Ollie, in his sleep: “I like chess!!”
Fortunately (unfortunately?), he means the game, not the musical.
Evie: “Did you guys keep turning around to look at me?”
Me: “Yes.”
Evie: “Oh, okay. You were really far away and I could see a peach circle, but I didn’t know if it was your face or your bald spot.”
Sara: “Hold this spoon for one second.”
Me: “I am really resisting the urge to say, “one” and then drop it.”
Sara: “I totally thought you would do that!!”
So who else got a collage made out of obituaries??
The first Friday of the month is reserved for recipes. You can see additional First Friday Food posts here.
This is the king of garlic breads. I have never tasted any other garlic bread with quite this combination of flavors. I could eat a whole loaf of this (and as a teenager, basically did).
When I was in about 1st grade, someone brought this bread to school. My memory is a bit hazy on this, but I loved it SO MUCH, that I got them to give me the recipe.
This was before there was any such thing as “the Internet” where you can just “look up recipes” when you’re hungry, but despite living in this vast, unknowable future, I still make this bread from a recipe card written out in my mom’s handwriting like it’s the 1600s (note: I do not churn my own butter).
The trick is to butter BOTH SIDES OF THE BREAD. Even if your wife is like, “Why does this take so much butter? Couldn’t you cut down on the butter a little bit?” You shout “Shut your mouth, hypothetical wife in this entirely hypothetical situation!” and then you just go ahead and make it with all the butter and hypothetically tell her you cut down on the butter even though you really didn’t.
(Either that, or you just cut down on the butter like she said and complain bitterly with every piece how there’s not going to be enough butter. Hypothetically.)
This is one of my all time favorite things to eat in the world, and I always requested it for my “birthday dinner” when I was a kid (along with lasagna). I could absolutely just eat a loaf of this as a meal, and I am very happy to finally share it with all of you.
Recipe from some kid in my 1st grade class.
Evelyn has always been the “mothering kind” so the story I’m about to tell you should surprise exactly no one.
Yesterday evening, Ollie was complaining about his ear hurting, which wasn’t a huge surprise since they’ve both been sick and Evelyn is just getting over an ear infection. Ollie is not a big complainer, so we’ve learned to listen to him when he says something is wrong (because he won’t mention it unless it’s really, really wrong!) So we gave him some ibuprofen, lots of love and kisses, and tucked him into bed.
This morning Evelyn came skipping upstairs. “Boy I’m tired,” she said. “Ollie kept waking up crying all night long and I had to go in and check on him.”
“What do you mean? Why didn’t you come and get us?” I said.
“Oh, it was okay,” said our little ENT. “He had an ear infection, so I looked in his ear, and then we made a plan: I gave him his dinosaur and told him every time his ear hurt he should hug his dinosaur. Then I gave him a kiss and tucked him back into bed.”
Sure enough, when I went downstairs to wake him up I found him clinging to his dinosaur.
We tried to impress upon them that they really should get a grownup in situations like this (who, at the very least, could administer medicine)(NO CHILDREN ADMINISTERING MEDICINE), but…he was happy, she was happy…what are you gonna do, you know?
These kids, I tell you what.
(I especially like that she looked in his ear. How would she even know what to look for?)
As the time came around for this year’s baconfest, we were really struggling to find a weekend to make it work. As much fun as eating a metric ton of bacon is, it actually does take a lot of preparation work: designing the shirts, buying the bacon, doing all the cooking, etc. With a newborn, the whole thing seemed like too much.
On the other hand, I WILL NOT LET THE TRADITION DIE, even if it kills me (and, since we’re talking about eating pounds and pounds of bacon, let’s be clear: it will kill me).
So we did a baby baconfest. Baconfest lite. No taste test, no orgy of bacon recipes, just one meal (prepared by Nate and Amanda), a little bacon with breakfast, and (naturally) some bacon soda.
“Y’all get yer fixins!”
Alex says, “What the crap is this nonsense? Is this seriously the family I was born into??”
Some of us didn’t think it was all that bad (Sara said it tasted like grape soda). I mean, I wouldn’t want to drink a whole bottle of the stuff, but, you know. I took more than one drink (for science!)
On the other hand, most people’s reaction to the smoky flavor of the bacon soda can best be summed up as:
I was also the proud recipient of an “I Heart Bacon” wall calendar, which is now at work.
Sorry I don’t have more posts this year, but the best I could handle was to keep the chain of baconfests unbroken (six down, one hundred more to go).
(Not for nothing, I did wear my “high five if you like bacon” shirt from last year and did get two high fives from strangers!)
Shane Halbach 