I am out of breath after a long exciting weekend and a Monday in which Henry and George and I (some of us more graciously than others) played host to a big happy group of other unschoolers in Austin. There’s a little unschoolers meetup every Monday, held at a member’s house or at a park or something. This week it was our turn to host, so I cleared the clutter off the counter top, put three kinds of muffins on the table (I am trying to develop a reputation as the crazy muffin lady), and put paints and all our best toys outside to encourage the kids to spend time out there. I love this group of people. The kids are funny and inventive, and quick to forgive when one of mine throws a ball at their head. The parents are smart, and easy going. Also quick to forgive when the same one of mine brandishes a shovel in their kid’s face, or ties them (the adult, I mean) up with a jump rope.  All things that happened today. My favorite part was when Henry and I were talking to a couple of boys about the experiments they like to do, which launched us into an hour-long exploration of what kinds of gross shit we could make with a sack of flour, a ton of water, the last of our food coloring, and every glass we own. It was a delightful mess. We put stuff in the blender and drank it, we sloshed and studied and laughed. It was pure joy.

The weekend was action-packed too. It was the Texas Book Festival- an event I love, though I tend to ignore all the works of literature and instead spend the whole day in the cookbook tent. I go every year, and always hang out with some of my favorite girlfriends there, but this year was extra-special because three of the amazing women of Food52 were there to promote their books (Vegan, Baking, and Genius Recipes), along with the beloved Cathy Barrow, who wrote Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Practical Pantry, which I love so much. Thanks to my friend Abbie’s generosity and gift for bringing people together, I got to spend large chunks of the weekend basking in the presence of these incredible people, and I felt giddy the whole time. The highlight was a Saturday-evening pool party (George was the only one who swam and did so in the nude, with wild and reckless abandon) featuring Abbie’s pitch-perfect cochinita pibil tacos and flan, lots of talk about food, and me only putting my foot in my mouth once (when I talked about being so over weddings in front of two women who are young and have boyfriends and might even have been engaged. Why did I say that? I should love weddings! My whole thing is about celebrating people and coming together to honor each other and eat food together! I think maybe it’s the act of going to a wedding with Henry and George that I’m so over, because that genuinely does suck. But I didn’t say that. I just said I was sick of weddings. I’ve spent too much time thinking about that and wishing I hadn’t said it, can you tell?). It was a great weekend, a great Monday, and all of it exhausting. Here’s what we ate this week!

Burrito Bar: Refried Beans, Mexican Rice, Sungold Tomato Salsa, Guacamole, Cheese, Sour Cream, Homemade Tortillas. My beautiful sister Helen, who is wickedly funny, wildly creative, clever, compassionate, and one of the true joys of my life, turned 30 last Monday. I love her to the moon and back and chose to celebrate that love in the traditional way, with a burrito bar. We gathered around the table and told her what we loved about her and what we wished for her in the coming year and ate ourselves silly with too many burritos.

Pound Cake. A few weeks earlier, Helen had spent a good deal of time texting me about pound cakes. She had never had one! I thought that was perfect, because I had just read about one in Make the Bread, Buy the Butter that sounded like a home run. The author describes the “sweet, crackly crust” and an interior “flaxen from the butter and eggs and generously freckled and perfumed with nutmeg.” Sign me. The fuck. Up.

The top crust separated from the rest of the cake and rose above the rim of the loaf pan and stayed there, which meant that it totally shattered when I unmolded the cake. No matter though- this cake is just as advertised. It’s a rich, buttery beauty with enough nutmeg to make you feel that it is meant to be served at Christmastime. I ate two slices (after all the burritos, mind you) and wished that I hadn’t. So good, though. So good.

