I got nothin'...except pictures

Oh, I've got things I could whine about on this here blog, but I'm sick with a head cold and words don't seem like a good idea. So let's have a looksee at Phook's recent adventures instead, okay?

Here we have Miss Phook, freshly laundered:

Here we have Miss Phook enjoying the out of doors with my dad's cat, Bob. (I'll note that Bob's growth is stunted at kitten stage and that Bob is a she, despite her masculine moniker):

Here we have the child enjoying the swing of some pals...if you look closely, you can see that her face is festooned with the remnants of a sandbox dirt snack. Phook enjoyed some quality time with the anonymous belly shown in the background and her little brother this past weekend.

Here we have a self-taken portrait of the K Family after we decided to randomly hike up the tallest hill in our county. Had I not been wearing Crocs, and had we brought along a Phook-toting backpack contraption, this would have been a lot easier. But it was fun. I love this photo because Phook looks sneaky in it:

Here we have Princess Phook with Grandma J. We celebrated Grandma J's birthday on Sunday with a meal of tasty fajitas. Phook celebrated by wearing a romper:

And I realized I never posted a photo of Phook in her Easter dress, which is a crying shame. So let us rectify that situation:


Finally, I will leave you with evidence of Phook's intellectual prowess:

That's all for now, cats...

Down in Lunch Lady Land

People. You oughta know that I come from a long line of (hot) lunch ladies. Seriously. My grandma was a lunch lady. My supremely most awesome aunt is an active lunch lady. I think one of my cousins dabbled in lunch ladyism. Really, when I think about it, it might be my calling in life too. I mean, I love lunch ladies and what they're dishing up. Maybe it's because I went to a Lutheran grade school with no hot lunch program, so my mom packed my lunch for 9 years...we didn't even get a microwave at school to warm up soup or leftovers or anything until I was in like the 6th grade, so it was all sandwiches, all the time, for the majority of those years. When I got to high school and started having dates with the lunch ladies, I feel that my life got a little sunnier. We had an a la carte line (snacks, pizza, etc.) and the official hot lunch line with the staple hot lunch foods. I was all over that stuff and I always loved the lunch ladies. Hoagies and grinders, buddies.

So, thanks to my husband's occasional bouts with notsmartness, I got a chance to practice this lunch lady gig. You see, Doer of All That is Good, Big K, teaches a class to families with kids ages 10-14 in The Woods, and tries to get them to play nice together, not bash mailboxes in with baseball bats or take the pot, and basically encourage them to avoid ending up on his juvenile justice caseload. And encourage their parents not to end up on his child protection caseload. Part of this class is a family meal for all the participants. Approximately 35 clowns during this particular session. The woman who normally cooks the food was occupied this week, so Big K, in his notsmartness, volunteered to do it. (Well, that's what he told me when he came home last week with the news anyhow. By last night at 10:30 p.m. when we were cooking giant vats of pasta, it was amended to "they forced me into it...no one else could have done it anyhow..." Highly suspicious, to say the least.) It really doesn't matter how it came into being though. The point is that when a man who can't remember to brush his teeth on a regular basis volunteers to cook for 35, it's a pretty sure bet that his wife is going to be heavily involved in making the magic happen. His wife, of course, is yours truly.

Now, we were instructed to make spaghetti and garlic bread. In retrospect, I realize I should have calculated how much Prego was necessary, but for some reason that idea didn't even surface in my brain for a nanosecond until it was much too late. Instead, on Tuesday afternoon, it occurred to me that we had a date with the in-laws on Wednesday, and the food needed to be eaten on Thursday (today). So I took to the internets and found this recipe for crowd-size spaghetti sauce. I then woke Big K up from the nap he had come home from work to take (he swears he had a bad headache...) and reminded him he had committed to feeding the 5,000, and that action had to be taken immediately, as I was not expecting a miracle to provide the food. He seemed surprised. "Food? What? Spaghetti? Oh, yeah, I guess we gotta do that. I need some chocolate milk...can you get me some? And a cookie?"

