Most weeks I come in with no ideas about what to say at the top and bottom of each post, but come up with something pretty quickly. This week, I can’t commit.

I thought about telling you about a chemistry outreach event we went to at UT this week where a dynamic professor named Dr. B bounced around the stage for an hour, doing approximately one experiment every 30 seconds. She flooded the floor with dry ice fog, put a spoonful of cornstarch in her mouth and sprayed it onto a blow torch to make a huge fireball, burnt up ethanol in a flash explosion in a water jug, and did dozens of cool things with liquid nitrogen. It made a big impression on Henry and George and we spent the rest of the week doing experiments at home inspired by the ones we saw.

I thought about talking about how silly it is that I, who have no job, and no school to take the kids to, still feel so busy all the time, when people who do one or both of those things do everything I do on top of that, but then it felt like I was being too critical of myself.

I thought about talking about the complicated dynamics of starting a weekly unschooling coop.

I thought about telling a heartwarming story about Henry so when I complain about him later in this post you’ll remember that I do, in fact, think he’s wonderful.

I thought about sharing my line of thought about whether I should or should not join a Brene Brown book club when reading the (very brief!) quotation on the back of her book, presumably chosen because it is pithy and interesting and representative of the rest of the book, made my eyes glaze over.

But none of these feel right and I’m out of ideas. I could delete all these half-baked thoughts and just say hello? Forget it, I’m gonna leave em. Here’s what we ate this week.

Potstickers, Black Bean Orange Peel Edamame. The kids and I went to HEB and everything went okay until it was time to checkout.  I started loading things onto the belt and George’s face crumpled and he broke into hysterical sobs. He  wanted to load the stuff onto the belt. I felt impatient and embarrassed but I held George and let him cry and then we loaded things together. Henry asked the cashier for a buddy buck and she gave the kids each two of them. Standard practice. These fake dollar bill-looking slips of paper are fed into a big arcade game-type machine, which makes a big wheel spin. You push a big red button to make it stop and the machine prints you out a sticker with the point amount the wheel stopped on. It’s amazing and a big draw, obviously. The very very best thing you can land on is an “Instant Winner” spot, which means you get to go stand in the customer service line and get a yo-yo or a handful of erasers or something else semi-crappy. The next best thing is the 50 point slot. You collect your point stickers in a book and I have no idea what you can get with them because we never put the stickers in the book. They float around the house until I recycle them during one of my cleaning frenzies. Mostly though, there are just a lot of 2 and 5 point slots, and you push the big red button and it spins and lands on one and says “yay! you got 2 points!” and everyone’s happy and ok who cares. Anyway, George and Henry head over to the buddy buck machine while I’m paying for the groceries and a lady is bagging them for me. They’re about 15 feet from me and I look up from the credit card screen in time to see George’s wheel land on the 50 point slot and Henry punch him in the back, which made George cry and start hitting Henry repeatedly. I ran over, meeting the eyes of a disapproving onlooker on the way, shaking her head slowly at the scene and judging the shit out of whatever mother would raise such violent children, and broke them up. I was furious. I told Henry he could never have another buddy buck in his whole life. I asked him how he would feel if he finally got the 50 point sticker and someone came up and, instead of being happy for him, punched him in the back. I told him I thought it was awful that he didn’t think George deserved to have good things happen to him. I was lecture-y and angry and said all the wrong things and didn’t let it go for hours. We continued with our day and eventually made up. Henry had apologized sincerely to George right after it happened, and seemed to have genuinely felt bad for what he did. It took me a lot longer to apologize for saying shitty stuff to Henry, but I did eventually. We spent the afternoon watching that chemistry exhibition at UT, ate a snack of onigiri at a nearby cafe, and then came home and had a meal in honor of the Lunar New Year.

King Cake. I’ve never had a king cake I didn’t make myself, so I don’t really know what it’s supposed to taste like. This one comes out with a sort of rich, dry, bready texture similar to pan dulces from a Mexican bakery. It is filled with a swirl of a gooey pecan praline mixture that is absolutely delicious. There was something sort of off about the cake though. I kept nibbling at it and thinking about it, but Andy was the one who cracked the case. It tasted like cumin. I guess my nutmeg bag rubbed up too close to my cumin bag and now all my winter-spiced baked goods are going to have a twinge of earthy cumin funk. I’m not buying more nutmeg- I’ve still got like 3 whole nuts (megs? balls?) in there.

