A lot can change in a week. Andy got laid off and I have a large uterus. Technically, the large uterus is not new as of last week, that’s just when I found out about it. And, no, I’m not telling you I’m pregnant in the worst possible way. The uterus, my uterus, is large for currently unknown reasons, not from the normal baby-filled reasons. Breaking these things down: the layoff is ok, maybe even a good thing- Andy’s a super genius with helpful friends. Finding a new job shouldn’t be hard and he might even get to spend a week at home with us! But I don’t know what to make of the large uterus yet. I’ve got a pelvic ultrasound tomorrow morning to see if some giant thing is lodged up there. I think of myself as a quiet, calm, and practical person (Andy’s going to laugh at this description of me, but I feel like I am compared to lots of people, not naming names, sister! ❤ ❤ ), but this has thrown me. I feel worried and anxious and scared and my stomach feels like it’s eating itself. And I’m distracted- hugely so. Here’s a story to illustrate this. I took the boys to The Natural Gardener today, during a break in the thunderstorms, to buy a cucumber plant and some more basil. After we had checked out, we took our haul and two, of course they each needed their own, $3 strawberry and thai basil gourmet popsicles into the butterfly garden so the kids could sit on a bench and drip popsicle juice all over their knees. Except as soon as we got there, Henry started walking around in a way that clearly indicated that he had to pee. Which I found super annoying, because now I’ve got two kids with two expensive popsicles and a wagon and a box of plants and we have to go back inside to the bathroom (Henry would never, ever deign to pee on a tree). And what am I supposed to do with the popsicles? Take them into the bathroom? Everything sucks. Henry finished his popsicle in a few quick chomps. We rushed to the bathroom. I left George outside the door with his popsicle and ran inside with Henry to show him where to go. I ran back out to George, who then said that he had to pee. I gave up and threw away his popsicle and took him into the bathroom with Henry. Told Henry how to wipe up the pee he had left on the toilet seat, washed everyone’s hands, and headed back out to return the wagon and then to the parking lot, the kids hurrying behind me. When we were almost to the car, I looked back to see that George’s shorts and underwear were still around his knees, and presumably had been since the bathroom 4 full minutes ago. I must have looked completely insane- rushing around with a half-naked toddler moving behind me as quickly as he could with the underwear-around-his-knees impairment. I still cannot understand how I didn’t notice this, or why Henry or George didn’t say anything, or even some stranger, since they’re usually so quick to point out parental missteps! Anyway, I hiked up his pants and we went on our way. Here’s what we ate this week.

Disha’s Pav Bhaji, Jaipur Slaw. Pav Bhaji is a dish tailor-made for my sister, but I didn’t cook it for her. Next time, sister! It’s like an Indian sloppy joe made entirely with vegetables. There’s potato and eggplant and cauliflower and tomato and onion and ginger and I don’t even remember what else. The linked recipe may fill in the gaps for you, or may not, as I noticed after casually glancing at it that it calls for ‘child powder.’ Proceed with caution on that one. The Jaipur slaw tastes mostly like a pile of vegetables, but maybe that’s because I omitted the fresh chile from the dressing in deference to the children. They didn’t touch the stuff so I needn’t have bothered, but the pav bhajis were a big hit.

Do you need three pictures of the 1/4 cup of peas we grew? I figured you probably did.

Wolf Chili/Leftovers/Stale Chip Casserole. When we were eating Andy’s birthday chili dogs, I asked him what he used to do with the leftover chili. I’m sure I’ve noted here before, maybe last week but who the hell can remember, that Andy’s cooking exploits pre-serious relationship amounted to chili dogs, grilled cheese sandwiches, and party pizzas. If you eat two chili dogs in a sitting, that leaves a sizable amount of chili for another purpose. He couldn’t remember ever doing anything with the remainder, but we supposed he might’ve just kept it in the fridge with one of those reusable plastic can covers, like you use for dog food, for the next chili dog day. I didn’t plan on making chili dogs three days later, but I also didn’t want to throw food away, even if it was dog food chili made from tortured cows. Especially if it’s dog food chili made from tortured cows! So here’s what I did. I took the leftover peppers and onions from last week’s fajita dinner, the leftover pico de gallo from the same dinner, the leftover beans from that same dinner, the leftover chili from the chili dog dinner, the bitter ends of three different bags of tortilla chips that were taking up half of a pantry shelf and layered it all together with the end of an aging but surprisingly not moldy hunk of monterrey jack and baked it in a 350 oven for 30 minutes. It was fucking incredible. I’m really not just saying that. Andy and I destroyed the thing. The kids thought it was weird. Maybe it’s because my expectations were so low, but I loved it more than any tortilla casserole thing I’ve ever made.

