I am not a decisive person.  Sometimes, when I don’t know what to eat for lunch, I’ll think about it for three hours, starved, until I realize I’ll never make a decision, and make the same thing I ate for breakfast, which is either swiss cheese broiled atop an English muffin or creamy peanut butter spread atop an English muffin.  (If you think that’s not enough food, don’t worry, I always wash down my mini-meals with seven or eight servings of fruit.)  So, yeah, when I wanted to bake something pumpkin-y, it only took me four days of incessant googling, cookbook-scavenging, and harassing my husband—oh, yeah, we got married by the way—via gchat, text message, e-mail, phone, and eye contact with questions very much like these:

• “Boo, should I make pumpkin bread or pumpkin muffins?”
• “Boo, should I make healthy pumpkin muffins or cream cheese ones?”
• “Ryry, should I bake at all?  I don’t know, I could read instead.”
• “Boo, do you even like pumpkin?”
• What shouuuuld I brake tonsils?   (That’s iPhone for “what should I bake tonight?”)
• “Maybe I’ll go to my second yoga class ever, I’m so stressed, you know?”
• “What are you in the mood for?”
• “Will you bring them to your office so we don’t eat all of whatever it is I may or may not bake?”
• “That’s cool that you got a promotion… um, but what should I bake?”
• “Can you buy me flour on your way home?”

Anyway, I finally, finally, finally settled upon a well-rated pumpkin muffin recipe with cream cheese filling that I found online.   I have this memory of, freshman year of college, eating 1/4 of such a muffin.  Then the security guard at Canter Film Center saw me and was all like, “you can’t eat in here, put it away” and that was that.

I made only a few changes to the original recipe, mostly cutting out some of the fat.  I subbed more than half the oil with applesauce, and used reduced fat cream cheese (Neuchâtel cheese) for the filling instead of regular cream cheese.  I added lemon zest, vanilla, and powdered sugar to brighten up the filling, so I guess using reduced fat cream cheese was kinda pointless in the end.  Just replacing fat with sugar, but I would have added the sugar to the full-fat frosting anyway, so whatever.  I mean, they’re muffins.

Anyway, these are very good, and they keep pretty well in an air-tight container.  We stored them in a Tupperware  inside of our new bread box.  They are lovely with a glass of milk.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

for the muffins:

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon ground cloves

4 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

4 eggs

2 cups canned pumpkin puree

1/2 cup vegetable oil

3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce

chopped walnuts, pecans, or pumpkin seeds + decorators’ sugar, optional

for the cream cheese filling:

8 ounces Neuchâtel cheese

zest of one small lemon

1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a freezer-safe bowl, or the bowl of your stand mixer, add the Neuchâtel cheese, lemon zest, and vanilla, and mix until combined.  Add in confectioners’ sugar and mix until well-combined.  It doesn’t have to be frosting-y, just well mixed and kinda fluffy.
3. Cover the cheese mixture and freeze it while you work on the muffins.
4. In a large bowl add all the dry ingredients and whisk together until combined.
5. In another large bowl, or the bowl of your stand mixer, combined the wet ingredients.
6. Add the dry ingredients to the wet.  If necessary, do so in batches.  Until well-combined… I did this with my stand mixer.
7. Pour the muffin batter into the paper-lined muffin tins, filling each mold about 2/3 full.
8. Remove the cheese filling from the freezer.  Using a tablespoon ice cream scoop to easily transfer uniformly sized dollops of filling from the bowl to the muffin.  Then press down on the filling with the back of a spoon until it has basically disappeared.  You’ll get the hang of this after a couple of muffins.  It’s kinda just like magic.  (And if doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t actually matter.)
9. Sprinkle the tops of the muffins with chopped walnuts, pecans, or pumpkin seeds, if you’d like.  I also sprinkled mine with decorator’s coarse sugar crystals.
10. Bake at 350 degrees for about 23 – 25 minutes. (Well, I make my muffins a little bigger so it yielded only 21 or so and they take about 23 – 25 minutes.  If you make 24, check the muffins at 20 and see if a toothpick comes out clean.)
11. Allow muffins to cool on a rack for 5 minutes, then remove them from the pan and allow them to cool to room temperature on the rack.