Carrot Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting. For Helen’s birthday lunch we went out to the Midway Food Park. This place has everything going for it. It’s close, it’s got a ring of fun food trucks surrounding seating under big, shady oak trees, and an awesome playground to boot. But the last couple of times we’ve gone have been on Mondays at lunch when only a truck or two is open, and my contrary children have firmly rejected the notion of setting foot on the playground. Why? Why? Henry tugs at my shirt and begs me to stop talking to my friends when he could instead be dangling upside-down from a geodesic dome! What a choice! I always have to give him my phone and watch in horror as he uses all the special items I have been hoarding in Candy Crush to buy me more time to sit at a table and chat. Anyway, on this particular day, the only available choices for lunch were the lobster roll truck and a taco truck. Henry didn’t want a taco, so I spent 10 bucks on a half-lobster roll for him. He took one bite and put it back. I asked him if he liked it and he said that he didn’t much care for it because the lobster tasted “too gross.” I tasted it and sort of agreed. I don’t get lobster. I ate tater tots and several of these cupcakes. I make the recipe as written, except that I replace all the healthy ingredients with unhealthy ones (no whole wheat flour! no olive oil! the bad flour and the bad oil instead) and it makes a primo carrot cake that is lighter than the norm and has a ridiculously good crispy top. Coupled with cream cheese icing, this is an unstoppable cupcake.

Focaccia with Roasted Vegetables and Purple Basil Pesto. I hope you like the look of this focaccia because it was a part of two other dinners this week. I’ve written about it before, but I just love this recipe. It takes three days but makes a bread that is better than any focaccia you can buy around here. The leftovers should be frozen, not stored at room temperature, because it gets stale really quickly.

Old-School Baked Ziti. I published this post and then scrolled through and saw that I didn’t write anything about this, so I’m back to remedy my bleary-eyed oversight, but with no stamina or wit left to make it interesting. Instead I’ll say that this was easy and fantastically delicious. It’s probably hard to have a bad version of cheese + meat sauce + noodles, but this is a near-perfect one.

Blueberry-Lemon Bread Pudding Muffins with Crumb Topping and Lemon Glaze. Based on the title alone, I was prepared to hate this recipe. Then I saw it was a Bobby Flay recipe, and even worse, from an episode with the unfortunate title of B-ready for Brunch and I doubled down on my initial impression. This is too many things in a muffin, I thought. How can you put a crumb topping on top of bread pudding? How can you then put a sugar glaze on top of that?? It’s America, in muffin form. But I said I would try them and so I did. The ingredients cost double or triple that of the other muffins I’ve made recently, and the workload was double or triple too. And then I took a bite. Warm, rich, eggy bread pudding, with generous pops of tart blueberries, a crumb topping that tastes like rich shortbread and a lemon glaze that gives you an additional hint of acid- this muffin is exquisite. A showstopper. I immediately ate a second one. I am sorry I ever doubted this muffin- it is lovely and perfect. More work, yes, but a greater reward too. Make them when you want to really impress your friends. They’re unbelievable served warm, but still delicious when cold (I froze some and they thawed beautifully). Jennie- thank you for bringing this muffin into our lives! I am so sorry I ever doubted you!

Burgers on Focaccia. I had three roughed-up, dried-out pepperidge farm hamburger buns in the freezer and so gave Andy and the boys the choice of having their burgers on my homemade focaccia or on the crappy store-bought buns. No prizes for guessing what they went for. I really enjoyed the burger on the focaccia though.

This was our after-parkour class dinner, so it’s time for a nemesis report. She wasn’t there. Henry had a really hard time being gentle with the other kids though, and I talked to him about how it’s important to give other people space and to wait his turn. I asked him why he was having a hard time with this and he helpfully explained to me that “all little kids just want to hurt each other.” If my own children’s actions are any indication, his assessment is right on the money.

White Bean Stew, with Still More Focaccia. You guys, what am I going to do when daylight saving time ends? All my pictures are going to look like this one. Washed out and sad under the crappy, dead bug-filled kitchen light. The sadness of this picture is an appropriate representation of a rough day. George woke up furious about something, we know not what. Straight out of bed he insisted that Andy put on his flip flops, which he wears more as a costume piece than as actual footwear, and which have little straps on the back to keep them in place. He was screaming demands the whole time and somehow slipped into a hysterical-upset because one of the straps had slipped off his ankle. Andy and I both tried to fix it, but George didn’t want us to. He just wanted to scream “LOOK AT MY OTHER SANDAL, EVERYONE” over and over through so many tears. Poor Henry burst into tears too and Andy had to leave for work with everyone yelling and crying and sad. We put our pieces back together and left to meet Helen and Phinnie at the library for story time, something Henry had absolutely despised in the past, but acquiesced to try again for George’s sake, who had never been. The librarian had prepared a bilingual program about underpants and the kids were both delighted. She read great stories and then the kids got to design their own paper underpants and it was so much fun. When the program was over we went across the hall to the main building to check out books and to play with the library’s collection of magnatiles. Henry made a beautiful magnatile car, but it eventually collapsed under its own weight which devastated him and brought on a meltdown of epic proportions. It took time, but we all recovered from that setback too, and went on to have a good time at the playground and a fun lunch at Helen’s house. But then George fell asleep on the way home and slept forever, which meant I was late starting these beans for dinner, and then, in spite of soaking for over 18 hours they took two hours to cook so we ate well past dark and everything is so hard. The kids both loved this though, so that was a nice thing.

