I was going to do a light/dark LOST joke, but that's how rants are born

I'd like to start today with a little unsolicited website plug. Meetup.com: Where You Can Meet People Who Not Only Tolerate Having Both You and Your Child In Their Homes But Will Also Totally Do Your Laundry While You're There. (And thus ends my career in sloganeering, over before it even started.) Seriously, though, is Craigslist gonna do that for you? No, it is not. Thanks, Laura!

Her obsession with Mardi Gras beads is exactly why Anna won't be joining us in New Orleans.

Last night I made Roasted Yellow Pepper Soup and Roasted Tomato Soup and as you can see, I used my rusty bartending skills to get them lined up all perfectly. (I actually just used my following-the-instructions-in-the-recipe skills.) It was delicious, and I didn't even bother putting it through a sieve, I just left it with texture and seeds and everything. Next time you want your house to smell great, don't light a candle, just roast a pepper or two.

Downside: one half is evil.

Every time I watch Anna stuff two entire handfuls of cereal or whatever into her mouth, this is what plays in my head. "YOU, ALRIGHT?"



I guess the fact that all of my thoughts are structured around 80s/90s PSAs, Simpsons quotes, and the movie Clue gives you a pretty good idea of how old I am. I seriously have to try to filter out Homer Simpson's voice before I say most things out loud. And that's One to Grow On!

Also, I know you've been thinking that it would be great if I spent just a bit more time talking about my various physical ailments, so I wanted to let you know that I seem to have a small patch of eczema on my hand, and it's times like this that I really wish I hadn't seen District 9, because now I'm just waiting for this finger to fall off and an alien appendage to peek through. Will keep you posted.

Blog Request Two: The Saturated Fats Strike Back

Hey, looky what we have here! Another cooking project request! That's two now, in two months. At this rate I'll soon be overtaking Ina Garten except instead of providing "expertise" or "helpful tips" I pretty much have "spare time and the willingness to take pictures of things."

So. Lauren wants me to make pie crust. Sure, it lacks the exotic nonsensical fried-ness of the last suggestion, but I think it compensates for it by intimidating me more than anything that doesn't possibly involve covering up a crime scene.

This lovely bowl of butter is to make up for showing you my bathtub laundry yesterday.

The first step was deciding what type of pie crust to attempt. I ended up going with an all-butter recipe adapted from Salt and Fat and Simply Recipes. I'm not going to lie, I'm still suffering some after-effects from WHF week, one of which is to be irresistably drawn to "all-butter" anything.



I tried to follow both sets of advice as nearly as I could, considering that it mostly consists of EVERYTHING MUST BE COMPLETELY ICE COLD INCLUDING YOUR DEMEANOR, JUST IN CASE and I live in Central Texas and it is August and my ice-maker is broken.

I tried to be as aloof with it as possible.

I don't know. It was kind of a mess. I added the water I was supposed to, but the dough was still super crumbly and at that point I was terrified to touch it at all for fear of overworking it or melting all the precious colder-than-a-Hitchcock-blonde butter. I managed to sternly will it into something resembling a sheet of dough, and using about four spatulas I wrestled it into the pie pan. At that point I realized that all the "trim the edges, crimp the pieces together" stuff was not going to apply to me, as I was fumbling to have "edges" at all.

This was not your failure, Smashy. It was mine.

So, now, with what shall we fill this majestic homemade pie dough? With thousands of pie recipes at my disposal, it took a while, but I finally decided that the blueberry pie linked to Simply Recipes's crust page sounded good. It's summertime! Let's be seasonal. Seasonal and decadent and a million miles away from WHF! Wait...what the...um, can you guys check that link for me? In that first paragraph, am I hallucinating? I did hallucinate a monkey yesterday.

I think the heat may be getting to me.

More wrestling with the top crust.

Craftsmanship.

But hey, what do you know? It came out of the oven looking like a pie!





It also tasted like pie. The question is, did it taste like completely awesome pie that was worth the effort? Well, Dan repeatedly used the word "fine." And when I asked if he could tell it wasn't store bought, he said "Nope!" in a way that I believe was meant to be encouraging. So I think my final verdict is: don't try to make pie crust when it is 107 degrees out. Cobbler is also very delicious. So is ice cream.

In the afternoon, Anna made me feel bad about how little I've been exercising by spontaneously breaking out in some baby yoga.









We celebrated Robert and family's last night in town with dinner at Hula Hut. I swear, you guys, I am not seeking out the queso. It is somehow finding me.

I had a cold noodle salad:



Dan was obviously feeling pretty adventurous, opting for a beer and a burger.



Given the choice between being loud and horrible in a restaurant and making me look like a liar for saying she's loud and horrible in restaurants, Anna chose the latter. I'll take it.

At least there was no monkey

Our house is slightly broken right now, in general. One: the ice-maker keeps making the freezer freak out. Our response to this thus far has been to leave the ice-maker sitting on the counter instead. Two: the master bathroom shower has super low water pressure. Not sure about Dan but my personal response to this one has been to forget that it's a problem for the 23 hours and 45 minutes a day that I'm not showering and then when I do turn on the water to make the following noise: "BAAAAH."

