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Oh, the things we pretend our dogs say. Aw, liver snap! Is what Cricket exclaims when Teenie doesn’t quite make the top step, followed by snickering and then full blown guffaws. Well I’m looking down the barrel of a gun. Only a few days to finish up this paper but you’ll be glad to know that I’ve cracked 10 pages. Halfway there baby! The old me would be starting tonight so I consider this a personal victory.

We’re going to a pool party on Sunday so we picked up a little floatie for Chase to use in the pool. It has a crab on it.. of course. I have to tell you I am loving the no slippy’s. They are so frickin cute clipping up her little alfalfa tuft at the top of her head. I may or may not have a picture of that we’ll have to see what I can pull off of my cam. Did I tell you already that we’re waving? Whenever Chase sees someone new she “waves” by raising her arm in the person’s direction. Sometimes that’s all they get (except for her signature smile of course) but sometimes she moves her arm or her hand.

Last night we ate at Donna’s. I had the special goat cheese ravioli in brown butter and sage with carmelized onions. I could eat the onions by the spoonful and frankly what wouldn’t taste good bathed in browned butter? We went out last night and I had already thrown together another batch of white chicken chili so we had that tonight. It’s a good standby that can be thrown into the crockpot. This is the second time I’ve made it so I’m going to call it a keeper. I made the triple chocolate chip cookies again too. This time with a combo of mini chips and heath chips and a smattering of craisins for good measure. Ben whined about the craisins but I think we both agree that this batch is delicious and we’ll include craisins (never raisins) from here on out. Raisins are disgusting but craisins are dried fruit of the gods! They add a little chewiness and sweetness to the mix. Lastly, I’ve been working hard at beefing up the supply of baby foods in the freezer. This week I did peaches and nectarines, sweet potatoes and zucchini. I have to see what else I can drum up at the farmers market tomorrow. Def. more blueberries if they have them but also carrots and tomatoes. There’s a recipe for carrots and lentils with tomatoes and cheese. I want to do it up while tomatoes are still in season. Oh, and a watermelon, glorious watermelon!

Oh, and I forgot to tell you about last weekend’s steak. I made a little compound butter with garlic and parsley and it was so good. Hmm, a second story about food coated in butter. I should probably get my rag and stick ready. Ok, I found hair clippy pictures but couldn’t limit myself to posting just one so four it is.

Alright, enough already! Back to work for me.

But then again if you checked this earlier today you already know what we’ve been up to. Here’s a shot of Chase’s little instruments and her new no slippy hair clippy. No joke, that’s what their called. They stay in pretty well even though she has very little hair for them to grip. They also appear to be less of a choking hazard than the ones we had before.

Today was long and trying and I missed my afternoon class but everyone’s in bed now and all is well. I have one fifth of my paper that’s due next week done. I’ll take it though, one fifth is better than no fifths. I’m going to call it a fourth actually. I’m shooting for more like 20 pages than 25.

Wow, this post is super crappy. I’ve used all of my good thinking power to get out the five sentences that I added to my paper tonight. The only bright spot in all of this is that now I can climb the stairs to my ultra plush bed. Bah! I had all of these notes jotted down about funny things to write. I’ll give you one guess as to how many of those notes I was able to come across as I sat down to write. You got it 0! Zilch, zip, not a one. Can you believe that crap?

I just caught a segment of some PBS cooking show… a regional Louisiana cook makes fry bread with his friend’s Native American mother and then they top it like tacos.. nice.

I got another recipe mag.  This time from Cook’s Illustrated.  It’s supposed to be like 101 dinners in 30 minutes or less.  Looks like there’s some good stuff in there.  There are definitely a couple of duds and a couple of recipes that are a little suspect.  Beef Taco Bake?  Do I really need a recipe for that?  Just call it what I do… leftover pie.

This was a pretty good weekend as far as weekends go. After a very productive Friday afternoon we finally finished painting the bedroom. Danielle was down and we hit the ground running on Saturday. Ikea, the mall, dinner, and then back into town for Bastille Day festivities at her friend’s friend’s restaurant not too far up the street. The mall was excellent and I scored some sweet deals at the Gap on clearance. We picked up a few things for our room at Ikea including a matching bedside lamp for Ben’s night table that he smashed before we ever got it in the house… excellent. They have a huge assortment of halogen lightbulbs so we bought some replacements for the chandelier in the dining room. They’re a little more expensive but they’ll last forever which is good because the little torchiere style 20w bulbs always burn out in like a week. I hate it. We went to Longhorn steakhouse for an unremarkable but not bad dinner. It was the end to a looong day of shopping and nary another restaurant was in sight by that point. Well except for the DQ grill and chill and I vetoed that even though Ben lobbied hard for it.

