Bunden i vejret eller resten i håret**

Holy smokes did I knock out some recipes over the weekend. Good thing, because I am not cooking at all for the rest of this week. At aaaaaaall. Seriously. I made Dan make the toast this morning.

BA#38: Seared short-rib tacos with BA#39 Quick pickled onions. After several beef dishes this summer, I finally got around to filling out page four of my Self-Discovery Journal: "I am terrible at cooking beef." I guess I can't blame BA for that exactly, but they did nothing to remedy the situation. So these were kind of chewy and blah-tasting.

I'm sorry to do you this way, cow.

Fortunately I am very good at cooking salsa, as evidenced by BA#40 Toasted guajillo chile salsa.

Thus concludes the Tacos! Tacos! Tacos! section of the magazine. I'm sad to see it go. I mean, I realize that I could always repeat the recipes that I liked, but I feel like the chances of me recreating anything from this issue in the future are slim, don't you?

Anna, sensing that I needed a little extra support this week, made a temporary headwear switch.

Solidarity.

Okay, here we go. *Cracks knuckles.* "How to throw a wildly hip Scandinavian sandwich party." Oh, dear. I'll shorthand it for you: gather as much fish and dill as your table will hold. Find some liquor that tastes like rye bread that has gone bad and dissolved into liquid. Sucker some folks into coming over. Party!

BA#s 41-43: New potatoes with dill butter, carrot and yogurt sauce, shrimp and cucumber salad with horseradish mayo. I...liked the potatoes. And I like the idea of having open-faced sandwiches and coffee all day long. (I think I read about that in a book once?) Especially when hard-boiled eggs are a topping option. But the overall effect was quite...fishy. And mayonnaisey. Look, it's easy to be judgmental when you still have a mostly-full jar of pickled herring making you feel queasy every time you open your refrigerator, but I think it's important to note that Denmark is in that area of the world where the sun is up for 18 hours in the summer and like 4 hours in the winter and that's bound to make people a little bit crazy.

Of course there was no recipe for a traditional Danish dessert, which I can only imagine as some delightful combination of lingonberries and caraway seeds with dill sprinkled on top. Fortunately for my guests, I instead returned to the Unnecessarily Messing With Ice Cream section and threw together a BA#44 Peach-blueberry ice cream pie.

No complaints, although it amuses me that there is crystalized ginger on top because obviously ice cream is NOT for children, you guys.

And, ah yes, BA#45: Aquavit spritzers. Like I mentioned above, aquavit has a strange and unpleasant flavor that will not be taken down by lingonberry preserves or cranberry juice or even, I imagine, the marinade from the herring jar. Apparently "tradition" dictates drinking it very cold and very quickly because "tradition" probably noticed how disgusting it is. It is also "popularly quipped that the akavit helps the fish swim down to the stomach," which is the grossest thing I have ever heard.

Yeesh.

Plus side: if you can get enough of it down, it can really help you step up your interpretive dance game.

Some things are just worth a bit of sacrifice.

I really do want to thank everyone who came over and threw themselves on this dill grenade for me, and I understand if you will be declining all future dinner invitations. I actually also want to thank Bon Appetit for making me throw a party, even if it was a pretty ridiculous wildly hip one. Even the children enjoyed themselves, probably because I made them a stack of PB&Js. I noticed that Anna can't resist a man who knows his way around an airplane.

Especially when he is also rocking a robot muscle shirt.

And Ivy...seems a little more anxious than Scarlett to get on board the BEST FRIENDS train.

She'll come around.

**This translates to "Bottoms up or the rest in your hair," which is kind of abusive and delightful.

I'll say it again: FIRE EAGLE

Only one BA dish for you, but it's a three-parter and also the cover photo, and also there was a NATIONAL HOLIDAY that required I spend all day being obnoxious on Twitter, so quit yer whinin' already. BA#35 Slow-roasted salmon with BA#36 cherry tomatoes and couscous.

I am going to be slightly harder on this dish than the others, because I feel that as the cover photo it is emblematic of the 60 RECIPES and, by extension, of summer itself. First quibble: "slow-roasted" is not a phrase that I associate with summertime cooking. Don't get me wrong, I loooooove long, slow cooking methods, even in inappropriate seasons. But I am not an extremely popular cooking magazine! I need guidance on how NOT to have my oven on all afternoon when it's 100 degrees outside, because that's what I ridiculously revert to much of the time.

