I was right, I did miss the maternity pants

Hello, all! I have returned from Southern California! It was extremely beautiful.

See?

I know this for a fact because I repeatedly said, "Well, it is beautiful" in the same voice one would say, "Well, at least he went quickly."

Small blessings!

Which is to say, it was not exactly for me. Not SoCal's fault. I believe I am more temperamentally inclined toward, I don't know, Northern Europe. In December. Layers and coffee and scowling, I mean. I would probably move to Scandinavia if I believed I could find palatable liquor there. It was pretty much like those California episodes of Mad Men where Don Draper stops seeming awesome and instead seems sort of awkward and uptight and out-of-place. And I know what you're thinking: Erica, please stop comparing yourself to Don Draper for once. Enough with the striking parallels. But I'm sorry, the symmetry is almost spooky.

The only meaningful difference is that I'm guessing Don Draper did not take pictures of all of his food, but it's not like we know that for sure.

He probably would have taken a picture of this bad boy.

And if you're ever served a salad with multiple flags in it and fail to record it digitally, we are not friends.

This one tasted like chicken!

Okay, in San Diego's defense, they do boast a Hash House A Go Go, which, in retrospect, is where I should have spent the entire four days.

The size of that straw allowed me to slide right down into this Bloody Mary and splash around, Augustus Gloop-style.

Thank GOODNESS Dan had the foresight to get the combination platter here.

I'm still not sure what happened here. I mean, I ate it. Almost all of it. And...I'm looking at it now. Yet I can't quite wrap my mind around it.

Most of the wedding food was very dim and blurry, but this is all that matters: late night grilled cheese (and sliders) on the way out of the reception.

Speaking of foresight.

Thank you to Actual Californian Sarah for steering us toward The Broken Yolk:

They have eggs there!

And thank you to Dan for ordering a French Toast Monte Cristo.

I sleep better at night knowing that this exists.

And big huge thank you to other Actual Californian Elizabeth for soliciting a burrito recommendation for us, which we cashed in late night in the hotel room for maybe the most satisfying meal of the trip.

Also for mailing a lobster hat to me (unrelated) (neither here nor there).

We also had breakfast at our extremely fancy hotel and somehow Dan managed to snag some bread pudding? Made with croissants? And bacon? You know, I'd had a bit to drink by that point in the trip, so I feel like I probably made that up.

It was all a dreeeeeeeeeam.

Anyway, I've got to go, someone's grandparents re-programmed her to wake up at 5:30 am for some reason and I'm sacked.

Practical jokers.

Town: I am out of it.

That's right dearies, after a week that was basically terrible in various ways, I have packed it all up and skipped away to the sunny shores of California. The only hard part was, as always, leaving Anna bereft at my impending absence.

Heartbreaking.

We're actually here for a pretty frou-frou wedding, as evidenced by the fact that the hotel bathroom includes a substance that both cleans your hair and exorcises it of its demons. At least, I hope it cleans your hair.

It is a Fancy Place.

I also spent some time this morning sampling various artesian vinegars.

No joke here, just bragging.

Don't worry, though! We haven't abandoned our humble, ridiculous-food-seeking roots. We spent a leisurely morning at Cafe 222 (WARNING: very annoying website) partaking of such nourishment as peanut-butter-and-banana-stuffed French toast:

Re: "nourishment," YMMV.

And a pumpkin waffle:

As featured in Gourmet magazine!

And now a special tip based on my personal experience, which is of course why you are here: in order to fully enjoy your pumpkin waffle as featured in Gourmet magazine, do not upstage it by ordering a tamale with gravy on the side no matter how much your brain is shouting IT'S RIGHT THERE ON THE MENU THEY OBVIOUSLY DON'T THINK IT'S WEIRD JUST DO IT. Better to skip the waffle entirely.

Hellooooooo, California.

Anyway. I do not know anyone at this wedding and I have spent a great deal of time skulking palely around the pool, fully clothed, quietly humming the theme song to "The Beverly Hillbillies," so I think it's going pretty well so far. But don't be surprised if I end up spending most of the weekend hanging out with this guy.

