well as her behavior during my pregnancies.

She linked to her letter to me when I was pregnant with Sam, beseeching me to call the ultrasound tech and say I’d changed my mind and did in fact want to find out the baby’s sex, but really her annoyance with me goes back much further in time than that.

It started approximately 1 second after I announced my first pregnancy to her. (Which was about 1 second after I announced my first pregnancy to my husband, but he thinks we kept it a secret until I went to the doctor, so don’t tell him that.)

So I started to think about all the ways she gave me a hard time about not knowing what type of baby I was having, and with the help of some old emails I never got around to deleting (yay for Yahoo allowing me to have 34,000 completely useless emails saved), I’ve compiled a list.

— Jenny lovingly called Kate “Hermie” for the entire nine months of my pregnancy – short for “Hermaphrodite.”
— She made a list of gender-neutral names we could give the baby (like Pat and Kerry)… I guess she thought the baby’s sex wouldn’t be determinable even after she was born. (Which now that I think about it, was one of the 9 million things I worried about. I’m sure that comes as no surprise.)
— At my baby shower, all the guests made scrapbook pages about memories of me, etc. Jenny filled the entire page with a snarky diatribe about how messed up it was that we didn’t know what brand of baby we were having!
— She threatened not to buy baby #2 any presents, because she refused to buy anything gender-neutral. I distinctly remember her calling me from the mall one day, telling me what a great sale she found but that she wouldn’t buy me anything for the baby because she didn’t know whether to buy pink or blue!
— After my ultrasound, she said she was going to call our doctor’s office and pretend to be me, saying I’d changed my mind and did want to know what the baby was. Really I wouldn’t put it past her.
— Upon hearing the news that Sammy was breech and I was going to have to have another ultrasound at 37 weeks, Jenny’s immediate response was not one of concern, but “Find out the sex!”
— During the winter I was pregnant with Sam, Jenny contemplated hibernating for a host of reasons, including this: “I won’t have to spend the winter months wondering what the HELL the sex of said baby is either, which will be a relief.”
— The day before Sammy was born, Jenny posted this: “Emily is going to thrill us by having another baby!! And more importantly, once it is born she will no longer be able to hide the gender from me! Hallelujah! The suspense is really killing me on that one.”

I really never had the desire to find out whether I was having a boy or a girl, but even if it had been killing me, causing Jenny such angst would really have been worth the wait.

And while I’ll be waiting with bated breath to find out the results of Jenny’s ultrasound this summer, I think it would be poetic justice if they saw all the baby’s organs except, you know, that one.

I baked a pizza – from scratch (I know! Who am I??) – and I really did my best to screw it up. Unintentionally, of course, but you know. That’s how I roll.

I decided to bake pizza because I wanted to try out the super-cool pizza button, which automatically turns on the convection feature. I wasn’t even sure what “convection” even meant, so I googled it, of course.

Convection ovens or fan ovens or turbo ovens augment a traditional oven by circulating heated air using a fan. The fan motor is in a separate enclosure, to protect it from overheating and melting any plastic components including wire insulation. Food warms faster in a convection oven, because the moving air strips away the thin layer of air which otherwise would surround and insulate the food. This is the same physical phenomenon which causes wind chill.

Who knew? (Oh, everyone but me.)

Anyway, I started to make the pizza crust. It’s the first thing I’ve ever made that involved yeast. Are you proud? I thought so.

The first problem was that I didn’t have enough flour. Minor detail. Fortunately my sister was on her way to my house anyway, so I called her and had her bring some over. Crisis averted.

Then the kneading fun began. And by fun, I mean misery. It’s times like these (not that I’ve ever kneaded anything before, but you know, if I did, I’m sure I would have felt the same way) that I wish I had a stand mixer. Ten minutes of kneading dough? ZOMG I’ve had 10 minutes pass faster on the treadmill. For realz.

I didn’t know exactly how long to bake the pizza, so – again – I googled it. The first few things I read warned against using a convection oven for pizza, because apparently sometimes the dough doesn’t get done in the middle. That made me a little nervous. I was planning to bake the crust on my Pampered Chef stoneware bar pan, and I meant to heat up as the oven was pre-heating, hoping that a hot pan would make the crust bake faster. Except I forgot to do that.

Problem number two.

My solution was to bake the crust a little before putting on the toppings. Except I forgot to do that, too.

Problem number three.

There was nothing to do but pop my fully-topped pizza (pepperoni, green pepper and onion, in case you were wondering) on its cold stoneware into the oven, and hoped for the best.

It turned out perfectly. The crust was cooked through and was crispy on the bottom, even on the middle pieces.

Problem number four? We ate it before I remembered to take a picture. But trust me, it was beautiful.

So, despite my best efforts to ruin it, the pizza button and the convection oven came through for me.

It was a miracle, I tell you. A Frigidaire miracle.

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In other news, tonight we had my husband’s tennis team over for dinner… 14 hungry boys descended upon my house less than an hour after I got home from work. Thanks to the Fit-More oven, everything was done on time.

I baked four lasagnas, three pans of brownies and two loaves of garlic bread all at the same time.

Wanna see?

My only “teachable moment” from that experience? Don’t put the bread on the bottom rack. Take my word for it.

I wrote this review while participating in a Test Drive Campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Frigidaire and received a Frigidaire Range/Microwave to facilitate my review.