"Moving on" is not my strong suit

Well, we all knew this day was coming, and it finally did. I was finally forced by The Man the reasonable renewal policy of the Wells Branch Community Library to return In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite. At least I managed to sneak some spaetzle in just under the wire, and believe me, it wasn't easy. Nothing about spaetzle is easy.

But what else will hold up all my browned onions, chard, and emmentaler cheese?

I guess it's mostly my fault for interpreting Clark's story about how she went several years without making spaetzel because it is too difficult to do alone unless you have a spaetzel maker (288 shopping days until Christmas) as meaning that I should definitely attempt to make it alone and also maybe add in a broken foot and a two-year old climbing me like a tree. One could technically describe that as misinterpreting, I suppose. Anyway, it was…a process. That resulted in…food.

I'm tempted to attribute my semi-botching of that last recipe to a subconscious desire to make parting with Year of the Library Sub-Project Book #2 a little easier. After all, scanning the shelves this time around felt far more discouraging. What could replace such a happy presence in my home? No one seemed like the right fit. Not chilly Martha. Not my old frenemy Prevention Magazine. Ina was a contender until a casual skimming revealed that approximately 85% of her recipes contain lobster for some reason. Then something caught my eye: Cook This Now. YES. A commanding voice of wisdom and seasonality! The kind of voice that will literally tell me exactly what to make in the month of March and could also probably instruct me to clean my baseboards were she so inclined! Welcome home, Melissa Clark. I almost had time to miss you.

The first recipe in the March section is Gingery Split Pea Soup with Toasted Coriander. It was all I could do to refrain from delineating the differences among porridge, mush, and gruel for Anna. I'm hoping that in a few years she will come to share my passion on the topic.

In the meantime, I will use ground coriander next time because I seem incapable of crushing seeds thoroughly enough to avoid having weird crunchy bits all up in my nice mush. I just made the blech-tongue-scraping face thinking about it.

I had much better luck with the accompanying Butter Lettuce and Clementine Salad with Browned Butter Vinaigrette. That is a lot of serious flavor for one little salad. Plus who thinks to put butter on salad, haaaaaa oh man I just love her.

I have no jokes about this salad, I really enjoyed it. I'M ALLOWED TO EARNESTLY FIND THINGS ZESTY AND DELICIOUS SOMETIMES, I AM ONLY HUMAN.

In conclusion, In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite: A plus plus. Cook This Now: very promising indeed. Likelihood that I will hop a plane to New York and start full-out stalking Ms. Clark: low, but on the rise.

After Ivy revealed herself as the handy type, we told her she could have a big girl bed if she could put it together.

We already took the crib down, so I think the added incentive of having nowhere else to sleep is going to spur her to finish this within the month or two. Six, tops.

Summer hibernation will be here before you know it

You can keep your chirping birds, your tiny blossoms, your weird urban legends about eggs and brooms standing upright unassisted. I know spring is nigh because I have just ransacked every grocery store in the greater Austin area in pursuit of edible green things. That's right: Green Bunko has come and gone once again! Third time's the lucky charm, right? Right, guys? It's not easy being green, you know what I'm saying? Relatedly, this year's sub-theme was "Kinda Phoning It In."

Cheese plate: less ambitious.

Stuffed potatoes: less adorably tiny.

Broccoli salad: way less prep time than green deviled eggs.

…pickles.

It is still a lot of green in one place.

Not sure I had this cutting board last year. So that's something.

And I DID go a new and bold direction in the dessert category: POTATO CANDY. It completely exists. And looks exactly like a pile of dirty potatoes.

I'm sorry about all this, Ireland.

Anyway, I have no idea what people are on about with this turd business. If I wanted to make a St. Patrick's Day turd, you would know it. Trust me.

The girls have been watching a lot of Handy Manny.

So maybe that master bathroom renovation will happen sooner than I thought.

If it's Tuesday, this must be pancakes

Hello and happy Mardi Gras! Or, more accurately for our purposes, Pancake Tuesday! Laissez les bon temps be smothered in syrup. Fortunately for all of us, the blog project that I continue to be right on top of provides the perfect material for this hallowed occasion.