Crispy Thai Pork with Cucumber Salad. I stayed up really late on Tuesday night cooking an Indian feast for my friend with a 3 week old. I made roasted cauliflower, potatoes, and chickpeas with turmeric and cumin, a lentil and eggplant stew, more Jaipur slaw, and 16 chapatis to mop it all up. George woke up and had to be nursed back to sleep two separate times during the chapati-making, my hands covered in whole wheat flour. When a friend has a baby, I really try to bring food more than once. People tend to help out in the first week or so and then never again. And it’s still hard one month, three months, all the months later. I am of course bragging about this bit of do-goodery, but juxtaposed with making my kid trail behind me with his pants down in a parking lot balances out to me just being an okay person. We got to spend the day with the new baby and mama and family on Wednesday and it was perfectly delightful. And then I drove home and found out Andy had been laid off. My heart starting racing and I felt so angry, but Andy was completely cool, as usual. That’s why he can win 40K on a game show (this really happened!) and I would walk into the studio and throw up on the light-up floor.

I always feel proud to set down a dish with green stuff in it to be photographed for this blog. There’s nothing like a pile of fatty crispy salty pork bits to make you want to eat your greens.

Sort-of-Chef-ish-Salad. I didn’t eat this- come on, I practically ate a salad yesterday- but I did make it. It was for my mother-in-law, who is super healthy and was watching the kids so Andy and I could go out on a date to celebrate our nine-year wedding anniversary!

Anniversary Picnic. Our default date is to in.gredients for their Thursday night Geeks Who Drink pub trivia game. We’re actually the thumbnail image for the blog recap of it, me looking slouchy and tired and Andy looking bizarrely wide awake. It was so fun though! And we got to walk through the store and pick out all the fun things for a picnic, and then I cut everything up with a butter knife and we ate it while performing badly at trivia and enjoying being anywhere together without children.

Molletes. I did not cook this- my friend Amanda did. But it was too damn beautiful not to document, and so delicious that I wanted to write it up here so I wouldn’t forget. Amanda, who has two young boys also (we always have lots to talk about!) effortlessly made these for us while simultaneously cooking grilled cheese sandwiches for four children and alternating a 4 year old and 1 year old on her hip. I mostly sat while she did these things. I owe you one, Amanda! She cut bolillos in half, buttered them and toasted them under the broiler. Then she spread on a thick layer of her homemade refried beans, some crispy soyrizo, which I’ve never bought but tastes exactly like the porky stuff, which is to say it’s delcious, and then covered it with cheese and broiled it. I am absolutely stealing this idea and will be eating these things as often as possible.

Killer Brownies. I know a lady named Joanie who is in the running for greatest human of all time. These are her brownies, and she brings them everywhere and gives them generously and every bite fills me with even more love for her. They are powerfully chocolaty, with a dark base of unsweetened chocolate, and heavy pours of dark chocolate chips and mini marshmallows. The marshmallows do a weird thing where they float to the top of the batter and melt into a sweet thin crackle, which only adds to the brownies’ appeal. I forgot to ask her if I could share the recipe here, so I just emailed her. If yes, I’ll update and post the recipe. If no, I will bask in this delicious secret and gleefully surround myself with mountains of gooey chocolate brownies that your lips will never touch.

Update! She said yes! Recipe copied below.

Roasted Vegetables with Pesto, Leftover Hummus and Crackers. I brought this platter to an enneagram potluck. It’s just random roasted vegetables- things I bought at the farmers market and didn’t do anything with. Also the last of our cucumber salad and the hummus leftover from our anniversary picnic. It’s a completely random and weird mix and is probably another sign of my distracted brain.

More Roasted Vegetables with Hummus. Aaand then I made the same thing again for a friend’s birthday craft party the next day. I momentarily considered bringing back the same ramekin of hummus, but then decided against it, if only because I had brought last night’s platter to Christy’s house for enneagram and this birthday party was also at Christy’s house. So new hummus! And fresh veggies! The kale chips were a surprise hit. The birthday party was for our dear friend Mary, who you might remember from the rainbow birthday cake vomit story! I couldn’t resist drawing a picture of a mouth vomiting out “Happy Birthday!” in a splattery rainbow font on her card. I’m lucky she has a great sense of humor. These craft parties are my new favorite thing. You bring something you want to make and sit around and eat snacks while you make it. For this very special birthday craft party, Christy had all the materials and patterns for attendees to make lovely little coin purses. It’s a simple project- literal children were making them- but my eyes glazed over during the instructions and it all just sounded like too much. I needle-felted an ugly little squirrel instead, which required little more of me than repeatedly stabbing fluff with a big sharp needle. It felt good.

Cheese Quesadillas and Leftover Stove Top. Just to keep things honest, here was dinner on Saturday night. Man cannot live on roasted vegetables alone.

