Goodbye, ice cream. I think I'll miss you most of all.

Hey, terrible news! I mean, only for me. Not for you. Unless you enjoy looking at pictures of food that tastes good, then it's also terrible news for you. It seems I have a sliiiiiiiiiiiiiight case of gestational diabetes. It's approximately as sucky as it sounds. The specialist told me that it's a hormonal issue and it isn't my fault, but I think you and I and the empty spot in my freezer where a bag of brownies used to be know that she was just being nice. SUGAR IS DEATH YOU GUYS, FOR REAL. Anyway, in the interest of not having a 12 pound diabetic baby, I bought a brand new cookbook and I'm ready to roll, controlled-blood-sugar-style.

I figured that since Prevention Magazine was the institution responsible for convincing me that even looking at can of tomatoes would mutate every cell in my body, they could probably handle keeping me on the straight and narrow for the next ten weeks. Here are some boring things that I have eaten in the past week.

Spinach salad with almond-encrusted chicken.

Roasted vegetable sandwiches with green split pea soup.

Chicken and asparagus stir fry.

I guess this shouldn't surprise me, but Prevention seems to have some sort of policy against "seasoning food at all," so in the future I'm probably going to have to do some slight tweaking. For now though, it's definitely helping me control my portion size by excluding flavor.

In the meantime, Anna continues to hate and fear bouncy castles.

I also get the feeling that she sort of misses me making beets every week.

The heat demon takes a different tack

Now that beets are out of season, the Local Box is treating me pretty well. I'm finally getting groups of vegetables that I can prepare without using recipes or attempting to cram them into a dessert, although I do think there is a market for a cookbook that consists solely of turning your CSA box into various cakes. Help me out, chefs! Anyway, we had some spinach and squash and farmer's market sausage and a little bit of non-local goat cheese just to prevent any total hippie smugness.

This meal is certified 95% smug.

So the temperature literally dropped 45 degrees to become pleasant outside for the first time in about five months, which is an unbelievable relief except OOPS the wind and rain-starved conditions have caused the entire center of Texas to catch fire. Having a pretty tough summer in these parts. Anyway, despite having a Labor Day that seemed perfect for grilling, we decided that going outside to set another fire probably wasn't a good idea, so we were confined to the grill pan, which means I was too busy being sullen about how poorly our birdhouse vent works to take any pictures of the very nice kebabs.

In general, we tried to be productive with our holiday weekend. Anna painted her new big girl room:

I know that edge is kind of a mess, but she's only two you guys.

We checked out the deeply depressing post-apocalyptic aridness that is our local landscape:

Anna only knows what rain is because she has books about the Time Before.

We also kicked back with a little black-market Four Loko:

Her painting is iffy, but she throws a mean house party.

Also, at one point the other day I said "I love you Anna" and she said "I love you lamp" and I absolutely swear she's never seen Anchorman, so it's possible that she's some sort of comedy savant.

It's a two-way street, Bruce

Still no interesting cooking this week, unless you consider frittata-as-leftovers-dump interesting. (If you do, stop. It isn't.) I do see that the food-rehash discussion thread has gotten pretty heated, as I feared it might. I'm thinking I'll probably have to hire a full time comment moderator, if anyone is interested.

Anyway, all I have to leave you with over the weekend is this series of Anna's attempts to communicate with temporary houseguest Bruce the Dog.

In two days it will be September and everything will be okay

No cooking this week, I'm attempting to clear out old leftovers from the freezer so I can restock for the arrival of Number Two. I could take pictures of my reheating efforts, but it's probably more exciting for you to click through the backlogs and guess at which meals are making an encore appearance. Post your theories in the comments! I know it's a hot topic, try to keep it civil!

This weekend we ventured out to Wimberly for cousin Levi's third birthday party.

Party face.

When she had all the fun she could stand indoors, Anna went outside to stare down the bubble machine.

This was seriously a prolonged stand-off. I think we called it a draw when both humans and machines alike finally collapsed due to the 110 degree heat.

The expression on my face was much cheerier, due to the presence of enchiladas.

Anyway, happy birthday again, big guy! You can use all your cool new fire fighter equipment to deal with any spontaneous-combustion grass fires that pop up, since the earth is just setting itself on fire now apparently.

On the homefront, Anna seems to be displaying some increased maturity in a few key areas. First, she has decided that reasonless tantrums require privacy.

A positive step.

It's also nice that she's finally old enough for me to hand her something to eat and know that she'll deal with it appropriately.

See? Not smeared into the furniture! My proper little lady.

Pulling back the curtain

Now that I'm in my third trimester, I thought I'd revisit my sadly underused Well-Rounded Pregnancy Cookbook while I still can.

First up: balsamic roasted chicken with Asian-style broccoli.

You know, when you just look at official dinner pictures, my diet looks pretty balanced.

Next: grilled asparagus and steak salad with cherries, pistachios, and chevre.

It's because I didn't take any pictures of the batch of brownies that I ate four of and then hid from myself in the freezer or the graham crackers that Anna gets one of for every five I eat or the two bags of beef jerky that I "shared" with Dan.

Finally: Tilapia Veracruzana with herb roasted potatoes.

Or the entire loaf of banana bread.

I think the last time we visited the playground at Central Market was almost a year ago. At the time, I was disappointed to see that her only interest was playing in the dirt, even though she was well over a year old and walking around on her own. Yesterday we had a break from "demonically blazing heat" for a pleasant day of "what the rest of the country would still consider blazing heat" so we took to the playground once again.

