Chicken. Dumplings. 34 utensils.

Generally I can quickly glance over a recipe and determine whether or not it is going to be an Official Pain In The Ass. This calculus mostly involves how many items of kitchen equipment I will need to wash in the aftermath of the cooking itself. Do I have to use a pot and a food processor and two cutting boards and a citrus reamer and a flour sifter? Do I have to MacGyver a gravy separator with Ziploc bags and scissors? Do I also have to deal with an entire animal carcass? (Anyone who has ever accused me of being a good cook should see the face I make when removing chicken innards.) These things all add up to OPITA. What I don't know in advance is whether or not all the effort will be worth it in the end.

Dan was really run down yesterday, so I thought some restorative chicken soup was in order, and I had been wanting to try Homesick Texan's Tex-Mex Chicken and Dumplings. I must have bookmarked it when I was in one of those ambitious moods that I get once in a while. These usually occur when I'm wearing sweat pants and/or drinking beer. Generally, the more lazy and depraved my day has been, the more glorious my plans for the future become. Yes, I don't feel like getting off the couch to go to the bathroom right now, but later I should totally make a soup that involves a whole chicken and cornbread batter. This phenomenon is also responsible for my signing up for 30 days of unlimited Bikram yoga. I'm guessing that happened on a day when I didn't manage to wash my hair or put on a bra.

Aaaanyway, I know the picture of the soup itself doesn't look too exciting, but if I could have taken a picture of how badass the entire house smelled while it was cooking, you would be completely droolingly jealous.

Put your nose up to the screen and use your imagination.

It was warm and slightly spicy and chickeny and great. I actually woke up this morning thinking "Yay, chicken soup for lunch today!" (Note: yesterday morning I woke up thinking "Yay, I'm going to go cut the tags off of Anna's new clothes!" so YMMV.) Lesson: sometimes things are totally annoying to deal with, but are worth it anyway. I'm sure there are other examples in that category, but I can't think of any right now.

Know what's on TV in the background? A Fellini movie. I am absolutely serious.

Okay guys, "Lindsay Lohan: Road to Jail" is on, so I gotta go.

And now we'll call the first year done

Yes, so, I'm taking weekends off now. I need my rest, people! Don't make me refer you to my Unpaid Food/Mommy/Unemployment Blogger Union.

A lot of food and mommying has happened since Friday. Technically there was also unemployment, but I'm not sure it counts on weekends (will check with union rep). Friday night we had Black Bean and Salmon Tostadas. I think it would be worth the extra calories to just fry the corn tortillas, since the baked ones turned out really chewy. Also, Dan asked me whether it was salmon or tuna, and I had a moment where I thought maybe I had grabbed the wrong package out of the pantry, so...it's definitely a generic fish taste. Not bad, but not that great. I liked the bean part and the slaw part, though.

Mystery-fish chewy things! That almost definitely sounds better in Spanish.

Saturday night my parents wanted to take Dan out for his belated birthday, and of all the restaurants in Austin, he chose Terra Burger.

I have no problem with this.

And then, Sunday. First birthday party, wooo! Um, here is the cake.

Still waiting to hear from the committee re: Most Visually Disturbing First Birthday Cake Award.

I should explain that what I was going for was this guy:



From Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? because it's her favorite page of any book right now. It's not like my aim was "generic cat" and I somehow landed on "prehistoric raccoon." My aim was "weird arty cut-out purple cat" and then...."prehistoric raccoon."

At least she ate some of it. And this was an old-school, freaking-Jello-included bright pink strawberry cake.

And the natural parenting books weep.

So, a success. Clearly.

For dinner last night I had spinach and artichoke dip.

It's over there in the corner.

This morning, Anna helped me clean up the mess from the party.

In a house full of new toys, she cried when I put the beer away.

This isn't really the type of blog where I spend a lot of time thanking people for being so helpful and awesome, but: you all know who you are, and I really appreciate it. I figure I'll be up for throwing Anna another birthday party by the time she's twelve, so you're on notice.

