Hit by a Pitch

Look at this fucking hipster golfer.

This is Rickie Fowler. I love him. I would watch golf if it were all hipsters and thugs. Can golf get some thugs? Let’s have a beer.

Mother’s Day recipes that don’t suck.

I love love love the idea of Mother’s Day brunch, but so does everybody else in the world and I don’t like dealing with crowds or waiting or food quality that suffers when a restaurant is super-busy. I’d rather stay home and make something from White Lace Inn, a little bed & breakfast in Door County, Wisconsin. I highly recommend one of the French toasts or egg bakes, because you assemble them the night before, so all you have to do on Mother’s Day is put something in the oven. I’m making my own version of the Spicy 3-Cheese Cornbread Egg Bake, and I’ll post a recipe if it’s good. Also don’t forget the mimosas.

I love maxi skirts.

I assume you’ve seen that Ann Taylor ballet maxi skirt that’s everywhere lately? It’s absolutely beautiful but, in my opinion, $176 is way too expensive even with the current 30% off offer. It’s also dry clean only. Do people still buy dry clean only stuff? I try to avoid it as much as possible for all things except, say, wedding dresses.

I found a good alternative. Here is a sort of similar look at a much better price and in a lower-maintenance fabric — the Billabong Long Way Tiered Maxi Skirt.

The Ann Taylor skirt is elegant and this is hippie, which means I love it. It’s also $46, machine washable, and perfect for sitting on the ground at the park eating sandwiches and wrangling toddlers, which, if you ask me, is when you want to wear a maxi skirt. Sorry for party shopping.

I can affect the game.

White Sox pitcher Chris Sale is loading the bases as we speak and I’m teaching Soren that, through some type of metaphysical awesomeness I don’t understand, we can affect the outcome of a sporting event that is occurring 1,000 miles away from us. He’s jumping on the couch screaming, “GO CHRIS SALE!” And I might be doing the same thing.

I’m kind of obsessed with two things right now.

The first is a bronze sugar skull necklace (purchased here). I don’t know. Soren and I are both having what I guess you could call a skull phase this spring. I anticipate that this will continue into the summer because who doesn’t want to be having a skull phase when you can wear cutoff jean shorts especially. I’m always conflicted about writing about stuff like this — things I buy — here, because I don’t want to be another person who blogs about shit she bought because zzzzz boring and there are too many people doing that shit already and I’m not even supposed to be buying stuff but shit, this is, like, my soul mate of jewelry and I love it so much. So whatever.

This is what I look like wearing the necklace in the bathroom at Mezcal (cool graffiti bro), which is another thing I’m kind of obsessed with right now (get the chile relleno plate or the #3 combo (although for the record whoever invented putting rice in burritos should be executed) OMG I love hipster Mexican restaurants) but that’s getting off topic because we’re not here to talk about Mexican food because if we were here to talk about Mexican food we’d be here all night talking about Mexican food and you’d have to bring tequila and everything else you need to make legit, from-scratch margaritas because we are fresh out, which is why I’ve been nursing a beer for the past hour, and that would be cool but you probably have better things to do.

This is not one of the two things I want to talk to you about today, but I also love being outside all day even if I’m the special kind of dumbass whose people are from the north but who nonetheless forgot to apply sunscreen today while being outside “just for a few minutes” (yeah right) and now the tops of my ears and shoulders are all hot and the back of my neck itches. To celebrate Earth Day, we planted a tree in our back yard, which is very exciting for me because I am a tree-lovin’ hippie.

This rambling, stream-of-consciousness writing style is used in part to try to distract you from the lameness of the second thing I’m going to tell you about, which is so lame I’m actually embarrassed but what the fuck let’s go for it. I’m totally and completely obsessed with cole slaw. I know. Cole slaw. Who even — I don’t know. First of all, cole slaw is kind of dumb. I used to hate it and anything else that contained mayonnaise or is something someone’s midwestern mom would bring to a picnic you have to go to as a kid and it’ll end up being fun even though you have a bad attitude but you still don’t want to eat cole slaw. Like potato salad. To this day, I’ll only eat snooty potato salad made with ricotta cheese and garlic and red onions and no mayo.

But for whatever reason, one day not too long ago I wanted cole slaw. So I bought some prepared cole slaw at the store and it was totally gross. But I was so dedicated to cole slaw I persevered and figured it would be better if I made it myself. And it was. And I have become a monster who eats cole slaw, like, every other day. Ben is already sick of cole slaw, which is fine with me because I’ll eat it all, for real. If there are leftovers after dinner, I’ll be hanging out in the kitchen later in the evening, standing up eating straight from the tupperware.

Anyway, if you have any desire to make cole slaw, this recipe is just about perfect, but I recommend decreasing the dressing a bit and, of course, buying a bag of cole slaw mix, which is just shredded cabbage and carrots. If you use a whole 16-ounce bag of cole slaw mix, use just a little less than the given amount of dressing ingredients (decrease everything equally so as not to throw off the proportions — I think cole slaw goes bad when you have too much vinegar in particular). When you’re mixing everything together, it’ll look like there’s not enough dressing, but there will be. Also, let the cole slaw chill in the fridge for at least 10 minutes before you eat it so everything can blend and become awesome.

I am on my way toward becoming the blogger who takes pictures of her cole slaw every day. Help me.

And then here is a weekend photo dump. As always, I try to include no photos that include people other than my immediate family. It appears that all our friends are animals and foliage.

The other day, Soren sang the following while in the bathtub:

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday cupcakes!!

As far as I know, he hasn’t even seen a cupcake in like a month, since we were at his friend’s birthday party (for the record, he didn’t even eat a cupcake that day — he had a gigantic piece of the “adult” cake, which involved browned butter, chocolate mousse, and hazelnut frosting).

Today at dinner, he stood on his chair, giving his jambalaya the side-eye (Ben even used my recipe!), requesting cupcakes over and over and over (as toddlers are wont to do). The boy loves some cupcakes. And we didn’t have any, and even if we did we wouldn’t have given him one right then and there, and he pretty much got over it and ate at least some of his dinner, so that was cool.

At first, I took a hard-line position against sweets. Babies don’t need sweets, I thought. And that’s true. Babies don’t need sweets. I freaked out about whether to give Soren cake for his first birthday. Then I got over myself and gave him a homemade pumpkin cupcake. And then I realized that, hey, I enjoy dessert once in a while (if by “once in a while” I mean “several times a week”), and there ain’t nothin’ wrong with enjoying a little dessert.

So after working all day, running 6.3 miles at the gym, and hanging out with Ben and Soren for a bit, I made some cupcakes while Andre Miller got a shoulder contusion and the Nuggets were summarily dismantled by the Mavericks. Soren was asleep by then so he doesn’t even know the cupcakes exist yet, but boy will he be excited tomorrow.

I’d been wanting to make strawberry cupcakes for a while, but most of the strawberry cupcake recipes I’ve ever found on the internet are kind of horrifying and include things like jello, which, well, gross and not vegetarian. I figured I’d make my default vanilla cupcakes with strawberry frosting, but when searching for a strawberry frosting recipe, I found a strawberry cupcake recipe that didn’t terrify me.

So I made strawberry cupcakes, pretty much following the recipe (I used 2 eggs and the equivalent of 4 eggs of Ener-G egg replacer, because I didn’t want to use egg whites because it seems wasteful to just toss 4 yolks and I didn’t have any other use for them in the immediate future) with my usual altitude adjustments. I think I added extra strawberry puree to the frosting (I used what was left in the blender and didn’t measure it). I doubled the cupcakes and did not double the frosting, and it ended up being the exact right amount of frosting for the cupcakes. The cupcakes themselves are decent — mine came out dense (I suspect I might be overmixing) and the strawberry flavor is very, very subtle. The frosting, however, is the shit — it’s so good the cupcakes function merely as a frosting-delivery device so their lack of flavor is pretty much immaterial. Mmmmm frosting. It’s definitely worth adding to your dessert arsenal.

Holy crap I’m tired.