Chicken with Thyme and Lemon and Smashed Garlic Potatoes, Broccoli with Butter. Today was such a slog. After the natural gardener underwear debacle we went to Central Market, which was insane, because rain and Sunday, and which also didn’t go very well. They were out of the two-seater kid carts, which meant Henry had to sit in the big part of the cart, half-buried in groceries. When we got to the bulk section, a woman walked past pushing one of the kid carts with no kids and just her big stupid louis vuitton purse in the seat. It took every once of my self control to not accost her. NB: I couldn’t remember what you called that brand of purse and thought about describing it as the brown one with the YL stamped all over it, but then googled “fancy purses” and was able to work out that it’s a V and not a Y and also this is a boring tangent so I’ll stop now. Then we got home and it rained all day and the kids were grumpy and miserable. Andy and I put our heads together to decide how early we could reasonably attempt dinner and bedtime. We ate dinner at 5:30 and both kids were asleep by 7:15, which has never, ever happened, and which means it’s 10 o’clock on a Sunday and I almost have a finished blog post. It’s almost worth the shitty day.

The chicken is from A Bird in the Hand and was only moderately successful. The potatoes are more work and not as good as these potatoes and the chicken is nicely lemony but more work and maybe not as good as this chicken. This recipe is the cover shot of the cookbook and looks completely gorgeous, but mine had no color at all after the time was up, so I broiled it briefly, which meant Henry huddled by the garage door in the rain to avoid the possibility of the smoke alarm. We’ve got problems. I boiled some broccoli and put a pat of butter on it for something green and it was edible and we went about our business. Food blog!

I’ll keep you posted on the big uterus and job situation. Until then, I’ve got Andy home with me with no place to run when I corner him about making a big ole chicken fence. Things are happening.

Killer Brownies

• 4 ozs unsweetened chocolate
• 2 sticks of butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 cup flour
• 1 1/2 cups (at least) chocolate chips (I use a combo of the
• semi-sweet and the 60% cacao)
• 2 to 2 ½ cups miniature marshmallows

Use 13″ x 9″ pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place unsweetened choc. in 4 cup glass measuring cup or large glass bowl. Begin to melt in microwave – 1 min. on high. Add butter and microwave for another minute – stir. Let sit.

Put the sugar into a large bowl. Add eggs one at a time, beating well with a wooden spoon after each. Stir in vanilla, then flour, then chips and marshmallows. Add the melted choc./butter mixture and stir well.

Pour and spread in the pan, and bake for 45-50 min. These shouldn’t be over-baked, so they’re soft and fudge-y, but don’t under-bake them or they’ll be “raw.” Place pan on rack to cool. Let cool before cutting. It’s easiest to cut them with a plastic knife, and the crumbs are great on ice cream. Cover the pan with foil, or wrap the brownies in foil, and they’ll stay fresh for a long time. They also freeze well.

I’m taking my neighbor’s chickens after all. They’re all super old, but still laying for the time being. But I’m sure I’m going  to have to find a way to get rid of seven non-laying chickens in the next year. And one of them is a creepy naked neck. That’s a real breed!  I had a lot of good reasons for not taking these chickens, but I talked myself out of all of them. The main reason I want them is that my neighbor is giving me his coop, his 14x24x7 foot chicken run to go around the coop, a cool feeder box he built that lets the chickens step on a pedal to open the lid to eat their food so wild birds don’t come in and steal all of it, and lots of other chicken accessories. If I said no to this, to me it would mean never having chickens again, because it will never be easier or cheaper to get them than this. Andy’s not excited but the kids really are. I want to raise chicks too, to replace this batch of chickens when they stop producing. So big plans. I’m gonna be back in the high-life, knee-deep in eggs and chicken shit.

Speaking of ill-advised plans…The National Puzzlers’ League convention that we go to every year is being held in Salt Lake City this July. I had hoped that we would be able to drive instead of fly, and take a long leisurely road trip through New Mexico and Arizona to see the grand canyon, up through Utah’s big parks, and then back down again through Rocky Mountain NP after the convention, but Andy’s job is going to keep him busy in July and he can’t take off more than a week. I gave up the idea. But then he said that plane tickets to SLC are pretty expensive. So for the amount it would cost to fly us all up there, I (just me!) could drive the kids up there in four days, driving six hours a day and camping out every night. And then keep driving after the convention up to Portland to see my parents and Oregon in the summertime. After which we would have to drive and camp out for five days to get back to Texas. Andy said it would be his idea of a nightmare, that the kids would be miserable in the car after an hour and a half. He’s usually right about these things, but the idea of this adventure, of camping out in new places across the country, has a hold on me. Imma think on it. Here’s what we ate this week.

Chapatis. Aka roti. I was surprised to discover that making chapatis is exactly the same as making tortillas. Same ingredients, same technique. The only difference here is that you use equal parts whole wheat and white flours. The process for both is monotonous and stressful at the same time. Roll a ball into a circle, lay it in a hot skillet, re-flour your board, start rolling out another ball, stop to flip the chapati in the skillet over, keep rolling the half-rolled ball on the counter, remove the one in the skillet, toss in the new one, repeat times 15. If a kid needs something in the middle of this process, the whole delicate balance is thrown off. A chapati stays in the pan a few seconds too long and scorches, and then the next chapati sticks and burns too and it’s hard to get the rhythm back. So kids, leave your mother alone when she’s making flatbread.

Daily Dal, Green Beans with Mustard Seeds and Ginger, Chapati, Rice with Garden Peas. Every Tuesday, I spend two and a half hours in the active play room of a little kids gym. I follow George around, and Henry when he joins us after parkour, play a little and stop them from swatting kids in the face, but mostly I do three things: 1. Manage the balls from the ball pit. This includes replacing balls that have been thrown from the pit and abandoned and also re-spherifying crumpled balls. 2. Judge other people. There’s a lady who comes in every week with two older girls, who she mostly ignores while she takes selfies in the corner (#MyGymActivePlayRoom). Sometimes she puts down her phone to take a few jumps on the trampoline, which has clearly posted rules that state that no adults are allowed on the trampoline, you guys. So I judge. 3. Look at myself in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that line one wall of the play space and hate the way the waistline of my jeans cuts into my belly fat while simultaneously sliding down my body and needing to be hiked up every few seconds. The takeaways from these observations are that Tuesdays are boring and I am an uptight and obnoxious rule-follower.

We came home and I made dal, which was pretty good, rice, which was whatever, reheated the chapati I made earlier in the day, and stir-fried these green beans which were shockingly, outrageously wonderful. The sesame seeds, mustard seeds, and ginger combine with the tomato paste to make delicious little clumps that cling to the blistered green beans and make the dish taste meaty and savory and completely exciting. I ate them cold for breakfast the next morning and loved them that way too.

Our first strawberry. It was sour AF, but look how pretty! An aside: Henry has been enjoying muddling berries in a glass with a little sugar and then mixing in some plain yogurt for breakfast. This day was blueberries, as you can clearly tell from his pajama sleeves. It’s a messy business.

Chai Masala Spice Mix and The Perfect Masala Chai. The spice mix was a gift for my chai-loving friend Christy, but I stole a few teaspoons for myself before giving it to her. You mix water and milk in a pot with a couple of tea bags (highly-caffeinated Earl Grey in my case because it was all I had) and 1/2 a teaspoon of the spice mix. George downed his mug quickly, but I didn’t even have time to worry that the caffeine might keep him up because he immediately climbed up onto the kitchen stool, perched on the hard wooden seat in child’s pose, and fell asleep, naked, for 45 minutes. It’s a soothing tea.

Sweet Corn and Roasted Cherry Tomato Quiche, Kale Salad with Strawberries and Toasted Sesame Seeds. The kale in the garden was riddled with holes, so I knew to prepare myself for what I was going to find on the underside of the leaves when I washed them for this salad. Still, it was horrifying. So many caterpillars. But I was so cool about it. I pursed my lips and went about my business, tearing off the part, or parts, of the leaf that held a caterpillar, or a weird web-y thing, or a cluster of lustrous eggs and dropped them in the compost bucket, as breezily as I could. I would occasionally be surprised by a caterpillar hiding under a curl in the leaf. At one such encounter I said, “Oh golly!” which was embarrassing, because even though nobody was around to hear me, I now have to live with the knowledge that I’m a person who says ‘oh golly’ when confronted with a small caterpillar.

The quiche, from the Violet Bakery Cookbook, was so lovely to assemble. Roasting the tomatoes with thyme, piling them into the flaky crust with corn, sharp cheddar, herbs, and custard. But somehow the whole thing felt like less than the sum of its parts. I’ll steal the technique where you egg wash the entire crust in the last 15 minutes of blind-baking, but otherwise I probably won’t reach for this cookbook when I want to make a quiche.

Corn, Tomato, and Avocado Salad, Avocado Toast. Some of my unschooling mom friends are starting the Whole 30 this week. I was invited to join them but knew immediately that I wouldn’t. I want the whole colorful spectrum of foods, from the shiny blush on our first rosy strawberry to the garish orange dust on a crisp Dorito. But even so, I feel like I’ve been eating too much sugar and carby stuff with not enough fresh fruits and vegetables and proteins to balance it out. This was my lunch when the kids wanted pasta with tomato sauce. After I ate it, I stopped myself from also eating George’s untouched pasta, which is a thing that I do.  Because it’s there. I’m on the one-lunch-instead-of-two diet.

Tartine’s Country Bread. Reading through this bread recipe took years off my life, but in actual practice it was fairly straightforward. Except for the part where you keep your oven at 500 degrees for two hours. When the first loaf came out of the oven (before you wipe out the pot and return it to the oven to preheat again for the second loaf) I flushed with pride in a feeling not unlike being handed your new baby for the first time. This loaf is so pretty! And huge. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but these loaves are bigger than a human head. A big human head.

I got to skip the week-long process of making your own starter because my friend Abbie gave me one, huzzah! She also gave me a beautiful recipe for no-knead sourdough bread that looked awesome, but it called for beer, which we never keep in the house because no one here likes it. I looked at Central Market to see how cheaply I could get one beer, and they had a big weird German one for $2.79, which seemed like too much to spend on a loaf of homemade bread, which would otherwise be made for pennies. Or probably quarters based on how much flour you use, but still! It’s super cheap.

Creamy Broccoli-Parmesan Soup, Sourdough. This soup comes from The Food Lab cookbook, and it is a knock-out. The soup, not the cookbook. The cookbook is so dense as to be almost off-putting.  I’ve been flipping through it for about a week, and while I learn something new every time I open it (there are so many fun science lessons inside) I have had a hard time picking a recipe to get started. I feel like a big part of this is that the recipe sections feel old-fashioned. Breakfasts are heavy egg and meat affairs. Main courses are big cuts of meat, with additional chapters for vegetable side dishes and salads to go with your big hunks of meat. The whole thing, at first/second/third glance feels heavy and unhealthy. But I think focusing on this might be missing the point of the cookbook, which, aside from an old-fashioned sort of recipe collection, is ground-breaking. I made three recipes from it this week (you’ll see two more below) and each one was a treasure. The recipes are flawlessly written, and in each of the three cases resulted in the very best version of whatever it was I was making I had ever had, and each has taught me a fun and innovative new technique that can be used in many other applications.

I have a broccoli parmesan and lemon soup that I love from food52, so I thought it would be fun to try Lopez-Alt’s version for comparison. His wins, hands down. He adds 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda to the pot, which raises the pH of the stock/milk cooking liquid, which in turn breaks down the pectin in the cells of the broccoli so it gets soft in a third of the time (20 minutes!) of my old favorite recipe. I pureed it in two batches in the blender, skipped the step where you push it through a sieve, and we devoured it.

Thursday brought more than just a fun new soup. If you’ve seen me, out and about in the world, and have taken stock in the way I clothe myself, it won’t surprise you to learn that I haven’t bought new underwear in approximately five years. I’m still wearing pairs from Victoria’s Secret, which I haven’t been to since sometime in college, 10 or more years ago. Anyway, I bought six new pairs and feel like a new woman. I have no reason to share this story with you other than as a friendly reminder that buying new underwear is a thing you can do, in case you forgot.

Banana Buttermilk Bread. We had this bread for a tea time snack with Auntie Helen and Christy, along with some of that chai tea from earlier. I loved the crackly sugar top and the teaspoon of rum in the batter but otherwise felt like this was too sodden and dense. There are six bananas in this loaf. Six bananas! Also a ton of oil and yogurt (subbed in for the buttermilk). Also, I undercooked it and it sunk in the middle under the weight of the half-banana you put on top of the batter. So it’s all my fault, really. Moving on.

Chana Masala, Roasted Purple Cauliflower with Cumin, Turmeric, and Lemon, Hot Flaky Paratha. The cauliflower in the upper right corner started out purple, so it’s not as ruined as it looks, but it was still hopelessly overcooked and shriveled. I left it in the oven way too long because I underestimated how long it would take me to make the hot flaky parathas. I love that name. I wish everything was hot and flaky. The paratha is just a chapati that has been drizzled with oil and folded over on itself several times to create those hot flaky layers that puff and crackle when you cook them. There’s a recipe in the book (these things were all from Made in India) for cinnamon-scented lamb stuffed into parathas which has to happen. The chana masala, scooped up with the paratha and topped with yogurt, was the best. I have fallen hard for this cookbook and feel like I need it in my life, in my arms always. Aside from the daily dal, which was merely good, I have loved everything I have made from it. The Violet Bakery Cookbook doesn’t have quite as high a success rate, but there are some recipes (egg yolk chocolate chip cookies, macaroons, and strawberry scones) that I’ll make again and again, and many more I still want to try.

Diner-Style Ham and Cheese Omelet. The best omelet of all time, courtesy of The Food Lab. You whisk the eggs and salt them and let them sit for 15 minutes, in which time they turn a dark orange color and look totally weird. But this step means that your eggs won’t be watery after you cook them. Also you fill the thing with four ounces of ham, which feels positively luxurious. This recipe, like the soup one, is clear and concise and ended with a perfect product.

Grilled Skirt Steak Fajitas, Black Beans, Guacamole. I’ve said a lot already and still have more to say, so I’m just gonna say that these were great. You mix some of the marinade with the skillet of peppers and onions which is smart, right? I liked it. If you’re feeling cheated because of the short nature of this paragraph, please feel free to take the time you would otherwise spend reading more about meat marinades and enjoy this random youtube video.

Cinnamon Buns. A sugary birthday breakfast for Andy! Andy does not care about birthdays, least of all his, which is totally foreign to me. I want every birthday to be big and exciting and special. Andy wanted to eat a hot dog and do nothing. So I tried to take the Ron Swanson approach to birthdays for Andy- I made him these cinnamon buns, which are sort of weird cuz it’s a biscuit dough instead of a soft yeasted bread, but are still soft and cinnamon-y inside and get the job done – and then I took the kids to the park for a few hours so he could play a video game and enjoy some alone time, which is the best gift you can give any parent, right? At the park, Henry delighted in asking every adult to guess how old he was and what his name was and how old his parents were and how old his brother was. Some of the times he was ignored while parents tended to their own children, but one guy pushing his daughter on a swing engaged with him. When Henry said he was 4 and 11/12ths the guy asked if Henry would be starting kindergarten soon, to which he replied that he was never going to go to school. I explained that we were homeschoolers, unschoolers, and the guy asked why we picked that. This is such an awkward conversation to have and I still haven’t found a good response to this question. Anything I say could be construed as a value judgment on the parents who choose to send their kids to traditional schools, or the jobs that traditional schools do, and I don’t want to sound like I think I’m better than anyone or that this choice is the best choice for everyone- I’m not and it isn’t. Can I just say I want my kids to be able to have a say in what they learn and when they learn it? Or does that sound judge-y too?

Birthday Hot Dogs with Canned Chili. Longtime readers will remember that Andy picked hot dogs for his birthday dinner last year. We upgraded the hot dog by adding a loose pool of Wolf brand chili to the top but downgraded the drink, from a whiskey and coke to water.

Lemon Drizzle Loaf. Andy and I looked through lots of cookbooks together to find the perfect birthday dessert before settling on this lemon cake from the Violet Bakery Cookbook. It came out beautifully and paired pretty nicely with the chili dogs. Happy birthday, my love!

We spent the weekend at Camp Ben McCulloch, camping with five other unschooling families. I grew up about 15 minutes from this place, but had never been. Mostly because I knew it only as ‘the site of the annual Confederate reunion’ and had no desire to explore a place like that. It’s really pretty though. Onion Creek runs through it, and there are waterfalls and huge old cypress trees and rope swings. And it’s really cheap. You can put your tent anywhere you want (there are no designated campsites)- you just find a water hookup, if you want one (they’re scattered arbitrarily throughout the grounds like Easter eggs), and set up camp and someone on a golf cart may or may not come by and ask you for $15. The place has some downsides though. The confederacy glorification for one (lots of examples of this on their facebook page). Goat Roast 2016 for another. This was going on all weekend, and to the outsider looked like a hillbilly rock music festival. There was live music all weekend (“This song’s called Hot Shit!“) and lots of crazy drunk people and women smoking cigarettes in bathroom stalls. One of our unschooling friends was asking some campers about what this event was for and a lady explained that they were there for Billy Jack’s birthday (this Billy Jack? A cousin? I have no idea.), but that it was also the anniversary of the goat roast. Some number of years ago, she said, some folks got together to roast a goat. Only, everyone ended up liking the goat and they decided not to go through with it. I guess it was a live goat that they were going to kill and gut and skin? Anyway, they have a big party and drop a lot of acid instead. Except that someone’s dog gets high on acid and kills the goat. And that’s officially the best story ever told on this blog- thanks, Camp Ben! But while it wasn’t the nature retreat I had envisioned, we still did a lot of fun things. The kids love sleeping in a tent on the cold, hard ground. Seriously! They both slept pretty well. We spent many hours sitting around a roaring campfire, unplugged, and with good company. We splashed in the creek, threw rocks in mud puddles, and gathered big bouquets of wildflowers. And I got to cook real food in my camp dutch oven for the first time! Here’s what we ate this week.

Butter and Buttermilk. It’s a ball of butter I squeezed in my hands! I was inspired to make butter and buttermilk after reading (in the link) that the amount of each product you get from a pint of cream is the perfect amount to make biscuits with and that sort of shit delights me. You leave the cream out on the counter to culture for an hour or two and then whip it in your stand mixer for a while, until it’s butter and buttermilk. And then you’re done. I got 6 oz of butter and a little more than 8 ounces of buttermilk from my pint of cream.

