Renae du Jour

While it would appear that LK is feeding Green Pepper with a baby bottle, she was really giving it gas. D thought it was very funny that she would give the pepper gas.

Later, LK introduced Pepper to her other favorite toys, Baby Brother and Baby Sister. This proof that she really does have toys and is not forced to play only with fruits, vegetables and legumes.

She carried Pepper around for so long we were worried we’d have to start a second college fund and that would mean we couldn’t afford any more green peppers.  Plus, we have Big Plans for Pepper’s future.

But that’s for another day, and because we live in the here and now D snapped a photo of me, LK and Pepper.

Sorry it’s so blurry. Green Pepper would NOT STOP MOVING.

D wants everyone to know this is not Field and Stream.

A few days ago we went to the lake and I was incredibly excited that there were people fishing. And unless they were there just to torture the fish, I’m thinking they were trying to catch some dinner, and that’s right up my alley.

D sat on the dock with LK, planned his blog, “My Wife is a Freak”  and quacked at the ducks while I took photos of strangers fishing.

This is a woman who cannot stand the glare from the sun and needs an umbrella for shade. We are in Washington and it is NEARLY 60 DEGREES after all.

Here is a man who brought his most comfortable chair to the dock. He wanted to bring his La-Z-Boy recliner but his wife made fun of him. 

Here’s Santa!

Mr. Claus had caught four lovely Rainbow Trout by the time I met him, and had plenty of stories of the elusive 18-inch trout that swim in Cottage Lake. 

He was planning on having Mrs. Claus dredge the trout in flour, season them with salt and freshly ground pepper and fry them in some nice olive oil. 

This tea set belonged to me when I was a little girl, and now it belongs to LK.

It’s beautiful, breakable, more than 30-years old and is being manhandled by a two-year-old who looks like she has been raised by wolves. I hear her parents are very nice people and they really do try to brush her hair.

But I digress.

This tea set was a gift from my paternal grandmother when I was four. My mother looked at it and promptly placed it in the attic so that I could have it when I was older and better able to enjoy it. Now that I am 36, she hauled it out of the attic to give it to her granddaughter, LK, who is two and much more capable of keeping Nice Things nice.

I am tempted to haul the tea set up to the attic so that I can present my future grandchildren with a beautiful 60-year-old tea set in 2038 and say “see! They did make toys in Japan,” but I have a theory: pretend food tastes best when you’re small.

LK’s pretend menu:

• Marshmallows
• Chocolate chips
• Butterfingers
• Sprinkles
• Ice cream
• Coffee
• Sugar (as an entree)

* LK is already showing superb planning skills. When I was her age every pretend meal consisted of fried eggs.

Earlier this week we had a spell of amazing weather and that meant we ditched the kitchen and headed to the park, salad in hand.

We didn’t even have to pack a basket.

Life is good.

Two pounds deveined cooked shrimp

1 cup chopped celery

3/4 cup mayonnaise

2 tsp lemon juice

¼ tsp salt

2 tsp ground pepper

2 tbsp Fresh dill

Six cups mixed salad greens

Three tablespoons olive oil

2 tsp balsamic vinegar

One cup cherry tomatoes

¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

In a large mixing bowl, combine shrimp, celery and mayonnaise. Stir in lemon juice, salt, pepper and dill. Refrigerate shrimp mixture for up to six hours.

Toss salad greens and tomatoes with olive oil. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar. Plate salad and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Scoop shrimp mixture on top of greens.

If you’re bringing this for a picnic, pack the salad and shrimp separately. Add some good French bread and you’ll have an outdoor feast.

For more great recipes, check out What’s Cooking Wednesday, a weekly recipe roundup hosted by the Fairy Blogmother. 

 I recently bought a 25-pound bag of pre-washed triple-cleaned pinto beans. They called to me from the Costco aisle, and they are triple-cleaned, beautiful and very hard to resist. IMPOSSIBLE TO RESIST. I planned to make chili, soup and frijoles for the next five years, but I didn’t know that our entire family would fall under the pinto bean’s glossy, speckled spell.

