I'm just glad she has someone to talk to

Time to dip into the freezer stock! We repurposed some braised pork with tomatillo salsa to make a lovely taco dinner. I know, we're hitting the tacos pretty hard around here. So unusual for us!

I probably rank "wrap it in a tortilla" somewhere between "put an egg on it" and "add kale for no reason."

We've also revisited zucchini garlic soup and tomato broccoli pasta casserole. So far, everything is holding up. Excellent nesting, me!

In "food I couldn't eat for three months which makes it even more awesome now" news, the banana pancakes that Dan made the other morning were good enough to induce family-wide breakfast-food-trance-state.

I'm starting to wonder if Anna had a falling out with creepy robot dog, because she is absolutely having some sort of special relationship with her ball popper right now.

Dan specifically requested that I post a "normal adorable baby picture."

Check the archives, dude. Not my style.

Okay, JUST THIS ONCE.

At least the destruction is still confined to inanimate things

I can tell Dan was (justfiably!) proud of the egg and veggie tacos he put together for us because he photographed them himself.

The compulsion to take pictures of your food: contagious, apparently.

Also, I just wanted to let you know that this cookie has a huge pile of frosting on top of it.

If your cookies don't have huge piles of frosting on top of them, you are kind of missing out.

Anna has finally started interacting with Ivy a little bit more!

Pretty sure she's checking for the return label.

When Ivy received a gift in the mail yesterday, Anna even took care of the tissue paper it was wrapped in.

Definitely no signs of sublimated rage here!

I love it when melted cheese arrives at my door

Now that I have a tiny bundle of reasons to avoid cooking, I'm going to do that for as long as possible (aiming for June or so). But that doesn't mean you can't be jealous of the awesome things that other people are bringing me! Thank you thank you, other people! Drool away, everyone:

Also! In the last few days I have followed up my burger and shake with pizza, barbecue, cookies, and small amounts of coffee. I can only assume that by tomorrow morning I'll be having tequila and cigarettes for breakfast.

Anna, as you can imagine, is so excited about being a big sister watching more Curious George than normal!

She's such a good little helper, she even assisted us in filling out Ivy's newborn vital signs chart.

Seriously though, I think she's handling it pretty well.

Anna finally has someone to share the burden of Blog Model

Okay, so, a Big Thing happened the other day and obviously I am going to mention it, calm down, but it seems like a shame to ignore the fact that I made some perfectly respectable-looking plates of food last week just because SOMEBODY showed up two weeks before her due date. Right?

Chicken and cashew stir-fry. Another excellent recipe from Gourmet, and it made perfect leftovers for post-Big Thing recovery.

Quinoa con queso from Simply Recipes. It probably goes without saying that any recipe involving the words "con queso" gets an automatic bookmark from me.

I mean, would you really have wanted me to skip over this pork chop saltimbocca? It's pork that's stuffed with more pork! And also cheese! And then there's a butter sauce, but don't worry, the sautéed spinach on the side makes it all healthy!

A perfect meal.

And then look what happened on Friday:

JUNK FOOD!

Okay, sorry, before that: IVY!

Note that the milkshake is very, very close at hand.

Welcome, Ivy Elisabeth! You'll probably want to work on that scowl if you want to fit in around here.

So close.

There's my girl.

The littlest duck with the terriblest ennui

Last Christmas my dear brother gave me six years' worth of Gourmet back issues and I have just now finished turning them into a usable recipe notebook, so I figured it was time to celebrate my ten months of very hard work by trying it out. Why not start fancy-ish? Sesame tuna burgers with fried shoestring zucchini!

This dish uses its height to intimidate other, lesser plates of food.

But that was pretty exhausting, so I quickly reverted back to my default "bowl of soup for dinner" state.

At least it's full of cheese.

Long-time readers will agree that Anna's reaction shots are fairly predictable at this point. This entire blog is basically a testament to her capacity for irritation and boredom in the face of fun activities.

Halloween costume:

Watching Daddy's band play a rare gig:

Delicious tacos:

Okay, taco trance is entirely appropriate. Actually, it's like looking in a mirror.

Arrival of eight-year-old boy who lives next door....whoa, wait a minute.

Uh oh.

Also, yesterday at our play date I wouldn't let Anna turn the hose on, so she took matters into her own hands.

Having a two-year-old is like constantly realizing that the raptors have figured out how to open doors.

Sort of.

For the record, she was definitely the aggressor

I realize that I JUST made this summer squash with baked eggs recipe, but it was delicious and this picture turned out better so you have to deal with some reruns. Lookit, it's so cheerful!

And be grateful that you're not just looking at a different picture of an egg every single night because that is a thing that could easily happen.

Pretty sure there's no need to justify or explain baked chicken with roasted tomatillo cream sauce.

Because, roasted tomatillo cream sauce.

This one, however, was a use-stuff-up meal based on this chickpea pizza scramble. It actually tasted really good, but I spent a lot of dinner considering how fortunate I am to have a husband who doesn't even blink an eye at being served a bowl full of chickpeas for dinner.

You really, really never know what you're going to get coming home to me. "Eggs" is a fairly safe bet though.

What's Anna been up to, you ask? Um...nothing. I don't know. Pretty much nothing. Definitely not trying to make out with her creepy robot-dog.

That would be weird.

A series of tiny rebellions

If it seems like I've been making far too much food for two adults and one strictly cracker-subsisting toddler lately, it's because nesting has kicked in pretty hard and I'm cramming my freezer with 1/2 casseroles. Also, stop monitoring my food intake, creepster! Can't a girl who weirdly insists on displaying all of her meals for the public get some privacy? Anyway. Tomato broccoli pasta casserole.