Biscuit Breakfast Sandwiches. I don’t remember much about Monday, except that we stayed home after doing too many things over the weekend, I talked my sister through peeing in a ziploc bag in a restaurant parking lot while her baby slept and she waited for AAA, and I royally fucked up these biscuits. The recipe is beautiful, and I will try again and follow the directions and use the right ingredients next time. I used the butter and buttermilk from above, but used only 4 ounces of my 6-ounce butter ball, as per the recipe (which I think was right). I didn’t have pastry flour so I just used 21 ounces of all purpose. I used store-bought, not homemade baking powder. Yes, this is a thing people make themselves, apparently. I forgot to dock the biscuits, I cut them into terribly disparate sizes, I cooked them in a 450 oven instead of 500 so as to lessen Henry’s chances of freaking out about the smoke detector, and all these things together meant that they were pretty dense. They still had deliciously crunchy outsides, but they were obviously nothing like the biscuits in the picture in the link. We ate some with fried eggs and bacon and sharp white cheddar and some with the leftover 2 ounces of butter, sea salt, and honey and enjoyed them very much in spite of their density. I’ll try again.

Mejadra, Mango Lassi with Cardamom. We spent the day at Helen’s and George was in a terrible mood. Helen read him a book about a bunny (I think it was a bunny?) with a bad mood who gets over it by eating pancakes. A good moral to be sure- pancakes can fix anything. Helen took it a step further by offering to make George pancakes for lunch, and then took it 40 steps further by making five varieties of pancakes (peach cobbler, strawberry, blueberry, banana cinnamon, and plain). Then she also served leftover spaghetti and a crispy little pizza and it was officially a kid’s lunch dreamland. We ran to parkour and then ran home so I could pull a dinner together out of pantry ingredients. I also, saints be praised, had all the ingredients to make these mango lassis with cardamom from Made in India- they’re standard lassis plus cardamom but the cardamom is a fantastic addition. Frying the pile of crispy onions for the mejadra takes forever, but they’re far and away the best part of the meal, and also of the meal prep, because you get to tilt your head back and drop big salty pinches of the stuff into your mouth while you grind cardamom seeds in your mortar and pestle. I did that.

Chewy Ginger Snaps. I’m going to talk about these after the next picture, because they’re part of a set, but it felt weird not typing anything here. So I’m wasting your time by typing here but not actually saying anything. This felt like the right decision.

Giant Coconut Macaroons. My mom’s birthday was on Saturday and she had to be in LA on not-at-all-fun business, so I wanted to send her a care package so she could pop a giant macaroon in her mouth when she got back. I made tiny versions of these last week, but the recipe actually specifies that it makes “10 large macaroons.” They’re not kidding- these macaroons are monstrous. They look ridiculous fresh out of the oven, but lose their puffiness as they cool and settle into a slightly more managable but still outlandish size. And they’re completely amazing. The recipe, like others in the book, is a little vague on the details. You’re supposed to ‘scoop them into individual portions’ with no size guidelines given. The recipe calls for 200 grams or 1 1/3 cups of unsweetened shredded coconut, but 200 grams of coconut measured as more than two cups for me, so should you go with the weight or the volume measure? I went with weight and they tasted great, but there’s lots of questionable stuff like this in this cookbook. Still, I think I love it.

And the ginger snaps! They’re ok. The recipe calls for 1.5 teaspoons of boiling water. What is that? Do you really have to boil a pot of water for 1.5 teaspoons? Does it make a difference that the water is boiling, really? Really? My cookies are way uglier than the picture in the cookbook but taste good enough. The first one I ate was shockingly crispy, which was kind of fun and novel, but then one I had a little while later was chewy, as advertised, and which I guess I prefer? I don’t know. She lists coriander and paprika as optional ingredients for these cookies and I was too much of a wimp to try it with them. My mom loved both! She said the macaroon was the best she had ever had, which made me happy. Thanks, mom!

Creamy Chicken and Fig Curry, Naan. Oh, this day you guys. George insisted on wearing butterfly wings on our trips to Target and Central Market to get the stuff we needed for our camping trip, which meant that I had to pull down and dig through our costume tub instead of just leaving, but I didn’t mind because it was adorable. He also held onto my magic wand and yelled Expelliarmus! a lot. Target was fine, but Central Market was the worst. George fought with Henry every time I stepped away from the big dumb cart I have to push there (the one with two kid seats attached to the front), he threw a long screaming tantrum in the bulk foods section when I said he couldn’t have any gummies. Not because we’re healthy and don’t eat red dye #40 sugar snacks, but because I’d already bought them a box of fruit roll ups at Target. And then we had a bathroom-related emergency in the cheese section that I won’t elaborate on, but which, together with the other things, made the trip a decidedly lousy one. We went home and we were all starving, because it was way past lunch time (obviously, I realized afterward, that’s why George was so mad at the grocery store, d’oh!) and I made a box of Stove Top, which is something I buy for Henry every once in a while because he got a taste of it once and adores it. I do too, actually. Henry can happily eat about 3/4 of a box, and George likes it too, so I gave Henry a big portion, George a little portion, and myself the littlest portion. I ate mine in two bites and looked enviously at George’s plate, hoping that this would be one of the times when he doesn’t eat anything and I’d get to eat his portion too. He ate a few bites, climbed down off his chair, and pushed his plate over to me, and I asked, eagerly, “are you done?” And he said, “No. I’m just gonna eat riiiiggght next to you.” Which was probably sweet, but which I interpreted as him rubbing in my face how much Stove Top he still had. The whole day was like that. We were all in bad moods. This chicken, which was so quick and easy, was delicious though, and the naan was too. It’s one of the many many easy weeknight meals in Made in India. I’m making lots more this week, but so far, I love this cookbook.

