are things complicated yet?

7 Quick Takes: King Leck, a Cooking Rat, Stokke, and The Worst Chore

1. I read Graceling and several weeks later I bought Bitterblue. (I had no idea I'd missed Fire, the second book, until sometime yesterday.) The book is firmly YA dystopian fiction and Graceling (the first book) hinted at a bad thing King Leck had done. Bitterblue picks right up with this storyline and I endured several chapters of suspense on the topic before I was positively DYING to know just WHAT had King Leck been DOING?? It was really awful and really mysterious and I JUST WANTED TO KNOW.

I went ahead a few chapters and found nothing. I went to the end of the book and found nothing. I Googled and found nothing. (RARE.) I was really frustrated I could not figure out what this horrible King had done and I was feeling really inconvenienced that I would have to READ THE ENTIRE BOOK to find out. But, I resolved to read it, like a good, literate human. Approximately five minutes later, I got bored reading the book because I was so distracted by KING LECK! KING LECK! WHAT DID HE DOOOOOO? 

I finally figured out how to use the search feature on my iPad for "King Leck" and I paged through the book in fifteen-word blurbs via the search window in the margin, until I finally found out what horrible things King Leck had done. (They were very horrible things.) Now I could concentrate on the other storylines and themes of the book. (Digital reading, FTW!) (Pretty sure this is NOT what the author intended.)

I do this a lot with books and television shows and movies. I want to find out what's going to happen so I Wikipedia and immediately feel better. (I have recently done this with Game of Thrones, Sons of Anarchy, and Breaking Bad.) Then I continue watching or reading, happy with the knowledge of what's coming, whatever it is. I know, it sounds like I'm RUINING everything but I'm not! I promise I still enjoy the books, movies and TV shows.

2. The airplane is going in for its annual mechanical inspection next week so everyone think good, non-breaky thoughts for it. I would love it if I did not have to replace a $400 blinky light this year (as we did in 2010).

3. I hardly ever break out the DVDs any more, thanks to Netflix and Amazon, but the other night I wanted to watch Ratatouille with Claire and I could not find that stupid DVD to save my life. I spent a full thirty minutes double checking the soft-sided DVD cases, the linen closet, behind a cabinet, in a drawer, perhaps in the office? The cooking rat movie was nowhere to be found.

This is why DVDs are dying/dead. Even when you OWN the movie you want to watch, it's still a giant pain in the ass to actually watch it. (Not to mention the fact that it's a stupid Blu-Ray, which means it would take like ten minutes to even start up, OMG I hate Blu-Ray.)

We never got to watch the cartoon rat cook a meal. (Four days later, I still haven't found it.)

4. I spent a large part of my afternoon sorting clothes for the children. (Is there anything worse than this chore? No, there is not.) Charlotte is kind of shrimpy (about 20th percentile) and at almost 14 months she's still comfortably wearing a lot of 6-12 month items. Claire, on the other hand, is wearing a wide variety of sizes and this whole 4T/5T/4/5 sizing is very confusing.

The brands don't seem to be consistent at this age (she's 3 and will be 4 in October) and it's a total crapshoot as to whether a dress will be scandalously short or sister-wife long. Same with the shirts and shorts: will there be four extra inches in the chest/waist or will it not even go on her body because it's cut so slim? Since her Grandma and Grammie buy ALL THE CLOTHES, this is putting a cramp into my sizing advice for them. (I have big problems, I know.)

5. Charlotte really likes to dance to Super Why.

6. Thank you to everyone for the thoughts on the lime green Stokke a few weeks ago. You convinced me to get it and when it arrived it was...electric green. Kind of Mountain Dew green, actually. It hurt my eyes.

Eagle-eye reader Meaghan suggested WHITE, which was not one of the options on the table, which was actually very genius of her. I traded the green for white and it's fantastic. THANK YOU MEAGHAN! (Also, WHY NO BLOG MEAGHAN? You are obvs very clever!)

7. I purchased all of the turquoise zig-zag fabric for the curtains in the kitchen (as seen above, still thumbtacked to the wall), and I have even sewn the panels, but they remain laying on a chair upstairs and not hanging on the window. I can't find the right curtain rod. The windows in the kitchen are on a wall that meets at an angle, (it's kind of like half a bay window) and any curtain rod with a finial won't work.