So after he rolled out of bed and snacked, I made a list and sent him to the store, and later that evening we set to work on making absolutely giant vats of sauce. (For the record, we omitted the olives called for in the recipe because I don't think they're universally appreciated enough to include for a group this large. I also tripled (or so) the garlic, because I always triple the garlic. Bam.) After we browned the meat in 3 different pots, I reasoned that we should mix all the other ingredients together with it in one container for even distribution of spices and the like before pouring it back into multiple vats for simmering. (Four hours of simmering, that is...) I took out my largest bowl, which Phook could probably swim in. (Note to those special readers who are in the know: this is approximately the size of the "gout bowl.") Despite our efforts, we could not fit all of the sauce into this thing to mix it together, so we got creative and eventually got all the ingredients back into their pots for their merry simmering, and I then spent several hours getting stoned to the bejesus on spaghetti sauce fumes.

Last night, we made the actual pasta...10 pounds of spaghetti. I'm just going to throw it out there that spaghetti is my second favorite food, after carbonation. So fucking around with spaghetti for several hours without eating it is probably about the fourth circle of my personal hell. Just so I don't get flamed in the comments by my spouse, I have to admit that Big K did assist with this process quite a bit. He also had the foresight to think about the fact that the giant cooking vat the stuff is going to be served from had never been used before, and maybe it required some sort of pre-use heating. He was correct...he went online and the manufacturer's website indicated that you needed to heat up the device without the actual food crock thing in it for 30-60 minutes before actual use. So we roasted marshmallows over that blazing hazard for awhile while we were at it. (This, of course, is a lie.)

Today, the foodstuffs were assembled and the 18 linear feet of garlic bread were made by one Big W with sous chef Phook. (Don't you like the idea of Phook wearing a little chef's ensemble with her name embroidered on it? I sure do.) Phook was a wee bit pissy due to the fact that I greasily manhandled her from exersaucer to Bumbo to floor to snacking on those puff things to measuring spoon gnawing in an attempt to placate her, all the while essentially ignoring her while panicking about whether or not I needed to turn up the heat on the stupid spaghetti and flinging steaming loaves of garlic bread around the place. And now I'd like to present photographic evidence of my lunch lady maiden voyage:



I guarantee the bastards who eat this will think it's Prego. I'm considering going over to the class with my hair all mussed and a tomato-stained baby to make sure that doesn't happen, but it would probably be bad form. Besides, my hair is usually all mussed and my baby is usually tomato-stained, so it probably wouldn't look out of the ordinary.

So I'm just gonna sing Phook a lullaby that goes something like this: Sloppy joe, Slop, sloppy joe...

And then I'm going to think about how all the lunch ladies in the world rule.

I just hiked the Appalachian Trail

Well, no, not really. But my sense of accomplishment feels vaguely similar to what I believe I would feel if I had just traversed 2160 miles on foot. What on earth could I have possibly done? Friends, I've gotta tell you. I just organized approximately 15 years of photos (yes, my entire life since I was about 12) into tidy albums. You have no idea how much work this was. But since I am an unemployed goat who is something of a fan of affirmation and feeling a wee ache where occasionally mildly appreciative co-workers used to be, I'm going to try to convey it to you, in the hopes that you will comment and laud my efforts just a pinch.

