You saw me open the box. Then, it was on to cooking.

This month’s Potato Tastemaker 2K10 challenge was honoring National Seafood Month. My task was to create a dish using potatoes and salmon.

Watch and see what I created:

I’ll probably post a full recipe in the future. For now, make sure you click over to the ModernMami.com YouTube channel and rank the video. Yes you have to sign in, but it’s super easy and free to create an account if you don’t already have one. And why don’t you, anyway?

Here’s how to rank the video:

• View the ModernMami #tastemaker challenge 1 video at YouTube. Just click that link to go there.
• Sign in with your YouTube account or Google account; either works.
• Click the stars under the video to rank it.

That’s it! Simple enough right?

Make sure to spread the word to your friends!

Now.go.rank.the.video.

I just quit my job.

Seriously. I just handed in my resignation letter.

It feels good. And a tiny bit scary. But, I think that’s normal. It’s a big change for me. I’ve never quit a job without first having another.

So, here I am. Well not quite yet.

I still have some time at work before I am officially done.

But, soon. Soon, I’ll be done with my outside the home job.

I may be broke and eating Ramen noodles soon, but at least I’ll be working towards something. And, like my husband said last night, “There’s no one I’d rather be broke with.”

“Working fathers are struggling to juggle the competing demands of family and career, according to a report that shows that they are just as uneasy with their work-life balance as mothers.“

No surprise there. But, perhaps this isn’t obvious to everyone else.

The above quote is from the UK-based article titled Working fathers want more time with their children too. The article outlines some key points from the Fathers, Family and Work report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). A few interesting points in the article:

• 42% of fathers felt they were not able to spend enough time with their children
• About two in five men fear that asking for flexible working arrangements would result in their commitment to their job being questioned.
• “…employers think of women as a potential burden because they worry they will want flexible conditions. It will be helpful for women…once men are also seen as likely to demand flexible working.”

I guess it’s good for formal research to be completed and a report published on what I feel is something most men and women probably already knew. I know that my husband struggles with being a working dad just as much as I do with being a working mom. Of course he wants to spend more time with baby girl. And of course he has a hard time with balancing it all. He often works with me on planning our evening schedules and household calendar to try to manage all aspects of our daily lives.

Is this news to you or does this just confirm what you already knew? Let me know in the comments what you think of the article, the report, or just working dads in general.

I got my first box for the Tastemaker challenge! A big part of being a #tastemaker participant is that I’ll be documenting it all on video. This is a first for me as I’ve never done any vlogs on here. So, I’m really excited…but really nervous too!

Here I am opening the first box to find out what we received for the challenge. Clearly, I need to work on my video skills. But, I’ve got a couple of months in this challenge and lots of videos to make, so I’ll get some practice.

Don’t be too harsh!

And then…being the genius that I am, I figured it out. Yea, watch and marvel.

Ok, so now you have to go over and rank my videos. This will be a part of the challenge as well.

Please pretty please????!!!!

Do it. Click and rank.

I’ll stop harassing you now, but I really appreciate your help with getting me some votes.

Look for another video soon once I make my first dish. This month my challenge is potatoes and salmon for National Seafood Month.

I hope the husband likes what I make. Cause his challenge will be to smile for the camera as he eats!

I cannot believe it’s already the middle of October. And here in Florida, it’s still in the mid-90s most days! It definitely doesn’t feel like fall. Yet, many stores around here already have their Christmas sections up. Unbelievable.

Anyway, I wanted to take the time to share with you some recent and upcoming events going on in the blogging community.

Article Republished

• My post on Latino terms of endearment and cultural differences has been republished at MyBrownBaby. Denene has shared my post with her readers and I’m so glad that there’s so many out there that can relate.

ModernMami part of Community Site Warming Party

• This Friday, there will be a #community site warming twitter party hosted by the queen of twitter parties, Amy from Resourceful Mommy. You can RSVP for the party here and join us on Friday night as my site is one of the blogs featured!

Tastemaker Challenge

• The U.S. Potato Board has partnered with nine bloggers, who have officially been deemed the “Tastemaker” Challengers. And guess what? I’m one of them! You can read all the details here, but just know that I’ll be playing Iron Chef a bit. Only thing is, we already know the secret ingredient…potatoes! Follow the conversation on twitter with hashtag #tastemaker.

Got any news to share yourself? Go ahead and let us know in the comments. I’d love to hear about it.

And don’t forget to join the twitter party this Friday! See you there.

It’s funny how the world sometimes reaches out to you. I’m not normally one to go around “looking for signs,” but sometimes you just can’t miss them.

Two months ago, I wrote about how brown dolls are not enough and we need more multicultural dolls.