So, I found this and thought, "Oh! That is perfect!"

Low profile and slim enough to hang on adjacent windows (that meet at an angle) without them knocking into each other. Also? Not ugly. Perfect! Except...they're $50 and I need two of them and I wasn't really thinking this was a $100, plus tax, plus shipping project. These also do not appear to be $50 curtain rods, I mean, there's just not a lot TO them. These appear to be worth...$35. AT MOST.

I keep looking for a not-PB version but apparently the people in charge of PB knock-offs are not really clued into these curtain rods, and it's the only version like in all of America.

Because, of course.

I have a picky eater and I really don't care

I didn't realize Claire was a picky eater until my best friend pointed it out to me. She said something casual and I was kind of like, "What? She's not a picky eater. That's crazy!" Then I realized I could count almost every item she eats on my two hands and...yeaaaaah. Claire is a very picky eater. 

My best friend's daughter is the same age and she will try ANYTHING. Last summer she was eating mussels like they were popcorn. (I DON'T EVEN EAT MUSSELS.) 

Claire is so picky, I can list everything she will deign to eat without any risk at all of being tedious:

Tier One (70% of her diet)

Cheese (Cheddar and Colby Jack. NO OTHER CHEESES ALLOWED.)

Bread (includes tortillas, waffles, pancakes and actual sandwich bread)

Fruit (strawberries, bananas, grapes, apples, etc)

Tier Two (20% of her diet)

Cheerios

Cashews/Peanuts

Cereal Bars

Applesauce

Yogurt

Tier Three (10% of her diet)

Ravioli (Unreliably)

Cheese Pizza

French Fries

Chicken Nuggets (Unreliably)

Peanut Butter (A new addition to this list, as of two weeks ago)

(Of course, sugars of all kinds of welcome: cookies, cakes, brownies, ice cream, candy, etc.)

That's it. That is basically all she's eaten for the past three years. I have tried, OH HOW I HAVE TRIED, to get her to branch out and perhaps try a green bean or a leaf of lettuce or even an avocado (which she DID eat as a baby, which makes it all the more infuriating). She's also very particular about temperature and format: She will eat cold cheese in a tortilla, but if I heat it up and call it a quesadilla? HELLS NO. 

She won't touch lunch meat, hot dogs, ground meat, pasta (except ravioli and, as noted above, not very reliably) or basically anything else that a normal person might call a full and complete meal. Claire is very fond of finger foods she can eat straight from the fridge, I think because it translates into "what you see is what you get." She will eat an actual meal (that is, eating what's offered until she's full), but she often takes a long time to eat it and is easily distracted from the table. She's getting better at sitting at the table until she's finished, but she has never, ever displayed an "I am so hungry I could eat that entire cow!" kind of appetite.

And, as bothersome as this might be to some people, I don't really care. 

She's basically a self-selected vegetarian and she seems to prefer whole foods. (It's very Michael Pollen of her, don't you think?) I don't mean that in a hippie-uppity-snobby way, because she will happily eat the hell out of Oreos or any other processed sugary thing. She's just VERY SUSPICIOUS of foods she can't identify that have been blended into something else. For example, a taco is a no-go because she can't see all the parts of it laid out plainly, but she'll happily eat a tortilla and cheese on their own. (Lettuce and meat are already on her Hell No list, so those didn't have a chance.) If I pack a cheese sandwich in her lunch, she's very likely to take it apart and eat the bread and cheese separately, but she'll eat it. She certainly LIKES all of the ingredients in some meals I prepare, but she absolutely won't eat them cooked together and certainly not hot.

I hear about picky eaters and how their parents try to get them to eat other foods through tricky means and smoothie measures and...that is not a tactic for me. (Claire is not going to eat anything resembling a smoothie unless it comes from Sonic and is called a chocolate milkshake.) She is obviously thriving, so that makes it easy for me to say I don't give a crap if she chain eats grapes and toast all day. We try not to do that EVERY day, but I'm definitely not spending a lot of mental space thinking about how to get her to eat some carrots or some steak. I just don't have the energy or desire to fight with her about food if I don't have to, and I suspect that's probably the wrong tactic to take anyway. 