I feel like he just gets me.

I'm just as nervous when she comes at me with a blanket

Hey everyone, thanks for indulging my, uh, petrospective the other day (it's okay, he loved puns, I promise). I'm afraid I'm still a tad glum, but I do want you to rest assured that the entire exchange with my neighbor was as awkward as humanly possible. My inability to communicate with people will not be compromised by tragedy! (Offers high five, is left hanging, clumsily scratches head.)

Let's see...comfort food, comfort food...here we go.

What's it like to have feelings that don't taste like eggs and cheese? Never mind, I don't want to know.

We should probably fry something too, just to be safe.

In peanut oil. To be extra safe.

Non-coincidentally (or as some would say, "on purpose"), my Food Lush post yesterday was comfort-food oriented as well. I'm sorry if any of you needed cheese this week, I think I have all of it here.

Look, I realize that child malapropisms are pretty low-hanging fruit, but I dissolve into a puddle of giggles every time Anna solemnly requests the "fly swaddle."

It does make me wonder what she thought we were doing to Ivy all those months.

Just to bump "dead cat" off the top of the page

I would sincerely like to wish everyone Googling "I am a lawyer and unemployed" the best of luck, and I do hope it leads you more productive places than here.

Those of you Googling "asian boys"... I'm going to leave to make your own luck.

Sorry to hit you with sincerity on a Friday

You know what sounds really delicious? Grilled cheese crepes with shaved asparagus. I'll never know, though.

The fact that the recipe calls these "amazingly easy" is just cruel.

It's okay, I salvaged dinner by turning them into quesadillas.

Then IMPROVED dinner by turning them into an egg dish.

Because putting an egg on something is actually amazingly easy.

Personally, I like Anna's full-throttle approach to coloring with markers.

But Ivy seems uncertain.

Traditionalist.

We also had a very somber 9-month checkup for Ivy.

She really might be the world's most dignified infant.

So everything is a little brief today, and I apologize that I'm going to send you into the weekend on a huge bummer of a note, but we said goodbye to our nine-year-old cat Hopper this morning. Well, not "Goodbye" so much as "Oh shit, our neighbor ran over the cat."

Regardless.

He was a sweetie and a weirdo and a big help in the garden and I will miss him.

Goodbye, buddy.

If you have a better containment system than "random drawer," I'd like to hear it

In case my Summer Food Project coverage was not in-depth enough for you, I dedicated yesterday's Food Lush post to things I intend to make again. If, on the other hand, you think my Summer Food Project coverage has been excessive, just thank your lucky stars that I'm not devoting the whole of August to lazily reminiscing about 60 SUMMER RECIPES. Not in an interesting retrospective sort of way, either. More like, "Hey, remember when I made grilled clams? Crazy." And that would be the whole entry. With no link or picture or anything.

Ugh, you guys. August.

Okay, fine, I'm going to pull it together and throw you at least a few NON-BA recipes throughout this wretched month, here we go, Buffalo chicken lettuce wraps. I had not even realized how much I missed my slow cooker and its magical shredded-chicken-creating properties.

Now Bon Appetit will release a crockpot issue and I will be helpless to resist it.

Whew, that's enough for now. Just dipping a toe back into the water, you know?

Since the girls recently received cute matching outfits from Grandma, I figured I should make an effort to capture them wearing them at the same time. Ivy was game!

Anna was Anna.

She did make an effort eventually.

I just wish the physical pain she experiences while smiling was less evident.

Then things went a little off the rails.

Before taking a turn for the "party bus."

If I had Photoshop, you'd better believe they would be doing this out the top of a limo.

I mean, full party bus.

I guess we probably shouldn't have been attempting this shoot at 3:30 am.

Fortunately, Ivy is her mama's daughter and knows exactly how to sober things up.

That's right, baby. That'll fix it.

Hey, do you guys notice anything weird about Anna's approach to art?

That's right! No hat!

Stick a fork in this project, then top it off with unnecessary chia seeds

Having run out of June Bon Appetit entrees, I finally had a chance to go wild and make anything my heart desired for dinner. Where to start? Cauliflower and greens soup, obviously! Okay, maybe I'm a little out of practice at recipe selection. In retrospect, the description was clearly a red flag: "The color is nice, and the soup is fast."

"The taste is Spinach Water" was probably implied.

I put off this BA#59: tamarind and date agua fresca because it required me to go way out of my way* to find tamarind pulp, but aside from never ever wanting to see my "fine-mesh sieve" again, I was pretty happy with the result. Tamarind is pleasantly sour and there are no gooey seed clumps floating in it.

*To the Indian grocery a 1/2 mile from my house.

No idea why I saved this BA#60: apricot crumble parfait for last, though. It was easy! And ice cream! Why avoid it until the very end?

I mean, look how hard this child is selling it!

I kind of love whoever was responsible for this series of photographs.

SURELY Anna can approach this with less skepticism than Red up there.

"Skeptical" and "forlorn" are two different things, so I'm calling it a success.

WHOA YOU GUYS WE DID IT! 60 SUMMER RECIPES! I have to say, it was maybe the summery-est summer ever, which was the main goal. Being irritated and overwhelmed actually made the time pass pretty quickly, so I'm going to keep that in mind for future attacks of boredom. Based on my experience, I'm going to posit that on the whole, Bon Appetit is probably not for people who:

• are vegetarians
• are on ANY sort of budget
• enjoy their current pant-size
• dislike crustaceans
• prefer simplicity
• hate entertaining

That's not to say that there weren't some hidden gems. I guess since I went to all the trouble to cook the entire magazine, I may as well do a rundown:

1. Cucumber and radish salad. An unfortunate, vinegar-drenched beginning. C-
2. Roast chicken with
3. Pistachio salsa and
4. Peppers and corn. A for the juicy chicken, B+ for the pistachios, C+ for the oddly bland peppers and corn.
5. Taqueria guacamole. I'm not sure what guacamole would have to do to get less than an A from me and I hope never to find out. A
6. Rajas poblanas. Very nice vegetarian taco filling. Slightly spicy and tangy. A+
7. Fresh corn tortillas. These were just fine, but I'm deducting points because there are perfectly good instructions on the back of the masa bag, so tortilla recipes are pointless. B
8. Brown rice salad with crunchy sprouts and seeds. Nice flavor. I do not believe "crunchy sprouts" actually exist. B
9. Cantaloupe-basil agua fresca. Just eat a cantaloupe and save yourself three hours. C
10. Tomato-basil sauce with polenta. It's hard not to give a good rating to anything that makes the house smell this nice, no matter how much polenta confuses me. A-
11. Halibut with spring onion and summer squash sauté. Light, quick, summer-y. A-
12. BombeBasticks. Delicious. Difficult. The name just made me roll my eyes all over again. B-
13. Fresh chorizo. Yes please. A+
14. Creole-spiced shrimp. For someone who emphatically dislikes shrimp, I actually enjoyed this a lot. A-
15. Kielbasa with onions and poblanos. Generally, if something is intended to be served with mustard and crusty bread, it's a winner. Also extremely easy to put together. A
16. Black rice salad with mango and peanuts. Eh. My personal preference is for rice, pasta, and grains to be hot, which is going to be reflected in the scoring for all of these salads. B-
17. Watermelon and grapefruit agua fresca. See #9, replace "cantaloupe" with "watermelon." C, but when vodka is added it's an A, so we'll give this one a B overall
18. Pico de gallo. This is a standard, acceptable version of pico. B+
19. Yucatan-style habanero salsa. I wouldn't make it again, but having consumed it and survived gives me a nice, warm (very warm, actually pretty hot) feeling of accomplishment. B
20. Cumin and ancho chicken. It's possible that I'm just a fan of taco fillings. A+
21. Tony's steak. Good flavor, and I like that at least some of the summer recipes involved the grill. Could have had a better texture. A-
22. Quinoa tabbouleh. I think quinoa is my exception to the above-stated "no cold grains" rule. A-
23. Shrimp in adobo. For someone who emphatically dislikes shrimp, I...found this to be edible. B-
24. Pink lady milkshakes. So unnecessary, yet less disgusting than they sound. C+
25. Cocoa-date truffles. A little bit of a mess to make, but really, really good for something with no refined sugar. A
26. Grilled pork chops and peaches with pole beans. Yay for the grill and yay for the great flavor on the chops and extra yay for grilled peaches. Boo for green beans that retain structural integrity. A-
27. Spiced cucumbers and coconut milk. I think this one benefited from extremely low expectations. B
28. Fish filets with tomatoes, squash, and basil. This seemed very healthy. B-
29. Curried spelt salad. I could not face these leftovers, so Dan had to finish it. C-
30. Grilled flatiron steaks with
31. Tomatoes and
32. Tapenade. B+ for the steaks, B+ for the tomato salad, A for the tapenade because IIIIII loooooove olives.
33. Vanilla-roasted rhubarb and strawberry. Smelled better than it tasted. B-
34. Cucumber salsa. I can barely even remember this, so it was obviously neither great nor awful. I'm going to guess "pointless." C+
35. Slow-roasted salmon with
36. Cherry tomatoes and couscous and
37. Yogurt sauce. The salmon was not particularly special, especially for the cover recipe, and it required the kitchen to be hot for a long time, C+. Cherry tomatoes and couscous are fine, B. Yogurt sauce was the KEY element of this dish, A-.
38. Seared short-rib. I cannot cook beef correctly. Bon Appetit continues to let this happen. C
39. Quick-pickled onions. Good way to brighten up tacos. A
40. Toasted guajillo chile salsa. It was a little tough to track down dried guajillo peppers, but the result was really nice. A-
41. New potatoes with dill butter. The least objectionable Scandinavian dish I have yet encountered. A-
42. Carrot and yogurt sauce. This is exactly what it sounds like. I found that it tended to get lost amongst the more...interesting Danish flavors. B-
43. Shrimp and cucumber salad with horseradish mayo. I only had one, tiny, aquavit-fueled bite of this, so this will probably be an unfair assessment. C-
44. Peach-blueberry ice cream pie. Why not? B+
45. Aquavit spritzers. Keep in mind that I did give these extra credit for helping inspire some pretty sweet dance moves. F
46. Blueberry Smash. This benefits from being the only other cocktail and not containing aquavit, but it was still pretty bitter and unpleasant. I don't go for sweet drinks, but had to add a little sugar to make this palatable. C
47. Grilled clams with herb butter. Mmmm, herb butter. A-
48. Basmati rice and summer vegetable salad. NO. RICE. SALADS. EVER! C
49. Strawberry tarts with ginger-nut crusts. A pain to put together, but highly tasty. B+
50. Summer house lobster salad. This one is tough. How can you put a price on adventure? Oh, $14/lb? Okay. C+
51. Black barley, fennel, and radish salad. No. C-
52. Hot fudge sauce. This is like guacamole. Don't ruin it and you're gonna get an A. A
53. Marshmallow sauce. Not for me, but the kiddos love it. B+
54. Sweet-and-salty peanut butter sauce. You have no idea how hard it's been for me to know this is in the fridge and not just gulp the rest of it down. A+
55. Cherry compote. Almost too virtuous, containing real fruit and whatnot. B+
56. Wet walnuts. Hee. A++
57. Chocolate, cardamom, and coffee ice cream sandwiches. Probably the best "grown-up ice cream" entry. A
58. Chia limeade. If you really like limeade and you don't want to have to share, this is one option. C
59. Tamarind and date agua fresca (above). A good excuse to check out your Asian grocer. Interesting flavor. B
60. Apricot crumble parfait (above). Much, much better than the children suggest. A

And that's that! Overall average: B. Turns out I really like tacos and ice cream! What a journey.