i like to eat turkey in a big brown shoe

It's finally been confirmed that I do indeed get to cook Thanksgiving this year. Yay! It won't be in my own kitchen, but I think that's okay since the kitchen I'll be cooking in could fit a small army. In preperation for the big day, I've been pouring through past issues of Gourmet (RIP) to find some new ideas. I've got lots of ideas and will be attempting to try out the recipes on the fam before they make it to the Thanksgiving table. Which means, if all goes according to plan, we will be eating very well for the next few weeks. Yum.

Over the weekend we tried the beet-pickled deviled eggs. Which were really just a sneaky way to make deviled eggs look pretty. But since B and I don't really need too many excuses to make deviled eggs, we were all over it. Dee-lish. Don't think we'll make them for Thanksgiving though - they seemed more suited to the Halloween party table that they were on. I really wish I had remembered to snap a picture. Instead I'll leave you with the picture from the magazine:

B: Three is the new tantrum

I finally did it...I accepted that the era of the blog boom is mostly dead...likely replaced by this facebook thing people keep talking about, so I finally went through and cleaned out my list of favorites. I always find dead blogs kind of sad. I know ours was (or continues to be)!

Anyways, I did it. No more will I carry around a long list of blogs dead for more than a year.

On another front, why do they always talk about the terrible twos? It must be because it sounds good...it sure as hell doesn't get any better after two! One of the things that I wasn't prepared for was the "silliness". It is like she is holding a contest to see how much time she can possibly waste being silly. I know it sounds wrong, but this is actually waaaaay more frustrating than the tantrums. If she hits her sister, she gets a time-out and tantrum or no, the rule is clear. With the silliness, there is no rule that it shouldn't take 25 minutes to pick out a pair of socks, but that is what happens. You don't want to get mad about a little girl being silly, but it can absolutely test every last ounce of patience you have just trying to get a pair of socks on.

hello rutabaga!

There's no doubt now that fall is here. We dropped about 30 degrees in two days, and now it's supposed to rain next week. There's snow in the mountains and the down blanket is on the bed. Hurray for fall! Hurray for the fall food!

B and I have been on a kick for the past couple years of trying to cook seasonally. It seems logical, and really when you think about it, of course you would cook with what's in season, but it's harder than you think. Growing up, meals really didn't change with the seasons - sure, there was less barbecuing in the winter, and maybe a few more soups, but why wouldn't you want to use peaches in January? And really, I totally understand - our parents went from growing up with only seasonally available foods to having a giant bounty of freshness, pretty much whenever they wanted. Of course you would want to take advantage of that. But now we're swinging that pendulum back the other direction and attempting to eat "locally," which also means seasonally. Most of the time it's pretty easy, and we're having fun trying new recipes and ingredients (hello rutabaga!). Now that fall is here we're embracing it completely. Last week we busted out our essential fall salad: mixed greens, thinly sliced onions, pears, goat cheese, and a fresh balsamic vinaigrette. I think tonight we may switch out the pears for pomegranate. Yummmm...

Oddly enough though, we had a really tough time with summer. Maybe it was because we were really busy (newborns will do that to you), or maybe it was because our backyard garden didn't come through as well as we'd hoped, or maybe it's because cooking in the summer when its 90-100 degrees just doesn't sound appetizing. Other than our standby tomato bruschetta (and of course pesto), we didn't do much distinctly summer cooking. Anyone have any great summer dishes to share?

updated

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I've had a post rolling around in my head for a while now. It was about babies and how wonderful they are and how amazing Cashew is and how different it is this time around and etc etc. And it was all emotional too about postpartum depression and how I had it with the Little One and it totally sucked and having Cashew has really shown me just how joyful new life can be. But it was taking WAY too long to write and I wasn't posting anything else because I wanted to get this post up. And then Dooce went and wrote it for me and I don't need to say anything more. I didn't have quite the experience that she did, but she sums it up pretty good. So there. Mischief managed. Resume blogging.

And did you know that today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day? Y'arrrr!

seems logical (if you forget about 6)

So the Little One started asking about some Spanish words the other day. (Yay for Handy Manny!) We were counting to 10 when I realized I couldn't remember what came after cinco, and I paused to think about it... "I don't remember what comes next - do you know?"

The Little One looked up at me and with complete seriousness and said "seven-os"?

Not sure if I've posted about this before, but this commercial cracks me up:

Even better is the one aired in the UK:

Gotta love the Brits.

the new pirate

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We're really embracing the whole "suburban family" thing. Step one was the van. Now we have step 2:

No, we're not wearing silly hats and rampaging lands... Here's another hint:

The Little One loves our new toy. She even likes washing it. Actually, I think washing it was the highlight of her week. Here it is, in all it's glory:

She's a beauty, eh? 

Earlier this month we were invited to go camping with some friends, and with an eminent UCSC geo friends camping trip looming later this summer, we decided to give it a shot. We hadn't been camping with kids yet, so we didn't really know what we were getting into. The only tent we had was our old 2-man backpacking tent, which obviously wouldn't work for the 4 of us. We thought about getting a giant family tent, but realized all those years of camping and backpacking had made it so that we're tired of sleeping on the ground. We thought about it for a long time and realized that we really weren't going to be excited about camping unless we had something a little more, well, comfortable. Enter the Viking. 

We took it out over Memorial Day weekend with some friends and some friends of friends and it worked great. The whole experience, however, was a little much. Eight adults, seven kids - four of which were under 6 months old. We gave the college kids next to us plenty of reasons to use birth control. I think the Little One had a good time though, and Cashew did surprisingly well. Next stop: the beach?