LK has spent hours sorting, counting and moving the beans from one plastic bowl to the next.

We have two rules:

• Do not put the beans in your nose.
• Do not eat the dried beans. They are no longer triple clean.

When LK was a tiny baby I would sing her this lullaby:

Avocadoes, you’re so green and creamy

Avocadoes, how’d you get so dreamy?

Avocadoes, avocadoes, avocadoes

Avocadoes, avocadoes, avocadoes

When I was little, my mom sang this:

Honeydew you know

Cantaloupe tonight

Moon is over water

Melons are so ripe

I guess I come by it naturally.

Two ripe avocadoes

Freshly-squeezed juice from ½ lime

1 tsp sea salt

Peel avocadoes and remove stone.

Place avocadoes in medium sized bowl with lime juice and salt.

Mash.

I recommend that you mash with one of these:

Perhaps you can find one with more prongs. I have no idea where all my good mashing forks have gone. Soon I will be suggesting that you use your fingers.

Because you have stayed with me through this recipe, I’m including a bonus for Purists:

Pour. Drink. Bite lime. Repeat.

We’re working parents with a toddler, so an adults-only dinner is worth painting my toenails and shaving my legs. D wanted me to wear a va-va-va-voom dress and I wanted to wear capris.

I compromised by wearing my new Mrs. Roper sandals with my capris and hollering “Stanley!” every ten minutes.

Yes, posting a picture of my foot is a thinly veiled plot to bring more traffic to my site. Hopefully it doesn’t drive anyone away.

 But back to our night out …

We weren’t up for anything too fancy, so we went here:

This is Redhook Brewery in Woodinville, where the beer can be ordered by the keg and the condiments are organized in a cardboard container:

And some lucky person with excellent penmanship skills gets paid to do this:

 And this:

While we waited for our food we watched people much younger than us drink and preen and pretend they were in a beer commercial. Redhook is an interesting place because it’s minutes from the Burke-Gilman trail and attracts hordes of bicyclists who arrive parched and leave wobbly. On the way into the restaurant we saw a bicyclist stumble and then pass out in the grass. It was 5:30 pm. I am so sorry I didn’t have my camera out.

But drunken cyclists aside, the food is good, if you like this:

 And we do:

At our house, sprinkles count as a first course. Here, LK has created her own smorgasbord of rainbow non pariels, sequins, carnival sprinkles and chocolate sprinkles.

LK loves them all, but she’s especially fond of the brown flavor.

I’m not sure if LK’s excitement is accurately portrayed through the power of digital photos, but believe me, she was one happy girl.

Our family is united in our love of sprinkles, but divided when it comes to a naming convention. I’ve recently learned that D is campaigning to call sprinkles “jimmies,” a move that I am very much against, as it is just plain wrong and will tarnish our daughter’s food vocabulary forever.

I’ve researched the “jimmies” movement and according to the smart people at Slashfood in the 1930’s there really was a man name Jimmy who operated the sprinkle machine at the Willie Wonka Chocolate Just Born candy factory. I like to imagine Jimmy’s great- great- great grandchildren on a playground screaming “they’re called JIMMIES!”

Our sprinkles were made by Dean Jacob’s so I’m very clear they can not be called jimmies. Dean Jacob’s is manufactured by the Xcell International Corp in Burr Ridge, Illinois, a hot destination spot that I must visit. If you live in Burr Ridge and have a couch that I can use please let me know. I really want to see the sprinkle machine responsible for making my sprinkles.

My very important research also brought me here: Sugarcraft.com

Get out! Who does not need a 12-oz bag of cotton-candy flavored sprinkles? Who does not need a five-pound bag of cow sprinkles?

If you are reading this post you might already own the afore-mentioned cotton-candy and cow sprinkles. If you do not own them AND do not need them, please go away. This site is not for you.