Not feeling too sunrise/sunset about this milestone

I made a lot of food that tasted good this week, but more importantly, look how nice it looks in spring evening light.

Taco Salad! So festive!

Saag Paneer! Too spicy for my children! Their loss!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Muffins! These may be the culprits behind all my exclamation points this morning!

My home improvement project for yesterday was removing all the rest of the child locks from the lower cabinets.

Now that the youngest is six and a half, I guess I trust them not to eat dishwasher detergent when I'm not looking.

Please prove me right

And also mild magical powers, she said?

I spend a decent percentage of my visits to my parents house half-watching food/home/gardening shows in the background, since a lack of cable here has basically eradicated my "just put on a channel" option for everyday puttering. "Sort of watching The Food Network" is a highly satisfying activity for me. Anyway, on our last venture up, I'm pretty sure someone was explaining that the original version of Fettuccine Alfredo wasn't full of cream, but rather all the butters plus some fistfuls of cheese, so I decided that was worth investigating and looky here! 

I think she also said that this version was very healthy? Medicinal, maybe? And she was a science doctor? I could be misremembering.

I don't recall that she had anything to say about Nutella Pizza, but Ivy pronounced it "weird and good" so we'll go with that.

Also weird and good: Ivy's new springtime hobby of communing with rolly pollies.

Boy howdy spellcheck did NOT like the end of that sentence.

Highly recommend adding a protective layer of cherry cake

Kind of a mixed bag of a week around here, the girls have a brand new baby cousin and also a domestic terrorist blew himself up less than ten miles from my house. Anyway, I made two different kinds of cake and ate them both with a concerning amount of aggression.

Orange Pound Cake, Retro Cherry Tea Cake

Hey, just want to confirm--this is a trap, right?

Like, a pretty good one?

One pro, mostly con

Nothing insightful to say about it because I am still tired due to the precious hour that was stolen from me, but the Daylight Savings Time return to school is a real beast.

I just hope they un-blurried before the bus got to school

The one and only advantage of the time change in this direction is that pictures of dinner once again have proper lighting, so here is some nice sunny Chana Masala to ease the pain.

Personally I would be more than willing to eat my beans in the dark but whatever

For the record, she was mildly complimentary

We made a Chocolate Strawberry Slab Pie for Pi Day. Notice I didn't say we made a Chocolate Strawberry Slab Pie on Pi Day, we did not get around to it on Pi Day. But it was in recognition of it having recently been Pi Day.

For Pi Day!

Conversely, I made our St. Patrick's Day Irish Stew ahead of schedule because I will be working on Saturday and probably don't have stew-amounts of time to prep dinner. So both Pi Day and St. Pat's were culinarily commemorated on the Ides of March this year, woo spring break.

Sometimes things get wild

Just want to take a minute to say that my two children are both smart and funny and terrific and I think they're the cat's pajamas. 

Can't say enough good things

Unrelated, yesterday's entire morning activity was reading through this archives of this blog.

HI ANNA I LOVE YOU 

Today they might try for a figure eight

How is the onset of DST treating you? We had breakfast for dinner last night, so I've personally never felt more lost in time and space.

I honestly don't know which way is up, but if it means more eggs I'm fine with it

We have escaped once again to YaYa and PaPa's house, where the very limited internet access requires my children to create their own fun. 

This game, for example, is called "Circles."

It eventually progressed to "Advanced Circles."

So, maybe you are having more fun on your spring break than we are, but...I kind of doubt it.

She accessed this character pretty easily

Definitely feeling some spring fever restlessness this week, but I managed to focus enough to make a few...bowls of stuff.

Bowl of soup:

Clam Chowder with Broccoli and Corn

Bowl of noodles: 

Stir-fried Chicken and Broccoli with Mango Chutney

Bowl of muffins:

Chocolate Buttermilk Muffins

For Career Day this year, the girls were a baker and an artist.

A temperamental artist.

Here comes the onslaught of extra daylight

Hello everyone, I hope you're ready because it's already Oh No It's 80 Degrees Why Didn't I Make More Stews When I Had The Chance season here in Austin. Now everything has to be "light and fresh" or whatever for like eight months. Sigh.

Fine here is some salmon and green things 

Anna tried her hand at merengues over the weekend, which means even our cookies are light.

And our looks are fresh.

Tapped out

 ATTENTION: yesterday, March 1, 2018, I did the following things:



 1) made pasta, fancy pasta that was very wide and flat and had pistachios and mint

2) facilitated some Dr. Seuss costumery 

and 3) made an appearance on a local morning show that at least wasn't bad enough to go viral or anything

which means that I have used up all of my productivity for the month of March the rest of 2018. Thanks for understanding.