Vegetarian King Ranch Casserole. I had to make something out of beans leftover from Helen’s burrito bar dinner, a half bag of frozen corn, and the broken shards at the bottom of two bags of tortilla chips. King ranch casserole, y’all. I used bean water instead of stock, frozen hatch chiles instead of poblano, a layer of beans, and a layer of corn instead of the chicken. It was not as good as the real thing but pretty good for something made out of a ton of odds and ends.

Sugar Cookie Pizza. Henry and I spent the whole morning playing restaurant. He drew up some menus, with items including a wild blueberry salad, a fruit risotto for dessert, and a fruit pizza. Lots of fruit. It made me want to make a real fruit dessert pizza, so we did. Baking with kids is an exercise in patience and mindfulness for me. It is mostly not at all fun. I like to do things my way. It physically hurt me to watch Henry try to spread cream cheese frosting (leftover from Helen’s cupcakes!) on the cookie. I was so happy when he asked me to do it. This process repeated exactly with the raspberry jam. And the decorating! That’s not how I wanted to decorate the cookie pizza! I know, I can hear myself. Who cares how your kid decorates a cookie pizza, you nutbag! Well, I do. I wish I didn’t but I really do. I try not to let it show, but I’ve got just about the worst poker face so he’s going to catch on one of these days. Oh me.

Pecan Pralines. There was a hunk of the very last praline sitting on the counter next to me when I sat down to write this post. I think Henry was the one who chewed on it and left it there, but it could have been anyone really, as I served the leftovers at our unschooler gathering today. I ate a few bites off of it anyway.  I keep picking up the small nub that remains and absent-mindedly bringing it to my mouth, but then my brain kicks in and I put it back down again. They are just too sweet for one to want to finish eating the whole thing.

I made them to bring to Abbie’s Book Festival party, because she was making tex-mex-y stuff, and was making flan for dessert but thought we could do with another sweet thing. If you’re not getting flan in a tex-mex restaurant, you’re going to get sopapillas. And if you’re not getting sopapillas, you’ll pick up a plastic-wrapped praline from a wicker bowl next to the cash register. Since, unlike the sopapillas, you can make pralines in advance, I decided I’d bring them to the party. They were easy, but they took forever to set up. The recipe says to let them sit for 20 minutes and then move them to an airtight container, but mine were still sort of translucent and sticky an hour and a half later. I was sure they were ruined. I moved them anyway, and stored them between layers of parchment in a tupperware, and by morning they looked like semi-real pralines!

Praline Chocolate Cookies. Though they look like a train wreck, I’d consider these cookies to be a huge success. I chopped up about a cup’s worth of the ugliest of the pralines and tossed them into a delicious chocolate cookie batter. The praline mostly melted, but stayed intact in some places too, but every bit of it was sweet, salty, chewy, crunchy, and fun.

It’s after midnight and I’m wiped. This little praline nugget is still staring at me. I’ve gotta get up and throw it away before I accidentally eat it. Until next week, dear readers!

Well, I just finished reading Where the Red Fern Grows, aloud, to my kid. It was rough. We read Charlotte’s Web a few weeks ago, and when I got to the part (do I need a spoiler alert here? consider yourself warned) where Charlotte dies, I was a wreck. Henry, genuinely concerned, asked “What is wrong with you, Mama?” But I managed to hold it together a bit better during the end of this one. My throat feels like sandpaper from struggling not to cry throughout the last two chapters though. Anyway, I feel like we need a lighthearted read next. I’m thinking Ramona Quimby, Age 8, but I’m open to suggestions if you’ve got any.