Hoping to post more often.  Happy New Year.

My nine-to-five revolves around food.  Yes, I still adore my local farmers’ market.  And nothing soothes my soul like preparing an elaborate-but-comforting dinner for my friends and family.  But, ah, after eight hours at my desk, what with the scents of a zillion-things-a-simmer sailing through my windowless workspace air, I’m kinda over it.

So, I’m thinking, maybe I’ll bring more to the e-table than just a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  By the way, PBJs no longer keep me full at lunch.  My new go-to summer office lunch: low-fat plain yogurt + Kashi cereal + fruit of the day (whatever I bring from home, or whatever is in the walk-in at work that we don’t need for a catering job usually gets thrown in the bowl, but my market-fresh, just-cut apricots made a phenomenal, peak-season special last week.)

Wait, why am I talking about food?  This was supposed to be something different.   Here goes nothing… I’ll start with a simple 1-2-3 of things floating through my mind.

• • • • •

1.  ”@#%! You, You’re Fat, Too!”

I was eating frozen yogurt on my (broken) couch tonight, watching DVRed back episodes of Fashion Police.   This one episode from a couple of weeks ago flashed a picture of Christina Aguilera that was just not good, not at all.

Source:  Just Jared

I know that she probably suffered so, so much to be as thin as she was during those “Genie in a Bottle” days, and I feel for her, I really do.  But oh, man, did I smile when Kelly Osbourne spoke these words regarding this, well, kinda washed-up pop star:

“Maybe she’s just becoming the fat bitch she’s always wanted to be. I don’t know. She called me fat for so many f*cking years, so, you know what? F*ck you, you’re fat too.”

Sweet!  Check out the video of this here.

• • • • •

2.  ”How many calories in a baby’s arm?”

It is painful, really, how much restraint I must exercise to not google the question posed in the above headline.  How did I even think of such a bizarre question?  Well, this little blurb in the Los Angeles Times really got my creative juices flowing:

A 36-year-old woman allegedly snatched an infant from his stroller and slammed him into the metal railing of a truck as his mother and aunt tried to fight her off, police said Wednesday.

The woman, Natasha Hubbard, later told police she wanted to eat the baby’s arm. The baby suffered only minor injuries.

Okay, now, all giggles aside, this is totally absurd and horrific and a mother’s worst nightmare.  And I acknowledge the sheer terror with which this family has surely been struck.  But, guys, OMFG.

(Okay, I googled it.  The results are in.  And they are lame-sauce!  Don’t believe me?  See for yourself, freak.)

• • • • •

3.  I am in love with a dress I do not need.

Like, I do not need it, not even a little bit, not at all.  And this is coming from the girl who has needed a (very beloved) stuffed duck, a Wii that’s been used once, and several servings of fruit in the middle of night, during deep slumber, people.

Source: Neiman Marcus

GAH!   LOVE.

Anyway, if you have a money tree, please send this dress to me.  And invite me to a gala to which I might wear the pretty thing, too.  Preferably, the event would take place in California, in February, so my hair would look nice.

• • • • •

So, what do you think?  Is this stuff of any interest?  Or is it just an extension of my already-obnoxious Facebook account?  Let me know what you’d like to see next in the poll below.  Or in the comments section.  Or, if you are my mother, just call me after lunch tomorrow.

(Hi, Grandma!  Love you!)

Take Our Poll

I introduced you to Stamp in my return blog entry, posted last Tuesday.  Perhaps you remember that Stamp is the best stuffed animal ever and everyone who meets him is obsessed with him.  He loves to travel and likes Kanye West and chocolate chip cookies.  And making phone calls, but duh.  Once, Ryan and I met my parents for breakfast and my mom was giving me a hard time about keeping my purse zipped.  And Ryan was like “but then Stamp can’t breathe!”  Honestly, cutest thing ever.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.  I had just walked in the door, sweaty and flushed from a 30 minute run, when Stamp offered to make a light meal for us.