As fine as I am with her pickiness, I have always wondered in the back of my head if there was a misstep somewhere on my part, that led her to this very, very selective culinary path. Did I not introduce the right variety of foods, at the right times? Was I not consistent enough?

Then Charlotte came along and ate everything in sight. Everything! With no hesitation whatsoever, my second-born child will eat ANYTHING and if you don't offer your bites to her, she will demand them loudly. Charlotte will throw a fit over the enchilada (with jalapenos!) on your plate and when you give her a bite, she will ask for the entire thing and eat it merrily.  Claire never did that. She was extremely snooty about food, even as a baby.

I suddenly realized, in what is surely going to be one of my top-ten no-shit statements of 2012,

"Oh! Some people are just picky!" 

I've come to see Claire's food preferences as more of a personality trait rather than a behavior I molded, formed, or influenced. We all know plenty of ADULTS that won't touch a tomato, won't eat green vegetables, and hell, I even have an uncle that doesn't like cheese (I KNOW). I won't eat eggplant or shellfish. We all like what we like and when I meet an adult picky eater? I never, ever, think, "Oh, that person's mother must have only fed her fruit growing up. That's why she won't eat broccoli. What a terrible mother she had."

No. Nobody thinks that.

Perhaps Claire will branch out into delicacies such as spaghetti, hamburgers, or macaroni and cheese over the next few years, but for now I'm happy to make her a cheese sandwich and sliced strawberries every day for lunch (and sometimes again for dinner). She's a picky eater. Whatever.

Look, I tried to like Vampire Diaries but I think it's just kind of dumb and I can't watch it any more

I do this thing where I go in phases of extreme productivity where I get All The Things Done followed by weeks-long stretches where I spend my evenings watching questionable television about teenage vampires, with an iPad on my lap, and a slice of chocolate cake at my side, getting absolutely nothing of importance done.

(I am currently in about week 4 of a vampire/chocolate cake phase.)

My friend Courtney used to ask me, "What are you doing tonight?" and she would ask me this on like, a Monday, which is traditionally a non-drinking day for single people in their early twenties, so my usual response would be, "Um, I don't know?" Courtney always had some kind of plan for her after-work hours. Paint her nails, organize a cabinet, research something, make a curtain, watch a specific movie, make something new for dinner, go to bed early, etc.

She planned out her off time in advance and I started doing the same thing and it was kind of fun and nice to have A Thing to look forward to in my evenings rather than getting home and just laying on the sofa for three hours. (I totally sat on the sofa for hours at a time anyway [and still do!], but now it was The Thing and I looked forward to it all day, which somehow made it BETTER.) Sometimes, The Thing even required a trip to Target for craft supplies or nail polish or whatever and that was also kind of fun.

I picked up on this habit of hers and I've been silently planning my evening hours for about ten years. I like to stew about what I'm going to do that evening and consider my options all morning (or even days before) and when I decide (even if I decide on vampires and chocolate cake) it's like this delightful little carrot waiting for me at about 8 PM.

"If I can get through this meeting/commute/pile of dishes/whiney child, I can do XYZ!"

Sometimes, The Thing is ambitious like "Sew Kitchen Curtains" and sometimes it's "Open A Bottle Of Wine As Soon As The Children Go To Bed." But the point is there's always SOMETHING (productive or not) to look forward to and that's the part I like.

Anyway, I go through phases with my selections. These days I'm watching Vampire Diaries but I read ahead on Wikipedia and now I feel bored and like it's not moving fast enough and there's too much pesky character development. I think my new project is going to be a huge, giant, toy purge. I can only do it in the evenings so the children can't see me donating/throwing away their toys, but we have seriously reached Maximum Capacity with toys. There are four plastic bins in Claire's room because there is simply no place else to put them. Charlotte has also outgrown a lot of baby toys and there are even more toys with missing or broken parts, plus lots of toys nobody plays with that need to move along to their next home.

(This is making me think of Toy Story and how sad the toys must be because I'm going to pitch them. Surely THEY KNOW, right? They have to know. Too bad, toys!)

