I’m sick and when I am sick, I crave comfort food. Right now I am craving a sweet treat my mom used to make for us when we were feeling ill.

We used to watch “Little House on the Prairie” every week with Mom. Laura Ingalls-Wilder mentioned these little cakes in her books more than once and we were thrilled when we finally tracked down the recipe. No other scone-type recipe seems to turn out as good as this one.

1 1/2 cup white flour
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of nutmeg
1/4 cup chilled lard (can use shortening)
1/3 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425º.

Mix flour, sugar, baking soda, and nutmeg. With cold fingers, rub lard into dry mix. Add buttermilk and work into dough.

Roll out dough and cut into six wedges to be shaped into hearts.

Grease cookie sheet and bake about 15 minutes. Dust with sugar.

I have skin like my mother’s. She has skin like her mother’s. All in all, the skin of the women in our family is all pretty much the same in both color and texture. I have to admit, I was pretty lucky to have inherited skin that refrains from wrinkles quite well. My grandmother taught my mom her skincare regimen. My mom passed it along to me, and my grandmother followed up with great tips.

It’s my place to pass along skincare tips to my own daughter. The thing is, her skin is very different from mine. I am very fair skinned. She is decidedly olive skinned. Her skin has a different texture, it behaves differently in sunlight, and I know she will need a skincare regimen that suits her needs rather than mine.

For example, her father has small, dark patches of scarring from when he had acne breakouts as a teen. He also tends to scar on the outside with larger injuries. I’m not used to dealing with those issues and as it turns out, my daughter’s skin is more like her dad’s than it is my own.

ORIKI Cosmeceuticals has products specifically for those with Asian, Mediterranean and other Olive (AMO) skin types. The products take into consideration the unique pigmentation factor AMO skin types. I am happy to have the products and the company website as a resource, because I had never given thought before to the fact that I need to take pigmentation into the mix when teaching Gigi to care for her skin.

I’ve written numerous articles about the dangers of MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) or what some call the “superbug”.

Today the reported that over 90,000 Americans get potentially deadly infections annually from a drug-resistant staph and that deaths caused by MRSA may actually exceed those caused by AIDS.

One of the sneakier characteristics of MRSA is that is it can be carried by perfectly healthy people. It tends to hang out on your skin and in your nose. The superbug used to be considered to be a risk only in hospitals and other healthcare settings. But, it has made its way out into the community. You can pick up MRSA on shopping cards, playground equipment, sports facilities, schools and daycare centers, …pretty much anywhere.

My daughter had several outbreaks of MRSA when she first started to attend her old pre-school. The infections started out as very small, red pimple-like sores on her torso. They would quickly grow larger and boil-like, coming to a head several times. They were hot to the touch and sensitive. Eventually, we would end up in the doctor’s office to have them drained. It was unpleasant and frightening.

MRSA can enter the bloodstream and attack the soft tissue. In fact, MRSA is said to be the culprit in the death yesterday of a 17-year-old Virginia high school senior. Doctors said the germ had spread to his kidneys, liver, lungs and muscles around his heart.

Good hygiene can be the most important aspect of preventing infection. Wash your hands frequently and properly, especially after sneezing into your hand or picking your nose. Wash your hands after shopping and touching thing is public. Clean scrapes and cuts quickly. We use Staphaseptic (which you can get at any drugstore) instead of a typical antibiotic ointment, because MRSA powers right through ointments like Neosporin.

I’m just happy the medical community is finally taking the time to recognize the epidemic of MRSA in the community. The more we make this issue stay in the spotlight, the better we can all be equipped to fight it.

In an earlier post today, I talked about how Gigi is showing interest in both ballet and cheerleading. Being me, I immediately started mentally listing all of the things I will need to buy to get her set up for the dance classes. She will need very particular dance outfits depending on which I school I use for her lessons. Pee wee cheerleading also comes with a laundry list of items I need to buy for both her wardrobe and practice.

I just cannot stomach going out and buying everything in one fell swoop. I’m the type of person who makes a list and then shops around to find the best price for the best quality of each thing I need to purchase.

Anyway, that’s not really even what I wanted to blog about! I’ve been having some reservations about the whole cheerleading thing, so I’ve looking for alternative. I know Gigi wants to learn ballet, but her interest in cheerleading is due to the high energy level and the team dance style. There is a program out in the Midwest called Just for Kix (they are also a dancewear company). They have team dancing lessons, but I get the impression they aren’t specifically doing cheer for a sports team, as much as focusing on the issue of team dance. I want to find a similar program in my area, because while Gigi is this young, I’m not really all that interested in having to attend pee wee football games as much as just getting her involved in dance.

I know reading a cookbook can make you hungry, so I avoid picking one up when I’m feeling puckish or having cravings. I thought, though, that this new time travel series I started reading would be safe! Turns out the author must have a penchant for gourmet cooking, because the main character is a foodie of the highest quality. When the character is preparing a meal for himself, you could quite literally turn his descriptions into an accurate recipe. The measurements are included and even the cooking methods. It’s meticulous.

And, it makes me hungry when I read the book.

I just started Allen Appel’s Time After Time, which is the first in his “Pastmaster” series. I have books two and three in the series on order. I can only imagine that they will be just as fascinating, and jut as hunger-inspiring.

I’m looking over his personal website now and I am pleased to see he earned his B.A. at West Virginia University. Though I did not attend WVU, I lived in Morgantown for my job at a publishing house for several years and have quite an affinity for the area. It turns out that although the author was born in Pennsylvania, he was raised from the age of six onward in WV.

I love time travel fiction. It is my favorite genre. Appel’s writing is some of the best I have read in this arena, seriously. But, I’m actually disappointed to find he has not written a cookbook, though his wife has written some books on Mother to Daughter wisdom that include recipes.

We have several family members who have been living in Israel for going on a year now. They have not set up an international cell phone plan yet and for the most part we all communicate with them via e-mail.

The holidays, though, are a time of year that I find myself more in the mood to hear the voices of my family members, rather than just reading letters or e-mails. You cannot replicate the immediate response and sound of emotion in a live conversation.

What I have in mind is to get my Christmas shopping done a little early for my relatives. I’m going to set them up with an international phone card that they can use when they have time to make calls. By purchasing pre-paid time, you can take advantage of bulk pricing and take the time to find the best deals available. For example, PhoneCardsAvenue has inexpensive international phone cards as well as a 3% cash back rebate program. By shopping around like this, I can get more minutes for my money.

Of course, I could just send my family some of the good old American food products they have been missing over in Israel, but I’m feeling a little selfish. I would rather just hear their voices.

When I was growing up, I was interested in reading and writing, soccer, music and very long walks and bike rides in the woods surrounding our neighborhood. I grew up in Civil War Battleground territory, so there were always old chimneys, covered bridges and such scattered in the woods very close to our home. When new developments went in, we would all go out with dad and his metal detector and look for buttons, as well as arrow heads, bullets, and other exciting finds.

All of this is to say that my daughter is already developing very different interests than I had as a young girl. She is in swimming lessons right now, but she is asking about both ballet and cheerleading. Cheerleading! Yikes. That is so far from what I was as a kid. I’m quite sure I never felt interested in cheerleading and I had very little respect for the cheerleaders at my school. But, if this is what Gigi really thinks she wants to do, I have always vowed I will support her in her interests, rather than pushing my interests onto her.

I have no idea where to even begin to look for information on peewee cheerleading in my area. I don’t know anyone who has kids involved, so that makes it harder. If I had my way, I would have her in highland dance classes and involved in music.