“Yo, I want to make lunch!”

“Stamp, we have no food, we’ve been avoiding grocery shopping and living off of Kashi bars and Swiss cheese for the past few days.  You know how we get before a Costco run.”

“Listen, you’re gross and you’re going to turn into an almond and you always put so much effort into Ryan’s lunch and then just eat cereal and plain yogurt in front of your computer at work.”

“Stamp, you’re kinda being a brat.  But you can make lunch.  No grilling though, you have awful HMO coverage.”

We might be baking coffee cake or something later.  But for now, Stamp’s lunch will have to suffice.  Read on!

English Muffin Pizzas

Ingredients:

• English muffin, split and toasted
• olive oil, just a drop
• 2 TBSP marinara/spaghetti sauce
• 1.5 ounces mozzarella cheese (fresh – sliced thin; pasteurized – shredded)
• crushed red pepper and dried oregano, to taste
• fresh basil, if available

Directions:

1. Preheat over or toaster oven to 450.
2. Toast split English muffin, to medium or until somewhat crunchy.  We are toasting the muffin to protect it from moisture.
3. With an oil mister or the back of a spoon, spray or spread just a drop of olive oil onto the insides of the muffin.
4. Add 1 tablespoon prepared tomato sauce to each side of the muffin.
5. Add a sprinkle of oregano and crushed red pepper, if you’d like.
6. Add mozzarella cheese.
7. Bake until cheese is melted and bubbling.  We like to raise the temperature to broil for the last minute or so to get the cheese really gooey.
8. Add finely chopped basil, if you want.  Eat!

Notes:

Our ingredient choices:  Rudy’s Organic Whole Grain Wheat English Muffins, Trader Joe’s Organic Marinara Sauce, Trader Joe’s Whole Milk Fresh Mozzarella Log.   These are some of our favorites.

We love using English Muffins because the end-result is a mini-deep dish pizza, which is not something we would normally eat.

Have a safe and happy weekend.

Well, hey there.  I know it’s been a while, but I’m sure you remember me.  I’m that peanut-butter-and-sunshine loving girl who lives in Santa Monica with her boyfriend fiance (!!!).  I’m obsessed with fruit.  I try to eat candy off the floor.  Do you remember any of this?

Let me remind you why you read this blog in the first place.  I’m betting one or more of the following applies to you, dear reader:

1. You went to high school with me.  We weren’t really friends, or anything, but you think I’m funny, and/or you have an unsupervised desk job and eight painful-but-paid hours to kill.
2. You are friends with my mother.  (Need I say more?)
3. I’m going to toot my own horn here.  Whatever.  I write well.  That makes visiting this blog somewhat pleasant.
4. You don’t care about what I have to say or what I made for dinner.  You are mildly interested in looking at personal pictures of me because I wasn’t cute in middle school and now I kinda am.
5. I make you read it.
6. You are my mom or dad or sister.  Hi, family!  And Grandma and Grandpa, also, hello!  Can’t thank you enough for the little yellow dutch oven!
7. You googled one of the following sampled terms:

“giant sugary donuts with eyes and mouth and pink frosting”
“cup cakes ummmm”
“costco stuffed giraffe”
“vegetables”

Anyway, it doesn’t really matter why you used to read my blog, way back when, before full-time employment,  marathon viewings of several seasons of Dexter, and wedding planning consumed my once-very-unbusy life.

There are a billion stupid things that have happened, and what’s passed has passed, and I could never catch you up entirely.  So here’s one sample story:  yesterday I tossed a plum in a dumpster and somebody was in there and I was a ghost and it was awkward.  But I digress, let’s stay on point.   There are three things you need to know:

1.  Ryan asked me to marry him. After burying my face in his shirt for 10 minutes, I said yes.

Halloween in Boston, 2009. Ryan cut up a baby ladybug costume from the drugstore and made it my size. At which point I was sure he was the one.

"We are finally going to get that KitchenAid pasta attachment," whispered Lauren. "Best day ever."