Anyway, I was wondering what YOU all do after everyone is home from work and dinner has been eaten and children are in bed, pets fed, cows milked, etc. and you have some time of your own. I am about to abandon Vampire Diaries and the toy purge can't take me more than two days, and then I'll need some new, exciting ideas, and I would very much like to just copy you. And, does anyone else do this "wheeeee, it's finally MY time" thing? I realize it might read a little OCD, but I do keep the whole thing loose and easy and I'm not militant about it AT ALL. I just like to look forward to things!

The Garden, Week 18: It's Getting Closer to Tomato Time

It rained a few times this week and I had a lot of family visiting, so I ignored the garden for a couple of days. When I finally dragged myself out there to inspect things, I was OH SO PLEASANTLY SURPRISED. Here, virtually walk with me through my garden, friends.

First up, we have the first Cherokee Purple tomato of the season! Now, I have HIGH HIGH hopes for these suckers, so I was really pleased to see a tomato FINALLY happening on one of these plants. I might have yelped a bit when I spied it.

And then I was very happy to see a second Cherokee Purple on the same plant, with a handful more starting to form. Excellent.

This makes FOUR of the six varieties that are producing actual tomatoes so far. (Amish Paste, Cherokee Purple, Yellow Pear, and Black Krim all have infant tomatoes. Mr Stripey and Brandywine have none, but they're the BIG tomatoes so maybe they just take longer?) (Although, one of the Brandywine plants IS still recovering from the mauling our resident Very Hungry Caterpillar gave him, so I'm not really harboring negative feelings towards him for not yet producing. He has an excuse.)

I think part of the change in tomato status is it hasn't been as hot lately. We haven't hit 95 in two weeks and I think that probably helped with the blossom drop immensely. We're slated to run up to almost 100-degrees by Sunday though, so I'm curious to see if tomato production drops off again.

I also have several clusters of Yellow Pears on two plants. Easily 20+ of these little guys on each plant.

And, two biggish Amish Paste tomatoes with several other tiny ones starting out.

We even have what appear to be the spiky beginning of some cucumbers! So, you know, food! In a garden! That I'm growing! This is kind of cool! 

***

At this point I am about 126 days removed from sticking seeds in the plastic tray. Remember this? All the way back in February? Back when it was cold enough to wear pants and Newt Gingrich was still a candidate? Yes, this was a long time ago.

The plants have been in the ground for about 63 days (9 weeks). Most of my seed packets say it'll be 85 days after transplanting until harvest, so that would put me at eating a home-grown caprese salad the week after Fourth of July, which is only a few weeks away. (!!!!!) When I put it that way it doesn't make me feel as badly about all of the already-harvested tomatoes I'm seeing on Facebook. I'm still on schedule. I've planted indeterminate varieties, which should produce consistently all summer until the frost kills the plants, rather than determinates, which produce all of their tomatoes at once (but early) and then stop.

I will be verrrrry satisfied and possibly a little bit smug if I'm still getting tomatoes in September, is what I'm saying.

A Long Year

It feels really indulgent to write about Jake again, about a year after he died, but next Wednesday it will have been an actual year and I think about Jake a lot and I miss him often and it still feels like he'll come sauntering around the corner to say hello any moment.

Of course, he won't be doing that.

I have yet to read Dog Heaven all the way through (I am sorry Natalie, but it just makes me BAWL by page three.) I have been meaning to change the URL of this website but I'm dragging my feet. Claire occasionally talks about Jake, telling strangers, "We have a dog! His name is Jake!" Or other times, "When is Jake coming home? I want him to come back to our house."

I feel the same way I did last October, when I wanted not another dog, I wanted JAKE. And I've come around to the idea of maaaaaaaybe getting another dog, a Not-Jake, but with two young kids and our travel schedule it seems poorly timed. Certainly a puppy is not in the cards (we have enough needy creatures to take care of) but an older, rescued, dog seems appealing, in theory. 

But then I think about an older dog and I think about saying goodbye again in five (or fewer) short years and that idea seems unappealing too.

So, we're in a kind of holding pattern on another pet. His nose smudges are still on the back window of my car. His little door to the back yard is still here. His bowls are in a cabinet in the laundry room. I sometimes see those things and it's almost like he's a lost pet, a runaway, and we're holding onto these things just in case he comes home, after all this time.

