When I told one of the other moms I sometimes talk to during parkour that we were going to Utah for a vacation she said, with a quizzical sort of casualness, “Oh. Do you have family there?” What she was really asking, I think, was, are you one o’ them Mormons? I am not. All the Mormon people I have known though, all of them, have been smart and funny and talented. Still, my sense of Utah before visiting, and perhaps others’, is that it’s kind of weird. Maybe uptight and religious? Culty? After visiting, I can say that these suspicions were sort of right. At one stop on the (very clean) train from the airport to our hotel, a group of eight or so guys on their lunch break hopped on and they all looked exactly the same. Varying shades of pastel polo shirts, khaki shorts, sensible shoes, blonde hair, blue eyes, square jaws. We saw copies of these guys everywhere. There were pockets of ‘alternative’ lifestyles on display- hip and grimy pizza parlors that could have been in Austin, museums with political statement-exhibits on the face of homelessness and climate change, a pop-up electronica concert outside the big and beautiful central library, and people with non-preppy clothes or tattoos or piercings who stood out like sore thumbs. But we didn’t come to Utah to see if it was full of blonde be-polo-shirted guys or not. What brought us to Utah, to Salt Lake City, was the annual National Puzzlers’ League convention. We go every year. It’s always in a different city, and it’s always one of the very best weekends of my year.

The NPL convention is a gathering of brilliant, innovative people who bring homemade games and puzzles to delight one another, and is focused mostly on wordplay, trivia, and cryptic crosswords. I am not naturally adept at any of these things. I went the first time, just as I had with the MIT Mystery Hunt, because Andy is. But, in spite of being not great at this stuff, I absolutely adore it. And I’m getting a bit better at cryptic crosswords (which are like crosswords where the clues are half definition, half wordplay, and you have to work out, slowly in my case, which bit is which)- even the fiendishly complicated varieties that turn up at Con. I still feel hopelessly stupid sometimes though. An anecdote: one group of attendees ran a game that spanned the length of the convention called Elevator Trivia. If you happened to be riding the hotel’s elevator at the same time as them, they’d offer you a trivia question. If you got it right they gave you a shiny sticker that looked like a full Trivial Pursuit color wheel to affix to your nom tag (we get to use nom de plumes instead of our real names! Mine is Expelliarmus. Cuz it’s got the letters for Arielle in it and is Harry Potter-related, my only criteria at the time I chose it in 2006). Anyway, on the last day of the convention, Andy and I ended up in the elevator at the right time, and it was so exciting! It felt like finding yourself in the cash cab. Andy got his question first, something about “what American team has won the most Stanley Cups” and he got it right almost immediately- the Red Wings. Come on, Andy! So then it was my turn. My question was “what is the widely-recognized nickname of Edward Teach, an Englishman who sailed in the West Indies in the 18th century?” And my brain just could not. I answered, “Christopher Columbus?” Yes, I did. I know he sailed the ocean blue in 1492- it’s right there in the rhyme! And I know he’s Italian. And obviously his name wasn’t actually Edward Teach. The question-poser took pity on me and let me try again. Who would be sailing in the West Indies in the 18th century, he asked. Uh, a pirate? Think brain, think! I could come up with Captain Cook, but I thought he was over by Hawaii. So then another guy who rode the elevator with us gestured meaningfully at the colorful sticker he’d earned from an earlier elevator ride, to the yellow part, I thought, and so I answered Yellowbeard. And that was wrong obviously. Because that’s a bad movie, and not a real pirate. Blackbeard’s a real guy though. And the answer to this question. So I didn’t get a colorful sticker. I asked Andy afterward how he had known Red Wings, because we know nothing about sports, and he reminded me that a friend had tipped us off that all the answers to the elevator trivia questions started with a color. I’d forgotten that. Worse still was that that same friend had given us four answers (sharing answers was encouraged) and Blackbeard was fucking one of them. I had written it down myself. So that stung. I still feel bad about it. I was able to sort of redeem myself by being a helpful team mate for the fantastic puzzle extravaganza later that night, but my God, man. That was a really long anecdote. All this to say, that even if I’m not gonna win any prizes for my puzzling abilities, I love being a part of this amazing group of people. I love playing the games, I love basking in the glow of so much intelligence, and I love the people, who are wonderful and welcoming and kind, even if I do think Columbus was an Englishman who lived in the 18th century.

