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.

Pun involving the word halibut

LND: Baked halibut with braised red cabbage and steamed broccoli. Sometimes things just get healthy up in here.

I took about 700 pictures of it, but they all looked like fish with vegetables.

And then I think better of it and make strawberry cobbler.

This picture makes it look like The Saddest Little Cobbler, but that's because it was taken in the dark by someone drinking rum.

Actually, though, it's a recipe from the Whole Foods Market Cookbook, so obviously it is healthy as well. Plus, the two glasses of rum were necessary to accompany our one-day-late viewing of 1776, and everyone knows that thematic consumption doesn't count against you. Verdict: a fully virtuous evening.

This morning we went to a moms and babies meetup at Kneaded Pleasures. No pictures of it, so you will just have to envision a long table with about 14 women attempting to wrangle 14 infants while drinking coffee and eating bagels. The fun thing about this particular meetup is that we always sit right by the front door, which causes the majority of patrons entering the restaurant to have a brief "I....am...in...the...wrong...place" moment when they see us. Today one woman actually gave us a semi-horrified "Wow." I'm basically just living for the day that we cause someone to turn on a heel and immediately abandon the premises.

Anyway, Anna was pretty good for the coffee meetup, although she kept leaning over to the woman sitting next to us in what I believe was an attempt to lick her wristwatch. That probably wouldn't have been so bad if she hadn't been eating freeze-dried blueberries, which gave her a fairly ghoulish look about the mouth area.

This afternoon we went to a wading pool in order to use her awesome floppy hat and little wet-shoes, all of which are conspicuously absent in the following pictures because her goals were, in this order 1) remove shoes and hat 2) attempt to drown self in order to spite mother for this outing. I'll just leave you with a visual portrait of her general boredom and exasperation with me. In a way, I'm proud of her precociousness, because that last expression demonstrates at least a seventh grade proficiency in disgust.

Less than the sum of its parts

LND: BLTs with homemade mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is generally a member of my top three least desired foods list, along with mushrooms (dirt flavored rubber) and shrimp (things that used to be alive should only crunch if they are deep fried). I guess I would say mayonnaise's crime is...high caloried pointlessness.

I'm sorry, but the only thing that matters here is bacon.

At some point I realized that I don't object to any of the individual components of mayonnaise, so it didn't really make sense to be grossed out by it. Also, people who know about food are constantly claiming that homemade mayonnaise is so completely different than store-bought that you will rend your garments when you realize the height of mayonnaise ecstasy previously unknown to you. I had no reason not to believe these people, except I sort of suspected they were the same pack of dirty liars who told me that making crepes is totally easy.

None of these things are gross.

So I whipped some up, and yeah, it was better than the store kind. But not mind-bendingly, avoided-foods-list-revisingly better. Mayonnaise and I have, at best, reached a détente. Given the calorie and fat content, I would still much rather smother my food with cheese or guacamole or pesto or Amy's ice cream. Or the separate, non-emulsified ingredients of mayonnaise.

It is an uneasy truce.

Instead of going in to work, Dan spent all day being an exemplary husband and father, reading to the kid and cleaning the garage, while I ate bonbons* and watched my stories**.

"See, honey? Any time a signal follows different paths to the same point, such that the energy from one path is delayed in time with respect to the energy from another path, a frequency-dependent phase difference exists between the two signals."

We also had a major food-intake breakthrough, so please, please no one tell Anna that strawberries are fruit.

I had to tell her it was a type of bread made of sugar and acid and phytonutrients, so back me up.

*Tacodeli
**Read about cognitive behavioral therapy

Can you smell the smoke and Big Red?

Happy Independence Day, here's some barbecue. You've earned it. Actually, I realize he only comprises about 33% of my total readership, but the following pictures are pretty much just for my father.

See? Dinner did in fact include some green vegetables.

I actually can't look at these without feeling like there is a fine layer of grease all over my skin. And internal organs.

Yep, last night we headed out to Lockhart for some Kreuz Market action in celebration of Kevin's (I want to say....48th?) birthday. It was smoky salty goodness as usual, and now we can go ahead and add "beef fat" to the list of things that Anna will chew on despite refusing to touch bananas, sigh.

