Messy fish, icy sorbet, semi-abandoned ridiculous complaint

Did I say no more weekend posts? Oh. Well, some weekends have more downtime than others. Don't get used to it! You won't always have the magical, magical gift of Erica's boredom!

Anna is continuing her convalescence apace.

The flash from the camera is disguising the sense of pleading in Hopper's eyes.

Last night I made tilapia with the Texas Home Cooking version of Salsa Veracruzana. I'm actually not sure I should even attribute it to that august volume, as I mangled it pretty badly. Their recipe calls for fresh snapper, and I used frozen tilapia. I ran out of capers making Salt Mussels earlier this week (it's cool Belgium, I ain't mad at you). I don't even understand what "white wine Worcestershire sauce" is, so I used the regular kind. And my green olives aren't pimento stuffed, so I added a few dashes of that fancy pepper I got because it has the word "Piment" on it. I only mention that particular feat of culinary logic because I did the exact same thing with the egg salad the day before, so I guess it's like...a thing. That I do now. Just trying to get my $12 worth.

Mangled, I tell you.

I also made some Watermelon Sorbet, but I cut the sugar in half and increased the vodka by 900%.

I'm just kidding, I didn't reduce the sugar.

This morning I cashed in the very first Groupon I ever bought, which for some reason (beer?) was for a spa that specializes in facials. I had a whole thing in my brain where I was going to bitch about how miserable I was for an hour and a half, but then I decided to take pity and not subject you to an extended version of the most first world problem complaint ever (my expensive facial was bad for my self esteem!). Instead, I will say that the mood of the entire exercise is best summed up by the lady's surprised/concerned "No lip wax?"

And now for some CSI: New Toys Edition.

He was so close.

This is extremely momentous and also fried in peanut oil

The focus of last night's dinner is going to be the side dish, rather than the main, for two reasons. One, and this is very exciting, it's my first ever requested food project on this blog. Two, it's freaking fried avocado slices. I want to officially encourage this type of strange yet intriguing food suggestion. Seriously, keep 'em coming. But no cookie balls please, that's a little too hardcore for me.

Because the avocado fries were a specific request, I tried to be more thorough than usual in documenting the process. Here we go!

Let's do this.

Sort of like coconut crusted shrimp, but 100% different.

I had to add an extra hand-washing to get this in-process picture, so, you're welcome.

Look how thirsty they are for sweet, sweet peanut oil.

Fry, my pretties!

Et voila.

Difficulty level: pretty low, really. The only tricky part is being very gentle when you bread the avocado pieces so that they don't mush up. So if you have any inclination, I say definitely make an attempt on these guys. Flavor: I mean....it's fried avocado, so if you like avocado, it's delicious. It's nice to have that crunch to balance out the creaminess. Maybe because I'm used to my avocados coming in spicy guacamole form, I think they could have used a little more seasoning. Personal preference. I also couldn't eat much, which is probably a good thing, but the richness is a bit overwhelming. In the end, they are very tasty but also lily-gildingly unnecessary.

I served them alongside egg salad sandwiches from Big Orange. The egg salad was pretty good, and to be fair to Bon Appetit, the onion bagel was my dumb idea, not theirs. Egg salad on a bagel: yummy in theory, logistical mess in practice.

Just upstaging the hell out of that sandwich.

Quite some time ago, my dad and I determined that the appropriate wine to accompany fried pickle slices is a Fume Blanc, so I figured it could carry over to this other culinary abomination. I think it did the job nicely.

Fume Blanc: for when you need to wash down gratuitously fried things.

Anna is still a little congested and droopy, but she is more or less back to her normal cat-pursuing activities.

I think she feels better.

This post is Belgian flavored

Did you know that yesterday was Belgian Independence Day? No, you did not. Did you, like me, think, Congratulations, Belgium! Uh...independence from whom? I mean really, would you know without looking? My guess was France, but it turns out to be the Netherlands. I blame They Might Be Giants for never having written a song about it.

I feel like it could have gone either way.

This is exactly the type of tidbit you come across when almost all of your knowledge of the outside world is filtered through food blogs, in this case, the kitchn. I'm usually pretty organized about my weekly menu, but when I saw that post and realized I had some mussels in the freezer, I knew that this year we would be adding Belgian Independence to the list of "extremely tenuous reasons to celebrate with themed food and drink." Seriously, though, Belgium is known as "The Land of Beer and Chocolate." You know I didn't make that up because I could never have even conceived of a world where such a fairyland existed. Why not go ahead and throw July 21st in with St. Patrick's Day and Cinco de Mayo?

There are a lot of reasons to like Belgium. A) waffles B) they have like 20 major political parties, and their Green Party has an exclamation point in its name because they are so pumped up about the environment C) the only Belgian I ever spent significant time with had a huge chip on her shoulder about speaking French with a Belgian accent, and as a Texan, I relate (because I also speak French with a Belgian accent) D) THEIR WHOLE THEME IS BEER AND CHOCOLATE.

Anyway, mussels. I had never cooked mussels before, but it's really easy if you just get the frozen package and don't have to deal with cleaning them up. They definitely looked pretty for a first attempt.



I even bought a fancy kind of pepper I had never heard of before.

Quick review: costs $12 and smells like paprika.

They were sort of half successful. The flavors were really good together, and the mussels were good if you didn't get any of the broth vegetables in the bite, otherwise it was crazy salty. I think it's possible that Dan and I, being uncultured, were approaching it more like a soup than a salt bath for the protein. I have no idea. It was very salty. I think I would try it again with half the capers and twice the Belgian ale on the side. To...wash down the salt.

All in all, thanks, Belgium! I'll try to remember you again next July.

Anna, who is never sick, is sick. Can you tell?

Sweetie, I'm sorry for posting a picture of you in this state, but at least it wasn't the one with the Cheerio stuck under your nose. And that one was hilarious.

We had to cancel our first ever playgroup at the house because at this point she's just covering every surface with snot and I don't want to involve any additional surfaces in the form of other babies. I always figured hey, she's not talking or walking or getting most of the food to her mouth, but at least she's healthy as a horse. Now I don't know. "But at least her fingernails grow really fast"? I'll work on it.

Paella, Monkee, Sheep-Cow

Last night I made "Farmstand Paella" from my Easy Vegetarian Dinners book. Good way to get in a ton of vegetables AND use some saffron (thanks to Emily, my partner-in-saffron).

You can see the sippy cup reflection in the table, which is why I am never featured in aspirational lifestyle magazines.

The book claims that the start to finish time on this recipe is 25 minutes, but it should probably read "25 minutes plus however long it takes you to go out to the garage and find the machete in order to cut through a raw cob of corn and also if you thoughtlessly substitute brown rice for Arborio, go ahead and add another half hour, you idiot." If they want to cover all their bases.

I thought it was a little weird to have to fish out the pieces of corn on the cob, eat them, and set the cob bits on the rim of the bowl, but I guess it's normal in a traditional paella to serve meat on the bone and seafood in the shell, so I believe it's intended to be in that spirit. Pretty worldly of you, $3 clearance section cookbook!

Like many vegetarian dinners, it actually looked prettier in its mise en place form, so here's that as well.

Check out all that healthiness waiting to happen.

Because she was a total pill yesterday, Anna is taking a blog Time Out.

No screen time for you today, Missy.

Instead, we will discuss some of Anna's stuff. For me, one of the highlights of becoming a parent was discovering that there are a ton of They Might Be Giants children's albums. What did you think I was going to say, watching the amazing transformation of an infant to a person? Learning to appreciate life's small moments? Gaining a capacity to love that I never knew before? No. Finding out that the "Particle Man" duo has a lot of new music that it's now appropriate for me to purchase. High. Light.

All I have so far is Bed, Bed, Bed which is really a book with a four song CD accompaniment. But just so you understand what I'm talking about, one of the songs both defines a gavotte and references Mr. Peter Tork. I figure if TMBG put out enough of these, I won't have to worry about gaps in her public school education.

These are extremely good things to know about.

One of Anna's brand new birthday gifts is also turning out to be awesome for me, even though she's not as into it as I am yet. It's a Leapfrog magnet thingy for the fridge, and you can mix up animal halves and then it'll sing a little song about a "pig-duck" or whatever.

It's a little bit Dr. Moreau, and I like it.

You know how some people stick pictures of swimsuit models on the fridge to remind them not to pig out? This is serving basically the same purpose for me, because every time I go into the kitchen I get super distracted making sheep-cow monsters.

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.