Yelling at the baby

We took a day off from meetups yesterday because Anna's shots made her a little sick and I was exhausted, so basically nothing happened. It was just a day full of me saying ANNA, CAN YOU POINT TO KITTY? WHERE'S MR. KITTY? ANNA, WHERE'S MOMMY? CAN YOU POINT TO MOMMY? Like maybe increased volume would help her understand, the same way people holler slowly at foreign-language speakers. So I guess if she didn't have hearing issues before, she will soon.

For dinner I made Skillet Gnocchi with Spinach and White Beans. It wasn't bad. I used canned tomatoes, of course, since that's what the recipe calls for and also I am lazy, and then today a waiting-room Prevention magazine informed me that canned tomatoes are one of the seven foods you should never eat, ever, ever, no matter what. Too much BPA leaching into the food. So that's good.

This is basically just a pile of Bisphenol A.

When I got home I had some of the leftovers for lunch, so I guess I'm not Prevention's target audience. Next time I'll look for the latest copy of Bring on the Neurobehavioral-Affecting Chemicals magazine.

ANNA, CAN YOU POINT TO THE MILK?

Check up

Wednesday night: Greek salad with grilled chicken breast, inspired by Simply Recipes. I cut down on the oil a little, am out of red wine vinegar so I used white, and prefer my Greek salad to be in big chunks, but it's pretty similar. I thought we should lighten things up since we had about seven sticks of butter the day before.

There is very little butter in this salad.

It was good, and Anna even approached her adorable mini-salad like an actual human who eats food. Progress!

I didn't really have the energy to discuss it before, but we took Anna in for her 12 month check up yesterday afternoon. If there's one thing a visit to the pediatrician is good for, it isn't allaying my (secret) concerns. So I'm not sure what it is. Probably obtaining grape-flavored tongue depressors. Visiting the pediatrician is very good for that.

I always walk in there feeling like I'm about to take a test I haven't studied for at all. This time I was actually strangely optimistic, I guess I was figuring she had mastered everything they asked about at the six month appointment, so we were all set. For some reason, though, they were interested in an ENTIRELY new skill set than they were in February. We had to fill out several pages of questions such as "Does your child wave goodbye to people in a manner appropriate to their social standing?" and "If you put a single Cheerio in a clear container, will your child reference Descartes?"

Totally oblivious to how badly she's doing on this survey.

Of course she couldn't point to Dan when the doctor kept asking her where Daddy was, so all we've done since the appointment is try to coach her to point at things when we ask. Completely teaching the test as though our federal funding depends on it. It won't matter, obviously, because by the 15 month appointment she'll be pointing like a champ and they'll only want to know about her equestrian skills.

On question #7, I just wrote "Secretly."

Sigh.

But look how cute she is in our front ya...er, this abandoned, un-mowed field.

I guess now I have to stop calling it my "baby fat"

"I think it's time we discuss my curfew."

Anna takes an introspective moment to consider the weight of her year.

Happy birthday, ladybug! I hope that fussing through music class and getting your shots were all you dreamed they would be.

So she is one, and we are having a small party this weekend, and this is something I've been stressed out about since around my second trimester for some reason. Whether to do something, what to do, whether to be one of those people who says "no gifts please," who to invite, whether to be one of those people who says "whom," etc. Several months ago when I was already hemming and hawing over these extremely pressing issues, my own mother assured me that my first birthday was very simple and low key, "just something for the grandparents." No stress required! Being concerned about planning a first birthday is a silly waste of time! A quick glance through the photo album, however, provided some bits of evidence that at some point in the past 30 years perhaps she has shrunken and en-modested the event in her memory.

It's not like she went to any trouble.

And now if anyone who is attending the party is reading this, I have tipped my hand and lost my only asset, which was fake nonchalance. Crap.

Well, fine, now that my veneer of "Oh, what, this? Just whipped it up" has been compromised, I may as well tell you that I worked really hard on Dan's birthday dinner and dessert last night. Did I make Eggs Benedict with asparagus and home fries? Yes, yes I did. Does that mean I made Hollandaise sauce for the first time ever?

Correct.

But wait...surely I didn't ALSO make the English muffins from scratch?

