Dear Mom…

“In the cookies of motherhood, you’re the chocolate chips!”

Ever notice that it’s the magic of food that connects us viscerally to each other from one generation to the next, as the recipes are handed down along with special techniques and shortcuts to make the food taste even better, as these stories and ways of food preparation are shared around the mixing bowl or relived in our hearts as special memories.

Crazy Sexy Motherhood: 40 Cookies combines two of my favorite ingredients…stories about growing up in South Africa with authentic South African cookie recipes, the kind of cookies that one can expect to find at a South African’s home if you’re invited for tea, and tea time in South Africa being — anytime.

“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it” – Rudyard Kipling, author of The Jungle Book

On a personal note, I wanted to create something especially for those of us whose children are being brought up outside of our country of origin. The idea came to me from my oldest daughter when she was around 8-years-of-age and she said: “Mom, I don’t just want a story, I want an experience.”

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture, is like a tree without roots” – Marcus Gravey

And that is exactly the point of this book, it has been created to offer an experience through various avenues: baking, bonding, and finding the beauty of The Rainbow Nation’s culture through our diversity of cookies.

Additionally, I have gone out of my way to offer gluten-free options, as a dietary starting point. I want the whole family to enjoy the smell, taste, and feel of my South African recipes. My youngest daughter has a gluten-intolerance, I created these recipes for children like her not to be excluded from the experience, but instead, to become a pivotal participants as the cookies create conversational opportunities within the family’s dynamic.

Please note, that I use the term “cookie recipes” very loosely since some of the recipes are more savory than sweet, yet they all fall under the umbrella term of desserts.

To conclude, in my book motherhood is a sacred journey into the depths of our own possibility. It is a journey of connections, as we find it in the expanse of our own being to raise up a new generation of children on hope, encouragement, and a rich diet of memories. Ingredients that they will take with them throughout their lifetime, ingredients that become more valuable as the children grow and mature within their own depth of character. That is why I named this book with the statement: “In the cookies of motherhood, you’re the chocolate chips.”

You, dear mom, are doing the best you can with the resources, knowledge, and patience available to you in the moment. Now combine this with a culinary exploration of my cultural roots of South Africa, I firmly believe you have the pairing of a divine symbiosis.

The stories are short, and they set the context through historical information or personal experiences shared to frame the significance of each cookie’s choice. I really hope this book becomes part of your family’s culture, thumbprint — as the pages of this book as baptized with stains as recipes are tried out, adjusted, and transformed to your individual taste.

May this book become a living, breathing, being part of your family’s identity. I may have started this journey with the first word, yet I hope you leave the experience with a renewed sense of love for this experience called motherhood that is often best shared around food, laughter, and the act of making memories together.

A reminder that life is serious, motherhood should be fun…

What’s in a name? Crazy Sexy Motherhood…  

It all started in 1994 when I asked my 16-year-old younger sister for dating advice. In her arrogant teen-wisdom, she simply responded, “Think of the song lyrics from TLC…Crazy Sexy Cool. That’s how you date! You have to always be a little crazy, always sexy, and always act a little detached — cool.”

Thankfully, her advice didn’t become the cornerstone that I build my relationship experiences around; although, I did think back to our random conversation that we had during the Christmas holidays of 1994 when I became a mother again — almost 15 years later. Somehow, the song lyrics from TLC became more fitting within my new context of life, starting with the crazy part.

I suddenly understood the beauty of organized chaos, and how to find my “zen” stuck in the car with two toddlers and a new born, as we fought the traffic, and I tried to hold onto my last thread of sanity in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Motherhood also taught me to be sexy…and here’s where the word becomes confusing since the word “sexy” is relatively a new word. If you follow the word’s history, its popularity is created somewhere between 1905-1912. Yet for me, sexy means confidence. Confident people are sexy, they exude a sense of being comfortable with themselves that is even reflected in the strength of their shadow.

And that’s what motherhood has meant for me. It has made me sexy – confident because I know that I have been entrusted to take care of this child, and this child’s well-being is directly connected to how I represent both of us through my words, body language, and sense of contentment within my own skin, and that’s what makes motherhood sexy – a confidence booster that often believes in you before you have had a chance to believe in yourself.

Collectively, when you combine a world of chaos with a world of confidence, you get to this evolving space called motherhood. Motherhood by definition means a journey into the depths of one’s personal possibility. It’s an experience that will challenge, question, and reward in ways that one could have never imagined prior to the experience, yet it a space of finding, a place of losing, and learning a way of life that requires the harnessing of your intuition as you learn when to hold on and when to let go. At the end of the day, you know that you have grown both inwardly, spiritually when we realize that Life is Serious, Motherhood should be Fun!

Indeed, motherhood should be fun –  since it’s a gift that is often gone before our mind has had the time to fully understand the awe of this gift’s significance on our life’s greater purpose. And that’s why I decided to create this page as a reminder…to remind our mind of our heart’s treasure that is often lost in the mothering translation of getting the kids to school on time, remembering to give the dog its allergy medicine, and remembering to finish my morning coffee that I left in the car by the time I pick the kids up from school in the afternoon.

To end on a musical note, as an Aquarius, I love change and the future, yet one thing from the 90s that I still miss are mixed tapes. Something about the nostalgia of creating your own mixed tapes, the ritual of queuing the song to just the right spot, the hand-eye coordination required of recording/stopping the song exactly where you want it to be, and the sense of accomplishment of holding the final product in your hand, is lost to today’s musical choices. A mixed tape was a gift straight from the heart.

So, follow me at we create our own mixed tape through a journey of memories, shared experiences, and stories about what it means to celebrate the journey called motherhood – even through challenging chapters and moments of madness.

This is my mixed tape, one that I have proudly scribbled on with a half-dried out marker called….

Crazy Sexy Motherhood: Life is Serious, Motherhood should be Fun…