2.  Stamp came into our home and lit up our lives.  Stamp is a stuffed duck I found at Target before my birthday.  I walked up to Ryan, looked at him, looked at the plush farm animal, and licked it.  Then, I said, verbatim:  ”Now you have to buy it for me.”  I don’t remember how I chose the name Stamp, but it was between that and something else ridiculous, and my great friend Casey was all, like, “yah, Stamp!  Stamp it is!” and the rest is history.  Stamp is the best, and he loves to travel and make phone calls when we are not home.

Stamp waiting for Ryan to get home for dinner.

Stamp hanging out in the fancy room in Miami.

Packing for a trip.

Stamp during the epic closet clean out of 2011.

3.  I’m like, really, very good at making tacos now.  It is a marvelous talent and makes me very popular with the men in my life*.  Beef tacos— nailed ‘em.  Chicken fajitas—nailed ‘em.  Fish tacos—botched those, actually.  Poor, uneducated choice of tortillas that night, but that’s another story for another day.  The latest variety of taco filling added to our dinner rotation is carnitas, which is just a fancy, Spanish word for “awesome”.  Well, carnitas actually translates to “little meats”, (“carne” + “itas”; think “taquitos”, people…) and it’s so easy to make.

*Ryan and Stamp.

Just so we’re clear, carnitas = shredded pork.  Onward!

Slow-Cooked Carnitas Soft Tacos

Adapted from Bon Appétit    

Ingredients: 

The below are ingredients I used for our version of this dish; however, you could make great carnitas using only pork, sea salt, black pepper, and oregano plus those onion chunks, according to Bon Appétit, which published this well-reviewed recipe.  I included a bunch of Mexican spices because I am partial to those hot, citrus-y, and smoky flavors and incorporate them whenever I can.  But if your spice rack is pretty bare, relax.  You can still enjoy a mean pork taco.

• 2 lbs. boston pork but, huge fat chunks removed, meat cut into 1.5- to 2-inch chunks
• juice of one lime
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly-cracked black pepper
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 heaping teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon dried cilantro
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed dried red pepper
• 1 onion, any variety, sliced into large chunks
• garlic, cut into large slices, optional

Directions:

This is really a simple process, but at first, I was terrified of trying this recipe because I don’t have much experience cooking with pork.  It’s definitely one of the easiest things I’ve ever made.  And that’s coming from a girl who once made hot dog soup, using nothing but hot dog and a bouillon cube.  (Genius, I know.)

1. Remove excess fat from pork.  Cut pork into 1.5 to 2 inch cubes.
2. In a greased slow cooker or dutch oven, add pork chunks, lime juice, and all of the spices.  Toss to coat.
3. Add large chunks of onion.
4. Cook on lowest setting or very low oven temperature for five to seven hours.  Pork should be tender and dark.
5. Remove pork—but reserve the juices!— and shred and pull apart the meat with your fingers.  I removed large, gummy pieces of fat again at this point, but it’s not necessary.  I reserved the onions from the pot, diced them up, and added them to the shredded pork.
6. If and when reheating pork, do so with a bit of the reserved juices over low heat.

Serving suggestions:

This is a time to go wild; this is a time to exercise restraint.  Don’t barrage your carnitas with too many flavors.  You know what I’m talking about.  Try a few different topping combinations on a few different tacos until you find your ideal.

• Corn tortillas.  We enjoyed our carnitas with fresh 4.5″ corn tortillas we found at the giant Whole Foods in Venice.   Yes, the ”Whole Foods Parking Lot” Whole Foods.  There, 40 tortillas cost less than two dollars and they were all-natural, too.  Three totally wholesome ingredients:  yellow corn + water + lime.  We heated up the tortillas in a heavy, dry pan for thirty seconds on each side and could smell the sweet corn, which is always a good sign.   Warning:  nothing ruins a good taco like a bad tortilla, so make sure you get fabulous ones.  Ask around.  Google it, twice.  Don’t screw this up.
• Queso fresco.  Perfectly mild, crumbly, and soft.  It’s Mexican mozzarella, and it’s marvelous.
• Salsa verde.  Or, if you’re in a pinch, as we were, green taco sauce from a bottle!  Ryan bought this classic one.  Throwback!
• Shredded green cabbage.  ‘Cause duh.
• Avocado, tomato, and onion.  I hate avocado but everyone else in this freaking town is all like, “oh my godddd avocado!!” so whatever.
• Cilantro.  It looks pretty in these, if you’ve got it, but you don’t need it (we didn’t use it) and it’s not always worth the money.  Unless you can borrow it from a salsa bar… for free…
• Specialty Salsas.  Trader Joe’s make a mean pineapple salsa that I like to put on pork and chicken.  They make a pretty good pineapple pico de gallo at my work, too, but by the time I get home at night, half of it is all over my gym bag.

We served our tacos with a green cabbage salad, sliced mango, and refried beans on the side.

• • •

A note on slow cookers.  Definitely worth $50 to $200 bucks.  You plug ‘em in, put stuff inside of them, and walk away for six to 12 hours.  They slowly but surely cook what’s inside of them at a very low and steady temperature, allowing cheaper cuts of meat to tenderize and flavors to meld together perfectly.  We like to stand around the appliance and stare at it, trying to justify stirring our creation yet again, just because we want to see what’s happening under that fogged-up lid.  Because it’s like science, and it’s awesome, and it smells good.  But stirring frequently actually releases a bunch of necessary cooking heat that isn’t so quickly reestablished, so only do it once or twice.  One more thing:  make sure to over-season a little, or at least re-season later, as the extended cooking time does lessen the brightness of spices and herbs a bit.

Forgot to mention this.  Registering for kitchen gadgets and cookware is bliss.  Also, for the record, I eat ice cream sandwiches in my sleep.

When in doubt, I feature squash. Normal?

Yeah, you didn’t doubt this did you?  Am I not another sarcastic, inconsistent, sleepy, fruit-addicted (more on that later) twenty-something college graduate with impressive diction and an abandoned blog up her sleeve?  Um, yah!  And you know what that means, right?  It means I’m going to write a list of things—10 things, of course, under the guise of self-improvement and the crisp, clean slate that a forgiving January offers.  But really, it’s just that work is impossibly slow and Kim and Kanye seem to have quieted down their little music video that has shaken the foundation of my office, literally, since Tuesday morning.

Anyway, onto the resolutions enumerated phrases!

1. Eat less fruit. No, really.  Why are you laughing at me?  I eat so much fruit it hurts, and it’s not virtuous or fun or affordable.  This morning, Ryan and I were eating breakfast and I asked him, “I guess it’s kinda dumb to bring an unripe banana to work, right?” and he said “yes” and so I sadly removed it from my lunch bag.  Well, we were walking out the door and he was all like, “WHAT’S IN THAT BAG!?” and it was weird, like, I saw this TSA agent side of him I had never experienced before.  His voice lacked trust and love and compassion; it was short and reminiscent of a young Jack Bauer.  I was like, “um, soup and a cheese stick?” and then he relaxed and said “I thought you had a whole bunch of unripe bananas in there.”  To which I replied, “what, do you think I would just take them all to work in a brown paper bag and peak every twenty minutes, to see if they had ripened?” and he said, “yes.”
   

   These things are like Marlboros for health snobs. They are like, the American Spirits of produce. And you can light them up at work.