I think that's the part I wasn't expecting: the still missing him a year later and getting sad when I drive past the vet (at least twice a day) and always, always thinking about wanting him and not just another dog.

Because he wasn't just another dog, you know? 

Oh, buddy. I sure wish you could come home. 

 

The Garden, Week 17: I'm Starting To Think This Was A Terrible Idea

The tomatoes keep blossoming and then dropping the blossoms. They shrivel up, turn brown, and fall off. I have two tomatoes growing on my Amish Paste plant and six teeny tomatoes growing on my Yellow Pear plant. But the other ten plants have bupkis. Lots of blossoms! Lots of leaves! About four feet tall! NONE TOMATOES.

This is discouraging.

If I'm to be eating ripe tomatoes sometime in the next few weeks, green tomatoes need to be forming. It feels like my vines should be heavy with small green baby tomatoes by now. I'm starting to have visions of getting through this entire summer and only eating a handful of small yellow tomatoes, which would be SO UPSETTING. (Also it would positively kill the rate of return I'm aiming for on spend.)

I know I'm growing heirlooms, I know they're not easy and are actually kind of fussy, I know I started them from seed and they'll take longer to set fruit and ripen, I know I have no idea what I'm doing and my strategy is largely "put it in the ground, add water and cross my fingers," but HOLY MOSES GUYS, THIS IS LOOKING BAD. 

I think the blossom drop problem is because it's too hot, which is infuriating because I thought tomatoes LOVED HOT. It's not even THAT hot yet (90's!). I should have done more research on which heirloom varieties do best in Texas, but I just didn't have that kind of spare time on my hands last January and I was such a newbie I didn't even know it was a question I should ask. 

So. I'm not really sure what to do about this, if there's even anything to be done. Should I shade the plants for part of the day? (As someone once told me I might need to do, as full Texas sun seems to be too much sun OMG THIS IS SO ANNOYING I CANNOT BE EXPECTED TO CONTROL THE SUN.) Should I water a crap ton more than I do? Should I cry a little? A few tears of tomato-grief, perhaps? I will do that, if someone thinks it might help. In my wildest dreams I did not imagine I'd grow these plants for four months and they'd get big and they'd blossom and then...refuse to set fruit. I figured if I made it this far the tomatoes would come on their own, as they are supposed to, but this appears to not be the case.

The cucumbers are blooming too, no cukes yet but they just starting blooming a few days ago. The okra is getting tall, but no blossoms on that either. The pepper plants are TINY still (about 8 puny inches), but they're blooming so I guess I'll have some quarter-size bell peppers later (wooo?). The basil is huge, though. The basil is my gold-star student. One million gold stars to Basil.

I'm constantly picking grass out of the beds, plus little shoots of Bradford Pear tree. The root system is still alive on the tree we cut down (otherwise the entire yard would have been shaded, which I am sure would also spell tomato doom, I just cannot win), and the tree is trying to survive but I wish it would just DIE already and stop growing in my garden. Seriously Tree, you're not going to win this one.

What I Keep In My Freezer

I'm a huge fan of freezer meals, which is somewhat surprising as I am not a fan of leftovers. Even more than I dislike leftovers though, I am reallllly not a fan of dishes, and a freezer meal lets me have a tasty meal for pretty much zero effort and zero dishes, which is basically how they became my favorite kind of meal.

When Charlotte was born my mom brought us an entire cooler full of frozen meals. (It is the best baby gift we've ever received.) Chicken Parmesan, Pot Roast, Beef Bourguignon, Beef Stroganoff, Chicken Piccata, Lasagna, Enchiladas....all packaged into two-serving ziploc bags. It was genius. All I'd have to do is remember to fetch one from the freezer before 1p, set it on the counter for a few hours to defrost (overnight in the fridge works well too), stick it in the oven to warm and TA DA DINNER IS SERVED for about four total minutes of actual work.

(If I was feeling very fancy I might heat up a bag of frozen vegetables. So, nine minutes of meal prep on fancy nights.)

This sounds kind of bland and boring (after all: FREEZER MEALS) but it was AWESOME! Some things freeze really well! We were super sad when all of the Grammie meals were gone. I figured out the key is to add a few fresh toppings or condiments to the frozen entree. Then the frozen meal starts to look and taste like I just made it: it's not all frozen like a Lean Cuisine, there's fresh stuff on there too, adding lots of flavor and texture. For example:

Frozen Chicken Parmesan: Boil up some noodles, grate parmesan on top of the whole thing, crack some pepper, pinch some basil from the plant in the yard. Add a salad. 

Frozen Pot Roast: Boil some egg noodles and add a (frozen) twice-baked potato. Add some salad! You probably still have a a lot left in that giant box of lettuce from Costco that only cost $3.

Frozen Chicken Piccata: Make some rice, or if you forget to make rice because rice is kind of a bitch that way since it takes thinking about in advance, make some couscous because it only takes four minutes and is very forgiving. Grate parmesan over your whole plate. (Really, freshly grated parm goes MILES towards improving ANY meal.) Add a bag of frozen vegetables or the ubiquitous $3 salad that makes seven nights of salad plus some lunches. (Very economic buy there, the giant box of Costco salad.)

See? It doesn't SOUND very blah Freezer Meal, does it? It sounds TASTY.

Now, the best thing about the meals last year is I didn't actually have to MAKE any of them the first time. When they ran out and we'd developed a taste for freezer dinner and its simplicity, I tried to figure out what I wanted to re-stock with. I've been penciling in "Freezer Meal!" about twice a week for a year and it's so awesome and it really keeps us from eating out on hurried nights where nobody wants to actually COOK but everyone would like to EAT.

Here's what I usually have in the freezer, and most everything lets me have dinner on the table in under 20 minutes (assuming I have remembered to defrost in advance).

Southwestern Egg Rolls

I'll make these for dinner and only heat up the 4 or 6 we eat that night. I put the rest on wax paper, on a cookie sheet, and stick it in the freezer. In the morning I collect them into a plastic bag and they live in the freezer that way. They take about 20 minutes to heat through (I stick them in the oven frozen) and I top with sour cream, salsa, guac, sliced avocado, halved cherry tomatoes, or whatever tex-mex type condiments float my boat (or, more realistically, whatever I find handy in the fridge that day). Occasionally, I'll double it and make a LOT of egg rolls.

I modify the heck out of this recipe. I've added hatch chiles (which I also buy in bulk each August and keep frozen), diced red pepper, left out the cheese entirely, done a mix of black and pinto beans and they're delicious any way I make then. So, tailor to your tastes. These are pretty hard to screw up.

Enchiladas (Red Ones and Green Ones [I use the recipe on a can of Old El Paso Green Enchilada Sauce])

We love enchiladas. Add some salsa, sour cream, or sliced avocado after you heat them up and it's a legit Mexican Fiesta Night. Or, don't add those things because you don't have them since TOMORROW is Walmart day, and guess what? They're still delicious. I don't add cheese to mine unless guests are coming over, and I usually add black beans, red peppers and hatch chiles (to both versions). Sometimes I heat them in the oven, sometimes in the microwave. Pair with a salad (Seriously, leafy greens all week for only $3) or a bag of those frozen Chipotle Vegetables from Costco, which are my new favorite thing.

Twice-Baked Potatoes

These freeze SO WELL. I bake four or six potatoes, scoop out the insides, mash up with green onions, salt, pepper and sour cream, stick in the freezer on a cookie sheet and then keep in a plastic bag. (We'll eat two the night I make them.) They're awesome. It FEELS kind of fancy, but I didn't have to cook them that day!

Pot Roast

It's so easy to make Pot Roast and it's SO GOOD. I pair mine with a twice-baked potato since I agree with Ree that baking the potatoes in the pot makes them mealy. Heats up in the microwave like a dream. Make a salad. BOOM, you have dinner.

Pizza Crust

You definitely have to find a few hours to make pizza crust, since it requires a bit of babysitting, but it's so worth it because pizza is so easy and you can use up all the random things in the fridge. I make two recipes at a time, which gives me four crusts. The dough is ready to use as soon as I defrost it and hello, everyone loves pizza. Also goes well with....salad. (WE EAT A LOT OF SALAD.)

Herbed Risotto with Carmelized Onions

This recipe makes enough risotto to feed about six adults. It's a GIANT PAN of risotto. Thusly, I always freeze the leftovers. I do not put chicken in mine because I kind of dislike chicken these days and it's a lot of extra steps and...I think the risotto is amazing on its own. When I heat it up, I add fresh parmesan, fresh herbs and freshly cracked pepper. I make a salad with it. This is a no-stirring recipe, winning it major points in my world.