Red Beans and Rice. The last time I made red beans and rice I had a dozen pork ribs expertly smoked by my brother-in-law’s dad to use up, so I cooked the beans with them and then shredded all the meat off the bones and added it back to the pot. It was the most incredibly delicious stuff. This time I had no ham hock, no pork of any kind, save one sausage link to slice and saute and add at the end, and the stuff tastes like hot bean water. It made a ton too. I froze most of it, and I’m going to keep it frozen until we have leftover barbecue I can stir into it. Life’s too short to eat red beans without pork.

Gluten Free Chocolate Cupcakes. We brought these cupcakes and the sugar cookies below to an unschoolers Valentine’s party for kids to decorate with lots of gluten-free sugary treats. Whenever I bring a baked good made with regular flour to an unschoolers hangout, inevitably, a doe-eyed little sprite will run up to me and ask, imploringly, please? Are these gluten free? And I shake my head sadly and say no and die a little inside. Whenever I use the ungodly-expensive cup4cup to make gluten free baked goods, nobody asks if they’re gluten free and dozens of little hands grab them and eat them hastily. The only person who will ask anything about them will ask if they’re also dairy free and paleo. And they are not, no. So still the little sprite walks away empty-handed.

Gluten Free Sugar Cookies. The party was delightful. Henry and George made big flashy Valentine’s boxes based on things they love. Henry’s box was modeled after our dog, Adelaide, but came out looking like a big red pig covered in stickers with a big heart-shaped hole cut out of its stomach. George apparently loves volcanoes because that’s what he picked for his box. We made one so large that I could have widened the card slot hole on top and used the thing for a hoop skirt. (Side note: a volcano hoop skirt sounds incredible. With some kind of oozy red shirt on top? Given the choice, I think I’d dress like Ms. Frizzle from the magic school bus books). Henry spent much of the party looking on with sparkly eyes as kids dropped valentines into the pig-dog’s heart shaped stomach hole. Every five minutes or so he ran over to lay on his stomach in front of the box and gaze inside to see if his pile had gotten bigger. George and I danced to bidi bidi bom bom with a group of vivacious senior citizens and a good time was had by all.

Roasted Chicken with Stuffing, Gravy, and Collards. After the party, we came home and sat in the front yard while the kids looked through all their valentines and ate every dum dum they had been gifted. I roasted a chicken and made stuffing and gravy and collards instead of mashed potatoes, even though we had potatoes, because we are just that healthy. I’m kidding. About being healthy. The pile of collards on this plate was initially much smaller. I added more for the photograph, so it would look like a healthier plate, and then pushed half the pile back into the pot after I took the picture. Secrets.

Broccoli Soup with Lemon and Parmesan, Grilled Cheese. I didn’t want to cook dinner on Thursday so we went out for tacos (we’re spending all our restaurant scratch on tacos this month so I can blog about my favorite breakfast tacos in Austin for this year’s AFBA city guide). We had some unschooler friends over on Friday to make miniature adobe bricks a la this site and it was fun, but also exhausting, and I really wanted to skip making dinner and just buy a sack of tacos again. But I didn’t, y’all. I didn’t. We ate broccoli soup with broccoli from the garden. Who needs you, taco sack! I ran out of energy when it came to clearing the mountain of shit from the center of the counter so I could take a picture, so that’s why there’s detritus rimming the plate and some sort of grease spot just above the sandwiches. If I were the hash-tagging sort this is where I would put the #foodporn one.

Mile-High Parmesan-Chive Buttermilk Biscuits, Bacon, Orange. Andy made me breakfast for Valentine’s day! All the heart eyes emojis. He got the recipe from the Everyday Baker and did a beautiful job- they were light and fluffy and beautifully flavored with parmesan and chives and lemon zest and cayenne. And the recipe has a neat tip too, Andy told me, where you flip the biscuits over after you cut them and put them on the cookie sheet upside-down because they rise higher that way! These really were super tall. Also bacon! And token fruit slices! Andy is the greatest human of all time. The biscuits clenched it.

