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I tried a new recipe today for beef enchiladas. I saw them making them on everyday food and frankly, I love enchiladas. I should note however that I NEVER make enchiladas with red sauce because I’ve only ever had it canned and have never found it to be very tasty. Now, everyday food is by no means over the top delicious gourmet stuff but the recipes are usually tasty and reliable and I love that they have special freeze it recipes with instructions on how to freeze AND reheat. I mean I figure that you can freeze anything at home that you can buy frozen at the store but that doesn’t always mean I know the best way to go about it. So, back to the recipe at hand…

The sauce: was a huge disappointment. Luckily I noticed this while the sauce was still simmering and not after I had taken the pan steaming from the oven. The sauce was super spicy in spite of the fact that I took most of the seeds out of the chipotles and very flat. I can only explain it as the sauce had no roundness… no dimension. So I added the juice of half a lime, a tablespoon of brown sugar and I whisked in some melted bittersweet chocolate that was left on the whisk from the brownies I was making… just as much as you would lick off I suppose. The sauce was now much improved.

Assembling the enchiladas: Because I am lazy and because I have just made enchiladas so many times I no longer heat the tortillas before assembling and I no longer waste time rolling them. I just layer it all in like a great big enchilada pie or Mexican lasagne as it were. I did the same here and it worked just fine. Maybe if I was serving it to someone fancy I would roll them but then again I can’t say that I wold be serving someone fancy everyday food enchiladas.

Plating: I served them up with a nice salad and a dollop of whipped cream to cut the heat of and some beer that’s been rolling around in our fridge for months. Luckily, it was ancient sumerian beer, it probably never goes bad.

Because the enchiladas were so quick and easy (I made the sauce at lunch and assembled at dinner) I had time to throw together some brownies. Yum! Double chocolate chunk fudge brownies. I ate two and I don’t even like chocolatey desserts.

That’s all on the cooking front. Chase spent some more time in her pool today because it was blazing hot. Well I guess it wasn’t hot in the house but we needed a little change of scenery and it’s really too hot to go much of anywhere. She loves that thing. She’s so big now. Just in the last few days she can sit up all by herself with no propping and doesn’t topple over. I gave her her first popsicle today. Really just a frozen cube of peaches in the little mesh teether thing. She loved it sucked it until her little fingers and mouth were all red from the cold.

Tomorrow I have class and I’m going to try a summer corn soup. We’ll see how that goes.

We finally did it!  We found our new sofa.  Check it out…

It only took us like 6 months to find it.  I won’t spare you with the gory details of the last 48 hours and who ultimately won our business and more than earned their commission (because my sister says I’m overreacting!) but I just don’t like uber-slimy sales tactics.  Anyway get your butts a-ready for some sitting cause it will be here in 4 to 6 weeks.  You can rest assured it’s comfy as Chase has already given it her stamp of approval lounging all over it at the store.  I smiled but was really thinking ok, cute but remember to hold it in at both ends honey!  “Barry” at Gavigans was sure to mention that we’re “paying” for U.S. labor and the English Company website says they use virgin foam.  Is that their way of saying rest assured that your couch won’t come stuffed with sawdust and broken glass?  Is that wrong?  Maybe all the news programs are just being alarmist about all the recent harmful Chinese imports?

Anywho… we kept it simple this weekend.  We cooked out yesterday and grilled ribeyes again.  I did those tomatoes topped with goat cheese on the grill again they are just fantastic.  What?  Share the recipe?  Soon… soon, I promise.  Today I just did fish tacos again.  I haven’t even seen a Baja Fresh in months so I’m left to my own defenses but my version is a pretty good substitute.  Then again, if you put guacamole on most things they taste pretty good.  Mmm…. guacamole burger, but I digress.

Our baby food experiment has been going well.  I did carrot and peach purees today.  The peaches were sweet and juicy and very tasty.  I left them a little chunkier than a true smooth puree and Chase did not know what to make of the texture.  She seemed to get used to it as we went along.  I know I griped about having her in the winter and not being able to go outside much but it’s totally paying off now to be starting solids right smack in the middle of summer’s bounty.

Chase has her six month check up on Thursday.  I’m curious what her weight will be.  She’s such a chunkster.

We spent our non-working hours today running errands and splashing in the baby pool. The weather was perfect for a little cooling down.

And I tried a recipe for a delicious summertime drink! I got a windfall of basil from my friend Lisa. Bruschetta anyone?

Chase had fun today at Whole Foods. She smiled at everyone but not before checking with mama to see if it was ok. She’s never done that before, it was pretty cute and I suppose better than her just straight up crying. Stranger danger as it were. Here’s a picture of the fruit and herb carafe

I love the look of these. I was thinking about printing them and hanging them in a series above our dresser.  Oh, and did anyone even get the whole happy birthday bean pie thing??  That’s classic A Different World.  Come on people!

I saw this on a blog today and thought it was hilarious.  Apparently I’m way late in the game and this isn’t news to anyone but me.  Whatever, here goes:

You Google your name + needs and cut and paste what comes up.

Stephanie needs some help- uh yeah, that goes without saying.  Help convincing our babysitter to drop out of school and take care of Chase full time!  Wait, what did you think I meant?

Stephanie needs cash-fast-but times are tough- always.

Stephanie needs a strong manly shoulder to lean on- thank god i have one!

Stephanie needs a sound proofed home to protect her- Fo sho!  Those danged fireworks…

Stephanie needs some quick cash- are you sensing a theme?

Stephanie needs a job!!! Any ideas???- hehe

Stephanie needs to stand out- needs to?  how about DOES?!  

Stephanie needs to stay focused on managing her resources- Sigh.. I’ll get to it.

I hope you like your happy birthday bean pie! Happy half-birthday Chase! Today was a big day! We had a 4th of July bbq and Chase got a brand new big girl car seat as you can see. Since it was her half birthday she got a few little other treats. Barrettes and some simple toys. I love love love the barrettes. She will never go barrette-less again!  I can’t believe that she’s six months old already.  I looked at the pictures I took today and I hardly recognize my little baby.  Her new thing for this week is angry face.  She wrinkles her nose and breathes in and out really fast.

Choosing a carseat was so difficult. I subscribe to consumer reports so I could see how various seats were rated. The Britax Marathon and the Evenflo Triumph 5 were pretty much even except the Triumph is 50 bucks cheaper. BUT now there’s a new version of the Triumph that has a higher weight limit. The thing is, this seat has never explicitly been tested. It’s just an updated model of the tested seat… sigh… so complicated. Anyway it’s nice and cushy so we’ll see. Pictures for you… enjoy! Oh, and check the bib! Born to be spoiled all major credit cards accepted!

It’s about that time of the semester when things start to get hairy and I start to feel like I want to watch Wayne’s World in my soy bamboo pyjamas while eating coffee ice cream in bed. But I won’t, I’ll persevere! I finished one task today and even though I am still agonizing over it’s quality I think it’s time to just let it go. This is what I do. I worry and worry myself into a frenzy to the point where I am paralyzed by indecision. Then someone talks me down and I actually start writing. Once I’ve written something then I can start worrying about how bad it is and wait for the impending bad feedback. 9 times out of 10 the feedback I get is not bad. So why worry? I don’t know, it’s some ridiculous dysfunction that I picked up along the way.

Ben’s parents are here for a visit. They treated us to Dinner at… you guessed it Donna’s!  Zang!  I know, I know we go there ALL the time but dang! The food is so good. You know the food is good because there’s no salt or pepper on the table and no one ever notices. We went for the works appetizers, dessert, the whole deal and it was all delicious. I especially liked the calamari.. gently breaded and fried but tender tender tender and tasty! As a bonus it was 10 dollar pasta night! I had the house ravioli stuffed with cheese and roasted veg. Dessert was tiramisu. Everyone else’s stuff looked good too but frankly I was too rapped up in dying over my own plate.