Second quibble: uncooked Israeli couscous, at least the whole wheat version,  looks and smells somewhat like those fish pellets you can buy at the zoo.

Counterpoint: that makes it more of a theme dish, which I like.

Third quibble: it all tasted fine, but also lacking. I really think it could be improved by the addition of something, but I'm not sure--OH WAIT maybe the BA#37: yogurt sauce that I made ahead of time and then forgot about.

A more conscientious recipe writer would add a reminder at the bottom to make sure you have not abandoned any elements of the dish in the refrigerator, is all I'm saying.

This year I on America's birthday I learned that I have not yet mastered grilling.

Wait, the most-cooked thing wins, right?

Obviously pretty disappointing. This is Dan's fourth.

The afternoon was redeemed by the Americanist-looking beer I could come up with.

I just think FIRE EAGLE bears repeating here.

We also spent some fun time at "Fourthfest" at our local park! I won't bother listing all of the child-oriented activities that were offered, since Anna's face says everything you need to know.

She was especially unhappy about being offered a wedge of watermelon.

It's not like she didn't have any fun, you guys. There were wood chips, after all.

And pants to put them in!

Anna used to be unimpressed by the level of the competition at the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, but now that she actually eats hot dogs I think she's coming around.

Wait until she gets a load of the bear. (H/T Elizabeth, that video made me prouder of America than anything else all day.)

And how was your first Fourth, Ivy? I know you're pretty low-key about holidays.

(Adds "independence" to Ivy's List of Exciting Things.)

You know you enjoy my process

I want to jump right in with these grilled flatiron steaks with tomatoes and tapenade, but I'm having a hard time figuring out which BA# it is. (Also, this is boring housekeeping to assure myself that I'm not cheating on this project, so feel free to skip. ANNA SURPRISES AHEAD.) Continuing from the last post, it would be #28, but this weekend as I was whining about thoughtfully contemplating aloud the fact that I wasn't even halfway through the 60 SUMMER RECIPES yet, Dan asked if I had actually counted to make sure there were 60, and I said "....." And then I tried to count. And based on my original recipe-classifying strategy, only came up with 54.

Remember when I decided that multi-part recipes should only count as one? That's not going to work, because the only way I could get to 60 was to break out things like 1) grilled flatiron steak with 2) tomatoes and 3) tapenade. That means I get to add two BA points to my total for chickens/peppers and corn/pistachio salsa, putting me at BA#30 grilled flatiron steak with BA#31 tomatoes and BA#32 tapenade.

I sure hope there are a couple of new readers today, because this is FASCINATING FOR EVERYONE.

Anyway, the steaks were pretty good, and I love anything made of chopped olives. Anna and Hopper were concerned that the grill session needed more vegetation.

Good looking out, guys.

I also threw these BA#33 Vanilla-roasted rhubarb and strawberry pouches on the grill. I think this was my first rhubarb, so I give BA props for forcing me to try something that I wasn't afraid of but just hadn't gotten around to yet. I would say these smelled better than they tasted, which was slightly bland. Dan said the rhubarb was "woody," so...there you go.

This is where I'm going to hide my confession that I only worked out 21/30 days in June. That's less failure than I expected!

BA#34: Cucumber salsa. My original vision for this pile of salsa, chicken, red peppers, guacamole and bread was "sandwich," as you can see.

A classic one-hander.

We spent Saturday evening with lovely internet ladies Natalie, Jennie, and Regan, and their lovely internet children. I considered only posting this picture of Anna in the pool:

But, as she is hatless, you can already see that something is amiss, so I may as well come clean and admit that she had a really good time playing in the water.

Like, a really good time.

And I think she was pretty impressed by Kyle's flexibility.

Don't worry, the giant swing snapped her back to normal.

Ivy says only suckers need a swimming pool to get soaked.

In other news, we are still wary of rain.

And asparagus.