2. Ride my bike somewhere besides my alley and find the courage to make turns on it. No, really.  Why are you laughing at me, again?  Rude.  You don’t know, you don’t know the story of my first boyfriend, Phillip, we loved each other but then, on annual Bike Day, he brought his big two-wheeler (WTF?) to pre-school (I told you, WTF!?) and was riding it the wrong way through our humble, childish, and pathetically safe one-way biking course.  For whatever reason, probably a leaf in the pavement or, as legend has it, a giant fuzzy bunny attack, I fell from my shiny pink bicycle, which was adorned with very age-appropriate training wheels and ribbons and stuff.  Naturally, Phillip was coming to rescue me but failed and his freakish, dark, off-road motorcycle of a two-wheeler ran over my fragile little wrist instead.  The next thing I remember, I was sitting on the floor with my cousin Jasmine enjoying our second Mickey Mouse popsicles.  I understand now that this was the school’s attempt to prevent a lawsuit.  But still, I would not stop crying, so I went to the office and they called my mom and I waited for her to pick me up.  It took her three years to pick me up, or so it seemed, and as I waited, to help the time pass, I alternated between coloring and weeping.  Oh, the point is, he broke my wrist and his mom bought me a fake purse (it was pretty, a cream-colored fake leather coin holder!) but it was never the same.  Phillip’s heart had hardened.  The pain of hurting the only thing he ever loved proved to be too much for him, and next thing I knew, Phillip had moved to Colorado and I was  playing house with his best friend, Will, like, every afternoon.
3. Start making my own coffee again. This used to be such a point of pride for me, because my mom sends me coffee and I save so much money but now I am a part of the proletariat and they know me at Starbucks.  I don’t know how it happened but I became the “Venti Bold, no room” girl and it makes me feel small.
4. Start blogging again. And not in a way that is silly and pointless and just a sentence attached to a picture of a sandwich taken with my iPhone from inside my freezing cold office, but rather, in a way that engages me in a process that challenges (and thus, rewards) me creatively.  This blog started as a function of my unemployment/fascination with the concept of peanut butter, but quickly became so much more… it allowed me to write again, using food only as a springboard for conversation and exploration, really.  I’m not Martha Stewart or Nancy Silverton or even Sandra Lee (who, by the way, is moving into the Governor’s Mansion in New York, so don’t doubt the power of her Kwanzaa Cake or whatever).  But I’m pretty good at telling stories, and instead of hating myself for having stopped, I’d like to restart.  So there.
   

   This is a picture of a sandwich I ate at work. It is useless and a prime example of what I'd like to stop shoving onto my blog. That being said, it was my favorite lunch this week, or at least top three.

5. Stop running through pain. It’s stupid and I know better but sometimes I can’t help myself and my calves really resent me for that.  Sorry, little guys.
6. Slow down. In every aspect of my life, I rush.  In the morning, even when I am exhausted and it’s cold, my eyes fling open, demanding peanut butter.  And then, in less than a minute, breakfast has come and gone, and I am inconsolable.  No joke.  I am honestly mildly depressed when I finish my first meal, because I forgot to stop and enjoy it.  Luckily, Ryan has already put his foot down and we have been waking up earlier to have breakfast together before we leave (he usually brings his to work and I’m fed by 6am).  This has forced me to find other things to do in the morning besides eat peanut butter, such as brush my hair and open the blinds for a minute to say hello to the California sun.  It’s pretty nifty.  Today, I had scrambled eggs & a pear with some cheese toast.  Curveball!
7. Make more friends. I have a tendency to love the ones I have, and then hold everyone else I meet up to absurd standards of awesomeness.  In other words, I expect potential friends (read: strangers) to be as awesomely weird and ridiculous as my best friends from childhood are, and obviously, I am left disappointed.  I mean, I don’t understand why they don’t get me.  Rude.
8. Take a lunch break. Apparently, this is universally upheld as one of the gilded keys to sanity.  My source is Ryan, who’s a genius.  And I think the government and about.com would agree with him, no?  As I write this, by the way, I am cursing going outside (it is beautiful and cold today) to enjoy my veggie soup.  Because I am a hermit, and apparently, I like to be in pain/indoors and I am a yuppie-hypocrite.   But we already knew that, didn’t we, because I went to NYU.
9. Find a way to get back to the Farmers’ Markets. I love them, love them, love them, and my job revolves around them, and I’m so busy working I never get to them.  There is one a few blocks from here on Tuesday evening, and it’s no Santa Monica Wednesday, but it’s better than nothing.  I would like to go to two markets a month, at least, and I think that’s reasonable.
   

