Hit by a Pitch

You probably already know about friendship salad if you’re a toddler — apparently it’s all the rage with the preschool set these days. I, however, had never heard of it before and it’s such an awesome idea I wanted to share it here in case you hadn’t, either.

To make a friendship salad, you need, well, a bunch of friends. Each friend brings one ingredient to add to the salad. At Soren’s school Valentine’s Day party today, we had fruit friendship salad, so everybody (duh) brought fruit. Each friend added some fruit to a big bowl. We had bananas, oranges, strawberries, blueberries, cantaloupe, and possibly some other stuff I don’t remember, plus some vegetarian-friendly yogurt (no gelatin). Soren and I brought apples (sliced seconds before we left the house, lightly sprinkled with lemon juice, and stored in a tightly covered container). (For the record, Lady Alice apples are the best apples I’ve ever had in my life. They make honeycrisps seem kind of lame.) The kids all really enjoyed their friendship salad, and the parents and teachers all really enjoyed the way the kids all sat calmly at the table and ate. Kids will sit calmly at a table and eat when they’re around other kids who are also sitting calmly at a table eating. It’s not like this at home. At home, Soren is always getting up and walking around while eating. It’s almost like we need to acquire a small flock of children, just to make mealtime less chaotic.

At the party, I got to spend some quality time with Soren’s girlfriend. I don’t want to be one of those parents who’s all “Oh my infant or toddler son totally has a girlfriend they’ll get married one day OMG!” but he kind of has a girlfriend. He talks about her at home all the time and today, when we arrived, she jumped up and said, “Soren’s here!” When the kids were getting ready to eat, we had to make room at the table so she could sit by Soren. They’re just about the cutest thing, ever. BFFs, at the very least.

Anyway, you could make an adult version of friendship salad with vegetables. Or even pasta. Hell, now that I think about it, you could make a friendship pizza. Or friendship ice cream sundaes. The possibilities are endless, as long as you have some friends and they have some ingredients. It’s a nice way to share.

With respect to Valentine’s Day, I still agree with what I said last year:

In grade school back in the day, you used to use construction paper to make and decorate a simple, envelope-style mailbox and then tape it to your desk. You gave Valentines to everybody in class and received a Valentine from everybody in class. There wasn’t any drama with this. It was a little opportunity to tell each of your classmates, “Hey, I like you.” Giving a Valentine to everybody didn’t dilute this message, because the Law of Valentine’s Day is as follows: Like something about everybody and everybody will like something about you. That’s just how Valentine’s Day rolls.

As a general rule, I believe we should act the way we’re “supposed to” act on Valentine’s Day every day, but I still like the simple, little, mushy, I’m-going-to-cut-out-a-heart-and-give-it-to-you-because-I-think-you’re-neat aspect of Valentine’s Day. The day doesn’t have to be flowers and candies and whatever the hell people want to sell you, and it doesn’t have to be bitching about all those things, either. Like any holiday, it can be whatever you want it to be.

For me, it’s a chance to say: Hey, I like you.

So hey, I like you. Thanks for reading!

Have you ever wondered what I do all day on the days I work from home and Soren is here? No? Well, here is a brief summary of today’s major activities. For the record, today was an above-average day in terms of productivity. This is why I’m sharing it with you — so you can revel in my awesomeness (not really).

• Breakfast with Soren: We split a banana because there was only one left and each had a bowl of Kashi Cinnamon Harvest (his with milk and mine with soy milk). Biscuit-type cereal is awesome for toddlers. Coffee for me.
• Hang out with Soren: We do random fun stuff around the house, including but not limited to getting books off the shelf and putting them in random locations (he’s partial to Plato, Hume, and Kant — either that or he likes the yellow books) and pushing a toy shopping cart around. An episode of Yo Gabba Gabba was watched.
• Shovel our sidewalks and the neighbors’ sidewalks (we have an unofficial mutual shoveling agreement). The snow was super light and fluffy, so this ain’t no thang, as they say (no they don’t).
• Vacuum. I didn’t mean to do this today but the couch was furry.
• Share apple with Soren.
• Wash, dry, and assemble diapers; get diapers ready for school tomorrow.
• Make filling for calzones (spinach, onion, garlic, basil, mozzarella, ricotta, parmesan, salt, and pepper, with a cheese-only version for Soren, who is offended by spinach and onion in his pizza-like items). Accidentally add 2x as much basil as called for by recipe. (I’m pretty much following the Moosewood recipe for these — that’s the first vegetarian cookbook I ever had, so I find the recipes kind of old school and comforting.)
• Lunch date with Soren: He had a quesadilla (tortilla, butter, cheddar) with a side of peas and carrots and I had munches of calzone filling and leftover nachos (I know).
• Proofread 5 articles (I’ve already edited these) on the following subjects: single-member LLCs and asset protection, nondischargeable securities judgments in bankruptcy, the admission of blood alcohol reports after Bullcoming v. New Mexico, implied non-infringement and ownership warranties in intellectual property agreements, and insurance coverage for expenses relating to repairing or replacing nondefective construction work that is damaged as a result of repairing work that is defective.
• Do a tiny bit of internetting, including but not limited to sending and receiving work-related emails.
• Take a 10-minute catnap (me) (the kind of nap where you only know you even fell asleep because you were having some weird-ass dream about a Zappos ad campaign that doesn’t exist) and an awful, stupid-short toddler nap (Soren).
• Do communal laundry. Is this a thing? “Communal laundry” is stuff like sheets, blankets, and towels. I generally do communal laundry, Soren’s laundry, and my laundry. Ben does his laundry and the dogs’ laundry.
• Get our indoor compost bin. Yay! Soren carries it around the house, discusses the fact that it is white (he pronounces this “wipe”) and green, and puts random things in it.
• Make dough for calzones.
• Engage in an ongoing mental debate wherein I ponder the costs and benefits of seriously getting up before the crack of ass tomorrow morning to go to the gym.

And now we have come to the part of our day where Ben is home and I have a beer. Ben is watching this video because I guess he’s going to remix this song? How freaking cute are these guys? They’re like 10. Apparently we are Oberhofer fans now. They’re playing at Hi Dive on April 25. Anyone going?

Ingredients for Super Bowl Sunday:

• the Puppy Bowl, on a tv of adequate size
• the Super Bowl, on a tv of adequate size
• good company
• beer
• nachos

Our usual Super Bowl friends are out of town this weekend and we weren’t ambitious enough to make other plans, so we stayed home for the Super Bowl. It was nice. I took some bad iPhone photos. It’s so hard to get out the “real” camera when the iPhone is so easy.

Nachos are what’s for dinner on Super Bowl Sunday, and I’m going to tell you something about my nachos recipe, which, for the record, is the shit. I’m not all that into black bean nachos any more. I’m more into fake meat nachos. Usually when I make nachos Ben makes tacos; he’s not that into nachos (I know). For his tacos, Ben makes in-freaking-sane fake meat. At some point, I started adding his fake meat concoction to my nachos and that shit is like chocolate and peanut butter, let me tell you. This time, I skipped the beans (I kind of think that with nachos, you need to either go bean or go fake meat but not both) and made “meat” nachos. Holy shit it’s a miracle I’m here writing this post right now because these nachos were so delicious you could die and also I’m really full and it’s only a matter of time until I’m like the fat dog who couldn’t fit through the doggy door in one of the few Super Bowl commercials that actually made me LOL.

Here’s how you do it.

How to Prepare Fake Meat for Nachos or Tacos

Ingredients

• one package Boca or Morningstar Farms fake meat crumbles
• 1/2 one medium-large onion, diced
• 3 tablespoons oil (I know it’s a lot, but yeah it’s good)
• 2 teaspoons chili powder
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• a dash to a couple pinches cayenne

Directions

Put all ingredients in a large frying pan. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for approximately 10 minutes (maybe 15 for tacos — make sure it’s all the way hot (for nachos this isn’t as important because you’ll be baking it). I recommend using this in place of black beans in nachos (you can also omit the onions from the nachos recipe if you like because there are onions in the “meat”) (also, this is probably more than you’ll need for a single order of nachos; use the leftovers for tacos or whatever).

Enjoy!

For some mysterious reason, I’m kind of obsessed with red velvet cake. I’ve only had it a few times and was never all that impressed with it because it doesn’t really taste like anything. I decided that making red velvet cupcakes that actually taste like something would be my baking project for January.

I hit up google and found this Smitten Kitchen recipe, which seemed good because she shared my issues with red velvet cake. Then I clicked the “adapted from” link to check out The New York Times red velvet cake recipe, which is exactly the same, word for word. (I noticed the same thing with her pineapple upside-down cake recipe, which, aside from omitting the cardamom, is an exact copy of the Gourmet recipe.) I thought it wasn’t cool to copy a recipe word for word, even if you link the original. What’s up with that?

Anyway, I followed the Times recipe exactly but for switching cake for cupcakes and using cupcake liners instead of butter and made the following high-altitude adjustments: decrease sugar to 1 1/2 cups plus 3 tablespoons and decrease baking soda to 1 1/2 teaspoons. I used this creamy vanilla frosting, which was kind of a lot of work but really good. Don’t cut this recipe in half — it didn’t result in the tragedy some commenters indicated but it wasn’t enough frosting. Also I recommend beating everything for longer than the recipe says — just a minute or two for the butter and butter and sugar and a good 5 minutes more at the end. The sugar granules went away after the 15-minute (exactly!) refrigeration.

So, if you’re in the market for good red velvet cake and coordinating frosting recipes, there you go!

Although I’m a child of the 70s, I’d somehow gotten this far in life without ever having pineapple upside-down cake. Weird, right?

When I realized it was the perfect dessert for a New Year’s Eve celebration that included 70s-friendly fondue, I figured I’d make a pineapple upside-down cake. It was very easy and very good! I used this recipe, with the following changes: (1) decrease cardamom to 1/2 teaspoon; (2) use canned pineapple rings because we couldn’t find a pineapple that was ripe at the last minute — canned pineapple also provides the juice, so that’s cool; (3) adjust for high altitude — decrease baking powder to 1 1/2 teaspoons and decrease sugar (in cake, not topping) to 3/4 cup; (4) use spiced rum because that’s what we had; and (5) sprinkle cake with rum after the kids get their slices.

Everybody had seconds, so I think that means the cake was a hit. I’ll definitely be making it again.

Also, if you were wondering, yes, toddlers like fondue as much as they like messing with the fondue skewer things. (Recipe here — we omitted the cherry brandy, because who has cherry brandy sitting around and who wants to buy cherry brandy just to have a tablespoon to put in the cheese fondue you make once every 10 or so years.)

Also, happy new year!!