Essentially, I started out with 3 paper bags full of old photos, negatives, doubles, random identification cards from various colleges and college jobs, and a stack of those overpriced photos you buy after you get off the roller coaster. These encompassed years 1992-ish to 2003-ish, which was the year I actually finally started believing that digital cameras were not just a fad and gave into digital-only photography. (I know, I'm lame.) In the digital department, we had photos from about 2002 to the present, which had never, ever, ever been printed or managed in any way by my husband, who for reasons that remain murky to me, I trusted with our digital legacy. I guess my trust was, in a way, well placed, because through his various computer rebuilds and hard drive swaps (if you inquire with customer service at newegg, I recommend you reference the "Big K discount" as he is THE preferred customer) he backed up the photos. And backed up the photos. And backed up the photos. And left them all for his wife to swim through as the sewage known as a giant folder labeled, simply, "Master Pics." Ah, yes, Master Pics. Master Pics is a real asspie. He held thousands of digital images in his wildly disorganized grip. I spent approximately 2 weeks simply sifting through this folder separating photos into years, then events within the years, then pictures that were worthy of printing and those that were not, all the while determining whether images where duplicates, triplicates, or higher order multiples. This included things like the nearly identical images of the busts of all of the hall of famers heads that my husband took when we went to the Pro Football Hall of Fame on one random vacation. (And while we're on that subject, I'm just going to throw it out there that that place is a real disappointment, even if you do like football. It's like a gymnasium full of busts. WTF?) Master Pics also housed photos of enough Christmases that I started searching images of the tree for ornament placement to tell the years apart. So anyhow, this was Phase 1, the digital reorganization. It bore the fruit that was my cat photo post, so that was nice for you readers, right?

Ok, so then I uploaded the photos to be printed to my friendly neighborhood digital picture printer place and waited for this to occur. And since they're jackasses, all the photos came back all messed up rather than in the order of the online folders I'd created, so I organized them again in hard copy. I was going to start chucking them into albums, but there was an uncomfortable sensation in the pit of my spleen, and as much as I tried to deny it, I knew it to be true...there was overlap with the film pictures. What if I made a nice album of some camping trip in 2002 and then found a sweet film picture of my birthday cake that a squirrel ate from the very same trip? Unacceptable. So I hauled out the paper bags, half-completed albums, and my undiagnosed OCD, and got to it. Holy flaming dog shit was that some mayhem. Not to mention an exercise in watching myself fatten via photograph. The summer after my freshman year of high school, I was a camp counselor at a Christian camp (back when I could corral my profanity when pertinent). Apparently, in my early teenage haze, I chose to chuck 7 pictures of this experience into every possible album, box, photo sleeve, and bag I had available to me. My junior prom? Well preserved in 4 different contexts. Entire years of photos just dumped in a bag and then one event from 2001 randomly preserved pristinely in an album? Yes. So I began. I separated into era (early high school, late high school, kind of fat, really fat), then year, then event, then ordered photos within the event, again searching for duplicates. (As an aside, at this point I'd like to electronically beat the piss out of my 17-year-old self for thinking I was hugely fat in 1996 and hiding my midriff accordingly. 2007 midriff is against the law in 36 states and the District of Columbia. 1996 midriff should have been immortalized in a plaster cast.) Anyhoo, turns out that a photographic memory comes in especially handy when organizing photographs. (And here I thought its only use at this point in my life was for visualizing the grocery list I left at home on the counter. Actually, I'm lying. I never forget the grocery list.) But seriously, when you are on a tiny island of rug in a sea of photographs and you stumble upon something that looks vaguely familiar and you can close your eyes and know which wave in the photo ocean is hiding a duplicate of that very same shot, you are at a distinct advantage. So thank you God for throwing that in the crockpot when you made Big W, right along with all that pork fat.

All right, so at this point I had an entire room full of my entire life in chronological order in photos separated into piles with little descriptive post-its on each pile. I then started albumizing them. I put all the really old stuff (you know, before I got my first back fat) into simple albums with plain old photo sleeves and called it good. I put the newer stuff into the kinds of albums that have a place for notations on the side, and added some cheeky comments. I put Phook's stuff in baby albums and wrote by each picture so it tells a little story in the sort of voice you might appreciate if you were a young adult looking at the albums and finding yourself utterly floored by the raw obviousness of your mother's love for you when you'd just gotten over a decade or so of kinda hating her. I'm most proud of that part, of course, and I think that if the K home ever goes up in smoke, after I save my kid and my cats, these things have now bumped my KitchenAid mixer for first object I try to save if there is time.

