I’ll tell you why.  It snowed last night but not enough to make playing outside worthwhile even though it was relatively nice out.  The mall has a pretty good play area but we always drive by a McDonalds that has a huge play structure that’s visible from the road.  So, today I pulled a quick u turn and decided to check it out.  It would have been awesome if there were lots of nice kids to play with but when does that ever happen?  So having the playground all to ourselves was the next best thing and it was huge!  It had a slide and bridge and the whole bit, pretty cool and a great option for days when play is limited to indoors activities.

Since we didn’t have soup and sandwiches for lunch I decided to do it for dinner.  I turned last night’s roast chicken into chicken salad sandwiches and made a batch of this lentil soup.  I like making something out of nothing.  Making soup is particularly satisfying.  I can’t think of another way to make water taste so good.  This recipe is pretty much made entirely from pantry items.  I can always dig a bag of lentils out of the cupboard.  It’s a simple recipe but very tasty.

Lately I’ve been having trouble getting Chase to do anything that’s not playing with me even when there are other kids around.  BUT I’ve found that inviting her to play in the kitchen while I make dinner works.  Plus you can’t discount that wholesome feeling.  Just balance it out by letting your kids play with Simpsons figurines.  Here, Lurlene sings for the children.

I survived day 2 of no nap.  It was mostly ok.  There was a rough patch right around 2pm but we recovered nicely, made it through dinner easily and to bed on time.  To bed on time is huge.  Huge.  Tomorrow I’m going to re-implement the nap and see how it goes.  She should be tired enough between skipping her nap for two days and going to gym tomorrow to take a little afternoon rest and get to bed at a reasonable hour.  I’m hopeful that a couple of nights of painless bed time will also be enough to keep her in bed tomorrow night until she dozes off.  I’m hopeful.

So, tomorrow gym in the morning, followed by a nap during which I plan to catch up with all kinds of stuff online and finally I want to make some focaccia so that I can try this recipe that I found while googling for dinner.  It’s so crazy that it might just be good.  Hmm, that means I also have to run to the store for tuna.  I’ll work that in somewhere.  I also scored two new cookbooks today.  I’m going to take a look tonight.  I’m even contemplating attempting to menu plan again.  What have you been cooking?  Uh… Yeah, so I do want to make that recipe but that’s not what I need to focaccia for.  The focaccia is for this.  Though I see why I was confused, they both have tuna.

This version is a one skillet dish from the Cook’s Illustrated Cover and Bake cookbook.  The spaghetti for chili mac really shouldn’t be mixed in like this nor should the beans but in this recipe the macaroni cooks right in the sauce, one pot!  Oh, and the beans?  Made in the crockpot.  I cooked them all day and they got nice and soft.  Easy.  I put half in the chili and half in the freezer.This recipe also doesn’t have you boil the meat as you ordinarily would.  I’m pretty sure I posted the traditional version of the Cook’s Illustrated recipe but here’s a recap that features that recipe as well as Rachel’s from Coconut & Lime, another Baltimorean.  The Cover and Bake version is here.   Just be sure to use a pot big enough to accommodate all of the liquid.  I have a deep skillet that came with my pressure cooker and it works really well for this dish.  It must be about 4″ deep but otherwise looks like a 10 or 12″ skillet.

We top Cinci chili with grated cheese.  I omitted the cayenne and Ben declared it delicious for the first time.  He always eats it but I guess he usually finds it too spicy.  Last night we couldn’t stop going back for more.  I was hopeful that Chase would eat it since it looks like spaghetti and sauce but she took about two bites and declared that she was done.  I can only guess it was all the new intense flavors.  She just skimmed the cheese off the top.  I’m kind of hungry again just thinking about it.  Maybe I’ll heat up another bowl and have a snack while I peruse the baby name book.

It was like 90 degrees here.  We went to the park, me and Chase that is, and then to Belvedere square so I could finally get my sandwich from Atwater’s.  I got a cup of soup that was so good.  It was something like butternut squash with crab and shrimp.  But it wasn’t creamy, it was a broth and had delicious sliced mushrooms in it.  I should have paid more attention.  I’d eat it for lunch again in a heartbeat.    We walked around a little while longer then returned to evaluate Ben’s progress.  It appears that the front and back room are now insulated!  Only our room has been patched but I’m hopeful that he’ll get to the back room sometime this week.  Then we can get ready to paint next weekend.

