This topic is burning up our email.   Should she be fired from her role on Zoey 101?  Should the producers change the plotline to accomodate her pregnancy?  My, albeit optimistic, thought is that she could somehow use her pregnancy as an illustration for  other teens of how challenging it is to raise a child and all the sacrifices you have to make to do so.  As I said on the air, it’s probably safe to assume that other teen stars have gotten pregnant and we’ve just never known about it.  Should we really wag our fingers at her for keeping her child and making her mistake public?  Having said that, is any single 16-year-old equipped to raise a child, regardless of how much money or resources she has?  I’d love to hear your thoughts. 

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What a trooper!  My Mom got up at 3:15am and accompanied me into the office at 4.  As I write, she’s getting her hair blown dry.  I assure you, she’s never worn this much make-up in her entire life, all combined.  She carefully carried in her homemade pizzelles (traditional Italian cookies) to share with the crew and typed out the recipe for you all.  It’s great having her here — though I’m not getting as much work done.   I’ll hand over the keyboard to her now to answer your questions!

And here’s my Aunt Carol’s pizzelle recipe.  My Mom warns that lots of things affect the outcome of the pizzelles:  humidity, altitude, weather.  She recommends you experiment until getting the cookies to the right thin crispness.  (btw, you’ll need a pizzelle iron, which you can buy at any good cookware store).

– 6 eggs

– 3 and 1/2 cups flour (approximately)

– 1 and 1/2 cups sugar

– 1/2 lb butter (melted and cooled)

– 4 tsps baking powder

– 2 tablespoons vanilla or anise (or orange or lemon zest, if you prefer)

Beat eggs while adding sugar gradually.  Beat until smooth.  Add butter and flavors.  Sift together flour and baking powder add to egg mixture.  Dough will be sticky enough to be dropped by spoonfuls onto hot pizzelle iron.  For some irons you need to press them only 20 seconds.  When cool, sprinkle them with powdered sugar.

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Here’s your chance to ask my Mom all your burning questions (well, within reason).  She’ll be in the Greenroom (and on the show) Wednesday morning and will answer you then.  If I’m not mistaken, this will be her first blogging experience!  

Mrs. Carlson has brought some incredible Swedish treats into the Greenroom this morning: Lefsa (Swedish pancakes), Spritz (sugar cookies), Kringle (coffee cake w/almond filling), Julukake (sweet bread) , plus toffee bars, candies and penuche. She’ll be on the set any minute now to share some of their family Christmas traditions. But she already gave me the recipe for the Swedish toffee bars to share with you:

– 1 cup of butter

– 1 cup of brown sugar

– pinch of salt

– 1 teaspoon of vanilla

– 1/2 teaspoon of almond flavoring

– 1 cup of white flour

– 8 Hershey’s milk chocolate bars

Mix ingredients and pour them into a 9″x 13″ greased glass pan. Bake at 325 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes or until edges are brown. Take out of oven and while still hot cover with the 8 Hershey’s bars. Once they’ve melted, spread chocolate around top of toffee with a knife. When cool cut into pieces and serve at room temperature. Yum!

GRETCHEN’S DAUGHTER GETS READY FOR HER CLOSE-UP

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We have a special treat on F&F this week — our families are making special guest appearances!  Gretchen’s Mom will be on tomorrow, my Mom will be on Wednesday, Mrs. Happy on Thursday, and a surprise Kilmeade family member on Friday.  After some winter snow delays, my Mom blew into NYC just ahead of an ice storm from her home in Cincinnati fully equipped with lots of old childhood photos, home movies and favorite family recipes.  I haven’t broken the news to her that we can’t devote the ENTIRE three hour show to her.  More like three minutes.  I’m so excited to have her on!  Hey, this week will be a great opportunity to start creating a F&F Cookbook with everyone’s favorite family recipes.  Remind me to do that. 

And it gets better.  Guess who’s on the show today??  Alice Cooper!   Alice makes me time travel back to high school.  My friend Debbie and her brother would come screeching up to the bus stop (where I’d usually just missed the school bus), I’d hop into the back of their mustang and off we’d race with “No More Mr. Nice Guy” blasting.   I’d be wide awake by home room.  

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Watch and enjoy!