My brave struggle against TDTM continues

I know you guys have been waiting for this news, so I'm just going to pull off the Band-Aid and give it to you straight: my softball team did not win the Super Social League (real thing) championship. I mostly blame Jillian Michaels, for breaking my ankles and causing me to hobble and wince around the field rather than lazily jog as usual. To distract myself from this SUMMER HEARTBREAK, I first made my house smell like fish and then covered that up with the smell of curry. The combo is really something special, if anyone wants to come hang out.

BA#26: Fish fillets with tomatoes, squash, and basil. All of the pouch-based meals have been very easy, although in this case you end up with a sort of sad, raw-looking lump of fish. It tasted fine, though, in a this-is-healthy-and-I-didn't-work-very-hard-on-it sort of way.

I call him Lumpy.

BA#27: Curried spelt salad. Except I couldn't find spelt, so this is actually curried farro salad. I thought the arugula was a little overpowering. Or I just don't really like arugula? No, that's probably not right, since I keep eating it.

File under: kale.

Overall not the most successful BA week. I want to blame triple-digit-temperature malaise, but TDTM is the WHOLE REASON for this very stupid inspirational project in the first place. Obviously I just need to step it up. Are there any cute babies around to give me a nudge?

Babies that are starting to look a lot like David Hyde Pierce, if possible.

This morning marked Anna's first trip to Chuck E. Cheese, and I'd say she ranked it somewhere between bouncy houses and carnivals. Also, I sincerely hope that you guys are half as entertained by My Child Strongly Dislikes Fun montages as I am, because I don't see this well running dry any time soon.

Surveying the land.

I think she likes what she sees!

Clapping along to the birthday song.

Digesting pizza. She needed to sit at a table by herself to focus (foodie).

 At least there was cake.

Yay, cake!

Also, my July issue arrived yesterday, just to taunt me

Well, the high today is 106, so here we are in the mouth of the beast at last. As you may recall, this is where my brain starts to melt slowly out of my ears, so let's take some dramatic measures and have dessert first.

BA#22: Pink lady milkshakes. To be fair to Bon Appetit, all of the ice cream recipes in this issue are contributions from what I'm guessing are very fine establishments across the country, and not something they cooked up in their secret underground BA lair. STILL, one of the major issues I've had with this project so far is my thwarted desire to leave well enough alone. What do you mean you want me to demolish this perfectly nice cantaloupe and then stir basil into it? What am I, a monster? Can't I just make a regular ice cream cone? Why do I have to sully this delicious adobo sauce with shrimp? And now, this: why mix rum and vinegar and pepper into already-delicious strawberry ice cream?

This strikes me as a waste of both rum and ice cream. And vinegar. I don't actually have a lot of call for pink peppercorns.

Having said that, the vinegar worked better than I was expecting. Anna got the no-rum, no-pepper kid's version. Let's see how she compares to the BA kid this time.

You know, that's actually...not too far off. Lucky for me BA picked some Very Serious children for this issue.

BA#23: Cocoa-date truffles. I was irritated at this one from the get-go because it required me to buy raw cacao powder, which is not inexpensive, and also it's billed as a "healthy dessert," and I had to roll sticky globs into crushed stuff and just, sigh.

Anyway, they're all gone now and I'm buying more dates at the store today.

BA:24: Grilled pork chops and peaches with pole beans. Honestly, when I took the 60 SUMMER RECIPES dive, this was pretty much what I was hoping for. Grilled deliciousness! I did not like the beans, because I believe green beans should be so mushy as to barely be considered a solid, and also taste mostly of bacon. Certainly not marjoram. Marjoram tastes like perfume.

But grilled peaches taste like summmmmmmmer. (In the good, mythical-fun-summer way. Actual summer tastes like hot asphalt and mosquito repellant.)

BA#25: Spiced cucumbers and coconut milk. I like how the guy who came up with this recipe is all, "I'm the only person in the world who has ever cooked cucumbers," and I'm all, "Hi, I'd like you to meet my deep and abiding love affair with fried pickles." So, I didn't find this weird. I did find it...lacking something.

Breading and a side of ranch.

Anna has branched out into self-portraiture.

How you doing, Ivy? Still got your embrace-face on?

My little summer stalwart.