Chase has decided that she wants that to be her room.  So it looks like we’ll be moving her down the hall and moving the baby into her room.  It seemed like a good idea until we realized that it might mean painting two rooms instead of one.  I was hoping to get the hallway worked in there too but it looks like that might not happen.  We’ll see.  30 days to go.

Yesterday was also the day I embarked on the great pork and beans crock pot experiment.  I had a little pork loin from Springfield in the freezer.  On Tuesday I cut some boneless chops from it and put the other half back in the fridge deciding to figure out what to do with it later.  I found a pound of dried navy beans in the pantry, did a little research online and came up with pork and beans.  I put the beans in the slow cooker with enough water to cover them by about half an inch and added in a goodly sized dollop of molasses, a squirt of ketchup and a spoonful of mustard. I seasoned with salt and pepper and sat the pork on top.  I seasoned the pork with salt and pepper too then slathered it with a mixture of brown sugar, dijon and balsamic.

So here’s the critical part.  It will taste delicious but you have to cook it for a long time to soften the beans.  A long time, like all day.  Like not from 11:30 to 6, but longer.  We had an impromptu potluck so I pulled it out of the machine but it could have gone at least another hour.  The beans were soft but not as creamy as I would have like baked beans to be.  The flavor was good though.  I sliced the pork and we ate it that way because it was eaten along side other dishes but I shredded the leftover and mixed it into the beans.  Then tonight franks and beans were on the menu.  That’s right, with apples AND apple sauce by request.

This was the first time I’ve done dried beans in the crock pot.  I’m kind of amazed at how well it worked.  I’ve used the pressure cooker for beans and this definitely won’t replace the pressure cooker because you’re looking at like 10 hours versus 30 minutes but still.  You could cook beans all day while you’re at work.  That’s mighty convenient.

Lastly, Chase blew me away tonight with her picture.  She’s been working up to drawing faces for a while.  I’ve been trying to save every scrap of paper that she doodles on thinking this is it, her first face.  But then I saw this one.  THIS is her first face.  Her first unmistakeable eyes, nose and mouth face and she was pretty excited.  I love it.  I’m going to go hang it on the fridge and now I can stop feeling bad about the scraps of paper that got lost in the shuffle.

That’s enough sharing for tonight.  I have an appointment for my last follow up ultrasound tomorrow morning.  I’m anxious to see what’s going on inside there.  Really anxious.  Hopefully I’ll have a few good pictures to share.  I’d love to get some more of those 3d shots.

The downtown market is huge.  They had to move the section for artists across the street to a completely separate location.  They used to be blended but now the entire original market is food only.  Chase decided she prefers downtown.  It has kettle corn.  It’s pretty amazing.  I thought we ran out of bacon so I bought two pounds and I bought a pound of Carolina shrimp since I always talk myself out of buying the farm raised shrimp from China.  The price is comparable so if it’s good I’ll stick with it.  We got more tomatoes because I can’t stop eating tomato bacon sandwiches with basil.  I tried it once because we had no lettuce and now I’m hooked.  Plenty of mayo please.  

Tomatoes and red peppers were the only veg I bought today.  I bought the rest of our fruits and veg for the week yesterday.  The red peppers are for pepper jelly.  I bought more jalapenos than I thought I could ever use but since I’ve been eating them hot out of the oven wrapped in bacon now I don’t know (thanks Erin!).  I bought blackberries for jelly but ended up not having quite enough fruit so I mixed them with some mystery berries that I froze a while back but neglected to label.  They turned out to be strawberries so I made a batch of mixed berry jam.  So the jam is done.  I hope to do the pepper jelly tomorrow and then move on to some pickles.  Though I don’t have a good recipe.  Have a good recipe for dill pickles?  I have a new book with a recipe that looks good but nothing tried and true.  

Oh, and about the sheep mask.  They were handing them out at the market.  The reverse is a $1 off coupon for the Maryland State Fair.  It starts on August 28.  Looks like we’re going this year.