Burgers

I finally realized we do not need to each eat a half-pound turkey burger when we make burgers. Because the thing is, turkey comes in one-pound packages so we always felt like we have to use it all up. NO MORE. I make 1/3-pound burgers (flavored with whatever), cook two and freeze one. Two rounds of this and I have a freezer-ready meal that Chris still has to cook, but then I don't have to touch raw meat or do any prep. WIN! Add frozen sweet potato fries.

Red Pepper Pasta Sauce

Costco sells a six-pack of red peppers for a sometimes not-jaw-dropping price and when they do, I scoop them up and make this sauce. I'll sometimes actually make the chicken parm along with it (this recipe is very good and I've made it for years), but this sauce on just noodles or tortellini is what I really like. Homemade pasta sauce (even when frozen) is always just SO MUCH BETTER than jarred to me. Sometimes I run an immersion blender through the sauce to make it less chunky.

So, that's how we do Freezer Dinner at my house. Anyone else keep a stocked freezer? I'm always looking for new things to keep up from getting bored, so please share if you do!

The Garden, Weeks 14, 15, 16: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

The tomatoes started to blossom so I fertilized them with some gray stuff in a bag that was stinking up to HIGH HEAVEN and WOW it smelled so badly I can't believe I PAID for the contents of this stinky, stinky, bag.

I have four whole tomatoes growing now, 3 weeks after first blossoms. I have two Yellow Pear and two Amish Paste and, look, this seems rather shrimpy to me. I have lots of blossoms on the other ones, but no tomatoes and some of the blossoms have turned brown and fallen off, which I think is called Blossom Drop. The internet tells me it's from lack of pollination so I suppose I'll go outside and shuffle the plants every now and then. It could also be from sustained temperatures above 85 which HA HA YES that is already happening too.

I have to keep remembering that I started these from seeds AND they are heirlooms so they are just not going to produce as early or often as my friends that bought plants. Elizabeth and I were talking about this one day and we produced a very handy graphic to make ourselves feel better about this situation.

Ahem. Moving right along.

I am not sure what I did to the green onions but they stopped growing and then just kind of....vanished one day. I think they maybe needed more water than I was giving them. This is okay, because the cucumber and okra plants are going crazy and I am going to move half of them to the empty spot where the green onions used to be. 

Observe cucumber and okra huge-ness, only six weeks after I threw seeds in the ground:

It is rather crowded in this six square feet: two tomatoes, two basils, six okras, six cucumbers. So, I don't know, it's been pretty boring in the garden lately. I water, I prune, I weed. It's rained a little bit. I keep an eye on the bunnies.

Yesterday, I noticed part of a tomato plant had some leaves chomped on. I looked closer, getting agitated about something snacking on my garden. I wondered if the bunnies had figured out how to lean their paws on the fence to get a few leaves...but then I moved on to the next plant, which was missing HALF its leaves and whaaaaaaaat?

UM, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

A moment later I caught sight of THIS guy, just hanging out all casual-like on one of my beloved Brandywine plants.

Hey guys! Just having a snack! (urrrp.)

He was GIGANTINORMOUS and he had these awful beady eyes and little T-Rex type paws and a little red pokey thing and he was FAT and LUMPY (with my tomato leaves!) and GROSSSSSSS. Oh, he was horrible looking.

Eagle-eye Jess told me what I had was a tomato hornworm. And ohhhhhhh, doesn't that sound EVIL? It is you guys, it totally is evil. I hope you are not eating right now, because what I am about to tell you might make you lose your appetite. This sucker turns into a moth with a FIVE-TO-SIX-INCH WINGSPAN. A fluttery moth that makes whappity-whappity papery sounds with wings AS BIG AS YOUR HAND which presumably FLIES AROUND and it might TOUCH MEEEEEEEEE OMG.

(GAHHHHHHH HAND FLAPPY OMG OMG OMG)

Obviously I do not want any of these around, either as giant caterpillars eating my tomatoes I have spent sixteen freaking weeks babysitting from seeds, or as giant moths flying around my head (HURL). I will be purchasing some insecticide tomorrow. Organic, schmorganic. I cannot have any of THESE anywhere near me.