I’m changing the subject now. I don’t spend any time thinking about money, but Andy does. He’s got a comprehensive budgeting program in which he tracks where, when, and how we spend every dollar, or at least every dollar I remember to tell him about. It turns out I’ve been averaging about $1000 a month on groceries, which is ridiculous, yes? It’s not sustainable. So this week I tried my hand at sticking to a budget, a way smaller budget, and it went ok! My plan is to spend about $25 a week at the farmers market, and another $100 at HEB. We live really close to Central Market, and I love it. I can pick basically any recipe I want and I’m sure to find all the ingredients there. But it’s expensive. Also expensive is my beloved Wheatsville, which sells locally grown vegetables and local, humanely-raised meats and the employees are paid a living wage and it is everything a grocery store should be. I’m sorry I can’t be more supportive of it right now. I gotta say though, I was pleasantly surprised with my HEB trip. They had everything I wanted. I got a giant bag of instant yeast (3 cups of yeast!) for $2. They had Andy’s hippy cereal, a cheap sack of organic potatoes, and full fat coconut milk. I usually buy organic cilantro, but at HEB it’s $2.50, and you can get the pesticide kind for 38 cents, so I bought that instead. I’m going to try to get a couple cilantro and parsley plants in the ground soon so I can grow them instead. All this to say, you might notice some changes around the food I cook each week (assuming that I’m able to stick to my budget- I’m not always good at that). I’m going to try to make more stuff from scratch (like the bread and hummus below), and do a better job eating or re-purposing leftovers. (I.e. no more throwing away a perfectly lovely caponata because I don’t feel like eating it.) Here’s what we ate this week!

Everyday Bread. As you can see, I screwed this one up. The recipe is from Make the Bread, Buy the Butter, and it’s the easiest bread recipe I’ve ever read. You mix up the dough, divide it into two pans, let it rise for two-ish hours, and then bake it. You don’t knead it. I’ve made other no-knead breads before, but those have to sit around for half a day or more before you bake them. I didn’t know this sort of witchcraft, a no-knead bread with a short rise, was possible. You’re supposed to bake the bread in two loaf pans, but I’ve only got one left after losing two to mysterious circumstances, so I dumped the other half of the dough onto a sheet pan and roughly shaped it into a loaf. After 30 minutes of baking you’re meant to pop the bread out of the pans and return them to the oven for another 15 minutes or so. My loaf stuck horribly to the inside of the pan, and that’s why you see all its entrails exposed in this shot (still have Where the Red Fern Grows on the brain. Too soon?). In spite of my ham-fistedness, this bread still tastes pretty good! It’s moist, slices and toasts nicely, and tastes delicious with salted butter. George ate several slices of it, which is several slices more than any other kind of bread I’ve ever offered him. Still, I don’t know if it will become my everyday bread. It’s just a bit denser than I’d like.

Broccoli Cheddar Soup. I have a broccoli soup I love- this broccoli, parmesan, and lemon number from Food52. But I liked the sound of this creamy cheddar version from Smitten Kitchen, so I gave it a go. It was ok. The broccoli and the carrots, which I had chopped into impossibly tiny cubes, took forever to get tender. Much longer than the 15-20 minutes noted in the recipe. I let it go so long that too much of the stock evaporated and I had to add more in the blending step to get it to liquify. And even then, I still found the bits of vegetable to be unpleasantly toothsome. The broccoli and lemon soup is better in every way, I think. It takes a bit longer but is way more hands off and the end result is smooth and warm and nutty from parmesan and bright with lemon juice. My kids like it a lot better too, so it’s settled.

Scrambled Egg Muffins. Um, these are delicious. Listen to what’s inside: sauteed corn, ham crisped in butter and glazed in maple syrup, roasted green chile, sharp white cheddar, and gently-cooked scrambled eggs. These lovely things are all folded into a simple cornmeal-enriched batter and they bake up beautifully. I froze the leftovers and ate them all week for breakfast, reheated in a 350 oven for about 10 minutes. I’m so sad they’re gone.

