My biscuits are burnin'! Or: The day the bear went shopping

So, husband was kind enough to be my model for officially trying my hand at food blogging. This shit is hard as fuck. Seriously. A dish that should take 20 minutes of prep ultimately took three hours to finish, but I had a fucking blast.

Things I also had during this afternoon's activity:

Five meltdowns
Four arguments
Three french hens
Two turtledoves
And a partridge in a pear tree.

The partridge came in the box o' pears husband brought home for me from the field. He's made himself quite at home.

The five meltdowns and four arguments part is true, though. I think Derek and I both threw at least two temper-tantrums a piece. It was a pretty solid afternoon.

On the docket today? Pretzel dogs, courtesy of Tasty, because even people living under rocks see at least twelve of their videos pop up on Facebook every day, and beer cheese dip, courtesy of Serious Eats. Pretzels without beer and cheese is just fucking retarded. At least, that's what I've heard from everybody else.

We started prepping for this shit yesterday, grabbing up all of the ingredients we needed. Hubs and I went to the liquor store for the fine, well priced, delicious, upscale brown ale necessary for the beer cheese. While I was trying to be thrifty and purchase the generic ingredients, Hubs chastised me and said, "NO. These pictures are for the INTERNET. Only the best ingredient can be portrayed." When he says things like that, it's acceptable. But when I say it, it's always, NO, DREA, A SAVINGS OF 35 CENTS PER OUNCE ADDS UP, GET THE CHEAP BRAND." You're a dirty, filthy mistress, internet. We may or may not have purchased a perfectly huge, perfectly delicious bottle of Appleton Estate.

Getting right down to the point, the fucking food was really, really good. We did fuck up a few things, though. When I've browsed other food blogs, there's a shitload of pomp and circumstance in the pictures. One lemon will be ensconced in rosemary and burlap, all of them looking itchy, but inviting. There's none of that shit going on here, because my apartment isn't a prop department. However, the pictures GREATLY improved in lighting and quality, because Hubs broke out the strobes and reflectors, and we gave this the college try. Well, the college try for people who actually try at college. So, yeah, this shit isn't going to be decorated within an inch of its life. These are just pictures. Hubs also has apparently never baked anything in his life, because he didn't remember to grease the baking sheet, and the pretzel dogs sort of stuck to the bottom. While we're on the subject of ways we fucked up the pretzel dogs, the oven was too high, and the time was too long. So, don't be like us, kids. Don't burn your pretzel dogs. They'll still taste delicious, but I mean...well, you'll see. They look like what I imagine a really suntanned dick looks like.

Here we go!

First thing's first, everybody! A warning: There are a lot of pictures. Like, a lot.

Oops number one: Skipping the ingredients for the boring introduction picture. Of COURSE this isn't everything we used. I almost decided to scrap the picture entirely, but I mean, why the fuck not? So, prepare your ingredients, plus all of the other ingredients that you've forgotten, and you can get started.

Listen, there's no shame in being scared as fuck of the impending pop of a can of delicious breadstuffs. What I like to do is drop it on the floor, so the pop stays as far away from me as possible, and I can quickly cover my ears and close my eyes, so the pop doesn't freak me out so hard. But Hubs is a man about town, and he did that shit with a spoon.

Unwrap your pizza dough, because it'll do you little to no good in one huge roll of raw dough. Unless eating raw dough is your thing, in which case, eat it. Eat it all. There's something delicious about raw shit, if you're gross like I am.

Flatten it all out, because you're going to need to cut that shit into strips for each hot dog. Hubs and I had one of many small tiffs where I said I wanted to wrap the dough in a circular motion around the hot dogs, and he demanded that the dough be wrapped fat ways, at least twice. Guess who won.

Husband! Husband won. Wrap the dough around your 'dogs, but don't wrap them excessively. Husband was right when he said two rotations would do. Anything more would just be additional work, and fuck that.

When all of those bastards are good and wrapped, line them up and pose them in ridiculous ways, because everybody should play with their food. If that isn't your bag, move on to the next step. Tip: If playing with your food is totally in your wheelhouse, don't play for too long, because that dough will start to sag, and there's no fixing that once it stops hugging your meat sticks.

Boil five cups of water, and don't wing it. I'm the kind of girl that likes to just do fuck all and drive drunk all over recipes, because why the fuck not? But keep this ratio right. Five cups of water. Boil them.

Once your water is boiling, take eighteen pictures of it, like I did! Or just skip that part and put in the baking soda. Bubbles! Who doesn't love bubbles? Dead people. Everybody alive likes bubbles.

Drop those motherfuckers like a bad habit. Thirty seconds, no more. But less works fine, because I watched Hubs take some of them out early. If you get them in for at least fifteen seconds, you should be all set. Do the grabbing and dropping with some amount of care, though. No need to be sloppy just because nobody's watching.