In other news, this is the greatest day in the history of days because Peyton Manning is coming to Denver and that means, if all goes well, Tim Tebow will be leaving Denver. I am so excited about this I was hoping everybody’s work would close and the whole city could go out for a beer to celebrate, but unfortunately that didn’t happen. Oh well. There are plenty of good, Tebow-free days ahead of us. This is weird, but for the first time in years (since Josh McDaniels was hired as head coach), I’ll have no reason to hate the Broncos. I’m not sure what to do now.

I don’t mean to get all healthy-living blogger on you, but let’s talk about oatmeal for a second.

As a hippie vegetarian, I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I have no use for McDonald’s. McDonald’s wouldn’t even be on my radar at all but for the radio commercials I’ve been hearing lately. They’re advertising, of all things, oatmeal. Like, you should go to McDonald’s and get oatmeal.

WTF? Is that weird?

Here’s the thing. If you want oatmeal for breakfast but don’t have time to make it in the morning and don’t want to resort to instant, make overnight oatmeal. I know I’ve told you about this before, but it’s so simple!

Right before you go to bed, stir together equal parts oatmeal (the regular kind, not quick cooking) and your liquid of choice (water, milk, soy milk, almond milk, whatever) in a container that has a lid. If you’re feeling fancy, stir in a bit of vanilla extract and something sweet, if you’re into that sort of thing (I’m partial to agave nectar in oatmeal and coffee, because I think it’s a more mellow kind of sweetness than sugar; pure maple syrup is also nice). Cover and refrigerate. The next morning, add fresh fruit if you like and eat whenever you want, straight from the fridge or warmed up in the microwave.

If you’re like me and eat breakfast at the office (that’s a random office bowl in the picture), this is an awesome thing to take with you so you can enjoy it while, for example, punctuating and cite checking an author’s endnotes. Oh, happy Monday.
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In other news, the 2012 City Park Jazz schedule has been announced (see it here). This is the best news ever! City Park Jazz had some serious financial issues last year and I was worried it wouldn’t be around again, but it is! If you’re ever looking for an awesome, fun, and free thing to do on a Sunday evening in the summer, this is a great option. Yay!!

Hey guys! I made something for dinner and it was good! Don’t let the bad picture scare you! Ben even liked it. He’s the usual cook around here and isn’t always impressed by stuff I make. I guess you could say I’m the baker of the family, but still I soldier on trying to cobble together dinner once a week.

Recipe: Cheesy Spinach and Artichoke Pasta

Yes, it’s toddler friendly and very easy to make!

Ingredients

• 1 1-pound box rigatoni
• 1 11-ounce package frozen creamed spinach, thawed
• 1 14-ounce can artichoke hearts (ideally small size), cut in half lengthwise and then sliced (approximately 4 slices per half) (like tomatoes, I find artichoke hearts easier to cut with a serrated knife)
• 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese (the good kind, not the kind in the canister)
• 2 1/2 to 3 cups grated mozzarella cheese
• 1/3 cup milk
• salt and black pepper to taste

Directions

Cook the pasta as directed on the package. While the pasta is cooking, preheat the oven to 375 degrees, slice the artichoke hearts, and grate the Parmesan (and the mozzarella if you didn’t buy shredded mozzarella). When the pasta is done, drain and return it to the pot. Add the spinach, artichoke hearts, Parmesan, 2 cups of mozzarella, milk, and salt and pepper, and mix very well, making sure the spinach especially is evenly distributed. Taste and adjust salt and pepper if necessary. Put the mixture in a 9×13 pan and sprinkle 1/2 to 1 cup mozzarella over the top. Bake for 20 minutes, then turn on the broiler and broil for a few minutes until the top is nice and brown.

Adapted from Real Simple, Cheesy Baked Pasta with Spinach and Artichokes.

And yes, the toddler did eat, well, some — he’s not a big dinner eater these days. I say this is toddler friendly because it contains green vegetables (which often aren’t a favorite) in a relatively inoffensive manner and is pretty tidy as far as pasta goes. Enjoy!

This song isn’t exactly groundbreaking but it is kind of awesome: