90 Billion Sodas

David and I have a new obsession, and it’s our goal to try all the bazillion kinds of fancy soda at this nondescript little hole in the wall my friend Dierdre found, Rocket Burger.

Over 300 different kinds of soda and new ones all the time that the staff is usually super excited about.  These people know their soda.

I totally wasn’t kidding about David and I trying them all… so be prepared for more soda posts.

We were only going to get a couple, but then they said if you buy five you get one free so… hell… you can never have too much soda.  The Fungal Fruit tasted like bubble gum which isn’t bad I guess but not a taste I’m excited about.  River City makes an awesome root beer and the Raspberry-Lime Rickey and Stewart’s Grape was delicious and exactly what you’d expect.

The Chocolate-Covered Maple Smoked Bacon… oooo that was good, but not for long.  That’s one you get to share the novelty of with other people.  After my first sip I swore I would drink a whole case, but by the third sip I was like “The smell of bacon in this mixed with the moisture on my face that is unavoidable with a carbonated beverage makes me constantly think that my face is greasy… and now I’m done.”

The Cafe Azteca Sparkling and Spiced Espresso Cola was my favorite.  It tasted like a dirty chai latte, but in soda form… I bet it would make a mind blowing float.  The Cafe Azteca is now tied as my favorite soda with one I got previously on an adventure with Dierdre called Leninade.  The carbonated lemonade was good, but the bottle kept us laughing all evening long because it was covered with hilarious communism jokes including the tag line, “Leninade, A Taste Worth Standing in Line For”.  Because the only thing that can make a good soda better is getting a hearty serving of political humor as well.

The way to my heart is through my rapidly clogging arteries.

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
My husband’s awesome,
Bacon.

For Valentine’s Day David made me a bouquet of roses… out of bacon.  I’m not a fancy girl, in fact I’m about as (monetarily) as low maintenance as they come… but I appreciate a thoughtful gesture, and I appreciate bacon.

Bacon roses.

What can I say, dude knows the way to my heart.

Food That Sucks

A short list of foods that seem nice but are really super super mean.

Cabbage

Every single time I try to cook cabbage (which is pretty often because we eat a lot of stir fry and cabbage is cheap) it sends me through this emotional rollercoaster of never knowing how much food I’m dealing with, seeming to change size every time I touch it.  It starts out looking like a normal head of cabbage, then expands exponentially with each slice, and ends the show by shriveling up to 1/10th of it’s origional self when I throw it in the pan.

Stupid lying cabbage.

Bailey’s Irish Cream.  I recently received a letter from Bailey’s.  It went a little something like this.

Dear Jenna,
You know how you spend a decent amount of time and effort thinking about and planning ways to avoid the alcoholism that is literally written into your DNA?  Like, much more time than the average person does, even the people with it staring at them from every branch of their family tree like you?  Well just in case there weren’t enough amazing drinks in this world tempting you towards it, we made this alcohol that would be so delicious in all six cups of coffee you were going to drink this morning anyway.
Have fun trying to resist when you’re barely even awake!

Screw you Bailey’s.  Screw you, then get in my coffee… but not till after 3pm… a girl’s gotta have standards.

Garlic Bread

You’re cheesy, you’re garlic-tastic, you’re covered in butter, and you have a bread base.  You’re basically a carb orgasm in my mouth.  You’re so awesome in fact that despite claiming we were having spaghetti for dinner I’ll probably only have a few bites of that and eat damn near a whole loaf of you instead.

Then you’ll do horrible things to me all night… giving me unkissable breath, making me burp garlic-tastic burps (which are substantially less tasty the second time around) and causing awkward noises to escape from the other end as well.  Although I guess this one is my fault for loving you so.

And yes, in my head all Italian food sounds like Mario.  It’s not racist, it just is what it is.

The middle-child blog.

Turns out I had a middle child blog.  And by “middle child” I mean that I totally forgot that it existed (although I’ll never openly admit that if it or one of my other blogs asks).  Oops.

Anyway, I remembered it tonight while David and I were making some fabulous sandwiches for dinner and decided to put those recipes on there… so if you’re feeling hungry feel free to hop over to my no-longer-forgotten blog Put This In Your Mouth to check out our sandwich gems the My BLT Had Sex With My BBQ Sandwich and the Hawaiian Mother Fucker.

Dear Homemade Bread, Get in my mouth!

Project ‘Summer of Whimsy’ Day 1

Fact:  Bread with rosemary in it is one of my favorite foods of all time.  I could eat loaves of the stuff and still be smiling about it while I moaned in pain on the couch all night long as a result.

There is absolutely no excuse for us to not have rosemary bread in our house all the time.

So my awesome thing for today was Verona and I brought out our inner bakers.  With my favorite cook book for bread recipes in hand,…

…some fresh rosemary from my friend Dierdre’s garden,…

…my tiny, adorable, and oh so eager assistant…

…we got to baking!

And by “we” got to baking I mean I got to baking and Verona got to shoving raw bread dough in her mouth every time I turned my back, it turns out girlfriend really loves her some rosemary.

It turned out kind of weird shaped, and didn’t taste nearly as good as I thought it should but I have some ideas to try for next time.

It did make a fabulous panini though.  Fresh from the oven rosemary bread, pesto, veggies, and pepperjack.  Yum!

St. Patrick’s Day Eve

Incase you weren’t aware, I tend to get a little excited about holidays.  And by a little excited I mean I get a little out of control.

This particular holiday is even worse though.  I married a Guinness loving Irish man and have given birth to at least one, possibly two, ginger babies (I still think Verona’s hair will get redder)… and (dad, stop reading, I’m about to make a dirty joke) I’m pretty sure I count as Irish now too since I have a little bit of Irish in me on such a regular basis.  Ooooo, mommy’s got a potty mouth!  Point being, St. Patrick’s Day is kind of a big deal around these parts.