Coconut Curried Chickpeas.  Those chickpeas look gross. Oddly gelatinous, right? And the color is precisely that of a breastfed baby’s poop when the baby has had too much foremilk. I wish I had followed a recipe and could blame the dish’s shortcomings on that, but it was a monster of my own making. I read the linked post- how to make a biryani without a recipe- and thought I could use the first few steps as a guide to make a curried sauce for chickpeas. It sounded romantic in my head- whole spices warmed in oil, aromatic onions, ginger, and garlic browned in the oil, and all those lovely flavors swirled with coconut milk to make a sauce that the chickpeas could soak up. When I tasted the finished dish, I got a mouthful of those whole spices. The coriander and cumin seeds crunched in my teeth and flooded my mouth with their flavors. I knew Henry and George would hate it. So I spent 15 minutes trying to seek out all those seeds and pull them from the sauce with a little spoon. I gave up and instead worked on removing just the seeds from Henry and George’s serving. This was a waste of time for two reasons: 1) I served rice with the meal so the boys ignored the chickpeas completely, even though they are supposedly #3 on Henry’s list of favorite foods. Lies! All lies! 2) I didn’t take the spices out of my and Andy’s serving and the extra cooking time softened them up a lot and made them way less unpleasant. The stuff tasted ok, after a really heavy squeeze of lime juice to brighten it up, anyway, but I’m gonna go ahead and follow a recipe next time.

Roasted Red Pepper Hummus. Part of my plan to cook and shop more economically naturally includes making more stuff from scratch. Central Market sells a red pepper hummus that I love, and I had tried to make a homemade version of it before and ended up with a huge bowl of something pink and watery and flavorless. I had a big pot of chickpeas, and a crisper full of tiny red bell peppers I got from the farmers’ market two week ago, so I tried again. I used the linked recipe as a guide, specifically removing the skins from the chickpeas and using way more tahini than I usually do. Taking the skins off of two  cups of chickpeas sounds trivial but takes forever. The kids were happily watching Jake and the Neverland Pirates when I started, but halfway through George’s mood completely shifted, and I had to peel the rest of the chickpeas while balancing him on one forearm, picking up one chickpea at a time with T. Rex arms. I roasted the little peppers until they were totally black, then peeled off their skins and added them to the food processor with all the other stuff. I let it run for a long time, and I was careful not to add too much of the chickpea cooking liquid (I think that was my problem last time) and I was thrilled with the results. It tasted pretty damn close to the CM stuff I love, and made easily triple the amount for way way less than the cost of one small tub, which is just the best feeling.

Crispy Roasted Chickpeas. I made a lot of chickpeas. I used up some more by roasting them with smoked paprika and cumin and coriander. Addictive and delicious.

Butternut and Sausage Calzones, Arugula Salad with Lemon, Parmesan, and Crispy Chickpeas. I wanted to break out of my rut with butternut squash and went deep into the underbelly of Food52 to find this recipe. I had never made a calzone before, and the mix of sausage and butternut sounded good, so I picked this one. There are a lot of steps in this recipe, but none of them are hard. The only questionable part of the process were the leeks. They were another thing that pre-budget me would have bought organic, but with $100 to spend, I decided to save a couple bucks and buy the conventional ones. But they were mutant super-leeks. The recipe calls for using the white and light green part of three leeks, and I followed that, even though the white and light green parts of my girth-y leeks were easily 12 inches long. (I’m gonna tone down the language here before things get out of control.) Anyway, when I added them to the comparatively small amount of roasted butternut flesh, it looked like the leeks were going to smother out everything until they were the only thing left in a dark and desolate landscape. They were well-nigh undetectable in the finished dish. More proof that I don’t know what I’m talking about. The butternut and sausage filling is delicious. The calzones browned beautifully, but stayed soft and pleasantly chewy. They really benefit from having a tomato sauce to dip them into- I think they need the acid- but it was a fun dish all around.

All the Leftovers. I am one of those people who don’t like leftovers. I don’t like eating the same thing over and over (unless that thing is pumpkin chocolate chip muffins), so I’d much rather repurpose something than just reheat it. But damn if this wasn’t so nice and easy. I had the soup, the kids had buttered noodles. I had two tiny crusts of bread and one single slice of ham and made Andy a couple of sandwiches  from it. We all ate a giant honeycrisp apple. We had spent the day at a new-to-us greenbelt on Onion Creek, which is stunningly gorgeous, and the creek is miraculously still flowing after months of very little rain. My sister heard that it always has water in it, but after a rain the creek jumps up 10 feet or so. It’s gonna be our new go-to greenbelt. It’s close, you can get to the creek in a hot minute, there’s a small shady playground, and it seems like no one knows about it. After spending all morning splashing in the close-to-the-road part of the creek, we decided to hike the 3/4 mile to another part, which we had heard was shadier. The hike to the creek was ok- it was hot, and not shady, and poison ivy grows thickly on the left side of the path the whole way down, but everyone was in good spirits and we made it to the creek, which was lovely indeed. Tall cypress trees grow along the banks of the creek, and there are big boulders and fallen logs to climb on, and millions of millipedes to observe/accidentally sit upon. I had to carry both kids on the way back- George on my front in the ergo and Henry riding piggy-back. I was exhausted and so were the kids. They both fell asleep on the way home, at 3 o’clock, which is the worst because it means they’ll both be up until 11. We made the best of it by going for a long walk around the Long Center after dinner and stopping for frozen custard on the way home.

