The swamp will not defeat her

Guys, I am very tired because I stayed up to follow the Senate vote on Twitter last night, but it was worth it because that plot line has been completely bonkers this season. I'm hoping the sweet sweet blessing of Mitch McConnell's disappointment will sustain me through the, let me check....mmm yes highs of 105 and 106 the next two days. COOL ME WITH YOUR SPECTACULAR FAILURE, EVIL TURTLE. SOOTHE MY BURNING FLESH WITH YOUR SCOWL.

Ahem. I have basically entrusted Smitten Kitchen with all summer weeknight meals at this point and it's going very well for me. Lesson: the only thing I ever actually want to eat when it's hot is starch + cheese + vegetable.

Broccoli rubble farro salad with a poached egg

Summer squash pizza

Current mood: somewhere between these two.

Could just switch to an all-screenshot format

Current mood: predicted highs of 103-105 this week; nightmares involving an evil and tenacious turtle and an equally evil and tenacious elf; Winds of Winter will literally never be published; can't look anywhere without seeing either Jared Kushner or TJ Miller's dumb smirking faces and no thank you to both. It's officially summer!

If you're curious about how up I am on #fresh #content for this space, I opened my photos this morning and thought "oh sweet we did something interesting and I managed to take pictures of it" for a split second before realizing those were screenshots from a preview The Bachelorette.

Pretend we went to Spain

So I guess my point is that I'm not sure why I'm here wasting your time when we all need as many screaming-helplessly-into-the-void minutes as possible right now, but here is a recipe for skillet pasta that involves setting your oven to 500 degrees because who cares anymore anyway.

Some men just want to watch the cheese brown

Kinds seems like I should decrease my posting schedule to once a week. Or year?

Keep Calm etc. etc.

This week's food theme flowed directly from last week's television consumption, a strategy I might consider sticking with for the rest of the summer/my life, we'll see how it goes. Anna and I started watching The Supersizers Go, a ten-year-old BBC show featuring Sue from The Great British Bake Off and a restaurant critic named Giles dressing and eating from different periods of British history for a week at a time. It's tremendous, and I highly recommend it (you can stream it on Hulu or YouTube).

Oh, I can see where you might think, at this point, that the meal plan was based on different periods of British history, but that's not...no. Sorry.

So we were watching the "Wartime" episode first, all about rations and Captain Carrot and Potato Pete and The National Loaf and it was very edifying and packed with nutrition and yay. On to the next episode! The Restoration! 1660! Oh wow that's a...skinned cow head there. Hmm. And are they peeling a tongue? Yep yep. So Anna made it about 45 seconds into the overview of the Restoration episode before we decided on this week's meal plan, which is: Vegetables.

Tacos with Summer Squash, Tomatoes and Beans

One-Pan Farro with Tomatoes

Broccoli Pizza

All successful, and now we are well-fueled for our various home-improvement projects.

I trust her to bring that cow home safely

As I'm sure my well-informed readers are aware, National Ice Cream Day occurred this past weekend. Did everyone celebrate? We actually observed National Ice Cream Day Eve this year, as is traditional in some families.

Ice Cream Claus left the gummy worms in the cup, as always

Bonus: this particular trip to the Ice Cream Cow Statues convinced me that when the time comes, Anna will be a sensible and focused driver regardless of backseat shenanigans. 

Cake week

Happy birthday to my big girl!

It took eight years, but we finally found a shirt that captures her exact aesthetic of "sequined cheeseburger"

And happy yesterday-birthday to my big guy!

We have eaten several cakes.

This is the America's Test Kitchen Cream Cheese Coffee Cake, which has no link online but is...very full of cream cheese, just trust me

I even made a run at a grown-up-ish dinner spread last night.

Anyway, I would excuse myself by saying I have a lot of things to get done today but that's a pretty obvious lie considering how cake-logged and sluggish I am, but I'm still....gonna...go. Over here. To a different tab. Okay bye!

Send me links to your favorite pictures of snow

Good morning.

Until the temperature drops back down below 85, I have chosen to live here. Inside this phone.

I'm not going to lie, it's kind of weird in here. But at least I am safe from the angry, relentless sun.

Okay, fine, fine, my actual human family still believes it needs to eat every few hours, so here is a pasta salad that I made. If you're in Texas you can probably just put the pasta in a pot of water and set in on the sidewalk for an hour or so, boom, no cooking required. COLD DINNERS FOR EVERYONE.

Last night I saw a commercial for Coolsculpting and was like "yes please can you freeze *all* of my fat and also the rest of my body parts"

I spent the other 95% of my energy this week on making an early birthday cake that looked vaguely like a cheeseburger that had gone through some hard times.

Someone definitely brought that thing home in a takeout bag and maybe stepped on it once or twice on the way into the house

Some art appreciation

Couple of good things this morning. First up: corn soup, which is probably the closest you're going to get to stealthily eating a bowl of milkshake for dinner, as it is very sweet and full of cream. It's basically a summertime dessert that passes as a meal, big thanks to Martha for legitimizing it for me.

Second, Ivy has been playing with Snapchat on my phone, which means I am now finding things like the following in my photos:

I believe the exclamation points by the cat indicate its surprise at not sinking into the water

From what I can tell, this seems to be...a greeting card? To herself, from the cats? With an implied promise of sending money her way later? I want to print out a giant copy of this and look at it forever.

Freedom to dither

Hello my fellow Americans and possibly two or three Canadians! My mental rough draft of this Independence Day blog post has swung so wildly from cynical to lachrymose to defiantly sappy that I have decided it is best, and laziest, to just put up a few pictures while I watch America's most nauseating sport on television. Just know that I powered through a very intense ambivalence in order to put on some red lipstick, which I will soon wipe off in order to eat two hot dogs and some tater tots. America...heck yeah.

Coffee: Arabian; Coffee cake: Danish; Strawberries: French

Homestar Runner is American though, they can never take that away from us 

Candy sentinels