Anyway, I suddenly realized that tomorrow, St. Patrick’s Day, we’ve got stuff all day long so I wasn’t going to get my green freak on… which means we were officially rocking St. Patrick’s Day Eve!  We started the morning by making some lemonade.  My friend Rachel and her daughter Carmen come over for Hoop Friday every week so Carmen got to help us.

Which of course we made green.

For post-nap lunch I made Verona and David mac and cheese.

And for dinner, broccoli and cheese twice baked potatoes.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s epic St. Patrick’s Day aventures in pictures.

Verona’s Birthday

So once upon a time my daughter turned 2 and I didn’t even get around to putting it on my blog.

Epic. Mom. Fail.

Anyway, I’m making up for it now.  Week before last my little squirrel turned 2 and the follow Saturday we had her birthday party.  In my mind the whole point of a kid’s birthday is so I have another excuse to hang out with grown ups… you know… because I’m a selfless parent and all that.  And by “all that” I mean “there has not been a single week in the past two years where I have gotten enough adult interaction to fully satisfy me”.

Luckily in the toddler stage “my kid’s friends” is just code for “the spawn of my friends” so we invited everyone we wanted to hang out with, made a cake and some snacks, and went to the park.

We hung out…

…there was much hooping…

…and played a lot of pehoe.

This is Verona’a birthday cake.  It is two fabulous layers of yellow cake, both of which have inside them a layer of peanutbutter cookie dough, a layer of oreos, and a layer of brownie batter.  All baked inside the already fabulous cake.  It was amazing.

So that was the deal.  It was a gorgeous and fun day and my little girl is getting less little ever single day.

 

 

Heart Shaped Food

I love holidays.  Love them.  Love them so much.  Why you may ask?  Because I’m nuts, totally off my rocker, batshit crazy, nuts.  And holidays give me an excuse to let that crazy fly without anybody thinking anything of it.

And don’t give me any of that “Valentine’s Day sucks, I don’t have anyone to love” bullshit.  First of all, while I admit that it’s been a while since I’ve been single, I don’t remembering hating Valentines Day even when I was… I just thought of it as “75% off Chocolate Eve”.  And secondly, you all seem to have so much fun hating on it that I’m completely convinced you find more enjoyment in hating it than the rest of us do in having it.

But enough ranting, back to the story.

Valentine’s Day is one of my favorite holidays for the pure and simple reason that it’s so easy to make everything in the world into a Valentines thing.  Case and point…

Our breakfast this morning: heart shaped pancakes, heart shaped strawberries, and heart shaped bacon.

Lunch: heart shaped grilled cheese sandwiches.

Snack: heart shaped watermelon kabobs.

And for dinner: pizza.  I’m guessing you can guess the rest.

I thought it couldn’t get any better/worse until, after all his “heart shaped things are stupid” yammering, David got himself involved.

And now, I’m off to watch the Valentine’s Day episode of 30Rock (“Happy Valen Times!”) so if you’re have someone in your life get off your freaking laptop and go cuddle with them, and if you don’t quit your bitter bitching and enjoy your 75% off chocolate tomorrow… I know I will.

Christmas Cookies!

How to make Christmas cookies with Mollie aka how to have the best holiday tradition ever.

Step 1.  Make the dough.  Verona loves to help so two things are certain, by the time the dough is chilling in the fridge she will have eaten completely inappropriate amounts of it and there will be flour all over the place.

Step 2.  Cut out the cookies.  If you’re not cool enough to have Christmas cookie cutters you can just free hand it with knives… although fair warning, your cookies will look like they just got off the short bus.

Step 3: Get your cookie art on!

Cookie making tip: You can never have too many sprinkles.

Step 5: Get squirrley.

Step 6: Get the dog involved.

Step 7. Procrastinate cleaning up as long as you possibly can.

 

I want my life to be a yogurt buffet.

Want to see my idea of a fantastic evening?  It looks a little something like this.

Tonight after dinner for a friend’s birthday we went to one of those frozen yogurt places where you get your yogurt and have a huge buffet of toppings to choose from and pay by the pound.  Everything from kiwi to hot fudge to Fruitie Pebbles to gummie bears and everything in between.  Basically it’s an orgasm for your eyes followed by an orgasm for your imagination followed by an orgasm in your mouth. 

Anyway, I’ve decided I want to live my life like a frozen yogurt buffet.  (Hmmmm… my world view is food based… shocker, I know.) 

There are a bazillion different things to see and do and choose from and a lot of them are so fantastic it’s hard to choose between them!  There are also a lot of things that suck and you can either dwell on their epic suckitude and get pissed that they exist in the world/buffet or pass them by and not be concerned.  I want to live my life like that.

Hey self doubt, body image issues, stress over finances, and negativity that other people throw my way about this that or the other thing… I’m passing you by!  You are the coconut flakes, the yogurt covered raisins, and the sunflower seeds on my buffet, I think you’re awful but instead of worrying my pretty little head about it I’m just going to pass you by and go on to something that sucks less.  Maybe someone else wants you on their frozen yogurt and I’m not worried about that either, they can do what they want with their frozen yogurt without me losing any sleep. 

I want the frozen yogurt of my life to be pile high with bluegrass concerts, cuddling, late night ice cream runs, gazing longingly at stars, hilariously off color jokes, and searching for meaning in this world. 

Or in the case of actual frozen yogurt I want it piled high with miniature peanut butter cups, cookie dough, brownies, peanut butter chips, and Capt’n Crunch.

Mmmmmmm, so delicious I completely forgot that the coconut flakes, yogurt covered raisins, and sunflower seeds even existed.