I feel like the use of implements is a definite sign of evolution.

Meanwhile, Anna continues to construct ever more effective sun-shielding ensembles.

Difficult times let her resourcefulness shine through.

Now I'm only cooking healthy things as decoration

I finally made the cold soba salad on Saturday and immediately put it in the fridge.

I still haven't tried it.

It looks nice, though, doesn't it? I guess the "cool and refreshing" thing has run its course and it's time to return to the heat-monster embrace. The forecast for this week has a high of 108. More than once. So, yeah, Anna has retreated to her blanket and I don't blame her.

"You'll never find me in here, SUN."

She has also abandoned her booster seat.

Much as I have abandoned vegetables.

And thrown myself into the loving arms of salt and fat.

We'll probably start wearing clothes again in October or so

I've managed to stick with cool and refreshing dinners all this week, although I'm finding it difficult to make "cold dinner" that doesn't look exactly like "lunch." These chicken salad sandwiches, for example, are straight-up brown bag. This doesn't really bother me, since I would gladly eat lunch three times a day (with the understanding that lunch sometimes involves a poached egg). But it doesn't make for very exciting pictures.

I did turn on the stove to fry the potato chips, so THUS FAR heat/laziness has not yet resulted in me serving a pile of raw potato slices. Updates to follow.

Every summer I make gazpacho and every summer I realize that it is like eating salsa for dinner.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing.

I had another cold recipe lined up for last night, but then I got too busy sitting on the couch and ended up having a chicken salad sandwich instead. Maybe the weekend will bring a time when cold noodles sound like a good idea.

Anna and I didn't have anywhere to go yesterday, so we 1) eschewed getting dressed and 2) decided it was time to potty train Monkey and Elmo.

Probably about time, the way Elmo eats.

Some of it was fruit flavored

National Farmer's Market Week really seems like the sort of thing that I should both remember and fully invest in every year, doesn't it? What with my CSA issues and my theme addiction and all. But didn't I totally blow it last year? Let me check. Yeah, see, that was pitiful. Well, don't worry, this past weekend we ventured out to celebrate a bounty of local cuisine.

I'm sorry, farmers. Again.

It's okay! What the Ice Cream Festival lacked in nutritive value, it completely made up for in scintillating and educational activities.

I think tub-of-water-and-popsicle-sticks is a traditional Montessori exercise.

We capped that off with some furniture-assembly, under the exasperated gaze of our forewoman.

Best weekend ever!

Bolstered by our streak-ending 97 degree high the other day, I've now completely regained the energy to attempt staying cool, or at least not so hot that Number Two will be seriously brain damaged, as evidenced by this lovely Greek salad.

I halved the oil and doubled the cheese. Oh, the many secrets of Erica's kitchen!

We should probably pay more attention to what she's watching on Netflix

I've definitely made use of the oven and stove over the past few days, but I have to admit there haven't been any hours-long maniacal heat-binges. I'm not sure whether this means that I'm regaining my strength and will to fight back against the demon sun or that I've sunk to an entirely new level of defeat wherein I slowly stop putting effort into anything until one day I just lie down on the sidewalk and become a giant piece of human jerky. So that'll be fun to keep an eye on! Let's examine the evidence.

Spinach baked eggs. Twenty-three minutes in the oven at 350; a decent amount of kitchen fire but definitely not a full commitment. The fact that I am serving a recipe classified as "brunch" for dinner with an egg as the centerpiece seems like a good sign of recovery.

Eggs for dinner indicate that I have not fully lost my lust for life.

Roasted red pepper potato soup. Points for using both the oven and the stove, but again it doesn't quite match the excess we've seen recently. I also strongly considered cooking it early enough in the that I could serve it cold, but was too lazy to make that happen, so I think those two impulses cancel out.

It may not offer any clear indication of my mental state, but this soup is delicious.

Vegetable lo mein. I really feel like stir fry is just full-on seasonally appropriate.

When I eat all the leftovers standing in front of the open refrigerator door we'll know that my rehabilitation is complete!

I thought we were seeing some rare nurturing from Anna as she fed Cheerios to her Elmo doll the other morning.

The aftermath, however, is on the unsettling side.

It's like the gluttony scene from Se7en.

Maybe I only noticed this because she had very recently used her kitchen stove to Fatal Attraction her sheep.

As long as the new baby isn't a stuffed animal, things will almost definitely be fine.

Braising in August, totally normal

I know you guys thought I was kidding about Croatian Victory Day, because I was kidding about that at the time. But I decided to actually celebrate it anyway, since I've never had Croatian food and it looked to involve a lot of braising, which fits in nicely with my current devotion to heat-worship. Also, I have no idea what people drink in Croatia, so I didn't feel too bereft in having to abstain. I decided to go with braised lamb over spaetzle and some red cabbage stew.

Tasted great and made the house very, very hot.

Celebrating Croatia was sort of a lot of effort, so yesterday I just made a bowl of Things From the Fridge. My specialty! Chicken, red pepper, spinach, chickpeas, pasta. And bacon, which makes most of the previous list unnecessary.

Minus ten points for short cooking time.

I also had some spare time and ingredients and an intense death wish sugar craving, so we made cookies. Don't worry, I had Anna test the flour for purity.