Belated

This year, I am thankful for Anna's school pictures.

Short and sweet: busy prepping for Thanksgiving edition

When composing my meal plan for the week, "Margherita pizza" and "Golden egg curry with naan" struck me as very different dishes, yet looking at the pictures now it seems that I am just in the mood for a certain bread and tomato combination at the moment.

At most moments, honestly.

Anna seemed slightly distressed when we informed her it was time for her first haircut in a year and a half.

But I think it's safe to say she was pretty pleased with the result.

LOOK HOW CLOSE THAT IS TO A SMILE. One corner of her mouth is definitely trending upward.

There were miniature desserts too, but my mouth got to them before my camera

I'm afraid since getting back from my trip I haven't quite geared up for things like looking at recipes or exerting any significant effort on dinner. I start daydreaming that I am standing in line at the omelet station at The Court of Two Sisters and suddenly hours have passed and I'm scrambling to throw together the least appetizing steak fajitas in history.

It's weird to describe food as melancholic, but there it is.

And honestly, how little attention was I paying when I inadvertently made a Whole30-compliant dinner for no reason? That's just shoddy.

I even cooked the sweet potatoes in coconut oil, it was a full paleo relapse.

Luckily for me (and all of us) Mary Beth hosted Bunco this week and made a MINIATURE THANKSGIVING FEAST HOLY COW LOOK AT THAT.

Plus she is nine months pregnant, which 1) makes this even more impressive and 2) also sort of explains it.

Every Thanksgiving food, on sage biscuits.

Delicious things inside of other things.

Delicious things inside of other things, Part Two.

I picked up these duchess potatoes and dunked them in the gravy boat like so many Oreos, oh yes I did.

This veered a little close to "green and healthy" for me, but I'll allow it.

Even though I haven't quite got my cooking mojo back yet, it's worth it to be home because I missed some little munchkin faces! They missed me too, I'm almost sure.

She's definitely going to remember who I am any day now.

No one in New Orleans showed a proper amount of skepticism regarding their breakfast items. Side effect of free Bloody Mary refills, probably.

Mostly we're just getting back into a routine. Hanging with friends.

If I made this expression at you in NOLA, please know that this is actually our "having fun" face.

Aaaand I just saw that Laura nominated me to answer a list of questions, which I will maybe do later. Or not. Do. I have kind of a lot of housework to ignore today. Sorry Laura! XOXO

I went to New Orleans and all you got was this lousy realization that I am very awkward in person

Oh, you guys. That was...a whole lot of weekend. I never walk away from a party without feeling that I probably need to make amends with some people, and this one was no exception, so here we go. 

Things For Which I Am Sorry

Meaning to spend more time with you and failing. Several of you are eligible for this one.

Pulling a weird sympathetic face when you paid me a compliment as though your taste is questionable/borderline tragic. (Ironically, I was pretty comfortable with Emily's approach of directly threatening to kidnap me and carry me around in a little cage. Hey, speaking of...)

...photobombing your cute headshot while sucking down a sandwich.

Not actually sorry about this one.

Not stealing all the name tags for you as promised. Or making it home with my own. Or my lobster hat. Or my sense of dignity never mind, didn't even pack that one.

Having the same name as you and causing some blog-related confusion. Also, aaaaaalmost linking to myself there just to be a jerk.

Dragging down your 5k time by 3 minutes/mile.

Being a dud at Saturday night dinner. I was just really tired and stressed out from all the vacationing and lack of responsibilities I had endured for three solid days.

Not squeezing ooooooone more free Bloody Mary refill in there, come on Erica! Four is weak! Where was your A game?

Probably owing you cab money.

Making you eat sushi in Baton Rouge.

Hello!

Not taking a video of the best street performer ever, the Transformer who ACTUALLY GOT DOWN ON THE GROUND AND DROVE AROUND LIKE A CAR. It was amazing.

Only understanding about every third word that you said, you delightful little ball of Canadian energy.

Not getting your Twitter handle until I heard you say it out loud on Friday. That one is more an apology to myself, for having to live with dumbness.

Giving you the free flashlight/compass/whistle I got when I checked into the hotel instead of a proper souvenir, sorry honey.

Sitting/staring. Prolonged exposure to big groups causes my brain to start eating itself.

Things For Which I Am Not Sorry

Coconut cake for breakfast.

Among other things.

Any of this, really.

Expressing fear that your hypothetical barefootedness would guarantee contracting a case of syphilis and learning that syphilis is easy to treat and therefore of little concern.

Discovering my ability to telepathically control the satellite radio through a small stretch of East Texas.

Knowing what I'm going to ask you guys the next time you pop up on Gchat.