This weekend, I came across an article titled Mattel introduces black Barbies. Introduces? It seemed odd since there have been black Barbies in the brand for a while. But, as the article’s opening line states, the So in Style dolls are “…a new line of black Barbie dolls with fuller lips, a wider nose and more pronounced cheek bones — a far cry from Christie, Barbie’s black friend who debuted in the 1960s and was essentially a white doll painted brown.”

Facial features. Going beyond just painting dolls brown. Finally!

The last connecting dot in all this is that the dolls’ designer, Stacey McBride-Irby, was just at the Blogalicious 2009 conference held this past weekend. So here I am on Monday, reading some of the conference recaps and the #blogalicious tweets and find myself circling back to the article I just read. And back to thinking about my baby girl and how she just might have a chance at seeing things differently growing up.

All of this on a day where part of the world celebrates and the other part watches Reconsider Columbus Day and nods their head in agreement.

It is encouraging to see that my baby girl will have dolls in her likeness to play with. And though I agree with the critique that the Barbie So in Style dolls have mostly long straight hair, I also see that there’s a huge improvement over the dolls I played with. Side note: two of the dolls do have short, curly hair, so I can see that it was given some thought. And my husband also pointed out just what the dolls’ designer had in mind – little girls love to comb their doll’s hair.

It is also encouraging to think that my daughter may not have to celebrate Columbus Day, but instead might have a chance at real education on the subject of Columbus and the history behind him “discovering” America. That is, in school, and not just supplemental education provided by my husband and I.

Most wouldn’t even connect these two. Dolls and Columbus day? But, the world calls out sometimes in a funny way and your mind connects the dots in an even more interesting manner.

So here I am. Feeling optimistic that my multicultural and bilingual daughter will be able to embrace both sides of her family, both cultures, and be loved by all as the Black and Latina woman she will become.

Watch these videos and consider the following questions:

• Why haven’t I seen any commercials for the dolls? The article was the first time I heard about them.
• Why haven’t I seen them in the stores? I was *just* in the Barbie aisle the other day at Target looking for a present for a birthday party we were attending Saturday. I do not remember seeing these dolls.
  • Edited 10/13/09: Ok, I went into a Target again last night and did see a few of the dolls.
• What will I teach my child(ren) about Christopher Columbus?

Reconsider Columbus Day

Barbie So-In-Style Dolls Friends Of Barbie Meet The Designer Part One

The first time I saw the movie Snow White in its entirety, I fell asleep. It was nothing against the movie itself, but more so that I was a teenager and the movie was a bit slow for my liking at the time. Since then, I had never sat down to give the movie another chance. It was just one of those things that never happened.

Of course, now I have a three year old girl and we’re all about the princesses. But, mainly we’ve been a Cinderella house.

So, when we heard that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was being re-released by Disney, we knew we had to get it. And since Disney movies are only available for a short time before going into the vault, we didn’t want to miss our chance of introducing baby girl to the movie that started it all. It was, after all, the first full-length animated movie to be made.

Just a few days later, I got an email from One2One Network about an opportunity to review Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Diamond Edition. Talk about perfect timing!

Why is it the Diamond Edition? Well, it has both a Blu-ray disc and a regular DVD in one package.

What’s so Great about Blu-Ray?

I finally get it. Ever since my husband put together his “entertainment wall,” I’ve been trying to figure out what the big deal is. He talks about 1080p, HDMI, and it’s all like a foreign language to me. I’ve thus far been unimpressed. Much to his disappointment.

But now…I get it. I guess my biggest issue was a point of reference. Now, I look back at my tattered and torn VHS version and then over at my sparkly new Blu-ray and the difference is like night and day. The color is clean and vivid. Though my daughter will never know the “joy” of scratchy, grainy video tapes, I can definitely appreciate how far things have come. Man, kids have got it good.

The DisneyView framing, though a nice thought, isn’t what I’d consider “must-use” as it seemed unnatural in some instances. Even baby girl commented on its “different” appearance every now and then. It’s basically just a frame around the picture. So, instead of having two black frames to the sides, you get scene-appropriate frames that coordinate with the picture.

All about the Sound

I think the audio probably excited my husband more than my daughter and I. Apparently, many of the Blu-rays he has purchased don’t have 7.1 surround sound. What did that mean to me? Err…nothing. So, I was privy to a 10 minute discussion of the surround setup in our family room and the difference between having 5 speakers and a sub woofer (5.1) versus 7 speakers and a sub woofer (7.1). It was more than I REALLY wanted to know, but, it did help me gain some perspective on “what the big deal is.” I actually began to appreciate the small nuances provided by his elaborate setup. Kinda funny that it took a kid’s movie to do it, which I’m sure he finds infuriating. He tried to explain the same thing before with Transformers. Hehehe.

Extras

I have to say, we were a little disappointed by the special features as a whole. Though the decade by decade Disney history was very interesting, to me and the husband anyway, I would have expected a little more with the capacity of the Blu-ray disc. There was not much in the way of music, video or otherwise; a single karaoke sing-along track and a music video from one of their up-and-comers.

The games, classic and new, suffered from the monotony that MOST DVD games suffer from. Some required a level of comprehension or patience that my 3 year old was not willing to put in. We did get a kick out of seeing which princess daddy was (ahem, Ariel) and the phone call from a princess was a fun little extra, that lit up baby girl’s face. With a web enabled player, you can take a peek at some of the latest films preparing to be released into theaters or Blu-ray/DVD in the coming months. And the quirky phrases and insights from the magic mirror was worth a few laughs to the monkey.

You can view the Snow White Blu-ray Edition Trailer and learn more about Blu-ray discs with the Disney Timeless Memories Blu-ray High Definition DVDs and Movies video.

Disclosure: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Diamond Edition pack received from One2One Network for review purposes.

Working in the e-learning industry by day and in social media by night, I’m always coming across new online tools. Some are more useful than others, depending on your need.

Recently, we’ve been exploring Wordle. It takes a sample text or URL that you enter and creates a visual image representative of the text. It’s much like a tag cloud.

I thought it would be fun to see what image this blog would create. So, I used my feed URL; here’s what I got.

What words stand out to you?

Let me know if you create your own, so I can come by and check it out.

****This post was originally posted in March 2009 at Family Eden. Since that blog is no longer active, I wanted to share with you.****

I’ve been asked a difficult question.

I was asked to write about what it means to me to be a Latina.

To be honest, I’ve never really given it much thought.

I mean, do people normally go around thinking, “What does it mean to me to be a woman?” Or a man? Or do Americans think to themselves, “What does it mean to me to be American?”

It’s just who you are. It’s you.

To me, it’s much the same.

Being Latina is a large part of my identity. To be specific, being Puerto Rican is really a major influence in who I am.

I was born in Puerto Rico, but we moved to Florida when I was 8 years old. Although I’ve spent many more years in Florida than I did in Puerto Rico, my parents made sure to maintain our culture in our house. I was raised pretty much the same way I would have had we stayed in Puerto Rico. (Ok, like 90% since obviously there are outside influences from school, friends, etc.) But, my parents spoke Spanish in the house (and still do), we listened to Spanish music, we ate Puerto Rican food, and I was taught values and traditions that are important to our culture.

All of those things helped to make me who I am.

However, being Latina is not just a matter of “I listen to Spanish music,” or “I eat rice and beans.” That is not what makes me Latina.

To me, it’s more about the overall culture, values, traditions, and beliefs. It’s about understanding why family is so important to us. Or understanding why my parents believed that as the youngest sibling and the only girl, I couldn’t do some of the same things my brothers did. And, how about the fact that now that I’m older and my parents are aging, I must understand why my father prefers to speak with my brother (who lives in Milwaukee) about his health issues than with me who lives 10 minutes away?

These may seem like trivial points, but if you understand the way our culture operates and the overall mentality, it’s easier to understand why these things happen the way they do.

So, what does it mean to me to be Latina?

It means a rich culture, deep values, traditions, pride, and an overall appreciation for yourself and your family.

Oh! And the great music and sabrosa comida don’t hurt!

What does it mean to you?

September 15 – October 15 is Hispanic Heritage Month. How will you celebrate?

I realized the other day that I never actually updated you on our potty training issues.

You’ll be glad to know that baby girl is officially potty trained. Full out. All the way. For real.

The girl goes to the potty by herself without us having to remind her, she’ll tell us if she needs to go when we’re not home, and she’s doing pretty good in the clean-up process as well.

And you know what we did?

Nothing.

All of you were absolutely right. She did it when she was ready.

For all the encouraging, rewarding, praise, and potty games we played, in the end, she simply would go when she actually wanted to. That turned into her going when she needed to. And eventually, she was able to switch over to being diaper-free all the time.

Even at night.

Really, when it was time for her to start preschool, it was suggested to us by the school that we bring her diaper-free. We warned them that she wasn’t fully potty trained, but they said to try it anyway and they’d deal with the accidents. So, that’s just what we did. And amazingly she did really good. There were really very few accidents considering our progress beforehand.

She’s definitely proud of herself and loves that we’re proud too. The first few weeks of preschool, she’d say things like, “Did I make you proud?” or “I had NO accidents today mommy!”

I love that my baby girl has finally achieved potty training success. Of course, this means she’s officially a big girl. In her eyes anyway.