Butter-Basted Pan-Seared Rib Eye, Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Roasted Broccoli with Lemon and Parmesan, More Biscuits. Quid pro quo, I made Andy his favorite meal, plus broccoli. I skipped the local grass-fed steak options from the farmers’ market and got him a good ole American corn-fed prime rib eye from the grocery store. It’s a big gluttonous pile of food, I know, but overeating garlicky foods has become a sort of V-Day tradition for us.

Raspberry Buttermilk Cakes. We brought these little cakes to share with Henry and George’s cousins Clara and Lucy. The kids made little kites modeled after a design Clara, the budding engineer, had created and ran around the yard with the kites trailing behind them. The kids had all made the sweetest homemade valentines for each other and I just love them all so much! We got to spend some time with the famous Phinnie baby this afternoon too, so my heart is full. Happy Valentine’s Day, friends!

When I was in high school I drove around in my bright red chevy cavalier with the windows down and Dvorak’s new world symphony and the wizard of oz soundtrack blasting. I wrote and performed bad poetry on how much I hated Texas. Helen and I cowrote a performance piece based on the “never work with animals or children” maxim where I mimed being birthed from her vagina and she mimed vomiting into my mouth as a mother bird might. Molly and I watched countless hours of Jerry Springer and Conan O’Brien and memorized hundreds of choice lines from both. All of this, in retrospect, makes me sound like an obnoxious twerp. But I feel nostalgic for it. I don’t do anything silly anymore. I feel slow-witted and unfunny. I used to be able to tear people apart with an off-the-cuff bit of drollery when they said something stupid or sexist or rude, and now I stare blankly at a computer screen for full minutes trying to think of synonyms for ‘wit’ and then give up and look it up on thesaurus.com and then look up ‘drollery’ on dictionary.com to see if that makes sense in this case. It kind of does. Is this an inevitable thing that happens to everyone? You are bright and sharp and funny and it slowly leaks out of you until you’re someone who opens her mouth to say something clever and then closes it 20 seconds later when nothing comes out? Or did I go wrong somewhere? Is it the children? Can I blame the children? Or was I never all that great, I just had a lofty opinion of myself and now I see things as they’ve always been? I don’t have the brain power or energy left in me to answer that question. Here’s what we ate this week, presented with as much drollery as I can muster.

Thai Basil Stir Fry, Coconut Rice, Citrus Salad with Coconut, Peanuts and Fish Sauce Vinaigrette. This was the fun dinner at the end of an amazing day that I mentioned in last week’s uncharacteristically upbeat introductory paragraph. Some of my high hopes for the week were dashed as the days went on- half the plants I transplanted to the new hellstrip garden died from shock (this is an actual thing) and George ate a prune every day of the week and still didn’t poop until Friday. How is that possible? He is but one tiny person against five powerful prunes! But on Monday I was still optimistic, and dinner was great. Henry’s fallen hard for coconut rice and asked repeatedly for me to add it to the menu plan, so I did. The stir fry takes no time and is delicious. So basil-y! This salad is the one we had at Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s citrus cooking class that has all the best flavors in one bright and shiny package.

Focaccia with Apricot Jam, Caramelized Onion, and Fennel, Caesar Salad. The kids asked for ham sandwiches for lunch, so I made three. Henry sat and poked at his sandwich and eventually ate half and I looked at him with my head cocked and brow furrowed. This is a kid who loves to eat. I knew he was coming down with something. And sure enough, an hour later he got a raging fever and we skipped parkour and spent the rest of the afternoon reading books in bed. We finished The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (thanks for the recommendation, Abbie!) and we both loved it. It did have the unfortunate side effect of introducing Henry to the phrase “titty baby” which he laughed uproariously at and has since repeated, mostly in George’s direction, ad nauseam. Andy and George and I ate this focaccia for dinner with April Bloomfield’s caesar salad and it was great. The focaccia is quick and easy- light years simpler than the three day one I normally make and honestly just as delicious. Especially with all the cool things going on on top of it. I’m a sucker for sweet and savory things on a bready vehicle.