So I albumized and albumized and organized and organized and put the duplicates and negatives and all that offal into photo boxes just in case I am ever called upon to need them. The last thing I conquered was our wedding, which occurred on 10/18/03. We had the disposable cameras on each table thing rocking, which resulted in about 498 dark images of each moment, as well as several close-ups of cleavage and naked asses. I saved this for last because I had specific albums we received as wedding gifts earmarked for this purpose, thereby negating the need to stick to the chronology. So I organized and organized and I glued an extra wedding invitation into the front of one of these albums, and inserted the placecards for "Mrs. K" and "Mr. K" I had made for our head table that I had been saving these long years into the end of the last album, and it was finished. I then entered Nirvana. To make it all the sweeter, Ocean's Eleven was playing in the background, as it always is when Auntie Hode is at my house, which she happened to be when this occurred this past Friday night. I then left the completed albums on the floor for a couple days so I could look at them smugly, having conquered the Goliath that is the pristine archiving of my existence. Did any attentive readers notice that my blog posting rate had gotten a bit spottier since my SAHM post? Yeah, this would be why. But anyhow, I estimate that my albums contain in excess of 4,000 photos. Here they are:


Here's the thing. I think I might actually put this on my Top 10 list of lifetime accomplishments. Call me pathetic (just not in the comments, please), but this had been bugging me for quite awhile as one of those things that needed doing but just seemed so huge it could not ever be done. And now I have done it, and it resulted in something really nice that all the Ks can enjoy for years to come. Big K and I spent the other night looking at the wedding albums, and I've got to tell you it was fodder for nice reminiscing and nostalgia and all that happy horse shit. Cheap at twice the price (which, if you paid me minimum wage for this effort, would probably be more money than Hillary has in her campaign coffers).

I know, I know, you're right, it is obvious. Crazylady Big W is used to being so ridiculously productive that she can't even sit down for five minutes during her kid's naps. True enough. Big K and I have dissected the psychological underpinnings of this act in great detail already, and I assure you I am quite well aware of the basic truth that I am still in work mode and it is going to take some time to transition to a life where there really is no project, no deadline, no ridiculous demand placed upon me by someone who does not have a soul. Oh sure, the SAHM thing is a hardass gig, but it is not the pressure cooker I'm used to. So I kind of recreated the pressure cooker, just a little bit, by doing this. I look at it as methadone to help me ease off what I used to be taking. This rehab shit is tough. But whatever. Do you want to come over and look at my albums?

Sweet

On tax day, let us not forget this sweet fact:


There's nothing to do but celebrate by wearing leg warmers:


Peace, buds.

P.S. Shoutout to J.R. for this and other vaguely inappropriate onesies given as shower gifts many moons ago. Who knew it would fit at just the right time of year?

I'm going to malign parenting magazines now

Okay, people, here's the thing. I generally do a tap dance around parenting issues I feel strongly about on this blog, because I genuinely do not want to hurt the feelings of or even merely annoy other parents who might be reading my words and may have vastly different approaches than the Ks choose to take with our young. I mean, really, do whatever is cool for you. But I'm going to take off the gloves here, because my hatred for parenting magazines is really starting to blaze, and it cannot be contained. So if you like these magazines, you might want to just skip this post.