One of the best features of The Book Lover's Cookbook is that once in a while it makes room for the slower more deliberate reader by throwing in an eight-line poem, such as this one by Shel Silverstein:

Pancake? 

Who wants a pancake,
Sweet and piping hot?
Good little Grace looks up and says,
"I'll take the one on top."
Who else wants a pancake,
Fresh off the griddle?
Terrible Teresa smiles and says,
"I'll take the one in the middle."

As the recipe included is quite standard and boring, I thought I would run the Silverstein test on Ivy to add a little interest to this section. I was right on the edge of my seat!

I'm not going to lie, this outcome was a surprise.

I also finished Cold Mountain, which means that so far I am keeping up my grueling pace of one to two books per month. The things I do for you people! ALERT--Since this is really the first grown-up fiction that I've covered, it seems like a good time to expressly lay out my policy on spoilers, which is: they will be raining down up on you fast and furious. All spoilers, all the time. Forget it, Jake. It's Spoilertown. END ALERT.

Considering the fact that this book is largely about death and destruction and the worst impulses of humanity, I was surprised to find that it was somewhat less bleak than I anticipated. It's even the type of human will to endure story that I generally go well out of my way to avoid! It's possible that after a couple of things written for children and one very unhappy memoir I was just so desperate for adult fiction that this felt like a relief, no matter how many people died horribly or how much bear cub meat got eaten. A couple of things near the end started to be too much for me, as children-in-peril always are, but for the most part it was a nicely-drawn world that I was eager to return to.

If I had to guess, I would say the real reason I enjoyed it was that Ada and Ruby's storyline scratched my productivity-porn itch left unfulfilled by Little House. Such thorough descriptions of hard work! Cleaning up! Planting! Clearing! Harvesting! Preserving! Lovingly detailed schedules and rules, aaaaaahhhhh that's the stuff. I need Ruby to come here and instruct me to scrub my baseboards. How can I scrub my baseboards if no one tells me to do it? Sigh. I also need her to come make some potato salad for me.

That noon, Ruby said she wanted to walk up and check on the apple orchard, so Ada suggested they have their lunch there. They made a picnic of the leftover pieces of last night's fried chicken, a small bowl of potato salad for which Ruby had whipped up the mayonnaise, and some vinegared cucumber slices.

Boom, perfect recreation.

Since nothing absurdly terrible happens immediately following this paragraph, I'm tempted to say that this is the most appropriate recipe-to-excerpt match so far except that there is not actually mayonnaise in this potato salad and again there is HALF A CUP OF WHITE SUGAR for no reason. Now, look. Setting aside the fact that people who can only obtain white sugar by finding the rare individual who stashed it away before the war and are willing to trade for it PROBABLY WON'T THEN PUT IT ALL INTO A POTATO SALAD, potatoes do not need sugar. They don't. I like carbohydrates as much as the next lady! The simpler the better! Potatoes do not need sugar.

Let's see how we do with the White Bean Soup.

Feeding herself was Ruby's to do as soon as she was old enough to be held accountable for it, which in Stobrod's opinion fell close after learning to walk. As an infant, Ruby foraged for food in the woods up and down the river at charitable farms. Her brightest childhood memory was of walking up the river trail for some of Sally Swanger's white bean soup and on the way home having her nightgown--for several years her usual attire, even in the daytime--get caught on the trailside blackthorn briar.

Immediately following: she is stuck there all night long, to the point that she has either a spiritual experience or an auditory hallucination. Also, it seems unlikely that Mrs. Swanger used an electric slow cooker for this soup. Small quibbles, though. I like bean soup.

It's beans and soup.

Did I like the ending of the book? I mean…when one character spends the entire novel in immediate danger of death and then has two entire pages of hopeful planning for the future…let's just say I was resigned to it. Also I was in the doctor's office waiting to get a boot on my foot when I read it. So obviously my own pain and suffering eclipsed Inman's sad fate, I mean, this thing is really pretty aggravating. I clomp everywhere!