Lil’s Favorite One Bite Banana Cookies. George doesn’t eat much of anything, but occasionally he’ll climb up on a stool next to the counter, peer into the fruit bowl, and if we’ve got one, he’ll ask for a banana. He calls them ‘namas’ which I imagine is a fact nobody but me will care about, but I just love hearing him say that. Sometimes I’ll peel a banana for him and he’ll just shake his head sadly when I offer it to him. Sometimes he’ll take one bite and abandon it. And sometimes he eats the whole thing. On this occasion, he took one bite and left it. I had exactly one cup of flour leftover after making calzones, and well more than the 1/4 cup of mashed banana I needed for the recipe, so I made these cookies. I didn’t have coconut and replaced it with rolled oats. Everybody loves these cookies. The first time I made them Andy and I stood in front of the stove and ate the whole pan-full. Use the curry powder if you’re feeling adventurous or replace it with cinnamon. Either way, these won’t last long.

Beef Stew with Mashed Potatoes. Last week when I was pulling the last containers of the red beans and barbecue stuff from the freezer for our frito pies, I pulled this one out too and was surprised to find it packed full of beef stew. I don’t remember freezing that. It has to be from last winter at the very latest. Anyway, I reheated it and served it over mashed potatoes and we had it for dinner. I should say, Andy and I had it for dinner. Henry poked at his serving of stew (without mashed potatoes because he’s the only person in the world who doesn’t like them) and complained about the lack of sauce. George didn’t touch his. I don’t remember what they ended up eating instead, but it was probably pretzel rods and squeeze tube yogurts.

Quesadillas with Black Beans. I am hoping against hope that this will be the worst dinner shot I ever post here. We spent all day at the pumpkin patch in Marble Falls. The kids painted pumpkins and made sand art necklaces (George’s broke somewhere between the pumpkin patch and home and I didn’t notice until he had spilled purple sand all over the couch, through the house, and onto my lap at the dining room table, Henry’s has since broken and been patched up with hot glue). We rode a hay ride that took us through a decidedly creepy scarecrow village with as many offensive vignettes as the creator could think up. The first scene was a saloon complete with scarecrow prostitutes, legs wrapped suggestively around tree limbs. Another was a ‘No Girls Club’ with scarecrows wielding signs with colorful language about how shitty girls are. Towards the end there was a jail scene, with sad prisoner scarecrows locked up behind bars. This fed into a Despicable Me-themed scene with minions and Gru. The whole thing was so bizarre and so Texas- I loved it. My friend Molly came over for tea after we came home that afternoon, and I thought the boys would love to have a tea party too, so I set up their little Ikea set at the table with us, on a big lace tablecloth I bought at thriftland. But Henry was too jazzed about the sand art to drink tea. He had the idea to make his own colored sand by blending the filthy stuff from our sandbox out front with food dyes. So he did that next to us while we drank our tea, and eventually moved on to the technique you see above, where he mixed water and sand and food dye in glasses and left them all around the house. I chatted with Molly until after seven and then hastily made quesadillas with black beans for dinner.

Pumpkin Waffles, Hash Browns, Fried Egg. These hash browns look burnt in this picture, but I don’t think they were, really. They are incredible. I had never made hash browns because for some reason they didn’t sound all that appealing to me. But then I read the description of them in Make the Bread, Buy the Butter and had to try them. She describes them as ‘better than french fries’ and do you know what else? You brown the shredded potatoes in butter and then you pour 1/3 cup of cream on top of them before you flip them to brown the other side. What could be more compelling than that? Andy and I ate the whole pan, 1/2 a pound each. Henry ate 4 1/3 waffles, which is insane. They’re really good too, and were a great way to use up the last third of a can of pumpkin puree I had leftover after making those pumpkin chocolate chip muffins again this week. I know, it’s a problem. I can’t stop. The fried egg is there for health reasons. Protein and all that.