   This is what I loved about California when I moved here, and I want it to be a part of my life again.

10. Stop taking myself so seriously. Honestly, who cares if I eat two bananas, four apples, a fruit salad, and a bag of baby carrots before dinner is served?  Or if I go to Starbucks because I’m lazy and American—at least it’s not a drive through.  I don’t eat fast food.  I exercise at least four times a week.  I have a job and sunshine and love and friends and family and tacos every Tuesday.  I’m blessed, even if I eat fruit with the faucet running so Ryan can’t hear me/thinks I”m doing the dishes.  Ha!

Happy New Year.  What’s your resolution?

But let’s get right to the point.  The  chef at my job sat down next to me yesterday while I was trying to work and made me look at chafing dishes and salad bars from a restaurant warehouse website.  Later, I was on the phone with a client, and I looked up at the bulletin board.  A wish list had been posted, replete with kitchen appliances and chef’s accessories.  I wrote in my own request.

I forgot my camera and my dad bought a scanner that's essentially worthless, so I've provided this picture of a whole wheat bagel instead. Enjoy.

Well, this is awkward.  See, yesterday, I’m sitting at the Thanksgiving table, enjoying my stuffin’ muffin, when my cousin Max (whom I spanked in Scrabble Thursday night, by the way) asks me, with faux naiveté:

“So, how’s Lauren’s Little Kitchen?”
“Defunct,” I reply.  ”Lauren got a job.  Lauren eats a lot of grilled cheeses.”

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.  Oh, the Era of Post-Graduate Displacement!  Time was plentiful then.  The gym was never busy and more often than not, I blissfully perused the sale rack at the Gap without some rude carpool mom pushing all those plastic hangers in the wrong direction, shoving cheap v-necks with weird ruffling right into my vulnerable, unemployed little wrist.

Anyway, the point is, apparently people read this thing.  Some even enjoyed it, especially my mother.  To ensure that I am alive and well, she now has to decode my Facebook statuses, which are normally very cryptic, as evidenced below:

“I like tacos”
“why is it 113 degrees outside!!?  i’m enraged.  seriously.”
“why do I sneeze after I run sometimes?”

Wait, what’s that I said?  Could it be?  Yeah…  I like tacos. Ryan actually requests them, and it makes me feel useful.  We make the American kind at home.  They are awesome, what with seasoned ground beef and lime and jack cheese and spicy flour tortillas and beans from a can.  And Cholula, duh.  Very authentic.  We even started a really mature tradition,  the sacred “Taco Tuesday”.

Once, honeycrisp apples were on sale so I bought some. And by some, I mean, the guy rung me up and it was nineteen dollars worth of apples on sale. So I said, "umm okay I'll take half", but I didn't mean it, and I only did it because both Casey and the cashier were being really judgemental and I felt awkward.

Preparation for such an event occurs all day long.  Casey and I send each other messages at work much like these:

Casey:  I need beef.
Lauren:  Yah.  You will get!  At Fiesta!

By the way, Casey is my best friend from when I was little and we had matching everything, including bluish kate spade purses that we wouldn’t be caught dead carrying today.  We did just buy matching kate spade wedges, though.  Casey likes J. Crew almost as much as she likes football.  Similarly, I like tacos almost as much as I like peanut butter.  Oh, In other news, I am thinking about quitting fruit.  My apple consumption is through the roof and Ryan thinks maybe this is cause for my chronic tummy aches.  Whatever.  He’s not a doctor!  Hmmph.This was fun.  Maybe next week I’ll have actual, relevant photographs (or discourse) to share.  But probably not.

Why is peanut butter so much better than regular peanuts? I don't know. But it is.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Diet SPAM, found all crushed and empty and flat in my alley. Oh, I love LA.

Perhaps now that I have a computer that turns on, I can share more thoughts about grilled cheese sandwiches with somebody out there on the world wide web.  Also, everyone I work with is a better cook than I am and I just like to sit in the corner and drink coffee and eat blueberries.

In other news, soon there will be ample apples and butternut squash in the markets.