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One of the best parts of my day is coming home after work and school, kicking my shoes off, combining ingredients to make a nutritious, home-cooked-with-love meal, sitting down with my family, digging in and hearing, “Ehhhh, this has too much garlic! Why is there ricotta in here? I hate ricotta! This is too hot! Waaahhh!” And that’s just from my husband.

To be fair…if I had a cooking advice column and someone asked me, “kdiddy, if I need two cloves of minced garlic for garlic bread and have a jar of minced garlic that I want to use up, can I just use that for the bread even though it equals 6 or 7 cloves of garlic?” my answer would be, “Absolutely. Especially if you want to have the garlickiest garlic bread that ever garlicked.” I honestly didn’t think it was that bad, but I love garlic so whatever. *breathes on you*

I didn’t really watch the debates last night. I was being a good student and studying for my Grammar mid-term that’s on Thursday. I appear to have a serious problem identifying phrasal verbs and some other shit and oh my god, I really can’t wait for this class to be over. It’s fascinating, sure, but I hate hate HATE tests and I seriously will not take another one after this. Except for my driving test. I really need to get on that. But that’s a whole other panic attack.

I did hear about McCain referring to Obama as “that one,” which, you know, smooooth move, Ex-Lax. I also really liked the part where he started talking about speaking softly and carrying a big stick and how Obama speaks loudly…and presumably carries a small stick and, hey, let’s just call this whole election thing off and have a dick-measuring contest!

I also skipped all of the punditry and relied on play-by-plays from Sarah Palin, John McCain, Joe Biden, and, of course, Biggie Smalls.

S’mores cupcakes, my friends. I made these for my co-worker’s birthday because I’m the nicest person ever. In making these, I learned that I should not bake after 10 p.m. because I tend to do shit like leave the vanilla out of the cupcakes (I’m rationalizing that the chocolate chips in them will be sweet enough), completely lose my ability to separate egg whites, thereby wasting 9 eggs and having to stomp to the corner store to buy a new dozen, and I also tend to accidentally flick meringue onto my face, into my hair, and onto the wall behind me.

I haven’t posted much recently about my cooking exploits. A possible reason for that is that I haven’t actually been cooking. A week in Conneaut with some overattentive grandmas and two weeks in OBX with caterers and other assorted foodies means that I’ve just been being fed.

While my stupid kitchen certainly isn’t as ideal as the beach house kitchen, it was still very nice to stock my fridge on Saturday and get back to the business of cooking for me and my dudes.

I think I’ve mentioned before that this summer I subscribed to a CSA that delivers to my campus. I am completely addicted to the amazing produce that I’ve been getting from them every week and I wish I could afford to subscribe to their fruit, dairy, and meat boxes. Maybe next year.

Quick, idealistic rant: I’ve read both The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan this year. I don’t think I need to tell you that our food systems are totally messed up and how sad it is that simple, good, healthy food is a luxury in this country. Big food companies, even many of the so-called “organic” companies, do not care about you or your health. They care about profit and are simply not concerned about what their business practices do to the people that they employ, to the people that they feed, to the ecosystem, or about how things operate on a basic level in the food chain. And after reading Pollan’s books, I’m fairly convinced that consumers will always lose out, particularly with the USDA’s shady regulations. I think we’re going to have to start kicking it old school. Producing what we can on our own and buying from farmers what we can’t, resorting to a trip to the grocery store for whatever is left.

I do want to start a garden, but finding the time to get our yard in shape before even a seed can be planted is tough. So I’m just doing what I can for now.

That said, let me tell you about the grub that I’ve cooked since we’ve been home.

Not surprisingly, I had some zucchini and squash in my CSA box this time. The husband does not like either (he’s stupid) and the baby is just picky about everything. I love the stuff, though. As luck would have it, a recipe for seasonal ratatouille came through Google Reader. I cooked this on Saturday with some of my fresh peppers and zucchini and tomatoes. I’ve been lunching on it all week. It’s delicious.

On Sunday, I embarked on a little experiment: baking bread. I’ve never made regular bread before. I mean, I’ve made dessert breads (banana, etc.), but not the actual stuff that you eat sandwiches with. My friend, Missy, recently bought a bread machine. Since I’m a sucker for gadgets, I started thinking about getting one, too. There were two problems, though. 1) They’re $120ish and 2) I have NOWHERE to put such a thing. But the prospect of throwing some ingredients in and having fresh bread a few hours later was still very tempting. So I decided to try making a loaf on my own to see if it was a total pain. If it was, I would consider the bread machine more seriously. If not, awesome.