Double Cranberry Orange Bread. I had plans to go to a craft day at my friend Christy’s house but felt bad for asking Grandma Mary to look after a sick Henry. But he felt cooler overnight and in the morning said to me “look how fast I can run!” So we went forward with the plans and I made this loaf of quick bread to share. I baked the bread in the size pan the recipe specified, but still the thing rose so much that blobs of dough oozed over the top of the pan and fell to the baking stone below. I tested it and a cake tester came out clean, but it was a damn lie. The center starting sinking as soon as I pulled it out of the pan, but I didn’t have time to put it back in, nor to cool it properly, so I put it in the passenger seat of the car and drove to Christy’s, watching in horror as the cake completely imploded on itself. I unmolded it when we got there and we cut the few salvageable slices off the edges and egads it was incredible! We stood around the cutting board and devoured all the non-batter-y bits. Christy put the doughy parts into the oven to try to salvage them and they baked up ok and tasted great. I was having so much fun with cake and crafts and scones that I texted Mary to see if I could stay longer, and it turned out that Henry’s fever had climbed over 104. So I’m eating cake and drawing pictures like a dickhead while my kid is on the road to febrile seizures. I left the fun and came home to cuddle with Henry. But later in the day, when he had fallen asleep, I baked another one of these cakes. The same thing happened with the batter overflowing, but I cooked it longer and at least corrected the sunken center problem.

The recipe is from The Everyday Baker and is exactly like the linked recipe except that it has one cup of fresh cranberries and adds a half cup of dried cranberries. Also, a half cup of sliced almonds instead of a glaze. Though I don’t know how or why one would downsize from a glaze to milquetoast sliced almonds.

Sausage, Potato, and Kale Casserole. This recipe is from a magazine I adore, Taproot, which is a celebration of food, farm, family, and craft, in an inspiring, misty and glorified way. The last issue, SHELTER, has a collection of casserole recipes, teaches you how to weave a rag rug on a loom made from an old picture frame, and has instructions for dyeing wool yarn with foraged plants. It’s ridiculous, I know, but also so lovely. I read it and think, maybe I will take up screenprinting! This casserole is it, you guys. It’s layers of sliced white potatoes, sliced sweet potatoes, a cheese sauce with absolutely irresponsible quantities of cheddar and worcestershire sauce, sliced sausages, and two bunches of kale cooked in the sausage fat with chicken stock, and then all those layers again, plus parmesan cheese. The kale on top turns into a crunchy kale chip layer and the cheese sauce is the greatest tasting thing with the potatoes and sausage. I only put about half the amount of food, probably less, that the recipe called for, which is something approaching 8 pounds of raw ingredients (2 pounds potatoes, 2 pounds sweet potatoes, 2 pounds sausage, 8 ounces of cheese, 2 big bunches of kale). The dish as written would feed a whole heap of people. I loved it so much that I ate the leftovers for breakfast, excitedly, the next two mornings.

Buttermilk-Cornmeal Griddle Cakes with Blueberries, Sausage. Day three of Henry’s fever and we were all going out of our minds from being cooped up in the house for three days. We spent the morning bickering with each other, and in the afternoon we dragged ourselves into the backyard sunshine and things got so much better. We spent three hours back there. Henry and I pulled weeds from the decomposed granite that surrounds our small circle of turf. When we would find a little caterpillar under a weed, which was dozens of times, Henry would balance it on a leaf and take to the same kind of plant growing in the grass circle so it wouldn’t die without its host plant. It was so dear. We built a fire and roasted marshmallows and Henry ate four in the course of about 3 minutes. It was so great to see him eat happily again, even if it was marshmallows. These pancakes are also from The Everyday Baker and they are my new favorite pancake recipe. They came out perfectly cooked, unusual for me, and have a little crunch of cornmeal and smell like vanilla.

Chickpea Curry with Rice. Friday dawned on a well-again Henry! We went to a nursery to spend a few bucks on plants to replace the ones that died when I transplanted them. I bought a Jerusalem sage, lantana, lavender, thyme, and tropical milkweed. We set out to plant them after lunch, both kids eager to help. Henry is careful in the garden but has a weak transplanting game. He tends to pull plants out of their plastic pots by gripping the stem and yanking, which occasionally leaves him with a plant and its roots stripped naked of their cube of potting soil. So this time, I went over to show him how you tilt the pot gently, one hand cupped under the plant, the other squeezing the thin plastic sides to dislodge the dirt and roots, and how you let it fall into your hand softly and then place it carefully in the dirt. He listened to what I had to say but then did not want me to intervene when he didn’t do the process like I had described it. When I started to correct him I could see that he was looking exasperated, but I kept going. When I tried to help guide the plant out of the pot he threw his body on the ground in contempt of my meddling. I got frustrated and threw up my hands and moved on to do the rest of the plants with George, who still lets me call the shots. I felt bad for having no patience and Henry and I made up quickly, and we sort of planted the Jerusalem sage together. We spent the rest of the afternoon doing all lovely things- cracking pecans together, making granola, pumpkin muffins, and these curried chickpeas- and one thing I hate, which is playing with a little baby doll the kids have named Pooey Milk. I have to be the baby and make him talk and they do things to annoy the baby, and then laugh and laugh when he says “Don’t call me Pooey Milk! Come up with a better name!”

Apple Muffins, Lemon Blueberry Bread Pudding Muffins, Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins. I brought muffins to a beautiful blessingway for a beautiful person and more muffins to an end of the world-themed birthday party for a hilarious five year old. There is no place where a platter of muffins is not welcomed with open arms.

Football Snacks. Guacamole, Sausage Balls, Genius Wings. We hooked up our tv antenna to watch the football game with the kids while eating a pile of snacks on a blanket on the floor. I had no idea who Bruno Mars was (Andy told me!) and I had never heard Uptown Funk. I live under a rock, did you know? The kids and I were all smitten with him. Also rainbow flower umbrellas. Also the game was fun. I sat in the stands with the marching band for every football game for four years in high school and was still only able to name three ways that you can score points in the game. I am an abject failure. Sausage balls are one of Andy’s favorite things. The kids ate mostly guacamole and orange wedges, but also devoured these chicken wings, which is unheard of. They never eat chicken. They’re really good and really easy. The wings, not the children.

Double Coconut Granola. I ate this before we ate the superbowl snacks, but facebook puts the last picture as the thumbnail image and I don’t want it to be the garishly-filtered chicken wings that look like they’ve been wrapped in a taut layer of human skin. So, granola! I ate it everyday for forever and got sick of it, but man is it delicious every once in a while. And it means I can make magical marvelous memorable cookies, so it’s all things bright and beautiful.

I’m giving myself permission to not try to be witty in this last paragraph. I’m fresh out. I never know what to say down here and so this week it’s gonna be nothing. See ya!

 

Today I made a poorly constructed volcano and a piggish dog body out of cardboard. I dug up crowded plants in the backyard and moved them to a new bed in the front yard. George ate a whole prune, which will hopefully be helpful later. Henry and George did not hurt each other once! Not one time! We played baseball with Helen and a cheez-it branded plastic bat and rescued a stray ball from behind the neighbor’s fence with a big broom and a folding chair. We looked at the peas, radishes, lettuce, and beets that are sprouting in the vegetable garden. Both boys sat happily with me on the counter while I cooked a fun dinner. And then everybody ate it. Today was amazing.

Here’s what we ate this week.

Mini Apple Muffins. Anytime I make muffins in the giant mini muffin pan that Helen gave me I think of the line from Arrested Development when Lindsay is talking about why she needs a new diamond cream. A million fucking muffins! I made these for a little unschoolers hang out at our house. Lots of friends came over and blew bubbles and made art and fed muffins to the dog and fought over one short length of nylon rope, I don’t know why.

Creamy Chicken Empanadas, Red Cabbage Salad with Dates and Feta. This is what I served my family for dinner. While I was making the empanadas, Henry was asking me about them- were they like the beef ones I made a few weeks ago? What kind of empanadas do you like best? Are these going to set the smoke alarm off? Sort of, any kind, and NO! Stop asking me that! I checked on these empanadas at the 22 minute mark. They looked beautiful, but were a little pale on top so I did the stupidest thing in the world and turned on the broiler to give them some color. I forgot about them for 11 minutes. At which point I smelled them, freaked out, pulled the tray out of the smoky oven {cue the smoke alarm and panicked Henry} and hated myself. I have made this exact same mistake at least three times in the past year and yet I keep doing it! Never walk away from the broiler. Anyway, I tasted one and it was burned and overcooked and somehow still delicious. Is it ridiculous that I’m going to talk about how good these empanadas were? It is, I know. But they’ve got a cream cheese dough that’s super flaky, and cream cheese in the chicken filling too, which, yes. The cabbage salad was ok. Pretty bad I guess, since it’s in second place against a tray full of burned empanadas.

Chorizo, Chickpeas, Kale, Roasted Butternut Squash. This dinner is one of my favorite ever quick meals. This batch was all the better because the greens were from an unschooling friend’s garden, which she brought to little unschoolers on Monday. I wish I were the charming sort of person who thought to bring a bouquet of greens to a friend for no reason. Life goals!

Croissants. These are my first croissants. As it turns out, this is what an undercooked batch looks like. I learned my lesson and left the second batch in until they were a rich deep brown. The process of making these was an absolute joy. You soften butter, beat it with a little flour, then spread it into a perfect 7 inch square with a little offset spatula, firm it up in the freezer, and then fold and roll it into a soft buttery dough over and over again. The dough was so silky and it rolled out to the exact size it needed to be almost effortlessly. You get to measure your dough with rulers! I love this. They take a long rest, then are cut and rolled into crescents, then rest again, then baked. Both my batches were a little dense, a bit less flaky than I was hoping, and I reached out to Mrs. Wheelbarrow to troubleshoot (I won the cookbook where this recipe appears, The Everyday Baker, randomly from Cathy’s blog). She offered her advice and promptly connected me with the cookbook author herself! I felt like a supreme asshole writing to pester her about my novice baking questions but she was absolutely wonderful and helpful too. I’m going to try again as soon as I have an extra pound of butter and can piece together 12 interrupted hours of free time.

Palmiers. You cut a little bit of dough off the corners when you’re making croissants, and those scraps are enough to roll into a whole sheet pan full of palmiers! Which are the greatest. Please ignore Ina’s ridiculous suggestion that you need 2 cups of sugar- preposterous. Just roll the dough out with a few generous fistfuls of sugar on the board and on top of the dough, and add a sprinkle of salt too.

Tuna Noodle Casserole. Oh but the kids hated this one! I improvised the recipe using stuff we had on hand- noodles, bechamel, thyme, tuna, peas, potato chip crust, like my mom used to make. I thought it was delicious. Andy had mentioned last week that he didn’t want to take fish leftovers for lunch at work because reheating it makes the whole place smell and people get mad. I sort of forgot about that immediately, since I never cook fish, and only remembered once he got home and the casserole was almost done. He grimaced and said he’d just eat it cold. Which made me mad. And is ridiculous right? What tyranny is this? Down with the anti-tuna establishment! He did eat the leftovers cold though, so we lost this round.

Rustic Country Bread. Another recipe from The Everyday Baker, and an easy and delicious one at that. You’re supposed to knead the dough for a few minutes after it comes out of the stand mixer, until it passes the windowpane test. I kneaded for a few minutes and tried, not even close. I kneaded more and tried again, a little bit closer. 30 minutes and another dozen tests later, I called it done, even though it only sort of passed. I could feel that the dough got a lot softer and slinkier after a while though. I have so much to learn about baking.

Bread, Summer Sausage, Radishes with Butter. After eating a radish dipped in soft butter made from grassfed cow milk, sprinkled with Maldon sea salt:

Henry: Mmm, this radish is really good!
Me, thrilled: Oh yay! I’m so glad you like it! Would you like another?
Henry: Hm. I was mostly being sarcastic.
Me, mouth agape: ….
Henry: I mean it’s like the Australian mango [which I had bought for him at central market for the outrageous price of $5 and which was decidedly not worth the money]. It’s not good and it’s not bad. It just is.