One thing to come out of last night's festivities is a good illustration of the photographic difficulty I am having with regard to my daughter; specifically, we are physically unable to look good in the same picture. It's actually to the point where I worry when I'm out and she's being especially adorable that I must look hideously malformed, and I get a little confidence boost when she makes weird faces.

I look fine, she tries to swallow her wrist.

She gives a nice toothy smile, I have fourteen chins.

I guess that's what Photoshop is for? I've never given any thought to what Photoshop is for, really, but now it seems like the answer is "creating family photos that don't look ridiculous."

Today's was Anna's first 4th of July, which is obviously a significant milestone, as it was also her first Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. Honestly, she didn't seem that impressed by the competition this year, but I think she's pretty happy to finally have a goal in life.

These fools are totally slacking off in the absence of Kobayashi.

It was too wet for yardwork

LND: Stuffed baked potatoes. No recipe, just ground turkey, broccoli, bell pepper, onion, sour cream and cheddar cheese. In a potato. With a side salad. Okay, I know, this is like the Platonic ideal of an uninteresting meal.

Don't worry, tomorrow's entry features a lot more brisket.

Speaking of potatoes, I'm sad to say it, but that sweet, squeaky little seven pound potato-looking thing we brought home last July has turned into one of those toddler monsters you see everywhere, harassing house pets and prying open drawers and growing teeth at inconvenient times. Which means: it's time to graduate to a bigger car seat. So that's what we did this afternoon, we went out and got the fanciest piece of equipment that Craigslist had to offer. In the last three days. Within 10 miles. Nothing is too good for my toddler monster!

I just know that she'll outgrow the current one eventually.

Also, Hopper has become pretty emphatic about the fact that as soon as he turns 18 he is so out of here.

Eggs, getting things done

LND: Shakshuka from the ridiculously good at all things food smitten kitchen. She describes it as an Israeli dish, but Wikipedia says it's more generally Middle Eastern and probably originated in Tunisia. I only mention this because I'm pretty sure if I had said "It's a Tunisian poached egg dish," I could have avoided the following exchange:

Dan: <30 minutes of geopolitical musing.>
Erica: I just really like poached eggs.

Can't we all just drown some eggs in spicy tomato sauce?

I replaced the feta with a combination of goat cheese and Parmesan because I accidentally used all the feta in that bean salad a few days ago. Parm plus goat = feta, right? Food math. Whatever, the other option was maple cheddar. Aaaand now I want a maple cheddar poached egg.

So, hmm. Let's do the week in productivity review. I have several things that I should be working on/maintaining, so I'll try to break it down by the approximate amount of time spent on each thing, in minutes. Organizing/printing out pictures: 0. Organizing cooking magazine recipes: 0. Reading actual books (3 therapist recommended, 1 book club book, 3 books on loan from people, 2 baby-related books, 3 books I started at least two years ago): 0. Exercise: about 20 minutes on the treadmill on Monday. Since then, I've just been trying to do this every morning:

It helps when my jokes are pre-labeled "Funny."

Approximate amount of time I spent watching four year olds compete in beauty pageants, in minutes: 120.

I'd say my only goal for next week is to find someone to write a letter to so that I can finally use this guy:

I guess the British are really strict about formality and stuff.

I had a good run

LND: Vietnamese steak sandwich. I can't vouch for the authenticity of it. It seems "Vietnamese" in the sense that something is "Mexican" if you put salsa on top of it, but with fish sauce. In which case, I'm not sure I feel comfortable recommending that you "Vietnamese" up your next meal.

I don't want to be culturally insensitive, but fish sauce doesn't really smell edible.

Speaking of less than ideal food, here is what Anna is having for lunch, because I have entirely given up, as a parent:

Green things are healthy.

Mommy protip: When the nutritional comparison on the back of your child's meal is "vs. Regular Fries," you should probably just turn yourself in to CPS and save some overbearing stranger the trouble.

I also let her watch television while wearing a halter top today, probably because I've been really into Ancestry.com lately, and I want her to understand where she comes from. (ETA: hicks.)

Know your roots, child.

My favorite part of today, so far: hearing someone on television use the word "misnomer" incorrectly. And by "television" I of course mean "Toddlers & Tiaras."