I did a quick search for whole wheat bread recipes and found this one. Verdict? Dude, bread (well, basic bread like this one) is easy and I felt like a total superstar when I had two loaves of seriously scrumptious bread. The only flaw was that I didn’t realize that I really needed to shape the loaves, thinking that they would just spread out like other baked goods. My loaves resembled Mr. Potato Head bodies, but whatever.

The best part is that this is not what Pollan would call “imitation” bread, aka the bread that you buy in the grocery store that has tons of stuff added to it. It is quintessentially Bread and you can really tell the difference. I’m pretty confident that I can bake one of these every weekend and that it will be cheaper than the stuff from the store.

Monday night, I made lighter tacos from the latest issue of Everyday Food. (Doesn’t look like the recipe is online yet.) We eat tacos once or twice a month because they’re quick and easy and everyone likes them. But I’ve been wanting to move away from the crappy packets of taco seasoning. This recipe used onions and green peppers, chili powder and cumin. So simple and so good.

Last night, I had wine for dinner. Whoops.

As messed up as it is, vacation really stresses me out. Well, actually being on vacation is fine, but immediately before and after vacation is a really sucky time for me, I’ve found. Next week, we’re going on vacation with my dad. (One of the messed up “advantages” of a divorce is the multiple attempts at normal family activities.)

So, right now I’m dealing with both post and pre-vacation stress.

I worry about getting stuff done around my house and the various projects I had planned for this summer that I’m probably not going to get to. I worry about how I’m eating and the admittedly unhealthy goals I set for my 30th birthday. I REALLY worry about work and making sure I take care of everything there before taking off. And I’m just generally annoyed at the drama surrounding the vacation with my dad, which has opened up a ridiculous amount of issues with my family…over nothing, really.

It all makes me not want to go anywhere ever, which is messed up since I’m entitled to a break now and then. And I can’t help but feel like no one in my life gets just how much I need a break from everything. I need the people who care about me to be like, “Yes, Kelly, take some time. It’s totally fine and I promise that we will not make any attempts to make you feel bad about it or even give you an inkling that we are anything less than completely enthusiastic that you are taking some time off.”

Alright, I’m whining. I know this. I think I need more fiber, which explains this:

The stuff that looks like hamster food is Nature’s Path Smart Bran, featuring 13g of fiber per serving, and the container underneath has a few dollops of Stonyfield Farm Lowfat Vanilla yogurt. Alternative names for this meal are “Hippie Hippie Hippie Patchouli,” “Move, I Have to Poop,” or “I’m 90 God Damn Years Old.”

Yesterday, I got this gigantic falafel salad for lunch from the Mediterranean truck on campus. It was delicious and I mused to Angela about my theories on falafel, namely that something in it sends my seratonin soaring or something. That was the last thing I ate yesterday

We went grocery shopping and on the way home I started to have stomach cramps. The cramps continued the rest of the night, varying in intensity. They woke me up a few times, plus I had a really bizarre nightmare about Twitter and the baby came in and was asking me about something.

By 7:30 a.m., I felt like absolute shit. The cramps weren’t coming as frequently, but I now had body aches, a headache, some chills, etc. I am at work now and am going to Student Health at 3:30.*

I think maybe I have a touch of food poisoning and that maybe the lettuce and/or tomatoes in my salad were tainted. I won’t tell you what I’ve been imagining about the nice old man who putters around making falafel in his truck and what his bathroom habits are, but I’m sure you can imagine.

So, yeah. I have nothing else to add…besides a request that you all pity me.

*One very good argument for being a professional student is access to Student Health. I LOVE Student Health.

Kids, above is my first successful batch of homemade English muffins.

Look! Those nooks and crannies? I made those!

My first attempt ultimately failed. I never got a chance to get to the actual cooking and the dough, which had been sitting in the refrigerator for two days at that point, seemed a little funky. So I just cut my losses and tried again.

The baby and I tried one and they are very, very good. I really can’t buy packaged English muffins anymore…which is kind of a bad thing since these were a tad time-consuming for a bumbler like myself.

First, the lulz:

And now, the baking hubris.

So, I was all impressed with myself (and the sister-in-law) after the success of our cupcakes and decided to tackle a baking project that I’ve had my eye on for awhile: homemade English Muffins. I’ve had the tab for that recipe open in my browser for like two months and last night I finally decided to go for it, since I actually had all of the ingredients and some time to mess around.

It’s probably obvious to many of you smart folks that baking yeasty products on a humid June night in Pittsburgh is a Dumb Idea, but I’ve always turned my nose up at conventional wisdom.

See, everything was pretty much fine until I got to the kneading part. I’m sure that I’ve bitched about my tiny kitchen on here before, but let me reiterate that I do NOT have counters. Like, there just aren’t any. I have a patch of space next to the sink that houses the dish rack (er, well, a towel that I rest pots and pans on to dry), an apartment dishwasher with a few feet of space on top, and the stove. That’s it. Those are my working surfaces. I’ve moved prep operations out to the dining room table before but it’s obviously kind of a pain. So last night I decided to just clean the six or seven inches of space between the burners of the stove and do the kneading there.