Meyer Lemon Curd Shortbread Tart. This was the tart from Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s citrus cooking class. When I found a vendor selling meyer lemons at the farmers’ market, I knew just what to do with them. This is it before I piled on huge spoonfuls of whipped cream.

Hummus, Roasted Chickpeas with Smoked Paprika, Crudites. I got this book from the library and was immediately inspired to rip out the grass on the thin strip of land between the road and our sidewalk, which is known, affectionately, as the hellstrip. The first paragraph of the introduction says:

“Many of us own or manage pieces of land that are part of the public landscape, a landscape that other people interact with every day. That public environment uplifts our mood or sends it plummeting, rivets us in the present moment or fails to distract us from our busyness. Attractive scenes invite us to open our senses and our hearts, while ugly or barren surroundings train us to block those sensory messages.”

Do you love that? I love that. It’s so true, too, in my experience. Most of the houses in our neighborhood have lawn yards with the occasional boxwood. But around the corner there’s a small, anarchist cluster of homes that have ripped out the lawn and replaced it with huge flowering rosemary bushes, muhly, lantana, cacti, and succulents. I love walking by these houses and brushing up against the rosemary, watching for the first prickly pear or cactus flower. So I got to work. And the amazing thing, the really amazing thing, is that I was able to get it done while the kids entertained themselves! This is a milestone. Henry and George played together in the front yard while I hoed up the turf grass. Henry got hungry, went inside and got a bag of pretzels, cut the bag open, and came back out and shared them with George. He wanted to play with bubbles and got everything he needed and opened the (literal) gallon of bubble liquid and poured an appropriate amount into a dish without help. I just hoed! It was brilliant. We brought this vegetable and hummus platter to a playdate later in the day, and it was good. I ran out of lemons and made the hummus with lime juice instead which was a little weird.

Crispy Thai Pork. With herbs from the garden and ground pork in the freezer, this was a pantry dinner for a night when I had no planned meal. It’s a lot better with the lettuce and cucumber, but meat and rice is alright too, you guys.

Seven Layer Burrito, Spicy Tostada. I’m sure there are a whole host of people who routinely VSCO cam their taco bell meals, but this was a first for me. Andy and I got to drop the kids off at Andy’s parents house and the two of us drove down to San Antonio for the day to attend PAX, a huge gaming expo. Huzzah! We wanted to grab a quick lunch before we got there so we wouldn’t have to wait in a huge line to spend $14 on a bag of chips and a banana. So, Taco Bell. Andy searched for one on his phone. We pulled up to the place and it turned out to be the fabled Taco Bell/KFC/Pizza Hut of our youth, that Andy and I would visit every single time we went to San Antonio. The thing’s got a giant plastic flag out front heralding passersby at the wonders that await them inside. A meal of breadsticks, biscuits, and chalupas! A personal pan pizza, mashed potatoes, and doritos tacos locos! Excuse me, locos tacos! But being an older, wiser person, I just ordered from the taco bell side of the menu. I am not ashamed to say I enjoyed the hell out of it, even if my burrito was stratified into two distinct layers, one for beans and rice, the other for sour cream and guacamole.

PAX was so much fun. We wandered around the expo hall and did nothing and enjoyed not having kids strapped to our chests. We met an NPL friend for a drink, who happened to be friends with every celebrity present at the convention, all of whom stopped by to say hi(!). We played board games, including this one, which has stolen my heart. The premise of the game is to forage and cook as many mushrooms as you can! You get extra points for higher quality mushrooms like morels or porcini, and extra extra points if you cook them in butter or cider. Come on, that’s adorable.

Now that I stop to think about it, I bet today was so great because I fell asleep with the kids at 9:30 last night and slept until the sun came up around 7. And also maybe because the kids are getting more self-sufficient and I can, if everyone has eaten and pooped successfully, do some of the things I enjoy doing during the day. I mean, this is really something! I hope the sleep + growing up trend continues into next week. If not, I’ll at least have more to complain about here, which is probably more interesting than the ‘life is amazing’ posts. It’s a win-win! See you next week.