I received a free subscription to 2 or 3 (not even sure how many, because they are virtually identical slop piles) mainstream parenting magazines around about the time I birthed Phookie. I don't remember how, but surely it had something to do with allowing my child to be photographed in the hospital nursery or by registering for baby gifts at Target. Whatever. When they started arriving, I started reading them. At first, I gobbled them up, desperate for information on how to handle the fact that someone had sent me home with a baby simply because I had successful forced it from my ladyparts. Kind of like how I read a shitload of various books during pregnancy. Hell, I even read a book on how to calm a colicky baby on the off chance one showed up here. The thing is, I have a bachelor's degree in English, which means I should technically be able to consume written words with a discerning eye, deconstruct meaning, and evaluate the text from about 8,387 different angles. (It also means I was excruciatingly lucky to ever find gainful employment, but I digress...). Anyhow, these skills went and hid somewhere with my perky breasts when I got preggers, because I kind of read it all like it was just true. So I happily read the damned magazines, and got real excited whenever I turned to a feature especially pertinent to my child's age group. I devoured this information like the unwelcome raccoons who feast on my camping garbage.

But over the last couple of months, something has happened. I think I've started to develop a small sense of ownership over my own parenting. Some tiny measure (although still easily deflated) sense of confidence that Big K and I can discuss what is best in our opinion, and then act on it. And as these little buds have blossomed, I have begun to see parenting magazines (and most other parenting publications) for what they generally are: complete and utter shit. I don't even know where to begin. I guess I'll start with the fact that 95% of the content is either an advertisement or an excuse for a feature that is still actually an advertisement. Need ideas for birthday parties? Here are 8 million products you can buy to help Junior remember turning one forever. Need some ideas for that bland nursery? Check out these spreads that include $1200 changing tables. Need a family-friendly vacation? Well, here are some resorts that offer great options for the kids while you and the Mister break out the gerbil and the toilet paper tube. Hell. Okay, so that is the most obvious bone I have to pick with these things. They create this illusion that every baby needs to live in a picture perfect nursery and have all of this ridiculous shit, and somehow, they actually do a decent job of convincing you you need another $49 piece of shit for the kid when really you know they would always rather chew on the packaging. It's kind of like how I receive catalogs from the various outdoorsy-ish retailers and for some reason by the end of the catalog I'm believing in the existence of a world in which I wear stylishly cut corduroys, a nice, fitted, vaguely thermal top, and a sweet vest that's just perfect for the weather this time of year (with some coordinating casual jewelry consisting mainly of polished pebbles) instead of the damned sweatpants that I will always, always be wearing on Saturday. Only it's worse, because it's your kid, and you are their provider and want to do it "right." So, yeah, there's that. These magazines are peddling something that no one needs, and pretending to be informative.

The more serious offenses though are the basic mindset about parenting that they promote. It's all about doing what is "right" for your kid without doing what is RIGHT FOR YOUR KID. For example, there are tips on how to handle the sticky situation you're in with that reckless mom who lets your kid play M-rated video games when he goes to their house for playdates, even though you absolutely insist on only the most educational and positive video games in your (granite-countertopped, master-suite-having, utterly yardless because you needed the 3-car garage) house. How about the suggestion that both you bitches shove the video games up your asses and tell your kids to go outside and look for bugs? Now that would be some good advice. Or how about reviews of the LittleAssholes brand versus the SpoiledToddlers brand of pre-packaged kids meals, telling you which one has less sodium and which one insists on cage-free birds in its poultry offerings? Personally, I'd like to see the recommendation that people actually cook a meal for their child. I know, fucking insane. Or the countless articles meant to make you feel better about the fact that you never see your kid. Really, seriously, do I need to see another reader letter from Jennifer in Omaha talking about how even though she works 80 hours a week at a law firm she knows she's teaching her daughters to be independent women and she's a positive role model because they'll know there is more to life than just being a wife and mother? Someone needs to tell Jennifer that her daughters just want a fucking bedtime story from someone other than the nanny. Seriously. Once I read the suggestion that you tell your daycare provider not to tell you if you child takes his first step or reaches some other milestone while they are at daycare so you don't feel bad about having missed it. I'm not saying that working parents should have to weep every day over what they might possibly miss out on, but isn't it just a little twisted to manufacture this dream state in which you aren't missing anything? So I'm probably a little overly defensive on these types of articles because I am at home with my kid, and there's a decent chance I won't be missing this stuff all that often, and that is meaningful for me...in fact, my very motivation for giving up a well-paying job that afforded me many luxuries in favor of a life in which I have the discretionary income necessary to buy a Twinkie semi-annually. I don't think that puts me in a superior position to those who are working outside the home, but I don't want to see it devalued either. I know that every day when we turn a certain corner on our walking route and the sun hits her face, Phook sneezes. Sure, it's just minutiae, but I think that on some level it's important that I am there to see that and know that, and I don't appreciate letters from Jennifer and articles telling parents they aren't missing anything of value. Because that devalues us unkempt bastards who are at home with our kids, and that blows goats. The kid in daycare is going to turn out fine and the kid at home with mom or dad is going to turn out fine. It's as plain as that. So why do these clowns have to piss in my Cheerios then, huh? And you know what, if you are working, I'm guessing that there are articles that make you feel just as shitty under your circumstances.

Oh, hell, we all want to feel better about this really hard job that is parenting and it'd be nice if these magazines actually accomplished that. I mean, I'm sure I'm going to use some well-timed sugar and media exposure in order to buy myself a few minutes of relative bliss here and there as time goes on and Phook gets crazier, but I think these rags are promoting childhoods in which parents do everything "right" and give their kid everything...but are really giving them nothing. From now on, I'm going to consider using the pages as baby wipes. No, no, I'm not going to do that...they're far too irritating.

Let's discuss this sandwich

People, here's the thing. The All-new Complete Cooking Light Cookbook is a gift from the heavens. I always feel a wee bit self-conscious discussing food, living right in the heart of Hotdish Country and all, but I'm gonna tell you what I think about this cookbook. It rules. Big time. Cooking Light? What? Yeah, this cookbook is stellar, and some of the shit in it is even good for you. I purchased it with a gift card I received for Christmas, since Big K had stated that he was hoping to be Slightly Less Big K, and I thought I'd throw him a bone and try to lay off the mashed potatoes and pasta a bit. I have been cooking out of this thing like a wild fiend since January, and have yet to make anything shitty out of it. And I want you to know about it. It could change your life.

So let's start with the Grilled Chicken and Roasted Red Pepper Sandwich with Fontina Cheese that you see here. I pretty much followed the recipe on this, with the exception of the bread. I couldn't get my hands on a loaf of rosemary focaccia here in The Woods, so I settled for the sun-dried tomato crusty whatever loaf shown in the photo. Oh, and I marinated the meat overnight instead of for two hours. Oh, and I used a 12 ouncer of roasted red peppers instead of the 7 ouncer. But, yeah, I did the rest like the doggies told me to. Now, this picture could use some food styling and shit, but that is a niceass sandwich. Let me tell you that it is the tastiest thing you have ever opened your jaw to its maximum size to bite into in your life. Big K and I each ate a third of this thing and we were stuffed. It ruled. Ruled. Ruled. And I may just use the marinade recipe sometime for chicken and skip the whole elaborate sandwich, because that was the best part. Oh, one other thing...you are supposed to flip this sandwich on the grill. I have one of those gigantic flipper tools for flipping a piece of fish or something else huge, but I was still scared to flip this and lose all the wonders it contained. So I just grilled the whole thing until the cheese melted and then removed the top half of the bread and toasted that up on the grill by its lonesome, and then reassembled. If you have the balls to flip this thing, congratulations. (I guess if you were using the prescribed focaccia, it'd probably be easier.) Anyhow, make this and eat it.

I can also speak very highly of the Chiles Rellenos Casserole. In the cookbook, this calls for turkey rather than chicken. I also subbed in a can of diced jalepenos for one of the cans of diced green chiles to make it a bit spicier, since here in the House of K, we like to maximize our Scoville units. This is a major Big K favorite. In fact, I only got to try one bite of this off Big K's plate myself, because he ate the whole damned casserole for snacks over the course of a weekend.