So, not only did the dough start touching the gross burners almost immediately, since it was hot, the dough just got stickier and stickier…and I could not extract my hands from it. I spent about 15 minutes going, “Oh my god. Oh my god. I don’t believe this shit. Oh, shit. Where’s my wedding ring?”

Sigh. I let the dough rise in the fridge overnight and haven’t had a chance to actually cook the suckers, so whether or not the whole project is a failure remains to be seen.

However, I am happy to report that the baby and I went to the dentist today and neither of us has cavities! Woohoo! I was pretty concerned about the state of my teeth since it’s been about a year since I had them cleaned and I had a very sensitive spot in between two of my bottom teeth. I braced myself for them to say things like “root canal” or “fuck this, you’re getting dentures,” but it turns out that one of my gums is receding a little and I just need to be a little more vigilant with my brushing and flossing.

The hygienist lectured me on letting the baby brush his own teeth and I was starting to feel a little irritated since she kept saying stuff like, “And MOMMY is going to brush your teeth, right?” and “Yes, Dr. Dentist, and the baby’s mom agreed to pay more attention to his brushing habits.” God, lady, back off. She reminded me of the Wii balance board which, if you didn’t know, is a snarky little asshole. The last time I got on that thing it asked me if the baby had improved any and I said no because I’ve pretty much accepted that he’s going to be in the -15th percentile for weight until puberty. And you know what that thing said to me? It said, “Maybe you should pay more attention to the baby.” So I “accidentally” jumped on it during the ski jump game. I don’t like passive aggressive electronics.

Of course, it’s been like two weeks since I’ve done the Wii Fit and I can just imagine the earful I’m going to hear from that thing now.

Gah, four days since my last post and I feel all rusty. I’m not sure how to start one of these things.

Anyway, even though it’s somewhat after the fact, I want to thank the fine gals at Cupcakes Take the Cake for featuring my little cups of sin on their site and wave hello to all of the folks who wandered over here. I also need to acknowledge the sister-in-law, who was kind enough to procure many of the ingredients and also frosted the cupcakes, which is a step that I just don’t enjoy.

Thanks, bitch.

So, dudes. I need two things from you. I’m in the market for a new (biggish) purse/tote bag and would love some recommendations for handmade types. I’m also wanting to expand my food blog reading and could use some guidance there.

I have some more substantive posts floating around in my head but I’m still all disjointed.

Oh, dudes…look what I’ve wrought.

Pomatcha cupcakes (plus a drop of red food coloring because we like ’em pink and minus the pomegranate seeds because those aren’t around this time of year) and Brown Sugar Hazelnut cupcakes with Blackberry Buttercream Frosting

But that’s not all.

Kiwi Cupcakes with Lime Frosting

And I’m very sorry to do this to you, but

Mango Kulfi Cupcakes

I am going to send Ms. Raspberry Eggplant my Weight Watchers bills because I am going to eat the hell out of these cupcakes.

Also, please snicker at my Suzy Homemaker cupcake carriers:

Alright, I’m off to shower and get ready for the sister-in-law’s graduation party. Have a lovely Saturday!

I really like reading the cooking portion of Pioneer Woman’s blog, since I feel she and I share similar culinary challenges: picky eaters and a lack of “fancy” ingredients.

The similarities end there. PW takes very pretty pictures as she cooks and in the background, you can see her gorgeous kitchen, complete with big fancy appliances and stainless steel and, holy shit, counter space.

For serious, every time she posts a new recipe it looks like she’s on the set of a Food Network show.

On the contrary, here’s how I throw down.

Let’s see, we have Wal-Mart rice, some of which has spilled on the cookie tray, peanut butter, salt, salt…a waffle iron.

Of course, there’s a decent amount of evidence as to what I last cooked sprinkled on the stove top. You know, in case I want to recreate something and want to know what the ingredients were.

Ahh, my favorite. The knobs on my stove are organized in such a way that I don’t think is very intuitive. As I alluded before, I don’t have any counters, so one day while I was cooking, I set a Rubbermaid bowl on the stove and then turned what I thought was the front burner on to cook something. Yeah, it wasn’t. So, some of the bowl is still there. Coincidentally, that night was also the night we came to the dramatic realization that the baby had a tree nut allergy. It sucked, too, since I made this really yummy green curry with ground cashews. Not only were the leftovers cold and worthless when we got back from the hospital hours later, they were also deadly. Yay!

Also, this guy comes in and judges me.

For the record, I’m making apple butter pork tonight. Yum.