Up next: The Accidental Tourist. I know absolutely nothing about this book except that Geena Davis is in the movie version. I guess I'm just hoping the body count is fewer than ten. Please don't tell me if I'm wrong.

Ugh, you guys, that was exhausting. I'm going to let Anna dictate the rest of the picture captions.

Ivy is completely wearing her mushroom hat and I don't know what she is doing but I think she is, um, chewing something and putting something in her mouth and she is wearing a shirt and I think she is also watching something. 

Ivy is wearing her hat again and she looks like she is looking at the windows and she is funny right now I think. She looks like her is chewing something. That's all.

ETA: I JUST LOOKED UP THE PREMISE OF THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST. I'm going to go lie down now. Happy Mardi Gras.

Loafing, limping

Just thought I should let you guys know that I got really sick of In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite and stopped finding Melissa Clark interesting at all HAHA JUST KIDDING I cooked four more recipes out of it. Sorry, Wells Branch Community Library! You can pry this book out of my sticky dead hands.*

Queso Fresco Quesadillas with Papaya-Avacado Salsa. It's possible that I would like absolutely any combination of avocado, salt, lime, and cilantro, but I ate a LOT of this particular combination. Very quickly.

Baked Flounder Cod with Eggs. One of the best things about Clark's breakfast section is her eat-whatever-foods-you-want-in-the-morning approach. THIS IS THE CORRECT ATTITUDE. Swistle knows what we're talking about.

Chocolate Chip Pecan Loaf Cake. I love me a loaf. Always have, always will.  You can pry this loaf out of my crumby dead hands.

Chorizo with Sweet Pepper and Onion Stew and Fried Croutons. This is heavy stuff. It is not spa fare. It is for places with real winters and also for ME because I LIKE it. It probably goes without saying that you can pry sausage-grease-fried croutons out…from…between my greasy dead knees? I feel like my dead hands are already pretty full. 

Domestic updates: Ivy is two.

Anna is still trying to determine the purpose of this primitive technology.

And I underestimated the toll all that bacon weight would take on me and now my foot is broken. MY DELICATE FRAME COULDN'T SUPPORT THAT PIGGY LOAD.

Or I got a small stress fracture from overtraining about six weeks ago, I can't remember. It's all a blur.

*No you won't, I'll have it back by the fourth, please leave my account in good standing. Thank you.

Pork Mortem

If the end of the Winter Olympics has left you with a world-class-competition-sized hole in your heart, fear not: this weekend kicked off the spring season of the Super Social Food League of Austin, and after a four-month break, you'd better believe we came to play. Then promptly proceeded to get our asses kicked.

You may recall that Regan and (sometimes Emily) and I had a perfect three and oh record at the end of our first round, so I can only blame hubris for the fact that we believed we were ready to take on the 2014 Bacon and Beer Festival after such a long offseason. It seemed a reasonable enough challenge. Bacon and beer! Why spend a Saturday afternoon any other way, really? We went in with hopes and hunger high, keeping a strong focus on the bacon half of the proceedings (this is a food league, if we wanted a drinking league we would go back to playing softball). Three days and four pounds of water retention later, I'm still not entirely sure what happened. Mistakes were made. Let's examine the evidence.

1. We should have camped out the night or possibly week before in order to secure a spot in the front of the line. In our naiveté, we arrived right around the start time of the event, not realizing that the dedication of bacon enthusiasts rivals that of concert-goers and Star Wars weirdos.

2. We should have brought our own table. And trash can. And 15,000 square feet of breathing room.

Behind the scenes exclusive: that sweet black backdrop is my lap.

3. It pains me to say this, but we should not have attacked cups of Amy's Ice Cream the second we walked into the room. I'm honestly not sure how to avoid that happening, though. I know intellectually and gastrointestinally that this was the wrong move, but I cannot say for certain that I wouldn't do it again.

"Bacon bread pudding" sounded cute at the time, but I literally just shuddered while typing those words out.

4. Maybe we should have noticed that there were two large rooms full of food before indiscriminately stuffing ourselves in the first one.

$5 to anyone who can even BEGIN to guess what this is. Hint: it contains bacon.