I’ve been researching my paper topic on Westlaw. My topic is about property rights in virtual stuff in particular as it relates to users of Second Life. I’ll bet you didn’t know that if you search “Second Life”on Westlaw you come up with all kinds of crazy nonsense in your results. Like people facing second life sentences… nice!

I have a picture for you! It’s Chase eating blueberries yesterday.

My friend Lisa gave me this recipe originally from Williams Sonoma

• 1 1/4 c flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 c butter
• 1/2 c firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 6 tbsp granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1c semi sweet chips
• 3/4 c milk chocolate chips
• 3/4 c white chocolate chips

Bake at 350 for 10-13 minutes

Cream butter and sugars until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla. Add dry ingredients in two batches mixing only enough to incorporate. Mix in chips. Drop by tablespoonful onto prepared cookie sheets. These cookies are tender, soft, and delicious. We have never tried them as actual triple chocolate chip cookies but rather use the recipe for it’s soft baked texture and add our own favorite chips. Usually we use mini-morsels because I find the cookie to chip ratio with mini-morsels very desirable. The last time we tried them we used mini-morsels and heath chips! Those were good!

that I spend sitting at my computer pretending that I have nothing to do and hoping desperately that someone comes online to distract me.  I NEED distraction.  I’ve already cruised through all of my bookmarks.. so here I am.  I have written three paragraphs of my 25 page paper the draft of which is due on Thursday.  I’m awesome!  Best procrastinator ever.  Honestly, I don’t know how to do it any other way.

Meanwhile, you would not believe how many loads of washing have been through that little machine today.  I should probably give it a rest but I hadn’t really thought about it until just now.   We did some running around today to pick up supplies and some stuff for the room.  We’ll still have to make a run to Ikea for a few things but I think we have most of it covered.  I picked up Super Foods for Babies from Barnes and Noble.  I had some nice blueberries from the farmers market and thought I might try my hand at making baby food for Chase.  It’s not like I don’t have the equipment so why not give it a go.  I did them up with some peaches and put it through a sieve.  I have them setting up in ice cube trays now and then I guess I’ll dump em out into a ziplock.  It looks good but you know it has to pass the real test…
I’ve been loving Starbucks’ orange passion iced tea.  All of a sudden it hits me and I run to the cupboard and it’s still there!  A box of Starbucks iced tea bags.  I rifle through them and sure enough there are four bags marked passion so I brew them up.  I don’t have orange syrup so I improvise and squeeze an orange into the mix and sweeten it with regular sugar.  Voila!  It tastes JUST like the real thing and I am so happy I drink ALL of it.  We had chicken for dinner.  I had all of like 20 minutes to get it prepped and roasting.  I take it out of it’s cryovac wrap stuff and get it butchered up in like 3 minutes flat.  I have never had my way with a chicken like that.  It looks great all cut up into neat little pieces.  I slap it on the pan, quick with the evoo, salt, and pepper.  I reach for the paprika and start to sprinkle before I realize that it’s not paprika but rather cinnamon.  Mmm.. cinnamon chicken.  I suppose I could have rinsed them and started again but no time!  So i push on.  The house smells like roast chicken and cookies.  It was fine in spite of the strong cinnamon aroma.  it actually tasted good and added some dimension to the seasoning.  I don’t however think it necessary to duplicate my mistake on a regular basis though.

I also used the frozen peaches to do a cobbler from the July issue of Fine Cooking.  The biscuits were good but I’ll wait for ripened summer fruit before trying this again.  I also whipped up some chicken salad a la starbucks because theirs is so good.  I know, I know you wouldn’t think it but it’s so good with the craisins and the tarragon.  We’ll see if I can duplicate it.  They serve it on multigrain.. I’ll have to come up with an appropriate vessel some time before lunch tomorrow.

Busy busy… until tomorrow.