Oh my, yes.

Granted, the English muffin-making would have been considerably less exhausting if I had managed to find the metal rings I needed to cook them all at once on the griddle instead of using my one 3-inch biscuit cutter to pour, then flip, every five minutes for an hour and a half. And yeah, Alton was all, just use empty metal cans, they're free! Uh, free if you've just eaten ten cans of tuna and not thrown them away. In which case, good for you and your "free" set of metal rings, hope your episode of "Hoarders" turns out well.

So after ALL THAT NONSENSE, what did I do?

This.

It's totally normal to have gained weight in the year since your baby was born, right?

Happy Birthday Patrick Stewart, and others

First things first: Happy birthday to my handsome and tolerant husband Dan! We kicked it off with some waffles and homemade blueberry sauce (just cooked down a bunch of berries with some water and agave nectar). Also coffee with steamed milk and homemade chocolate syrup. Don't worry, I didn't roast the beans or milk the cow or anything. This year's offering was presumably superior to last year's birthday pancakes, which were deemed "not my best," probably because I was in the middle of having a baby.

To be fair, it was pretty early in the labor.

Anyway, everyone please give Dan a nice birthday shout out because chances are he's going to get sick of me saying "Hey remember when you turned 30 and then I gave birth?"

Yesterday I spent $8 to get into the Austin Children's Museum only to realize that Anna seemed to have just as much fun in the bank lobby last week.

Anna, as directed by Fellini.

See what the museum made me do? It made me pretend to know something about surrealism in cinema, which I do not. Thanks, museum. Thanks for that.

The only time she seemed genuinely excited was when she found a toy cat and tried to devour its face.

Just like at home.

Maybe once she's walking it'll be better? I don't know. The other babies seemed to like it. (Secretly wonders if her child is challenged.)

Last night I bravely marched right back into the world of liquid dinners with Thai Avocado Soup. From the, um, Runner's World website. What? I'll have you know I ran seven tenths of a mile yesterday. In a row. Lady's gotta refuel. Which also explains why I added bacon and some hard boiled egg on top.

I don't want my healthy fats to get lonely.

It was actually really good, like a Cobb salad without all those pesky greens. So I'm declaring an end to my run of soup incompetence. Maybe I'll forget how to make sandwiches for a while or something.

Our weekend of wild North Texas living

Listen, if you've been to a 90th birthday party lately I don't need to tell you how cuh-raaaazy they can get. I'll just leave the specifics of the throwdown to your imagination. I will say that Anna learned that party = free food and beverage.

Components of the infamous Red Drank.

I will also say that my mother made some caloric monstrosities called "cookie balls," designed for people who think, "This Oreo is okay but it would be better if I mushed it up with some cream cheese and then dipped it in chocolate." (Note: this type of thinking should really be left to professionals such as beloved television personality Paula Deen. It just seems dangerous in the general population.) I did not take any pictures of them at the party. Nor will I take a picture of the bag of them currently sitting in my refrigerator, because if I do I will eat another one and I feel that more than four in one day is unseemly.

Post-party dinner was a pile of bits from various trays and two cans of beer.

This is actually a dramatic reenactment.

Sunday's proper meal was actually lunch: grilled squash, tomato salad, and tilapia. Very tasty. Thanks, Mom! But if you could include a souffle next time, that'd be great.

The reason this meal looks very well balanced and seasonally appropriate is that I didn't make it.

Anyway, a fine time all around, and now we're back in Austin for the week o'birthdays. With Anna's big number one coming up, I've started to wonder if I should be paying more attention to milestones and such. Getting food from a bowl to a mouth, for example. When she was a fetus, I was pretty much keeping track of her development on a second by second basis, and now when someone says their seven month old is calling them Mama and Dada, I have to just fake an "oh, yeah, obviously" face while I secretly wonder if my child is challenged. I dunno, it's a lot easier to keep track of this kind of stuff when you don't have kids.

Um...should one year olds be able to do...things?

Pizza, sort of

We've been out of town, so here's a quick catch up: Thursday night was pear and gorgonzola pizza topped with arugula that I tossed with salt, pepper, and raspberry blush vinegar. Whoa, did you just step into a 1990 Bret Easton Ellis novel or what? Yeah, I know, every time I'm in a restaurant and see what is basically salad on top of pizza, I think: that is sort of weird and pretentious. So obviously I was compelled to do it myself. I had some dough that I froze many months ago (I think it was actually snowing when I made it) so I figured I'd use it up in the frou-frou-iest way I could.

The arugula adds a nice peppery hint of snobbery.

Anyway, we're in Mansfield this weekend for my Granny's 90th birthday. On Friday afternoon, we packed light and zipped up the ever-delightful 35th Interstate. It was a beautiful day.

I guess when we have two kids we'll just get a U-Haul for weekend trips.

Like a band of gypsies, we crawl down the highway at 35 mph.

At least we arrived to a nice buffalo chicken salad and smooth Belgian-style trippel. Hooray for Yaya and Pawpaw's house!

In an effort to relax this weekend, I've been trying not to notice anything humorous.

Lighter than air! Plus an extra cup of cheese. So...the same as air, I guess.

Okay, I have taken a bit of grief regarding my being too lazy to type out the words "Last night's dinner" every time I want to show you...last night's dinner. Which is daily. I looked into it, and there is already a blog called Last Night's Dinner that I am now following. Her food photography is far superior, but she almost never says funny things about my daughter, so, your call.

Anyway, (voting is now open for a better transitional phrase): Souffle class at Central Market. Cheese and mushroom souffles with grilled chicken and pork tenderloin. They split us up into teams for the souffle construction, and considering that our team was composed of a (purported) English major, science teacher, descendent of bakers, and know-it-all pushy-pants, we were amazingly inept at reading and following instructions. Remarkably, even. We doubled the amount of cheese called for in the the cheese souffle (confession: this may have simply been an instinct of mine) and messed up our mixtures of almond meal and sugar for the almond raspberry souffle.

We named him Fred.

It was all still really, really lovely. I used to be skeptical anytime I perused a souffle recipe, assuming that the French were being unnecessarily complicated, but then I tasted that...pillow...made of cheese....

(Takes a moment.)

Yes, back. Sorry. The souffle class also delivered the food epiphany I was looking for with mayonnaise the other day, but in an unexpected form: mushrooms can actually be the base of a really delicious construction. I finished my mushroom souffle. And I liked it. DO YOU HEAR THAT, WORLD? I LIKED MUSHROOMS ONE TIME. So if you're interested feeding me fungus in the future, I suggest the souffle as the ideal vehicle.

As far as Anna goes today, I've recently realized that by having a baby/toddler you are essentially saying, "I would like it if my house constantly looked like a very bizarre crime scene."

Something...strange happened here.

The mariachi music was probably overkill

LND: Tomato-chipotle soup with peach salsa from the Bon Appétit Cookbook. I think I was overcompensating for last week's steaming pot of autumn by going for a light, cool, summery gazpacho-type vibe, and the big orange tome rarely disappoints. However, once it was all assembled, I couldn't help but feel that Bon Appétit had tricked me into making a bowl of salsa with salsa on top of it for dinner.

Maybe I shouldn't have served it with chips and guacamole.

Not that it wasn't tasty, but when dinner was over I was pretty much ready for my enchilada combo plate. Man, usually I really nail it with soups, but the last two have resulted in experiences of: Thanksgiving; the first 15 minutes at a Mexican restaurant. Tune in next week, when I will somehow evoke Yom Kippur in liquid form.

This morning was music class, which tends to be about 20 minutes of fun followed by 30 minutes of fussy struggle. Anna started off the day in a state of slight confusion due to a bowl of shakers that looked like various food items.

Ceci n'est pas une orange.

The hell?

Wait a minute...if they're disguising instruments as food, maybe they're also DISGUISING FOOD AS INSTRUMENTS.

Guys, stop. I have a theory.

Anyway, Dan is sick today, probably because I fed him a condiment for dinner last night, so we're trying to take it easy. By which I mean I'm going to skip working out. In solidarity.