Paella, Monkee, Sheep-Cow

Last night I made "Farmstand Paella" from my Easy Vegetarian Dinners book. Good way to get in a ton of vegetables AND use some saffron (thanks to Emily, my partner-in-saffron).

You can see the sippy cup reflection in the table, which is why I am never featured in aspirational lifestyle magazines.

The book claims that the start to finish time on this recipe is 25 minutes, but it should probably read "25 minutes plus however long it takes you to go out to the garage and find the machete in order to cut through a raw cob of corn and also if you thoughtlessly substitute brown rice for Arborio, go ahead and add another half hour, you idiot." If they want to cover all their bases.

I thought it was a little weird to have to fish out the pieces of corn on the cob, eat them, and set the cob bits on the rim of the bowl, but I guess it's normal in a traditional paella to serve meat on the bone and seafood in the shell, so I believe it's intended to be in that spirit. Pretty worldly of you, $3 clearance section cookbook!

Like many vegetarian dinners, it actually looked prettier in its mise en place form, so here's that as well.

Check out all that healthiness waiting to happen.

Because she was a total pill yesterday, Anna is taking a blog Time Out.

No screen time for you today, Missy.

Instead, we will discuss some of Anna's stuff. For me, one of the highlights of becoming a parent was discovering that there are a ton of They Might Be Giants children's albums. What did you think I was going to say, watching the amazing transformation of an infant to a person? Learning to appreciate life's small moments? Gaining a capacity to love that I never knew before? No. Finding out that the "Particle Man" duo has a lot of new music that it's now appropriate for me to purchase. High. Light.

All I have so far is Bed, Bed, Bed which is really a book with a four song CD accompaniment. But just so you understand what I'm talking about, one of the songs both defines a gavotte and references Mr. Peter Tork. I figure if TMBG put out enough of these, I won't have to worry about gaps in her public school education.

These are extremely good things to know about.

One of Anna's brand new birthday gifts is also turning out to be awesome for me, even though she's not as into it as I am yet. It's a Leapfrog magnet thingy for the fridge, and you can mix up animal halves and then it'll sing a little song about a "pig-duck" or whatever.

It's a little bit Dr. Moreau, and I like it.

You know how some people stick pictures of swimsuit models on the fridge to remind them not to pig out? This is serving basically the same purpose for me, because every time I go into the kitchen I get super distracted making sheep-cow monsters.