Breaking Bad!

So wish we had cable so we could enjoy this as it comes. However, new baby in the house + seriously violent cable tv show = terrible parenting aware?

Although, we'd be following in the show's footsteps....new baby + Meth cook papa = REALLY terrible parenting award.

Backyard Chickens and Bees

I want to go to this this weekend. At the Arboretum in Arcadia. Since I have no plans for this Memorial Day weekend other than making a pretty pretty nursery for impending baby-dom.

Wouldn't it be great to have baby chickens and baby humans running around our backyard at the same time!?

And a dog...

And a cat....

And a skunk, apparently.

Dinner #2 - Brad cooks!

Oh how I love my husband's spring break. Let me count the ways.....1) He remembered how to cook! 2) He remembered how to clean! 3) He had time to go to the movies. TWICE! In one WEEK! 4) He washed the car! 5) We went out for drinks. With FRIENDS! (oh...and he also managed to make time to go to Amoeba Records and Rockaway Records twice EACH. But record stores, now that's hardwired into his DNA. If he ever gets struck with the Alzheimer's, he'll probably forget my name, but still be able to describe in great detail all the best record stores in a 50 mile radius.)

When he wasn't reliving his 90's nostalgia kick (he got a Tori Amos album for pete's sake!) he was cooking dinner for us! One of Brad's dinners this week was Lentil Minestrone. Oh and how beautiful and delicious it was. He used up some lentils we've had in the back of the cupboard and some collard greens that I bought in a fit of produce delusion. 9 times out of 10 when I buy a vegetable I'm unfamiliar with, it usually ends up in the compost pile after we scrape it's rotting corpse from the bottom of that drawer in the fridge. But I buy anyway. I think to myself: "Collard Greens - I don't know how to cook these, but I'll buy it anyway in hopes that I'll get struck with an amazing recipe for collard green brownies." (Note -- no such recipe struck me this week. I'll keep you posted for the future veggie inspired desserts). Needless to say, I was happy when Brad told me he needed a 'bunch of greens' for the recipe. Another dollar saved from the compost!

It turned out delish. We ate it with some crusty bread and shaved parmesan and I enjoyed a glass of rather cheap white wine (gotta love a student's salary!). We picknicked on the living room floor. The lentil minestrone warmed us. The wine warmed me even more.

I give his minestrone a 4/5. Anytime Brad cooks, though, he's very thorough and meticulous when it comes to following recipe instructions, so his dinners usually come out in top form.

With all the work he was doing around the house, I had extra time to work on my garden! Next spring break I might just have to rent Brad out to the highest bidder. Any takers?

Dinner#1

For dinner last night I had to use up four potatoes. In my fridge loomed a scary site -- but I managed to find a large hunk of monterey jack cheese, which looked promising. In the door I found a jar of Trader Joe's pesto I forgot I bought (almost as good as finding a $5 in your jeans). Conveniently, there was also the necessary dairy products that are almost required to make baked potatoes really tasty (butter, milk, sour cream? Hells yea.)

My go-to book for awesome recipes is the wonderfully helpful "New Best Recipes" by Cooks Illustrated. In it's pages I discovered Twice Baked Potatoes. I normally don't like baking potatoes in the oven, mainly because I think about dinner right about the time that I'm hungry for dinner....not the best timing, but when have I had great timing? Plus, heating up the entire oven for over an hour just for potatoes seems a little energy wasteful.

There recipes for Twice Baked potatoes has some variations that I'll try another night -- Indian spiced? with pine nuts? (I've even made a variation with crab - so tasty.) But this version was substituting regular cheddar with monty jack and adding pesto! Zing! Dinner is on.

They turned out well, even though the process did take about 1.5 hours total (baking potatoes 1 hr, scooping out inards and mixing with yummies, 20 min, the twice baked part -- another 15 min). I'll definitely make them again - and maybe for company.

Twice baked potatoes might make a fine meal for some vegetarians I know, but I like some green with my meal. I've had a mini-obsession with Brussel Sprouts ever since Figueroa Produce has started selling them for so cheap and fresh. Brad cooks them much better than me, but he had just given his first lecture at USC, so I thought I'd give him the night off. The problem with that is my penchant for not reading recipes all the way through. . . which lead me to conveniently skip the part that told me to 'trim the bottom of the sprouts'. Whoops. This apparently helps them cook more evenly and absorb more flavor. NOTED. These turned out tough and not as flavor as when Brad cooks.

All in all a good, tasty, veggie laden meal that filled us up. 3.5/5.

C3PO USB

So, I'm nonchalantly doing my thing on the internet and reading someone's blog ( I don't know who's.... I just click around ), when she mentioned buying curtains from Urban Outfitters. I thought - well, I don't NEED curtains, I stopped shopping at Urban Outfitters YEARS ago, but HELL! why not.

And that's when I saw these ! C3PO USB drives! I wish it was Christmas again so I could buy one for my brother and for my hubby.

Shucks.

A Cat Haiku

Linus Henry, cat
Likes my jalapeno plant
More than my warm lap

An Equation

New Car + Pajamas + Morning Off = Happy Brad