I made a long list of the restaurants I wanted to try on our trip to Utah- something much more in my wheelhouse- with the hopes of sharing some beautiful food pictures with you. We ate at almost none of them. We had to do what was easy, after long days of adventuring with the kids, and mostly ended up eating mediocre stuff. I ate several turkey and avocado sandwiches. But I took pictures of all the mediocre stuff anyway, and I’m gonna talk about it anyway, so hooray! Here’s what we ate in Utah.

German Chocolate Croissant.From Eva’s Bakery. Forget everything I said about mediocrity. This was incredible. It was George’s choice for breakfast from the bakery around the corner from our hotel. I may have steered him in this direction, away from the ho-hum plain croissant. I ended up eating a lot of it.

Roasted Beet and Avocado Toast. I ordered this. I should have ordered 3 more german chocolate croissants instead. It was fine. The toast was of the jaggedly-crusty variety that slices your mouth open when you try to eat it.

The Gateway Children’s Museum. Say what you will about Utah, but the place is family-friendly in the extreme. We spent our first full day at the great nearby children’s museum, which blows the Austin one out of the water. They had a big grocery and farmer’s market play space, always my favorite part of any children’s museum, and Henry and George both spent a lot of time assembling lavendar, peach, and red onion salads for me with the wood and plastic ingredients they harvested.

Dairy Queen. We spent way too long at the museum, and the kids were well into hangry territory, so we ate at the stupid mall food court next door. They had a bunch of garbage. We ended up ordering from a Japanese place, which seemed dirty but was at least not McDonalds. And we got Dairy Queen for dessert, because fuck it.

Kouign Amann. This was the best thing I ate on the trip- it was my first ever kouign amman, which is like a croissant crossed with a palmier and sprinkled with flaky sea salt. You’ll know you’re saying the name correctly if it sounds like your mouth is full of marbles.

The Leonardo. Another museum! We spent a lot of time in the art area, where we made stop motion videos and drew bad self-portraits. While I was making mine an employee came over and made fun of the ones people had left behind, so I was sure to tuck mine into my purse before walking away. My drawing was also bad. Lips are hard. There were also math and science sections and we made tessellations and string art and played with colorful discs on a light table, after first figuring out how to turn on the light table and finding all the colorful discs by moving a big television stand. A lot of stuff was missing or broken at this museum but I liked its spirit. Except for the lady who made fun of the left-behind self portraits.

We were supposed to be making shadow puppets, but Henry made this instead.

And George ate some clay.

Big Cottonwood Canyon. Another day, another adventure. This is a spectacular spot, a curving road that winds between those big fancy Utah rocks and forests and churning streams. The water was freezing too, delightfully and almost unbearably cold.

What’re you too cool for cottonwood canyons?

This guy gets it!

Some older boys were climbing this trail. Would we call this a trail? So Henry had to try it too. You can’t really tell from the pictures but it looked damn near vertical in person. He had to cling desperately to rocks and roots that stuck out of the dirt, but he made it! He did it over and over until the last time, when he slid down on his stomach and scratched up his tender pasty belly.

Aristo’s. This place has won tons of local dining awards, and is on the list of the top Greek restaurants in America, and the menu had two kinds of rice for our kids who only eat rice now, so I was looking forward to it. We got there around 6:30 on a Sunday and the place was totally dead. The waiter had a distinct Billy Eichner vibe. When they forgot to make the little dish of fries that came with Andy’s flight of gyros(!) he said the kitchen staff members were all teenagers and incompetent. He said the same of the arsenal of people who came to clear our dishes away when we were done eating, and who indeed did seem to be clearing a table for the very first time. The food was pretty good though. Maybe people just don’t go out to eat on Sunday in Salt Lake City?

B&D Burgers. This little burger joint was right next door to Aristo’s and was hopping. So much for the theory that people don’t eat out on Sundays. We saw a sign on the window for extra thick shakes and left the sad and empty fancy restaurant behind and got a couple. Henry picked a raspberry cheesecake shake, Andy picked a rocky road one. They were glorious. I guess this is a chain? Though not a powerful one, I’m guessing, cuz they misspelled avocado and lettuce at the top of their website.

Antelope Island State Park. We didn’t see any antelope, but we did see lots of deer and buffalo, so that’s 2/3 of the home on the range animal scavenger hunt. Also, billions of tiny flies. When we first walked to the edge of the salt lake, we noticed bands of black stuff. It moved in waves as we approached it, with a great buzzing sound. The kids thought it was hilarious to run through the flies and watch them move as one in their wake. Also, a ranger-type fellow had warned us to not, under any circumstances, let the kids get the salt water in their lungs. He didn’t come out and say it but definitely implied that they would die. Is this true? With the crazy flies and the threat of death, I was a little on edge. We spent the rest of the day hiking and looking at all the giant spiders that lived between the rocks. It’s a beautiful and surreal-feeling spot. We ate smuckers uncrustables sandwiches and inedibly sweet m&m cookies from Wal-mart, drank what was hopefully potable water from the showers by the lake, listened to Hamilton on the long drive home, and had ourselves a very fine day.

Maxwell’s East Coast Eatery.  Then we went back to the city and ate a lot of pizza. This place has been on Diner’s, Drive-Ins, and Dives so it’s got the Guy Fieri stamp of approval. It was really good, thanks, Guy! We were all gross and salty from hiking all day, and George had to poop but wanted to scream instead of going into the bathroom, but they were nice to us anyway, so it gets my stamp of approval too.

Thanksgiving Point. On our last day in Utah we went to this museum paradise. There are four points of interest here: the Museum of Natural Curiosity, the Museum of Ancient Life, 55 acres of “stately gardens” and a working farm. We bought the adventure pass so we could go to all of them and then spent the first half of the day in one of six sections in the Museum of Natural Curiosity. To be fair, this section did have a 45 foot high monkey head playground complete with a ropes course and a giant slide, but still. We spent the rest of the day rushing through everything else, minus the gardens cuz they didn’t make the cut. We saw one of the world’s largest displays of mounted dinosaurs, the kids rode ponies and saw baby chicks and bunnies, and played on not one, but two different geometry playgrounds. It was a long day.

Blue Iguana. It was stupid to eat Mexican food in Utah when we would be flying back to Austin the next day, but this place was right next to the hotel and had stuff the kids were guaranteed to eat. Yes, rice. I had been eating pretty badly the whole time, so when I read the description of a special salad with fresh greens, corn, black beans, cactus, cotija, and a light avocado vinaigrette I thought I’d be super healthy and go for it. This is what came out- it was 90% sour cream, in a fried shell, and the dressing appeared to be a mayonnaise-y ranch, not the promised avocado vinaigrette. I took it as a sign from God to not be healthy and ate heaping spoonfuls of sour cream for dinner.

And that’s it for our grand Utah adventure! I’d love to go back someday to explore all the national parks in the area and eat at the restaurants that we didn’t make it to, but I enjoyed this trip for what it was, with its sour cream globs and uncrustable sandwiches.

We flew home on Wednesday, were home for a day, and then went camping for the next three days. That’ll be my next post, and then it’ll be back to the regular grind here. Thanks for reading, friends.

Happy Fourth of July! I made a cherry pie and ruined some baked beans and wrote a lot about chasing a chicken. Probably too much. We got to spend the holiday with family. The kids played with water balloons and ran through sprinklers and ate hot dogs dripping with ketchup and then we did fireworks and had our annual ‘party in the dark’ where the kids dance with glow sticks with the lights turned off and chant ‘party in the dark’ over and over creepily. It was the best. Here’s what we ate  this week.

Red Chile Pork Tamales and Pupusas with Cortido. The kids and I spent the morning at Jumpoline (oh God, I accidentally typed Humpoline at first. This could be a million dollar business idea), which is a giant building filled with different kinds of trampolines. In the back, they have long runway-style trampolines with sloped hills at either end, and we ran up and down them until I was sweaty and red-faced. It’s really hard to run across a big long trampoline runway without a shit-eating grin on your face. After two hours of jumping, we walked down to the nearby Mexican grocery store and generally annoyed everyone with our loud and demanding children and failure to understand the menu. The kids seemed to really enjoy the tamales and I know they loved the melon agua fresca. The pupusas were disappointing though, especially the chicharron, which we all agreed seemed more like canned tuna than pork skin. That’s weird.

Enchiladas Suizas with Black Beans and Mexican Rice. I’m aware that these enchiladas look terrible, all dried-out and crumbly, but they were honestly great. I didn’t have chicken, so filled them instead with monterrey jack and shredded white onion. I want my enchiladas to turn out like the ones in the linked picture, but it seems like the only way to do this is to not bake them at all. And then how do you get the cheese to melt? I’m gonna try again soon.

Blueberry Pancakes with Two Breakfast Meats. I don’t know how it happened, but I went on a meat spending spree this week. I bought all the meat. We had it for almost every dinner. The day I bought these two breakfast meats, George had been talking about bacon off and on for the whole day. Henry hates bacon (?!) but loves sausage so I bought both. After I loaded my shopping cart with meat and came home, I read this article, about how meat is destroying us all. I knew this, the thing about how not eating a cheeseburger is the carbon footprint-equivalent of taking 2000 cars off the road (this is a statistic I made up, I think. But it’s something about cars and beef and water and science, you get the gist.). But it’s so easy to pretend to forget. I’ll try to do better next time.

Vegetable Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce, Beef Bulgogi. The boys and I were sitting at the table working on geography jigsaw puzzles, like the very picture of a homeschooling family (this happens exactly never), but then George wandered off to go pee on the little potty in the living room and then waddled back to me, his (pajama) pants and underwear around his ankles at the same moment that our neighbor rang the doorbell. She watched me pull up George’s pants through the window on our front door, and then explained that she was there because one of our chickens had escaped and was in her front yard. It was Goldie, the only chicken who has never been caught, and is always flying over the six foot fence in our backyard and heading back to Otto’s house, the neighbor who gave her to us. Goldie’s at the bottom of the pecking order in our flock. That’s a literal term. The other chickens jump on her back and peck the shit out of the back of her head for the sport of it. Anyway, lately she’d been flapping over to Otto’s house, and she’ll spend a contentedly solitary afternoon over there before roosting in his chiminea or in the lowest branches of a tree, at which point he grabs her and brings her back to my coop. And then she does the same thing all over again the next day. We had already known she was out, and at Otto’s, but when the neighbor lady told me she was in her front yard, I figured we’d give trying to catch her a go. Henry wisely decided to stay home to finish the US and Canada puzzle he was working on. George and I chased Goldie back and forth, back and forth across four yards. We’d walk slowly, real casual-like, approaching her from opposite sides, but then she’d cotton on to us and sprint to hide under the middle of a nearby pickup truck. We gave up on the slow-and-casual method and just chased her full out, going as fast as we could, while she ran even faster, and in unpredictable swirling zig zags. We did this for half an hour. Finally, we backed her into a corner with no bushes for her to hide behind. She tried, unsuccessfully, to fly over the fence and I was able to grab her as she landed. I felt like a god among men. We started heading back home, and the neighbor who had alerted me about the chicken popped back out and thought I’d like to have a chat about all the kittens she has rescued in her lifetime, while I’m all sweaty and bedraggled and holding a furious chicken. I stood there for a while, George at my side, struggling under the weight of the compost bucket that I thought, mistakenly, could be used to lure Goldie back to our place, and this lady would just not stop talking to me about cats. After several minutes, Goldie got extra flappy and squirmy and the neighbor said she would let me get back home. Thank the good lord! This lady is real nice, and leaves bags of watermelon rind hanging on our front doorknob as a treat for the chickens whenever she has some, but come on! Take a hint!

Some words about food! We ate the spring rolls to use up the peanut sauce I made last week, and the meat was a delicious beefy impulse purchase.

Bolillo, Salami, Fruit. I woke up in the morning and wanted to make bread. So I made the loaf below and had enough leftover to make 4 bolillo rolls. That’s what that round thing is supposed to be.

Pullman Loaf (without a Pullman Pan). George pushed Henry while I was baking this thing. I asked Henry if it hurt, and he said yes. So I said, “What should you do, George?” and he promptly said “I’m so sorry, Henry.” Henry narrowed his eyes at George and said, “Somehow I feel that that apology was not sincere”.

Caramelized Beef, Zanzibari Coconut Creamed Spinach, Date Chapati. These recipes are all from the Food of Oman cookbook and they were, all together, the best thing I’ve eaten in a while. That meat is so wonderful. I know we’re not supposed to eat it anymore, but if we collectively decide that tender, exotic stews are a good trade off for destroying the earth before 2050, this recipe is a keeper. All you do is cut meat into big hunks and drop it into water with lots of spices and boil it for a while, and then simmer it for a while, and then boil it again. It was meltingly tender and so richly flavored. The spinach is fun too, and easy. It uses dried coconut milk (the lady in the linked recipe just used canned coconut milk) to make a creamy sauce that is malty and wonderful. George ate the coconut milk powder out of the bag with a spoon. It kind of tastes like astronaut ice cream. And the bread! It’s a lot like that m’smen I made a few months ago but even better (lots and lots of butter in this one). We had lots of leftovers and for breakfast and lunch for the next two days, I would shred some of the meat into a tortilla with a few spoonfuls of spinach, fold it in half, and griddle in until it was crisp. Shockingly good.

Should I tell you about how Andy took the last three date chapatis to work for his lunch the next day, instead of the two I felt was a fair portion and leaving one for me, and how I’m hormonal and cranky and got mad at him for it, because, in my estimation, he didn’t savor the date chapati. He just ate it while sitting at his desk. I would have savored it. So, as punishment, I told him, step by step, how that date chapati was made. It was lots of steps. And that if he doesn’t care about what he’s eating, I’ll make him a sandwich and keep the bread for myself. I probably shouldn’t have told you that, because it makes me look like a schmuck, but I went ahead and did it anyway.

Chilled Cucumber and Avocado Soup with Mango Salsa. I made this quick blender soup (it’s delicious!) to take to my friend Molly’s house on Saturday. I got to go by myself and Andy took the kids swimming. When I got home, Andy told me about this conversation he had with Henry on the way to the pool:

Henry: Do you think Mama’s having a good time?
Andy: Yeah, I bet she is.
Henry: Yeah, she is.
Andy: How do you know?
Henry: I just pictured her eating soup.

Chana Masala with Yogurt and Naan. Yes, I ate a lot of naan. I had a whole second piece after this one.

Sopita. These are noodles cooked in a chicken and tomato bouillon-cube broth and it’s delicious and costs 40 cents. I thought I’d make it “healthier” by eating half an avocado on top, but this was mostly a weird addition. You’ve just gotta go for it and eat a plain bowl of cheap noodles sometimes.

Wiener Wraps. I needed to think of a snack to bring to a quilting bee in the afternoon and these wiener wraps were the song in my heart. It’s the weirdest, least appropriate snack to bring to a bunch of ladies who are going to spend the afternoon quilting and sipping tea, but I just had to make them. They were a hit, naturally.

Miniature Cinnamon Rolls. And! And! Both times I’ve made these wiener wraps I’ve had just a little bit of that buttery yeast dough left over. Last time I used it to make some savory cheese and green onion buns, but this time, I made a teeny tiny tray of cinnamon rolls and almost died from the cuteness. I just rolled out the dough, brushed it with melted butter, sprinkled it heavily with a brown sugar/cinnamon/salt mixture, and rolled it up. The icing is just confectioners sugar mixed with a little heavy cream and a very little bit of vanilla. It was remarkable how much they tasted like the canned ones. Or at least my memory of what the canned ones tasted like as a kid. I feel like I’ve had them recently and they taste like sweetened chemical pucks.

Quilts for Orlando. Joanie and I had both heard about this project to make rainbow heart quilts to send to the victims, families, and rescue workers of the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub, and Christy very generously offered to host. I’ve made quilts by myself, but they have been shoddy, slapdash affairs. Christy is the real deal. She’s got all the tools, and a real-life, grown-up sewing machine, and she’s great at it. I liked the idea of being a part of this project, but I mostly wanted my part to be suggesting it to Christy and then milling about on the periphery while she put it together. And my wish came true! We ate a lot of snacks and sort of helped Christy make a bunch of heart squares.

Chicken Teriyaki. I forgot to marinate the chicken for the grilled bulgogi chicken I was going to make for dinner after the quilting bee (why did I want to cook two forms of bulgogi this week?). So instead I made this teriyaki from a Nigella Lawson cookbook I picked up at the library (thanks, Ben!) and it took 15 minutes and was very tasty. This cookbook also has a recipe for spaghetti with marmite and a lemon meringue fool that I needs must have. Also weird British interpretations of American food that I won’t be making. I’m looking at you, barbecued ground beef.

Sour Cherry Pie, Gluten Free. This is my first ever sour cherry pie! Sour cherries never make it to my neck of the woods, but this year I noticed that you can buy pitted bags of frozen sour cherries at Central Market. Two bags were enough to fill a pie. The finished filling looks remarkably like what you get out of a can, but is brighter, more tart, and clean tasting. I overcooked the pie a bit, because I was waiting for the cherry filling to bubble up through the lattice, but it never did. Still, the thing was pretty damn good.

We are headed out of town for a week in Salt Lake City, then back for a day and out again on a three day camping trip, so I’ll probably skip the blog next week, but I’ll come back and share photos from our trip soon. Happy Fourth, everybody!

I’ve been reading Catastrophic Happiness: Finding Joy in Childhood’s Messy Years, by Catherine Newman. I have never left a comment on her blog, but I am a superfan. I think she writes about life with young children better than anyone. If you haven’t, read this essay, which is the prologue of her new book. An excerpt:

One day, the children will eat neither pennies nor crayons nor great, gulping handfuls of sand like they have a powerful thirst for sand, sand, only sand. They will no longer choke on lint and disks of hot dog or fall down the stairs, their heads making the exact, sickening, hollow-melon thump that you knew they would make, when you knew they would fall down the stairs. They will still fall out of trees and off of trampolines. They will still scrape their elbows and knees and foreheads, and you will still be called upon to tend to these injuries. And you will be happy to, because they so rarely need you to kneel in front of them any more, to kiss them tenderly, here, and also here. Rest assured, though, that there will be ongoing opportunity for the knelling likelihood of doom and destruction. Ticks will attach their parasitic selves to the children’s scalps and groins; rashes and fevers and mysterious illnesses will seize everyone, and you will still go on a Googling rampage of “mild sore throat itchiness coma death.” The kids will still barf with surprising frequency—but competently, into tidy buckets, rather than in a spraying impersonation of a vomit-filled Super-Soaker on the drunk frat boy setting.

Oh, I love it! I want to write like her. And, honestly, I want to live like her. Look at this cool rug she made on a giant loom at an art camp for grown-ups! I feel like we write about the same subject matter, but she is observant and has a great memory (how do you remember all of the endlessly-quotable-but-easily-forgettable things little kids say?) and a sentimental side that I mostly don’t have. Are these skills that can be learned? Acquired? Faked? I aim to try. Here’s what we ate this week.

Crispy Thai Pork with Cucumber Salad. George, sitting on a fat vinyl mat in the active play room at parkour, looked up at a baby crawling nearby and said loudly, “That baby is white.” I said, “what?” He said, “That baby is white.” I said, “what?” again, and the white baby’s mom said, “White?” And George said, “Yes, white.” We all agreed that he was white, and I think there was also a silent agreement that I must be a weirdo racist person who points out white people to my toddler. In my defense, this baby was really, really white- ghostly pale skin with hair the color of cream you’ve beaten an egg yolk into. But I can’t say that to the mom- I think my kid is just noticing how freakishly pale your baby is. So instead, my supposed racism just followed me around the room the rest of the afternoon.

I had made a menu plan for the week that relied on me going to the store. But I didn’t go to the store, so I had to improvise. I was going to use the package of ground pork to make pastellitos, an empanada-like thing in the Hot Bread Kitchen cookbook, but was missing a tomato and raisins and the four hours I would have needed to make beans to go with it. Instead, I realized that I had almost all the items on hand to make this crispy thai pork I’m sure you’re sick of hearing about. The cucumber salad was made with the leftover cucumber spears from our solstice crudite platter. I stood each little wedge up on the cutting board and more or less failed to slice them thinly. You’re meant to serve the pork and rice and cucumber salad as tacos, wrapped up in fat, buttery lettuce leaves, but I only had an old package of baby kale, so I just put a pile of that on top of my rice instead. Everyone else opted to skip this step and just eat meat and rice. And that’s okay! This way, I get to sit up tall and look around smugly because I’m the healthiest person at the table, with my fistful of kale.

Roasted Tamarind Chicken with Honey and Red Chili, Mint and Yogurt Chutney, Naan. We spent three of our mid-day hours in my friend Amanda’s parents’ pool. It is spectacular. Beautifully landscaped and all in bloom (firecracker ferns, pride of barbados, red yucca, big blooming pots of plumeria) with soft-cushioned furniture under a shady pergola. They also have a diving board, and it was immediately obvious that the idea of jumping off of it into the deep end both thrilled and terrified Henry. He wears a ‘puddle jumper’ in the water- a floaty thing that wraps around his arms and across his chest and makes it virtually impossible to knock him over, like some precocious red-haired buoy, but still he approached the diving board with intense skepticism.We spent probably twenty minutes (a long time) coaching him through the various ways he might get from the diving board into the water, and with every passing minute you could see the frustration grow on his face. I was frustrated too and said that no one was forcing him to do this, that he could just give up and try again later if he wanted to, which made the corners of his mouth turn down miserably and big tears come to his eyes. Okay, so we had to find a way. I heaved my body onto a giant, dense, foam crab that George had been riding around the pool, floated to the middle of the deep end, and held out my arms. Henry jumped and I caught him, his beefy little arms crushing my own, but I managed to keep his head above water. We then did this forty more times, Henry beaming all the while.

Helen surprised me with a gift of Made in India, the cookbook I had a torrid love affair with a few months ago, and then had to return to the library. I am so so excited that it is back in my life again. I had planned one dinner (a pistachio and yogurt chicken curry) but still hadn’t made it to the store, so I switched gears and made this instead, which I had all the ingredients for, thanks to a big jar of tamarind puree I bought to make spaghetti squash pad thai months and months ago. The naan didn’t puff up as nicely as it did the first time I made it, but was still soft and delicious (I slathered each piece in melted butter and sprinkled them with kosher salt), and made a great wrap with the chicken and chutney. Henry opted to eat only naan dipped in a bowlful of the honey chicken juices, and George ate half a piece of naan. That was dinner.

Molletes. I had a lot of errands to run on Thursday, including the trip to the grocery store I’d been putting off and trips to two different libraries. Our regular one, where a hold was about to expire on The Food of Oman (Tipsy Baker’s post made me really want to check it out), and to a library in east Austin so I could borrow a copy of Truly Mexican. I needed to make huge quantities of Mexican rice for a party over the weekend and the recipe appears to have disappeared off the face of the internet. I was struggling to go through the 1000 steps needed to get the kids in the car. (Really it’s only two steps- get everyone dressed and peed- but each of these simple jobs break down into dozens of sub tasks. Is this a day where a kid absolutely must pick out their own shirt? Can I get clean underwear on George before he escapes into the backyard to catch another reluctant chicken? No. And now I have to wash chicken poop off of his bare foot, even though his new easy-to-slip-on shoes are kept at the ready by the back door, which I bought after Henry cut his foot in the chicken coop last week and I thought it might prove to be evidence in favor of me not being criminally negligent, should this ever come to trial. And then my mother in law, Mary, walked in like a beacon of light. I didn’t think she was going to be able to come, and what sudden and intense joy to realize I could just walk out of the house by my own self and drive away. I went to the libraries and to the grocery store, and even stopped by thrift land and bought myself some tank tops, all with a huge smile on my face at the ease of it all. After Mary left in the early evening, I made molletes, I got the kids cleaned up and pajama-ed, brushed their teeth, reminded them to pee, washed the dishes, and we were all in bed reading Harry Potter by the time Andy got home from toastmasters. I fucking did it. It turns out all I need to be a competent parent is a six-hour break in the middle of the day where Mary watches the kids and I do whatever the hell I want.

At the end of a long day. The kids look like sweaty little zombies. Also, look that poor chicken in the eye and don’t look away. Isn’t it haunting?

Tartine’s Country Bread. The recipe for this bread, I’ve mentioned before, is terrifying. It took a period of careful study and several re-readings and visualizations before I understood what it was asking. But once you understand what the hell they’re talking about, it’s not hard. Just long. This is sounding too penis-y. You have to make a leaven 12 hours before you want to start baking, then test if it has fermented enough by dropping a spoonful into a glass of water to see if it floats. If it does, you mix up the dough and begin a three-hour folding process. Then the dough rises another three hours. Meanwhile you’ve gotten your loud-noise-phobic five-year-old set up in the backyard with your phone and headphones and the They Might Be Giants’ Here Comes Science album, preheated your oven and a big pot to 500 degrees, baked the first loaf, and then re-preheated the pot for another 30 minutes and baked the second loaf. Then, on Saturday, you’ll drive down to Buda, through terrible traffic, to the party you were baking the bread for, and remember as you exit the highway that you’ve left the breads at home, wrapped in tin foil and crammed into your freezer.

Pineapple, Greens, and Tofu with Roasted Chile-Coconut Dressing. I brought this salad to enneagram, partially so I wouldn’t be the girl who always brings desserts and fried things, but also because I have had deep, unquenchable cravings for any foods made with fistfuls of basil and cilantro and mint. Anyway, enneagram this month was about your ‘passions’, which is sort of code for the main thing that’s shitty about you. I’m paraphrasing of course. It is a very good thing that I am not the person in charge of leading these discussions. Anyway, each of the nine numbers on the ennegram has one of the seven deadly sins associated with it. For the smart asses out there, yes, they added two things to the list of seven- fear and deceit. My number’s sin, or passion, is ‘lust.’ They’re quick to point out that this is not a sexual lust (says you, enneagram book!), but a thirst for intensity and control. I can relate. You’re not supposed to let your passions drive you, and for every number there’s a sort of concept you’re encouraged to embrace to counter it. Eights are supposed to counter our lust with innocence. This was one of those times in enneagram class where everyone else immediately understands what they’re meant to do and I just sit there blinking dumbly and completely failing to get how one would embrace innocence instead of lust. Does it mean, that in the midst of intensely driving after all the things I’m aiming for, I ought to instead go lie down in the grass and look for bunny shapes among the clouds? This is unappealing for two reasons. 1) I like to drive after things intensely and 2) there is a lot of chicken feces in our grass. I guess my main problem here is that I don’t get what is fundamentally wrong with knowing what you want to do and doing it. And I also don’t know what it means to be innocent instead. If the problem with lust is that it means I’m always calling the shots and I’m shutting out other people’s voices and needs, I get that. But wouldn’t a better counter force for that be ‘compromise’ or ‘listening’ or something? I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. I really hope it doesn’t sound like I’m making fun of this process. I honestly love the whole thing- the work, the people, the potluck(!)- and I’m confident that one day this innocence thing will make sense to me, and then my life will be all the better for it. But that day is not today.

Rice Crispy Treats, Gluten Free. Joanna and Javi had a farm party to welcome folks to their new 10 acre farm in Buda, Blue Earth Farm. I wanted to help with desserts because I love this family, and because Joanna and Javi have done so so much for us, and because I love desserts. So I made a few gluten free treats and also very gluten-ful bread and also way way too much Mexican rice. I always overestimate how much food people are going to eat. So, I multiplied the rice recipe in that Truly Mexican cookbook by eight. 16 cups of rice, 8 pounds of tomatoes, and so on and so on. The rice filled two 8 quart dutch ovens. This is too much rice. Maybe a third of it got eaten. Maybe. I took one of the pots home and the kids have been thrilled to have a neverending supply of the stuff. I mention this here because I didn’t take a picture of it and because I have nothing to say about rice crispy treats, except that they are tasty.

Raspberry Cheesecakes. These were a bit of a pain in the ass because the recipe makes 36 (it’s from Martha Stewart’s Cupcake book, and I couldn’t find the recipe online), and I only had two cupcake tins. And because you have to cook them in a water bath, which means you have to bake them in three batches. unless you are living the dream in a kitchen that has three muffin tins, three roasting pans, and an oven large enough to accommodate all of them. Worth it, though.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Fluffy Vanilla Frosting. The cupcakes I always make. Four of them toppled off this board in the drive down to Buda, and landed face down on the blanket. When we got home I really considered eating one of the dirty car cupcakes, but then put them in the compost bucket and immediately regretted it. I want one right now.

Bread and Honey. That bread that I forgot in the freezer was going to be used as a vehicle for party guests to sample Joanna’s gorgeous springtime wildflower honey. So after we got to the party and unloaded the other treats and the metric ton of rice, Andy drove back to Austin and brought them back for me. My hero!

The party was so much fun. The sky was grey and windy, and there were soft showers every once in a while. You can see the land for miles around, all of it green and lush and filled with flowers, and the sky looks bigger too. We watched the pigs roll around in the grass and the bees buzzing busily around their hives. We built farms out of legos for the lego competition and Andy won the farm trivia competition. We ate lots of tacos and tamales and treats and talked to lots of amazing people. And then George fell asleep on the way home and stayed asleep after Andy carried him into bed- the cherry on top of a really fun day.

Zucchini and Rice Noodles with Coconut Peanut Sauce. I also made frozen corn dogs for dinner, because I knew Andy would prefer it to this meal of cold vegetable noodles and the kids are complete enigmas and more choices are always better. Henry ate three bowls of this stuff, George ate an entire corn dog (following an emotional breakdown because he wanted to eat the corn dog while it was frozen and could not understand why I was putting it in the oven) and the floppy rounds of zucchini leftover from the spiralizer, and Andy ate two corn dogs but ended up much preferring these noodles. So yay!

Catherine Newman would finish up her essay with something heartfelt and lovely, but I’m too tired to try. So instead I’ll say nothing, with aspirations to do better next week. See you then!