Elizabeth, helpful as ever, suggested I purchase this very important reference guide:

The similarity is STRIKING, don't you think?

7 Quick Takes: Dallas, Stokke, Pot Roast

1. Jennie and I went to a screening of TNT's new show, Dallas, last night.

The invitation said business casual but there were women there in floor-length gowns with sequins, men in very nice suits, model/reality television types in obviously styled outfits whom I FELT like I should know, but I did not because I just don't watch a lot of TV. It was very pseudo-fancy, is what I'm saying. There was a red carpet, which was hilarious because they told US to walk on it, and HA HA HA this is the silliest event I've ever been to, and I have been to a lot of schmoozy, uppity events with self-important people.

As you might imagine, we had a great time people-watching and making comments to ourselves.

The show is terrible, by the way, and I wonder if they had the premiere in Dallas on purpose, to keep it away from Los Angeles and its far more critical eyes. I mean, I will watch almost anything with bemused enjoyment (after all, I was out on the town away from my kids!) and this was just terrible writing, terrible acting, and even the production was uninspired. It was boring. I wanted to go home.

It felt disjointed and trite at times, with two characters meeting at Cowboys Stadium, on the field, on the star, to discuss their evil plans. That's...not really a place you go to discuss evil plans, all casual-like. I get that you wanted to show the stadium in the pilot (and I am SURE Jerry was ALL OVER THAT IDEA), but perhaps ten more minutes of creative thought would have resulted in something more believable/natural/organic. It feels like there was a lot they could have done with the amazing story they already had and they turned it into something really boring. I mean, even the clothes were BLAH. It was not for me.

It started later than scheduled and we left half-way through the screening. Yo, we live in the suburbs. Some people have to get home at a reasonable hour.

2.  The baby was waking up at lot at night because she was losing her binky through the crib slats. I put the bumper back in and then next day she slept until 830. Today she slept until 7. Oh, crib bumper, you are my new best friend.

3. We've had some high winds here and two days ago I backed out of the garage and found this:

Yeahhhhhh. That's half a Bradford Pear tree in my front yard. We called the tree guy and he said that the split had weakened the remaining branches a great deal and the tree was not salvageable. If we left it, and it split again (which it would) it would fall on the house. On his recommendation, we had him take the entire tree out and now my front yard is very strange looking. That makes two trees we've cut down this year, leaving only the scrappy Magnolia.

4. I'm making pot roast for dinner.

5. I am going to buy another Stokke high chair, because Charlotte is getting to an age where she can sit in it and I would be VERY EXCITED to take this piece of shit Chicco Polly to the curb (SO HARD TO CLEAN OMG). Now, we already have one Stokke Tripp Trapp, that used to be mine when I was a kid. It's kind of a natural/cherry color. A smart person might get another one in the same hue, but I kind of want this green one.

Am I crazy? I mean, I expect to have this chair for....the rest of my life. These chairs last forever. My grandchildren will eat at them, just as my mother's grandchildren do. It matches the color scheme I'm going for in my kitchen these days. I just...I dunno, I like the green! I think it would look fun! I dunno, what do we think? Crazy? Imprudent? Or, Very Stylish and Brave Of Me? I have not mentioned my green chair idea to Chris yet, but I'll bet he votes Safe, Neutral Color Chair. What I'd REALLY like to do is buy TWO green chairs and send the neutral one back to my mom's house, so she can have two matching chairs and I can have two matching chairs, but I am not sure I feel like spending $400 on TWO CHAIRS FOR MESSY CHILDREN OMG. We'll start with one.

For comparison, the Neutral Chair we already have. (Boring! It's so boring!)

6. I know I already told you I love my Jack Rogers sandals, but two weeks later I STILL LOVE THEM. They're really comfortable and I'm not having any wearing-in issues AT ALL which I expect when I spent $100+ on what is basically a shiny flip-flop. I've been wearing them almost every day and they are certainly elevating my (rather extensive) collection of Old Navy dresses. I'm already dreaming about other colors I'd like to own.

7. I took this picture a few days ago and it makes me laugh so much.