Anna ate some of this! With a fork! I'll probably make a note in her baby book. Haha, no, I've never done that for anything.

You know how I keep making gazpacho and keep being surprised that it's just a way to eat salsa for dinner? Well, I managed to find a black-eyed pea soup that is the eating-bean-dip-for-dinner equivalent of that.

FINALLY.

I don't have very much to say about this salmon in mustard sauce because that sinister green mound of pickled greens in the background dominated the plate to such an extent that I can STILL smell vinegar wafting off of the photo. Where did this abomination come from?? Ooooooh, one of my "productive" days. Must make an effort to limit those.

Anyway, pickled greens are clearly meant to be an accent piece, not a terrifying, tear-inducing pile.

Anna's two-year-old stubbornness has been taking a lot of strange and subtle forms lately.

Staunch (and surprisingly aggressive) refusal to put head on pillow:

Joke's on her, she can sleep upside down in the broom closet for all I care.

Going wide with the yogurt spoon, purposefully and repeatedly:

Actual quote: "Yogurt in hair. Need wash it. WHY YOU DO DAT?"

Moving the parade of sea life magnets so that they are upside down and on the floor.

Like some sort of land-worshiping cult.

Also, for most of the time I've been writing this, she has been beating on her own head with a maraca. I hear that three is the "tough" age, so I assume she's just ramping up slowly. Stay tuned for true bizarreness in nine months!

Lessons from The Blathering

Non-conference: attended!

ROOM FULL O'LADIES

CRAZY ADORABLE LADY THINGS

1. I can survive an entire weekend around strangers without drinking or stress-eating.
  1. (a) With difficulty.
  1. (b) And awkwardness.

2. Easy access to migas and queso is a privilege that should not be taken for granted. I know most of my readers are Austinites, so I really want you to think about this before you go to sleep tonight.

3. I'm a little nervous that years from now when I look back at this I will only remember not being able to eat a cupcake.
   3. (a) Or seven cupcakes.

I regret that I didn't get to know you guys better.

4. Meeting your husband online? Not that weird!

5. My blog is super ugly. I mean, no one said that to me, I figured it out on my own after looking at so many blogs that are not super ugly. There's a chance I'll actually do something about this at some point.
  5. (a) Not a great chance.

6. Raspberry + mint leaf + cute straw = bottled water that is slightly less sad.

Slightly. Okay, I don't know, maybe it's even worse.

7. Apparently an enormous round belly can elevate your Target/Old Navy sale-rack wardrobe and make it seem very cute. Most effective/pain-in-the-ass accessory EVER.

8. I seem to think that being early to things will somehow earn me extra credit.
  8. (a) It totally does!
  8. (b) In the form of standing around nervously.

9. My comfort zone is tiny. Being outside of it is stressful.
  9. (a) I want to go back next year.

I only keep plates around to make the cabinet look normal

I didn't notice until I got all the pictures lined up that everything I've cooked in the past week has been bowl food. No regrets! Bowl food is the best food. Ice cream. Queso. Skittles. I know you're thinking, "But Erica, what about fresh baked bread?" Not so fast! The truly committed know to fashion bread INTO a bowl and fill it with other types of deliciousness (Skittles). Case closed.

Crunchy red swiss chard falafel on spinach.

Black bean "chili" (sorry Dad).

Mustard-glazed red cabbage with apple, sausage.

Slow-cooker braised pork with salsa over couscous.

KALE! and roasted vegetable soup. I must be back in the swing of things if I'm forcing kale on myself.

Anna and I spent some more time practicing the concept of "cheese."

Yikes.

Maybe she'll do better in an actual field test. Anna, look excited about Baby Sister!

Um...I'm going to go practice my excited face too.

Blathering

This weekend I am attending a blogging "non-conference" called The Blathering because my doppleblogger Erica suggested it and because it's in Austin so I have no good excuse not to and because way back in March when I signed up it seemed possible/likely that by now I would have grown an entirely new personality that was suited to this sort of social gathering instead of still being a crazy hermit lady. So, bad call on that last thing, but it's too late now.

Anyway, I've been desperately trying to familiarize myself with the other FIFTY attendees and their blogs, bar-exam-cram style. I made a spreadsheet. It won't help, but the activity is distracting enough that it keeps the anxiety to a low-level nausea instead of a full panic. Anyway, it seems possible that at least a couple of other Blatheringers are also checking out this blog, so I'm going to do a brief section just for them.

Hi, other Blatheringer! I'm Erica. If I have a weird expression on my face when we meet, it's because I'm terrified of you. And I might be attempting to employ some sort of mnemonic device to remember what I wrote about you on my creepy-stalker-spreadsheet. Also, I've noticed a lot of talk about pre-Blathering haircuts, and I feel like I need to justify the fact that my hair is currently in a disastrous growing-out stage because I need it to be ponytail-compliant by the time my second baby is born next month. It was really cute about four months ago, though.

I'm not going to do an accent vlog because I am lazy and self-conscious, and also because I have about 15 regular readers and 14 of them know me IRL so it would be sort of pointless. I'll just tell you that I have a mild Texas accent that increases with proximity to my hometown. (Current distance 180 miles, Twang Level moderate.) All you really need to know is that I use the word "y'all" without irony.

I'm currently saddled with both an almost-done baby AND gestational diabetes, so you won't get to see my true beer-and-queso-champ colors this year.

It should be obvious that I mostly write about food and my daughter Anna. Running themes: she likes to line things up; I have some issues with kale. I think that about covers it. See you guys Friday!