Leaving my camera behind at the Friday night party and gaining some special memories/blackmail fodder.

Alligator poetry.

This guy:

Happy birthday, Ivy! Sorry I didn't feature you more prominently!

Before it gets lost amongst all the BIRTHDAY HULLABALOO, I thought it was important for you to know that I made pasta with eggs on top of it. And there was kale involved. How could anyone have predicted that I would be drawn to this recipe? Ah, a woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets.

No, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Hey, my teensy baby turned one! I'll probably start acknowledging that there's a whole extra human in the house any day now. I went with the traditional purple for her cake, though you may notice that three years of motherhood have stifled my creativity and also my desire to permanently scar the minds of our youth.

I doubt this one will come up in therapy at all.

I made up for this newfound lameness by making queso.

It pretty much tasted like Velveeta. I don't have any problem with that.

I also made a casserole. Here is my recipe: a lot of chicken, a lot of cheese, a jar of salsa, leftover tortilla scraps from making Halloween chips, two zucchini you found in the crisper, two cans of beans. Heat up.

It was actually pretty good, because casseroles are magical.

Getting a party together is a lot of work, but Anna really threw herself into helping me this year.

All in all, it was a pretty staid affair.

"Children playing here. A little privacy, please."

You can barely tell they're related.

Realizing they're one always seems to get them.

Things perked back up at our post-party birthday dinner at Quality Seafood.

What? It takes a lot of energy to fully engage that scowl.

Okay all, I'm headed to New Orleans in a couple of days to hang out with other bloggers because I am a Real and Important Blogger and they need me there to wear lobster hats and make other people feel better about their ability to dress themselves and also their dancing skills. It's not like I have a choice. I continue to be too lazy and self-conscious to do a vlog, so if you are reading this and you don't know me yet, I WILL BE THE ONE IN THE LOBSTER HAT.

You'll never see the end of this post coming

I just want to say right off that bat that these pumpkin cinnamon roll pancakes are not the most foul-looking special holiday breakfast I've ever put on the table.

Sorry, guys! Looking vaguely fungal barely even gets you in the game.

But I do grant that they may have deserved Anna's judgment.

Ignore the fact that this is also how she looks at cereal. And puppies.

I may be too lazy to come up with creative "spooky" foods for Halloween, but I like to think mine was the only kid to show up at school with cinnamon sugar roasted pumpkin seeds and a blood orange.

I'm trying to teach her about subtlety.

The pumpkin gnocchi in a creamy gorgonzola sauce tasted only vaguely of pumpkin but very much of gorgonzola, so it has my hearty endorsement.

I imagine you could use a dish sponge as a sauce-delivery system and it would still be good.

I even kept things orange with buffalo chicken soup the next day, just to make sure we tapered off our Halloween celebration safely. This was very easy and very tasty, although the "healthy" claims are, uh, dubious.

Also kept things gorgonzola-y. Safety first!

Anna's school requested that we not send them in costume, so her daytime costume had to be pretty stealth.

Get it? She's "kid who tolerates having her hair braided."

You know, considering how judgy she was about Anna's Oktoberfest hijinks, Ivy certainly partied down on Halloween.

"Next time you see me I'll be oooooooooooone, suckas!"

Okay, let's see, this post needs a button. Something funny, something funny...you know what? Screw it, it's Friday, I'm going cute instead.

Boom.

Why yes I have celebrated Oktoberfest 17 times now

For some reason I have a hard time remembering that sandwiches are an option for dinner, which is strange, since my love of sandwiches is near Joey Tribbiani-level. I think I've solved this problem by breaking out "Pizza and Sandwiches" on my Pinterest page, so that any time I think, "I would like some food, and I would like at least one layer of bread to be involved," bam! There are a whole slew of options. First up: pan bagnat, French for "sounds fancy, but that tuna still came out of the pantry."

My reasoning behind the sweet potato leek soup behind it was that I can only find leeks in pairs even though I only ever need ONE LEEK and therefore I had a stray in the fridge.

Dinner: explained at unnecessary length.

You guys know I don't usually get political in this space, and I certainly don't want to fuel any conspiracy theorists, but I'm concerned that there were some...shenanigans at our polling place on Sunday.

You just know she voted a straight Sesame Street ticket, too.

Things got even worse when we took the little monster to Oktoberfest at NXNW, where she became increasingly opinionated.

"No, listen, man. You don't even get it."

I'd say it all hit bottom when, inspired by the oompah band, she stormed the stage to break it down monster-style.

This part is 100% true.

Moves like Frankenstein.

At some point, her buzz wore off and I think she may have had regrets about her performance.

The whole thing was a bit much for Ivy.