hypocrite

That’s me. I have been on this organic food kick since I watched Forks Over Knives. I try to buy organic, natural, healthy whenever possible. It’s expensive. It’s kind of a pain in the butt since the nearest Whole Foods is all the way across town. Sometimes it just doesn’t taste as good. But I’m doing my best because the thought of ingesting chemical-laden food just kind of grosses me out.

Here’s where the hypocrisy comes in…Diet Coke. Yes, the girl who is worried about hormone-infested chicken and ingredient lists that I can’t pronounce or spell is voluntarily drinking at least 12 ounces of …chemicals. Every day. Even after I read this article which says I’m basically drinking ammonia. They call it "caramel coloring" which sounds deee-lish but, really, it's AMMONIA. And yet I still cruise through the McDonald’s drive-through and grab a large Diet Coke (that’ll be one-oh-eight at the first window) nearly every day. Can I have a super-sized chemical, ammonia drink please? 

Yuk.  So I’m quitting…again. For the 50^th time. And wondering, what else do they put in there that is so damn addictivie?

mom's potato salad

My mom’s potato salad is legendary. I just whipped up a batch for our trip to the Lake. Can you tell this recipe has been used a few times? In case my little index card finally becomes illegible, and because it’s almost criminal not to share this recipe with the world, here’s the recipe. Best. Potato. Salad. Ever. 

Mom's Potato Salad

2 1/2 cups sliced, peeled, cooked potatoes (we usually double, triple or quadruple the potatoes and then adjust the rest of the recipe accordingly. I'm not good at doing math or fractions or I would have done that for you. Sorry.)

1 tsp sugar

1 tbsp pickle juice 

1/2 cup chopped onion (cut them big if people want to pick them out, small if they don't want to know they're there or use the dried stuff in you don't have fresh...it all works but don't leave it out!)

1/2 cup sliced celery (diced if you have lazy veggie eaters like me who will pick out the big stuff but not the small stuff)

1/4 chopped dill pickles (I think the cheap kind are better than the fancy Valassic stuff but either will work. If you get the sandwich slices, they're easier to cut. Or use one of those choppers from Pampered Chef. Shut up...I'm lazy.)

1 1/2 tsp celery seed

3/4 cup mayonnaisse (doesn't seem to matter if you use low fat, olive oil based, whatever...but I think less is more with this recipe. And it's not just calories, it tastes better with a little less.)

4 hard boiled eggs, sliced (I usually do more because I like hard boiled eggs)

2 tbsp Natures Seasoning (best spice EVER. If you haven't tried it, you should. We use it by the case.)

Salt and pepper to taste (I usually find that it's best to let it set for 4 - 8 hours stir it again and then taste and adjust. The flavors really develop over time and if you try to re-season too early you can quickly end up overdoing something.)

how does your garden grow?

Tagg and I started a gardening project in the spring, nurturing little seeds into tender green sprouts. It’s a bit of an experiment, and I’ve learned that I was not born with a green thumb. Thanks to my iPad and Google, however, the kids and I have managed to create quite the organic garden. Our tomatoes and zucchini are out of control. 

Sloane likes to eat them straight off the vine and has been known to lick spilled tomato juice right off the table. No sign of pumpkins yet, but Tagg’s corn is 6’ high and actually seems to be growing real ears of corn, which is hilarious considering we just threw the seeds in the dirt and wrote those off. Now we have corn. 

We’ve even managed to grow potatoes. I really did have to look that one up on the internet. I had absolutely no idea how potatoes grew!

How does one potato become many,
and then become potato salad? Good question!
Check out Potato2008 (a real live web site) for the answers.

I got a text message from Tagg’s baby daddy, Paulie, not long after we started our little gardening project. It’s a picture of his hand holding some cayenne peppers, and a lovely garden. He had seen my post and decided that he and his girlfriend would plant a garden too so it was like we were doing it together. Every time I pluck a tomato off the vine I think of him doing the same thing a thousand miles away. Pretty cute.

Things I’ve learned about gardening.

• I like it. Nurturing little seeds into vibrant, robust plants and then harvesting your own fruits and vegetables is very satisfying.
• It’s hard to garden organically. Snails, grasshoppers, whatever is eating those little holes in my Swiss Chard, the fact that my tomatoes are significantly smaller and ripening later than my dad’s MiracleGro tomatoes…these things all tempt me to run to Home Depot and buy some chemical corrector. I continue to resist! Trying eggshells and beer to get rid of the snails, ladybugs for the aphids, and patience for the rest.

For Sloane, tomato = apple.

•  Kids really will eat fruits and vegetables if they grow them. Tagg, who’s been on a no-veggie kick lately, has eaten zucchini, tomatoes, peppers and yellow squash. I’m already planning next year’s garden with this in mind. And I have a hard time keeping Sloane from picking things right off the vines.

• I have to learn how to bake, and fast. One zucchini equals about 1-2 cups of shredded zucchini. And I have about twenty zucchini. So far. Yikes. I’ve already made chocolate-zucchini muffins, cheesy herb zucchini bread, regular zucchini bread, zucchini tomato salad, lemon zucchini sauté salad, and grilled zucchini. Rumor has it you can shred and freeze it. I need to look into that. And if anyone needs a zucchini or ten, let me know.



Big, sneaky zucchini bastards
with cute little maters.

• Zucchini are sneaky bastards. You're supposed to harvest them when they're smallish and normal sized. But they hide. If you miss that window, look out. One day, BAM!! There's an enormous, gigantor zucchini in the garden. And the big ones are only apparently only good for baking. And phallic jokes. 

graduation day

It was graduation season a couple of months ago (where does the time go?!) and our mailbox was full of white and cream envelopes. A lot of our friends, who got started with their families well before we did, have kids graduating from high school and they proudly send announcements with photos of their smiling kids in caps and gowns.

Among them was an announcement for Tagg’s baby mama’s high school graduation. Amazing. He’s almost 4 years old and she is just graduating from high school. How crazy is that? 

I keep in touch with Juno’s mom and Juno and I are friends on Facebook (weird, right?) so I know that she’s graduating with honors, was the star of her high school basketball and volleyball teams, that she’s going to college to study medicine, and that she’s been to lots of dances and football games and that she's gorgeous, popular and seems really happy. Basically, she's having the perfect high school experience. I’m really proud of her. In what I hope is a non-condescending kind of way. 

That graduation announcement was comforting to me. Like we all did the right thing and it's working out perfectly. I hope she felt the same way. And that Tagg will, too, someday.

Now the big question…what do you get your baby mama for a graduation present?!