5. We should have anticipated and cashed in on the "serving food with clothespins" fad that is sweeping the nation.

Just makes that hunk of pig a little more Pinteresty.

"I'm carnivorous and also kind of twee!"

 6. We probably should have spent more time getting to know Dizzle.

Regan isn't actually smiling here, she's just holding back bile.

This guy wasn't smiling either, to be fair. Not him…the one below him.

It wasn't all bad news! I'd have to say the pork belly and grits from Hoover's took first place in my clogged, clogged heart.

In the end, I'd like to believe that Food League is now older and wiser, but we are also changed women. Bloated women. SO READY to take on that raw foods restaurant next time around.

Ivy has decided that the birds most likely want to bathe in mud. Like at a spa? Probably?

You make me wanna be a better pan

I have renewed In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite from my library twice now. I have cooked twelve recipes from it. Despite having explored it so extensively and finding Melissa Clark's recipes to be pretty widely available online, I am still strongly considering purchasing it because I feel it would make my house a better place. Seriously, this book is Helen Hunt and my kitchen is Jack Nicholson right now. FURTHER EVIDENCE:

Red Lentil Soup with Lemon. I love lentil soup. This was an especially nice one.

I can tell, because Dan said "This is good" in that borderline-offensive-to-previous-meals way more than once.

Braised Pork Chops with Tomatoes, Anchovies, and Rosemary. Dan isn't nuts about pork chops, but for some reason I can't stop making them. I guess I figured throwing in the skeevy leftover anchovies haunting my fridge would…help?

Somehow this was good, I swear. Of course, there were no spousal proclamations of such. So…grain of weird little salty fish.

If I'm being honest, I think one of the things drawing me to Clark's recipes is a deep nostalgia for the time in my life when olive oil was the best and healthiest thing in the universe. Remember that? I would totally watch VH1's I Love The Olive Oil. (I also long for the days when that was a current reference that made sense.) I know olive oil is out of favor now, at least in terms of cooking (as opposed to drizzling), but those were simpler times. And she even let me FRY EGGS IN IT! Nice and hot. Tasted like the good ol' days. Two more entries in the Olive Oil Hall of Fame:

Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake. Tastes juuuuuust grown-up enough that your kids will only steal about half of your piece.

And Olive Oil Granola with Dried Apricots and Pistachios. All I can tell you about this recipe is (incoherent mumble, mouth completely stuffed with granola).

Anyway, when I'm not cuddling ITKWAGA, I am making some progress on Cold Mountain, so my goal is to finish that up by the end of the month. Is anyone else reading it? It's pretty great!

Anna has started demanding that the dolls watch Wheel of Fortune with her, as she is obsessed with it in a way that only a four-year-old can be obsessed with something.

A doll-badgering sort of way.

And we're all just really, really enjoying Ivy's third year so far.

Eggs and warmth

I have some good news/bad news regarding In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite and its relationship to eggs. First, the good news: I am 100% onboard with polenta now, and this Buttery Polenta with Olive Oil-Fried Eggs and Swiss Chard is largely responsible. That is a tasty, filling, garlic-spiked bowl of food right there.

Also egg-topped, obviously. The greatest of all adjectives.

And then there is the Deviled Egg Salad Sandwich. Has any food item ever sounded more suited to me than a Deviled Egg Salad Sandwich? Eggs! Bread! Musta--hold the phone…no mustard? No mustard in a deviled egg salad? I'm really sorry to report that this is my first philosophical parting with Ms. Clark, whom I had heretofore considered basically my food-soul mate. (Food-soul. Seems like a thing?)  Instead there is mayonnaise, anchovy, and paprika. I guess it is a more thoroughly "deviled" recipe than my standard, as it contains both mayonnaise and anchovies, which clearly tend toward the "evil" side of  the spectrum. In her defense, it still tasted pretty good, all things considered.

Note the Unrealistic Pioneering Bean Salad on the side there.

At least we're all excited about the nice weather this week!

I mean, kind of.

It does seem a little suspect.

Better hit the garden while we can.