So I’ll see you next week! Since I’m in the mood to spoil endings for people, I’ll let you know now that I went over budget- on only my second week of trying! Not by too much though, so I don’t think you should write me off as a lost cause just yet.

Henry made me a card for my birthday. On the outside he painted eight roses in “all the prettiest colors.” On the inside he wrote, “Dear Mama I hope you’re happy for a whole year” with four hearts and a black rectangle. What’s the black rectangle? It’s my phone, because I love it.

Last week I shared my snotty comments about the parents at Henry’s parkour class who look at their phones instead of stopping their kids from knifing toddlers. But I look at my phone a lot too. Not while we’re out, which is why I guess I feel entitled to judge these other parents, but it’s always by my side in case there’s a minute of downtime when I’m at home with the kids. Henry’s including my phone in a birthday card as the thing I love most gave me pause, but didn’t change my habits one bit. But last week was rough- I got less and less sleep each night as George night-nursed furiously because he’s deep in the throes of cutting his back molars, and he’d wake up sobbing whenever I’d try to put a finger in his mouth to break the suction on my boob. And still, every night, no matter how exhausted I felt, I’d look at my phone until after midnight, scrolling mindlessly through facebook and playing candy crush. After doing this on Friday night it occurred to me that I hadn’t gotten anything out of it. So last night, I just went to bed. And it felt good, so I didn’t look at my phone much today either. I’m not saying this because I think I’m hot shit for going 24 hours without looking at facebook, or that it’s wrong for anyone to enjoy themselves by looking at their phones. I’m just sick of mine. I feel like I’m addicted to it, and I don’t want to look at it all the time anymore, so I’m going to try to do other stuff instead. Keep my hands busy with whittling, or sewing, or something else. That’s my plan, anyway. Here’s what we ate this week.

Suzhou Savory Pork Mooncakes, Stir-Fried Bok Choy, Glazed Pumpkin, Rice. Ugh, this dinner. Serious Eats had this post up last week about making a feast to celebrate the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival and I said yesss. I wanted all those things. The savory mooncakes especially caught my eye- you make a laminated dough by folding a big square of butter into the dough over and over and end up with a flaky pastry that’s not unlike a croissant. Inside is a ginger-y, garlicky pork filling. I had to have them! They were a lot of work though. And I only did a few of the other ideas from the feast post- a simple bok choy, and a sugar-glazed pumpkin that is actually Vietnamese, but I wanted it so I made it. But they added to the work. And then I thought I’d be nice to Henry and make a little pot of rice too, because it is his second favorite food (behind risotto and ahead of chickpeas) and I try not to make it very much anymore because of the arsenic and blah blah blah. But then he only ate the rice- he wouldn’t touch the mooncakes or the vegetables. George either, but that was less surprising. I felt mad at Henry for not experiencing the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival Feast I had prepared and mad at myself for feeling like he has to care about a weird culinary indulgence I had decided to spend hours cooking. Everything was delicious though. We had a ton of the mooncakes left over so I ate two for breakfast the next several mornings, and I decided that the only thing better than sharing mooncakes with my children is eating all the mooncakes myself.

Chicken Meatloaf, Mashed Potatoes, Roasted Broccoli. My sister was hoping for a round two with my nemesis from last week, but this meatloaf got in the way. I had to get home right after Henry’s parkour class to get it in the oven, so we went to the free play room early, and NO ONE WAS THERE. It was glorious. I am an anti-social monster. But we had the place to ourselves and they played gangnam style and single ladies and love is an open door and call me maybe over the sound system and I got to sing badly in a big room while the kids played on whatever they wanted and I loved it. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that this dinner is a home run. Ketchup-glazed meatloaf, mashed potatoes, gravy. The only possible weak spot is the broccoli, but I over-salted it so badly that it was rendered inedible, so everyone was free to ignore it.

Leftover Red Beans and Barbecue, Frito Pie-Style. I know. That’s an egregious dollop of sour cream.

Flour Tortillas. I took a picture of these to show you that I made them again. Making your own tortillas feels a little like printing your own money. Plus, you get to mix oil into flour, which is how you make cloud dough, and is therefore demonstrably enjoyable to squeeze in your hot little hands. They taste a little like crackers though, so something’s weird there. I think they need more salt? That’s my solution to everything.

Sausage, Egg, and Cheese Breakfast Tacos. No wait, breakfast tacos are my solution to everything. Or at least to what should we eat for dinner with no time and no special ingredients.

King Arthur Basic Muffins, Berry Variation. This is a good-hearted little muffin. It’s made from pantry staples- you don’t need anything. You can make them without anything mixed in, or you can finely chop literally any fruit and mix it in. They are moist and tender and just exactly what you would want and expect from a muffin, and there are some fine tips in the recipe to apply to other muffins. Like starting them in a 500 degree oven and then immediately dropping the temperature 100 degrees, because that’s how you get appealingly round muffin tops! Who knew? Mrs. Larkin, did! Thank you for lighting my path on the way to the muffin promised land!

Honey-Tamari Grilled Skirt Steak, Caponata, Bruschetta. My friend Christy makes a honey flank steak once a week by marinating the meat in a heavy drizzle of honey, liquid aminos, and chopped ginger overnight. I thought it sounded fabulous and I wanted to try it. But then I forgot to marinate it overnight, and only did it for a few hours, while the meat was defrosting too, so it didn’t end up tasting like much of anything, except grilled meat, which sure isn’t bad but was not what I wanted so I didn’t like it. Andy was happy to eat mine! I bought the eggplant for the caponata two weeks ago, and kept putting off making it, I don’t know why. I expected the eggplant to look terrifying when I pulled it out of the crisper, and then I’d have an excuse for not making it, but it looked just dandy, with cheerfully-taut skin and no blemishes. So I made the caponata and nobody wanted it. Henry because he was sick and didn’t want to eat anything. George because he never eats anything. Andy because it had green olives and capers, his only real food dislikes, and me, because I felt overwhelmed with the prospect of being the only one to have to eat this whole dish by myself. I never did. I threw it in the compost a few days later. I ate grilled bread for dinner. And then Andy went to Sonic to get Henry some french fries because that’s what he said he wanted since he wasn’t feeling well, and then Henry didn’t touch them, so I ate those too.

Pan Fried White Beans with Kale, Roasted Butterkin Squash, Leftover Bruschetta. This bean and kale thing is supposed to be made with big giant white beans, like gigante beans, but Wheatsville didn’t have anything like that, canned or dry, so I just used cannelini. They turned to mush in the frying stage but this dish still tasted great. What Wheatsville lacked in beans it made up for in novelty squash. They had a stack of butterkins right by the door, which I misread as butternut and pointed them out to Andy to say how crazy they were. He said (reading the sign correctly) that they were butterkins, but it was only when I was cutting the thing open days later that I realized that meant it was half pumpkin and half butternut squash. I was careful to share with you that I had not had a lot of sleep this week, and that my mind has atrophied from too much candy crush, so I have two excuses for not putting this together sooner. The thing is adorable, but otherwise inferior to regular butternut in every way. The stem is tough like a pumpkin and hard to cut through, the ridges make it hard to peel, and it is waterier than a regular butternut so it doesn’t brown as nicely when roasting. To sum up, butterkins can go to hell.

Pumpkin and Pancetta Pasta Al Forno. I had lots of leftover roasted butterkin wedges, and some leftover pumpkin puree too because I made those pumpkin chocolate chip muffins again (I didn’t photograph them out of shame), and some cheese and heavy cream, so I decided to make this mac and cheese. I mashed up the roasted pumpkin and mixed it with the puree and cream and other sauce ingredients. This recipe calls for a billion different types of cheese. I had cheddar, monterrey jack, and parmesan and so used only them, and this made the best version of this dish I’ve cooked so far. It’s obnoxious, isn’t it, when people drone on about all the substitutions they made in a comment on an internet recipe and how it turned out fabulous their way, but I’m going to do it anyway. Don’t let the long list of cheeses stop you from making this perfect dish- use what you’ve got.

It feels like I was really grumpy this week and didn’t like anything. Maybe I was and maybe I didn’t. I’d say that I was going to be loads more cheerful next week, thanks to my newly-found anti-phone zen, but I think I’m getting my period so everything’s going to suck anyway. See you next week!