Day 7: My Long-Suffering Mother

My Mother is quite taken with my blog, and has shown it to anyone and everyone who she can get to stand still long enough to bring up the URL. She had thought her daughter was finally doing something of note, something to be proud of, but most importantly: something she would not be embarrassed to share with others.

So, again today, she decided to share the blog.

With a colleague from work.

The title was "Day 6: A Butt-Load of Brownies."

I think it probably went something like this: My Mother said "wait until you see my daughter's new blog! It's so wonder......." And then in her head: "I will kill that foul-mouthed, coarse-word-writing, daughter of mine dead if it's the last thing I do."

My poor, poor, Mother.

Many is the jewel in her crown in heaven.

Oops, your awful daughter has stuck again...

But in my defense, it could have been much, much worse...

And you would think that, by now, she would know better...

I love you Mommy! Mean it!

So on to the delicious deeds of the day. My little Tamara needed some technical help today. She was trying to create a play-list on her ipod for her daughter Teagan's third birthday. Tamara, to say the least, tends toward the non-techno-savvy. I, being the ever-generous, ever-helpful, ever-magnanimous friend that I am, went over to her house to help her. After we were done compiling a list of 3-year-old-suitable songs, (Whatever - Tamara obviously would not take any of my helpful song choice suggestions. I mean, what's so wrong with a little Def Leppard at a pre-school birthday?) we went on a quest for clear-colored sprinkles for Teagan's cupcakes. Tamara had purchased some garish "rainbow" sprinkles that looked like a child had dumped several bottles of sprinkles in a bowl, mixed them together and called it good. So we trekked south to the next-nearest-neighboring town's Michael's Crafts. While we were in said next-nearest-neighboring town, we decided to treat ourselves and our pack of crazy kids to lunch. Somehow we were able to clear an entire restaurant in 10 minutes flat. A personal best, I'll have to say. But looking at these goofballs, you can kinda see why.

This would make me high-tail-it for the hills:

Our next agenda-item for the day was back-to-school haircuts. The girls both decided to chop a significant amount of hair off, and although the thought of their gorgeous locks falling to the floor of the salon made me a bit teary-eyed, I let them go for it. The result is two very cute little flips for my gals, and a few tears in private for me. When someone finds a drug to stop them from growing up so fast, let me know. I'll invest. Big.

So tonight I decided to make Roasted Carrots (pg. 149.) I thought this would make a nice accompaniment to day 3 of meatloaf. (The Trophy Wife Says: Gotta use those left-overs!) Olive oil, salt, pepper, toss and roast at 400 until caramelized. This is a yummy way to serve a number of vegetables, root and otherwise. Roasted broccoli is amazing, for example. You can do tomatoes, onions, peppers, squash, cauliflower - pretty much any vegetable you can think up, you can roast. If you haven't tried this amazing miracle of modern science...well ya better!

Before:

After: