Whenever one of us is sick, it’s time for The Soup. This is the only kind of soup we ever make in this home because Cris hates all other soups. This soup is amazing. The delicious, spicy broth is perfect for sore throats and stuffy noses, and the watercress is full of all sorts of magical, healthy goodness. And, bonus! The soup is easy enough to make even when you’re feeling like crap and hopped up on cough meds and trying to take care of a baby who’s become obsessed with the cat food dish.

The recipe was originally based on this Asian Chicken and Chili Soup from the delightfully cute (and tiny!) Everyday Food magazine, but it’s evolved over the years into its own beast.

Ingredients:

• 12-16 oz of chicken, poached and shredded
• 1 bunch of watercress with the thick stems chopped off
• 1 bunch of cilantro, chopped
• 1 roughly diced onion
• 1 red bell pepper, cut into 2” strips
• the juice from 2 limes
• 2-3 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp Asian chili garlic sauce (sweet chili sauce can be used if you don’t like the spicy)
• 6 cups chicken broth
• 1 packed of udon noodles

Directions:

1. Bring the broth, soy sauce, chili sauce, lime juice to boil. Add onions and bell peppers and simmer for a few minutes.
2. Add noodles and chicken, and simmer for a couple more minutes.
3. Add in the watercress and the cilantro, and then simmer for yet a couple more minutes.
4. Serve. Enjoy. Feel better.

That’s it. Sometimes we throw in some garlic and sometimes we leave out the noodles. Sometimes we add jalapenos or habeneros (because I’m not happy until it’s so spicy that I’m crying while eating it). But if you leave out the cilantro because you’re one of those weird creatures who quote-unquote “doesn’t like” cilantro? We can’t be friends anymore. I’m sorry.

Step 1: Throw whatever you have leftover in your fridge into a pan with a bit of olive oil and some salt. In this case, we’ve got: asparagus, spinach, onion, garlic, mushrooms, and sausage. Cook until… well, it’s cooked.

Step 2: Whip up some eggs. Six or so ought to do it. Pour them in the pan and cook over low heat until the eggs are almost set. Then top with shredded swiss cheese (or whatever cheese tickles your fancy, I don’t really care) and stick under the broiler for a few minutes until nice and crispy and brown.

Step 3: Slice and serve.

Step 4: Repeat Step 3 until you realize you’ve almost eaten the entire pan yourself. Feel like a pig.

The first time I fed Ezra rice cereal (verrrry watered down), he got mad. He kept trying to shove the spoon in his mouth and suck, while looking at me like I was crazy and then YELLING LOUDLY every time I dared to pull the spoon out of his mouth. I gave up after a few bites and nursed him, figuring that he just wasn’t ready for solids quite yet.

And then he started trying to grab food out of my hand whenever I ate near him. He would pull glasses of water to his mouth if I was drinking. He would SCREAM WILDLY every time he finished a bottle.

So we tried again. He loved the cereal this time. I don’t think he really understood the purpose of the spoon when clearly, if I would just stop being so dumb about it, he could grab the mush directly out of the bowl with his AWESOME HANDS THAT CAN GRAB THINGS!!! But if I gently held his hands and kept the bowl out of reach, he would deign to use the spoon, and now he’s an EXPERT.

A messy expert.

I had been planning on making our own baby food from the beginning. I finally got a copy of Top 100 Baby Purees in the mail earlier this week, and last night I made my first batch of baby food. Yes, I needed a recipe book to tell me how to steam some carrots and mush them up.

Of course, last night Cris ended up not getting home with the baby until almost 9, way past Ezra’s bedtime. He took one bite of the carrots, smiled at me, and then put his head down on my shoulder and started drifting off to sleep.

And after all the time spent on his dinner (steaming carrots is hard, people!), this is what happened:

For the past few months, I’ve been on the hunt for a slow cooker pulled pork recipe that both Cris and I loved. It’s been quite a challenge. I like spicy, saucy, carnitas-style pulled pork and Cris prefers BBQ sauce. Endless bottles of disgusting BBQ sauce. But after a few failed attempts with different recipes of my choosing, I let Cris talk me into trying to make our own BBQ sauce. We looked up a bunch of recipes, then went to the grocery store and Cris just kinda winged it from there.

The results? Delicious. It ended up way more spicy and less sweet than most bbq sauces I’ve tried before, and perfectly tangy. I never though I could like bbq sauce, but it turns out that it’s pretty darn good when it’s not disgusting! We served it on cheddar jalapeno rolls with cheese and lettuce, and oh my, it was good. I approve of this recipe!

Ingredients

• small pork shoulder roast
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1/2 c. ketchup
• 1/3 c. white vinegar
• 3 tbsp brown sugar
• 1/4 c. tomato paste
• 2 tbsp paprika
• 2 tbsp worchestire sauce
• 2 tbsp dijon mustard
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp pepper
• 3 jalapenos, chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 2 tbsp chipotle chili powder
• 2 tbsp dried chili flakes
• 1/2 tsp liquid smoke

Directions:

1. Put your roast in the slow cooker.
2. Put all the other ingredients in a food processor and blend, blend, blend!
3. Put the sauce on top of the roast, cover, and cook on high for 6-8 hours.
4. Remove and shred pork.
5. Pour sauce into a saucepan and boil until reduced by half.
6. Pour sauce over shredded pork, mix, and enjoy!

So, I wanted to try to impress some potential new friends with my hardcore baking skillz. But instead of sticking with one of my tried-and-true cupcakes of deliciousness, I decided to attempt red velvet cupcakes. Hours of recipe-searching and I settled on this recipe . Shouldn’t be too hard right?

Of course, Safeway was out of cake flour, dutch-processed cocoa, and normal red food coloring, so I went with all-purpose flour, plain gross Nestle cocoa, and some weird gel food coloring.

Do. Not. Do. This.

The cupcakes were neither red nor velvety. They tasted like bran muffins. Really boring bran muffins. With delicious cream cheese frosting. Cris took one bite, looked at me, and said “I’m sorry, honey.” That’s how bad they were.

After much whining and wailing on my part, Cris salvaged the situation by throwing these delicious cheese-filled, bacon-wrapped jalapeno things together at the last minute. There’s really no way to mess up that combination.

But of course I couldn’t take any credit for the yummy, yummy results and instead of being awed by my fantastic cupcakes, people were instead amazed with Cris’s ability to wrap things with bacon. Life is so hard.