Later, we went over to joint the festivities at Brasserie Tatin. It’s a really nice place and I would love to check out the regular menu but last they hosted a special event for Bastille Day. Ordinarily, the prix fixe menu cost $50 per person but we were VIP’s last night with our names at the door! Basically your 50 bucks bought you a nice buffet style dinner of assorted items. Marinated grilled veg, tender and delicious roast beef, summer sausage, cheeses, roast chicken, french style potato salad, haricots verts in a vinaigrette, and other assorted items that i can’t remember because you can only eat so much second dinner. There was plenty of wine to go around and desserts too. It was nice and warm with a gentle breeze on the terasse, a perfect night for a crisp and fruity nicely chilled glass of rosee. I realize now that I should have noted what I was drinking instead of just pouring it down my gullet. I have never bought a bottle of rosee but I would happily buy and serve that any time. It was truly perfect for the summer. My dessert was a light white cake topped with ripe strawberries and barely sweetened whipped cream. I am told that the woman that owns Tatin also owns a French bakery called Bonjour I may have to check it out. Oh heck, may schmay, I’m going to check it out.

We got invited to the after party but us babies couldn’t hang with those jet setters. Which is sad in so many ways. All in all it was a great time and the food was delicious. One last thing, and that’s that we came upon stunt baby the other day. It hadn’t occurred to us until just now but if only we’d known at the time just how much like Chase stunt baby was actually going to look..

Back to yesterday morning. Chase had her 6 month checkup. She weighed in at 23 lbs. and meausred 27 inches. The doctor was very happy with her progress but were not supposed to add any more solids until she starts to move around and thin out a little. Or until he reweighs her in 4 weeks. Shots are getting to be old hat for Chase but I’m sure that we’re BOTH glad that this series is finished with.

Chase sits up all be herself now and in the span of just a few days she has learned how to put her hands down to catch herself. In light of this new turn of events, she is not taking big girl baths without her baby tub, she can ride in the shopping cart, and can sit in highchairs at restaurants.

I tried another recipe from Fine Cooking’s Fresh magazine. Summer Corn Soup. It was delicious and summery as promised. The soup has just a hint of subtle but really robust heat. Probably from the pinch of cayenne pepper that the recipe calls for. I only had three ears of corn so I halved the recipe but you can’t really halve a pinch. I made it last night up until the point where you add the reserved corn kernels and pureed corn “cream” and then reheated it to warm through tonight. The soup is supposed to be topped with a dollop of sour cream, diced tomatoes, and a chifonade of basil. I didn’t have any fresh basil so I supped snipped chives over the top. Chives are my new favorite thing. I served it with a salad and a baguette we picked up today. We took a little trip over to Belvedere Square and happened upon one of those free Friday concerts. Chase loves music so we listened for a while.

We’ll it’s almost 10 and even though I didn’t have to do any more for dinner than throw a salad together I still haven’t accomplished anything for school. I did get a lot done for work though so that sort of counts I guess.

The top ten reasons I couldn’t hack in on Top Chef

10. I’m far too tired

9. When I come up with ideas… I don’t actually want to be challenged to follow through with them

8. I’d say something about the dude that sweats all over the food

7. I’d freak out and unleash all kinds of unairable words when I tried to plate stuff and my tower of whatever was dismantled

6. You probably get disqualified for seasoning things with dog hair

5. I need to know up front who’s responsible for doing dishes… can Ben come with?

4. I probably couldn’t get away with “helping” the way I do best (read: you guys clean up, I’ll go pick up the pizza)

3. A white boxy chef’s jacket + the camera = way more than 10 lbs

2. People would laugh at my knife skills… until I did something crazy and sliced my own thumb off then they’d just be horrified

1. People don’t like being bossed around by babies and besides Chase is getting too big for her Bumbo anyway… you didn’t think she wasn’t coming did you?

If that poor girl on top chef had only made her own sausage stuffed with something delicious like some kind of southwest blend of ground beef, black beans and spices.  She could have cooked it off, sliced it, skewered it with some nice fresh veg like onions and peppers and thrown it on the grill and she would have had a totally awesome reinterpretation of franks and beans!  Get it?  A frank stuffed with beans?  Oy!

He was missing today for hours. Evidently we couldn’t hear his meowls for help because he took to drastic measures. Anyone who knows Francis knows that he’s a kamikaze and only has maybe 6 lives left. That’s a generous estimate at that. I put both views to give you some context as to just how high the transom is.

I found out today that my paper is meant to be an opinion paper! This is huge because here I was agonizing (and not writing) over how I have these great ideas and not an ounce of factual basis or support for them. Ha! Who needs facts? Can I write 25 pages of personal opinion? You bet I can.