In a similar vein, I can recommend the Green Chile-Chicken Casserole quite highly. I was kind of horrified that it called for 24 corn tortillas, but they magically turn into something good in this context. (I guess I don't really harbor ill will towards corn tortillas, but they aren't really the light of my life, either.)

Another gem (if not the jewel in the crown) is Turkey Jambalaya. Sweet baby Jesus is this good. I bastardized this with a handful of shrimp and some fresh mushrooms, but I'm pretty sure that was a good call on both counts. And this may not be impressive to some people, but I just want to throw it out there that I had andouille sausage on hand before finding this recipe, just in case it became pertinent to use such an item. I'm telling you, cruising meat markets comes in handy once in awhile. Anyhow, I kind of wish I was eating this right now, in the sense that I'm salivating just thinking about it. This is good.

Okay, so I can also speak extremely highly of the Crisp-Crusted Catfish. I actually sought out fresh fish (not available in The Woods) 60 miles away from home in order to make this happen. I didn't actually drive 120 miles roundtrip for fish...I just happened to be able to acquire some while on one of my wild journeys. I can't really talk about how good this was without crying.

The Spaghettini with Oil and Garlic made an excellent side dish to accompany the Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms with Olives and Carmelized Onions. Those bitches were a bit labor-intensive, if I do say so myself, but they were mighty tasty. Man, there is nothing like carmelized onions. I love those bastards. Carmelization is a precious gift.

Now, if you want a nice pizza that starts with crappy refrigerated dough and capitalizes on the oh-so-popular harmony of tomato, basil, and mozzarella, I highly recommend you rock yourself out some Quick Pizza Magherita. A thing of beauty, to be sure.

I think it's also a good call to work some Chicken with Eggplant-Pepper Sauce into your repertoire. I liked this because it was an invitation to use my blender, which I always enjoy as I assume my Food Network pose and gingerly rest my hand on the top of the device as it whirs while smiling at the camera. I'll also note that when I purchased the eggplant for this dish, I was with Grandma J, and somehow said produce ended up on her back porch. She called and informed me I'd left my "tumor" at her house. I found that rather charming. This recipe created more sauce than could be consumed in the consumption of the chicken, so I have some leftovers frozen for later use. Oh, and I served this over wheat linguine just for shits and giggles.

In the side dish department, you can't go wrong with Roasted Root Vegetables. If you have never experienced the joys of a roasted parsnip, you haven't lived. That is some good flavor, buddies. Oddly, this recipe was the first time I've ever worked a turnip into my life. I felt good about it. I also couldn't resist adding a sweet potato to this mix. It wasn't a bad decision. And speaking of sweet potatoes, the Spicy Sweet Potato Wedges are a nice alternative to fries and the like. I served them with the aforementioned catfish, actually.

In the dessert department, I'd like to say that Lemon-Swirled Cheesecake is the sort of thing that makes you want to worship at the altar of springform pans. It does call for making your own Lemon Curd, and although there was fear in my heart, I slayed that beast. I took this sucker to Big K's grandma's house for Easter, and fools were raving. I have some leftovers in my fridge right now, so if you're reading this and feeling hungry, know that there is an actual slice in existence, at least for the time being.

So here's the thing. This food is good. There is everything from nonsense you can throw together in a few minutes to stuff that requires some fairly major fussing (and we all know that us stay-at-home-mom's have nothing better to do than fuss - heck, I am planning to sculpt a Nativity scene out of butter this afternoon). As for the "light" aspect of things, it calls for quite a lot of healthy fresh ingredients and some basic substitutions of the reduced fat and reduced sodium variety. I have actually (gasp) made some of the recipes a little lighter than called for with my own additional substitutions. But methinks that the portion sizes used to calculate the nutritional information (which is provided for each recipe) are on the wee side of things. I don't really care a whole heck of a lot about these matters though. I just want to eat and I want it to be good, but I'd prefer not to die an early death due to cardiovascular disease. So I think this presents some nice options in that regard. There are over 1,000 recipes in this big dog, lots of very nice pictures, and some random helpful information as well. You might enjoy it too.

Man, for some reason I'm feeling kinda hungry...good thing we're having the Lentil Stew with Ham and Greens for dinner.

Living in The Woods does have its perks

An anecdote:

Big W receives bill for sewer and water services and notes that last month's payment of $27 was not credited to her account, and late charge of 81 cents has been applied. "Hmm..." thinks Big W, "Methinks I did pay that." Big W then looks online and sees that said $27 check was cashed on 3/15. "Oh, poo," thinks Big W, "Now I'm gonna have to dick around and try to get this straightened out. My ass is getting chapped just thinking about this...I'm going to go have a snack."

So this morning (mere moments ago), Big W calls the number on the water bill. The City Clerk (who grew up in the house I live in) answers and we have the following conversation:

City Clerk: Well, hi Big W! How is that baby?

Big W: Good, great, swell.

City Clerk: What can I do for you today?

Big W: Well, I have a question about my water bill.

City Clerk: Oh, did you have a late charge on there, and it doesn't show credit for your last payment?

Big W: Yup.

City Clerk: Well, we had a glitch in the system and 145 people got statements like that.

Big W: I must be one of them. At first I thought I might have been a loser who didn't pay my bill, but I checked and I definitely did.

City Clerk: Yes, you definitely did. Just ignore that and send in payment for this month's charges.

Big W: Ok, thanks much.

All right. So the reason I find this hilarious is because whenever I have ever had to straighten out a billing mistake with any other provider of services to the Big W home, I pretty much had to slice my own body open with freshly sharpened cutlery in order to convince the other party that I was in the right. For things like a $1.39 credit on my satellite dish bill. Here in The Woods, you call city hall and the city clerk knows why you are calling, knows that your personal water bill has been affected by some snafu, and asks about your baby. That, buddies, is a bonus.

I shit you not*

Dudes, my kid was so hungry tonite, I am seriously considering the possibility that she has a tapeworm. I present to you the following photographic evidence:

*Okay, so I am shitting you a little, but not much. What she actually ate was the following:

• A 2/3 full "2nd foods" container of bananas with mixed berries
• A 2/3 full "2nd foods" container of peas
• A 1/2 full "1st foods" container of pears
• A full "2nd foods" container of sweet potatoes.

This resulted in the four empty containers you see above. That is a lot of food, man. I think it is more, by volume, than I ate for dinner (a mere morsel of leftover Spanish rice). Dude. I wasn't playing "just one more bite" with her either. If I withdrew the spoon, which I tried on many occasions during this gluttonous meal, she howled for more. Woof. Perhaps she is getting her appetite back as she gets over her cold? Perhaps she heard her father say, "I think I might be a little disappointed she's so normal-sized" on our way out of her 6-month checkup? Whatever. All I know is that the kid is a beast and she just housed an entire buffet table of baby food.

Phook's dad was pleased by this Kobayashi-esque meal, I think:

Is it just me, or does Big K look like either a serial killer or a crazed clown in this photo? (Wait, who am I kidding, we all know that serial killers and crazed clowns are one and the same. But anyhow, he does look like he carries a hacksaw and rope in his trunk, no matter how you slice it.)

All right, and since I'm making the effort to post pictures, I'm gonna throw in a bonus shot of the kid all churchified rather than all pigified. This child is so cute, she cannot possibly be ours. That's all there is to it.

And since I could not decide which photo in this little getup is cutest, let's have a couple more, huh?

Okay, maybe that was too many. Maybe to you they all look the same. But to me, they each reveal a nuance of her insane cuteness. Dude, she slays me. Slays. Me.