On last night’s episode Bobby challenged some guy to a meatball challenge and man, did they ever look tasty.  The looked tasty enough to induce me to make them after a long day at work today.  Bobby’s version looked like they were probably pretty good but the challenger’s were just simple straightforward meatballs.  

In reading the reviews on the recipe, I noted that a common complaint was that the estimate for prep time was way off.  To cut down on time a little I did as much prep work as I could in the food processor.  I used the fp to make the bread crumbs, grate the cheese (you don’t even have to use the grating disk) and mince the onion.  It took about an hour to make the sauce and meatballs from start to finish and that includes the time it took me to wander out and pick the basil and spend a few minutes talking over the fence.

The bottom line?  This is a yummy recipe.  I liked cooking the meatballs in the oven rather than the stovetop as it was less messy and the meatballs came out nice and tender.  The meatballs have pretty typical ingredients in them.  The big difference is the number of eggs.  4 eggs to a pound of meat is completely new to me and makes for a pretty wet mix but it works (though I did have to add extra bread crumbs).  The sauce was tasty and just the right thickness which is something I tend to struggle with.  Chase isn’t eating dinner this week but Ben thought it was delicious.  You can find the recipe for Maroni meatballs and sauce on the Food Network website.

With the car out of the way we spent some time this weekend thinking through the week’s dinners.  So far so good.  Tonight I made this chili from Fine Cooking and was really happy with the results.  Pureeing some of the beans with the tomato and chipotle is really an interesting technique and it really made this a quick dinner.  I bastardized this salad from Ina Garten (courtesy of Erin, thanks for the great tip!) and subbed it in for the plain avocado topping called for in the original recipe.  The chili is REALLY good with lots of limey avocado on top and a dollop of sour cream.  I’m just glad I did it.  It’s so easy to fall into a rut of take out.  So easy, too easy.  My only goal for tonight is to pick which of the 5 meals we planned to do tomorrow.  It’s my only goal, I can do this!  Right?

Here are a few pictures from memorial day:

The recipe is a basic recipe for vanilla cake with chocolate and lemon variations.  Next up chocolate.  You can find the recipe here.

I hope you had a great long weekend!

I used chicken thighs and made about half the recipe.  Seriously, I just can’t get over how easy it was to make, how few ingredients made it taste good and how hands off the cooking was.  I didn’t even bother with the tomato flipping.  The most delicious parts are the saucy tomato bits.  But the basil is good too, it comes out all crispy, salty and de-licious!  

As a rule, I don’t usually like Jamie Oliver’s recipes.  I thought about what two handfuls of cherry tomatoes looked like for a while and then just decided to throw the whole container in because I plan to shop tomorrow and I don’t want to deal with two containers of them.  That seemed to work out just fine.  :)   Try it, you’ll like it.

To be honest, my idea of chili mac is delicious fragrant Cincinnati chili ladled over hot buttered spaghetti… and this is not… well, that.  It was good but not great.  It was however a quick and nutritious meal that can be put together from pantry items and a pound of ground beef or turkey.  With a little tweaking I think this fresh, homemade version of hamburger helper could go far.  We’ll probably be trying it again.  I may even try to figure out a way to give a go at seasoning it like cinci chili.  

With the ground beef I made a meatloaf.  Neither of us cares for it much but it seemed weather appropriate and honestly, there’s just not that much you can do with ground beef.  I think the problem is that my meatloaf always kind of just tastes like a big loaf-shaped meatball.  I always sort of think what’s the point?  I’d might as well have made meatballs and had dinner ready faster.  Anyway, this particular recipe for meatloaf from BHG was really good.  I’m going to post the recipe for it soon because it was really good and worth trying if you have some ground beef and no clue what to do with it.  We were both impressed.  I baked it on Saturday night up to the point of glazing, brought it up to room temp on Sunday, applied the glaze and reheated.  Dinner was on the table in 20 mintues!  

I’m corning my own beef as we speak!  It won’t be ready in time for St. Patrick’s day tomorrow but I’ll probably make it for dinner on Thursday or Friday night.  Close enough by my measure.