Third and most pressing, because we are cloth-diapering hippies, is the broken washing machine. We have switched to disposables for the moment, but there was still one giant bag of dirty diapers left stranded. Yesterday I attacked it with detergent, bleach, and gloves.

I'm now leaning back toward the miasma theory of disease.

I was trying to find an illustration of an old fashioned laundress to help demonstrate what my afternoon was like, but I had a hard time narrowing it down. I really wanted her to have the requisite amount of misery. And a hat.

Not enough hat.

Not nearly enough misery.

Good hat. Interesting footwear. A little too...coquettish.

Stupendous hat. But she's being entertained by a midget practicing the art of glassblowing, so that's probably pretty fun.

Well, here we go. In a surprising turn of events, I'm giving it to a hatless one because she seems to have been locked in the catacombs with a monkey and that is definitely miserable. We'll say the monkey ate her hat.

Here's a little tip for escaping the haunting smell of bleach and urine: cook an onion in some bacon grease.

Fixed!

Then throw that bad boy into some Tlacoyo Masa Pockets. Then follow the Serious Eats link to see what they're actually supposed to look like. Then take my word for it that when they say "how easy it is to work with masa" they are just mocking you.



I didn't manage to take a picture of Anna banging on the glass door at the library yesterday morning or of her banging on the glass door of the title company yesterday afternoon, so you'll just have to believe that those were the prominent activities of her day. Instead, here is an Anna Classic picture.

Summer is for reruns anyway.

Thanks to everyone who helped rinse the vitamins back out of my system

After my dalliance with a healthy adult diet last week, the weekend was obviously going to go in a decidedly different direction. This is a given. You already knew it, in your bones. What you may not have predicted is how truly superlative my effort to undo any small amount of progress from WHF week would be. My mission began Saturday morning. Do I even need to tell you where?

Bacon, avocado, cheese, ham, mashed potatoes. Wheat tortillas.

We stopped at HEB on the way home from breakfast to re-stock the house.

Note that even the soda is liquor themed.

In the afternoon I took a short break from retoxifying myself in order to host a playdate with the other band babies. As you can see, Anna and Chloë were mildly interested in Cash's arrival. I think he was just hoping they didn't start ripping his onesie to shreds in pursuit of a souvenir.

Like a mini-Bieber, this guy.

So here's the really fantastic thing about this World's Tastiest Foods weekend: on Saturday night someone made me dinner, and on Sunday night someone bought me dinner. Both ridiculously nice and undeserved, it's like the universe was actually trying to make sure I filled back up. Thank you, universe-in-the-form-of-Emily-and-Paula.

Did I tell you there would be queso? Yes, I did. I was only desperately hoping at the time, in my soberly healthy delirium, that it would somehow materialize when the time was right, and then there it was.

Orange gold.

And although that would have been plenty for me personally, there were also fajitas and cupcakes.



It occurs to me that this was the second weekend in a row that Emily made dinner for us. I'm going to take that as an implicit establishment of a tradition. See you next weekend, guys!

Sunday morning there was a brief Anna and Daddy music session.

"Sorry Dad, it's a little heavy on the synthesizers for me."

Sunday night we went to Opal Divine's with Robert, Paula, and Haiden. I realize that you probably saw the vat of queso coming a mile away, but now I'm going to blow your mind by revealing that my weekend ALSO INCLUDED FRIED PICKLES.

Next time I will dip the fried pickles into the queso. This is my pledge to you.

I did give a slight nod to health by ordering a grilled chicken sandwich with spinach on it.

It's, uh, under the cheese.

In the end I decided it was slightly less embarrassing as a parent to post the picture of Anna entertaining herself with a pointy plastic object than the picture of her having sweet potato fries for dinner again.

Her response to culture is quite vocal

Well, I know you're going to be disappointed, but I didn't quite make it through the entire fifth day of the Five Day World's Healthiest Person Plan. We went back to the Blanton on Friday afternoon to make immediate use of my new membership and I quickly realized that I could not face watching Anna yell at art without a cup of coffee.

Piping hot cup of weakness.

It was my only deviation, and it was worth it, and I would do it again. And had I known what the next couple of hours had in store I probably would have gotten a large. And it would have been a beer. Technically this means that I did not become the World's Healthiest Person Friday night, so I guess your many questions about what that's like will go unanswered for now. I regret nothing!

We had to wait a few minutes for the people we were meeting, and because I am so well-prepared to deal with my child, always, Anna ended up chewing on my car keys while sitting on the bird-poop-covered ground.

At least she wasn't sitting on the keys and chewing on the poop?

Once inside, it was soon apparent that Anna's interest in the museum extended only to its acoustical properties. Sorry, other art patrons. I hope you interpreted all that delighted shrieking as "inspirational enthusiasm." Here we are in one of the installations. She's gearing up to find out what "yelping while inside art" sounds like.

"I'm about to make some noise in some art."

"She sure likes the ceiling" said the museum employee diplomatically after Anna had been hooting at it for ten minutes.

I think next time I have the museum bug I'll just go flip through my awesome blank journal instead. Eventually we made it out and headed home to put together the final dinner of the FDWHPP. I finished strong, choking down yet another entire bunch of greens in the form of Curried Mustard Greens & Garbanzo Beans with Sweet Potatoes. I guess the sweet potatoes were good, but I was pretty much over it at that point.



When I was cleaning up after dinner I said "Ugh, I wish this hadn't made leftovers," so I think that basically encapsulates my feelings on the matter. Healthiness: often disheartening.

Finally, a bit of miscellany: someone in the Dish Network marketing department is doing a bang-up job.

I can see the finish line, and there is a bowl of queso there

Yes. Here we are. Just hours away from my ascension to the World's Healthiest Person throne. The ancients foretold a very brief reign, quickly toppled by cheeses and spirits. But before that darkness descends once again, let's take a quick inventory. How do I feel here on the cusp of World's Healthiest Person status? Sleepy. Irritated. Inordinately angry at vegetables. Grasping for...vocabulary...things. 1.4 lbs lighter. Anyway, I hope my little dalliance with anhedonia was as exciting for you as it was for me and Dan. Ask him about how full of life and energy and all around vitality I've been in the mornings! Pretty sure there was a glow somewhere beneath the scowl.

Yesterday's breakfast was Quinoa Cereal with Fresh Fruit. The process of eating this cereal in itself was inoffensive, however: 1) WHF again completely cheated by throwing some peaches and raspberries in their picture while they are nowhere to be found in the recipe or calorie calculation 2) the very idea of quinoa for breakfast is akin to kale for breakfast, as in, they are not bad foods, but they are capital H Healthy Foods, as in, I have never eaten either of those things in the same day as eating ice cream 3) I just now had so much trouble typing the word "quinoa" repeatedly that I've become lightly enraged.

Dear all the stuff on top of the quinoa: We're cool.

Dan, being a sane person, made himself some French toast.

It was made out of bread that was already cheese-stuffed. Just in case.

Lunch was leftover 15 Minute Chicken & Asparagus and dinner was the amusingly named Mexican Cheese Salad. Pretty much just a meatless taco salad, but because it involved beans, cheese, and avocado, probably my favorite thing this week. I will most likely make it again. And I will always call it by its proper name.

"I really have a hankering for some Mexican Cheese Salad."

I'm starting to worry about how often I park Anna in front of the television set.

Do you guys think I'm letting her sit too close to the screen?

Finishing up The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Quick review: I'm pretty sure it was mostly about coffee and sandwiches. I liked that.

A minor breakdown involving greens

As I drag into the late morning of Day Four of the Five Day World's Healthiest Person Plan, I should warn you that there will be no near-homonymic antonyms today. The time for such whimsy has passed. I had kale for breakfast yesterday, you guys. Kale. I guess when I was planning this menu in the midst of a caffeine and alcohol and cheese abundant weekend, that seemed like a reasonable thing to do on a Wednesday morning. But in the harsh light of midweek that pile of greens on an empty stomach took on a rather sinister quality. It may be called a Healthy Breakfast Frittata, but my nickname for it is Death of Joy (Breakfast Category).

In my stimulant-free misery I have also started to question whether anyone really wants to look at my dumb boring healthy stuff or my dumb boring stupid blog but you know what? I ATE THE KALE, AND NOW I WANT YOU TO LOOK AT IT. Look at the kale.

Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaale!

Okay, I'm sorry. Sorry I yelled. I ate a banana and now I feel better. Anyway, when lunchtime rolled around I wasn't remotely hungry, so maybe it is the best diet food ever. I think my stomach was saying, "If this is what we're doing for food now, forget it." Fortunately, Dan had taken the day off and sagely suggested that we go out to lunch on our way to Afternoon Adventure Times. I weakly agreed that Kerbey might bring me out of my Vitamin K-saturated funk.

Take a moment to enjoy the blessed lack of kale here.

I even managed to not cheat by ordering a Berkeley Salad with no dressing and some green tea. All salad components accounted for on that horrible list. Dan kept the universe in balance by ordering a beer and a burger.



For some reason, Anna wanted to sit on Daddy's side.



After lunch we headed to the UT campus for Afternoon Adventure Time, which consisted of Dan getting a new ID and then us going to check out the Blanton Museum. This plan involved quite a bit of walking, but there was only a 10% chance of rain, so we figured it was no problem.



Oh, except for the ridiculous downpour. Luckily, Anna found the rain amusing because she thinks it's just a giant sprinkler, so we trudged ahead, wet yet undeterred, and made it to the museum.

Here is some art that we saw.

We ended up buying a membership, probably because they were giving away a blank journal if you join this month and those rank right alongside "shiny things" at the top of my irresistible useless stuff list. So there you go, Austin peeps: if you want to go to the Blanton, I can get in free with a guest for the next year. Also I have a blank journal that you can look at.

After a very long and rainy day, the black bean chili we had for dinner was exactly what I wanted. It was almost enough to make me forgive WHF for the travesty that was breakfast. Maybe I should just be having chili for breakfast.



Finally, a word on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: my wonderment at the Swedish language has now been overtaken at my slack-jawed awe and envy at the fact that someone makes coffee approximately five times per page.