Basil and Walnut Pesto with Sausage and Cavatappi. I’m always thrilled to eat a bowlful of pasta but Andy’s ambivalent about it, so I added a couple of sliced roasted sausages to the mix to make it more appealing.

Helen and Phinnie and I went to lunch with our Food52 friends at Crepe Crazy while the boys stayed home with grandma. I got a ham and swiss, because it was the first thing on the menu and contained the word ham, and so everything I read after it lost out in the comparison. But I got to taste a lot of crepes, and they’re all big and rich and delicious. It came with a leafy salad that went mostly untouched, which fits into this week’s theme of absolutely no vegetables, unless basil and lentils count. We talked about enneagram with these ladies, which is endlessly fascinating, and then I came home and cooked a million things to prepare for our camping trip the next day.

Peanut Butter Granola Bars. The forecast originally said that the rain would be gone by 11, so that’s when we planned to arrive at the campground, but it changed to 1 after we were on our way. So we ended up sitting in our car for 2 hours, waving off the goat roast attendees who tried to swoop in and steal our sweet spot, eating these granola bars, and waiting for the rain to stop. These are fantastic. They’re naturally gluten free, and more cookie-like than most granola bars, which means my kids liked them a lot. They’ve got chocolate chips and sour cherries and coconut, plus tons of oats and peanut butter and these are all great things that taste great together.

Sausage and Egg Breakfast Tacos. The last time I went camping, I brought hot dogs and hamburgers, s’mores stuff and Doritos, and lots more crappy processed foods. By the second day I felt completely disgusting. So when our friend Patches offered me some of her rosemary pork and potatoes cooked until crispy in a dutch oven, I greedily accepted. It was the best thing I had ever tasted and was enough to convince me to get my hands on my own camp dutch oven (it’s got little feet on it so it can sit on top of the coals and a handle for easy maneuvering) and cook real food on our next trip. I read tons of campfire cooking recipes in preparation for the weekend. My dutch oven came with a recipe book, but the recipes were mostly of the semi-homemade, dump-cans-of-stuff-into-the-pot-and-stir variety and I didn’t want that. Pinterest yielded similar results. So I thought about what I really wanted and decided it was more of those rosemary potatoes. But what goes with those? They remind me of renaissance-y type fare, so I thought steak-on-a-stick was a logical accompaniment. I added a big foil packet of vegetables (asparagus, zucchini, and cremini mushrooms tossed with olive oil and green garlic from my garden) to the meal plan and, inspired by a hot tip from Savorthis on the food52 hotline, a big loaf of garlic bread wrapped in foil to toss into the coals. The steak-on-a-stick idea didn’t fully pan out- I sliced the steak, tossed it in the marinade and froze it, and kept it in the bottom of our ice chest. All this worked fine. But then I thought I could thread the meat onto bamboo skewers and cook them one at a time by holding the skewer in the fire, and this doesn’t work for lots of reasons. The bamboo skewer is too short so your hand gets really hot. It’s also made of bamboo and burns up almost instantly. And the steak takes forever to cook this way, which only exacerbates the hot-hands and burning-skewers problems. I ended up dumping all the meat into a separate cast iron skillet set over hot coals, cooking them as best as I could in the low light, then threading them onto skewers and passing them around. They tasted pretty good in spite of my shoddy handling. The vegetables were good, the potatoes were mostly good and partially burned beyond recognition, and the garlic bread was barely warm and way too garlicky, but all of it still tasted way better to me than the hot dogs and Doritos of old and I’m therefore calling this a successful first attempt at real-food camping. Oh, and I’m telling you all this here because it was too dark to take a picture. These breakfast tacos tasted pretty damn good. I griddled 20 tortillas, then browned a pound of breakfast sausage in the pot, cracked in a dozen eggs and beat them, sprinkled the mixture with salt, and folded it into the warm tortillas. I’ll definitely do that again.

Beef Goulash. After two-and-half days out in nature with the kids, we came home, unpacked and cleaned everything, and felt completely exhausted. I also had very little food in the house and no interest whatsoever in going to the store. So I found some leftover beef goulash in the freezer and served it over half a box of shattered lasagna noodles. It was so good. Way better than I remember it being the first time. Maybe it was the alchemy of sitting in the freezer for a while or maybe it was just because it was a warm meaty thing cooked at home, in the company of my sweet family and a dog who’s never killed a goat while tripping on acid.