Washed eggs. Clean and sparkly, just like nature made! I think hubs used one eggs for this egg wash. 

Don't overdo it on the egg wash. One loaded swipe is just fine. When I sent Hubs out to get the basting brush, I made the mistake of trusting him to not go crazy at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Mistake number two.

If you don't like salt, don't salt these. The hot dogs make them plenty salty. I asked Hubs to leave three of them unsalted for me. If you DO like salt, use course ground salt, because aesthetics are important, god dammit. Look at how pretty that salt looks. LOOK AT IT.

Oven time! And it's super important that you grease the fucking cooking sheet. Treat it like a Roman, and you oil slick that shit up, one stop shy of the proverbial "hot dog down a hallway" joke. We cooked ours at 425 for 13 minutes, and they came out a bit too brown and chewy. Next time, 400 and 15 minutes should do it. Also, if you have an oven with a window, keep an eye on these. Seriously, they will burn on you, and you will be depressed, but you'll still eat them. I know you will. I would.

MOTHER FUCKIN' CHEESE TIME. If this picture doesn't arouse you even a little bit, go away. Seriously. I have no time for quitters like you.

Cornstarch your cheese, using Argo Brand Corn Starch. Argo: May the Best Man Win. (I don't think that's actually their tag line, but it could be. Also, if anybody has a line to Argo, I think I'm willing to talk to them about a marketing campaign idea I have, and also SPONSOR ME)

More of that gingerness we talked about earlier, and wash your damn hands before you do this. Nobody wants to eat part of your sneeze from an hour ago. Wash your hands, dry them off THOROUGHLY, and then mix up your starched cheese.

Beer cheese dip time! I promise, we cleaned that pot before we used it again. I suppose you don't have to do that, but I recommend it. Beer in first, there you go!

Add that dijon. Hubs was insistent that we use dijon, despite there being an amazing selection of other mustard flavors. I wanted Inglehoffers, but when I protested, Hubs shut the argument down with, "Yeah, nobody's ever rolled down a car window in traffic and asked for your shitty mustard." And even if I HAD a solid retort, I didn't.

Pour in your evaporated milk, and do it sexily. Mmm, yeah. I like that.

Whisk that shit up, and do it constantly. If your heat is off, it'll burn. If your heat is perfect but you don't keep it moving, it'll burn. Basically, it's going to burn, so the whisk is your best friend if you don't want burnt sauce that tastes like sewer hair.

Here comes the best part: ADDING ALL OF THAT CHEESE. Again, be careful here, because if you aren't, you'll just eat all of the cheese and be left with beer and mustard juice. If I hadn't been so busy behind the camera, that would have been what Derek and I ended up doing, because that shit was delicious.

Tada! Pretzel dogs! Delicious, delicious pretzel dogs!!!

While Derek and I were sifting through which photos to ditch and which photos to keep, Derek was immediately against this one. He said, "It looks like two dicks chasing each other." To which I responded, "MY DREAM!" And we kept the photo.

The beer cheese looks like milk, but it's not. It's fucking beer cheese. Delicious, delicious beer cheese.

I am 1000000 times happier with this set than the brownie set. Those were atrocious. But they can still be better. So much better. However, I went from "awful" to "sauntering vaguely toward a state resembling alright", so honestly, I can't be that fucking upset with myself. With this kind of progress, I'll own my on food blog company that also rules the world in little to no time at all!

A good diagnostician with a cool toy

I'm having trouble sleeping. It's twenty after four in the morning, and I don't feel the slightest bit tired.

I've been thinking a lot about death. My death, specifically. It's terrifying and wonderful to not know when it's coming. But I teeter more towards the terrifying. I worry about my parents having to bury me. I worry about my husband outliving me. Most of all, I worry about my son being too young to understand my death. Mostly about that.

Right after I had my daughter, I started to have anxiety attacks at night, when the house was silent and asleep, about the world ending. I imagined what I'd have to tell my daughter as the strings of the world collapsed around us. I pictured a gorgeous, long speech that somehow put us both at ease about our imminent deaths, and it would be soothing and not frightening at all. After I had my son, I stayed up at night, riddled with anxiety about dying in my sleep, leaving my son alone in a house with his mother's dead body.

That anxiety has since calmed down. I'm still terrified about dying before (what I assume is) my time, and the bleak finality of death is so sad. I can't really say if this is a shared part of the human condition. I don't really ask about it, because I don't want to be a downer. Nobody likes talking about death.

The point here isn't to be a downer, though. The point is this: being preoccupied with when I could die (and I mean, I could die as I type this) brings so many amazing, positive things into my brain, and ultimately, I wind up smiling, despite the grim topic.

Tonight, as I laid on the couch, thinking about death, thinking about how much sleep feels like death, and like how much I fucking want to sleep, I started staring at my hands and thinking about who else had held them.

I thought about how my hands, at an age that didn't appreciate the gravity of what they were doing, held my daughter right after she was born, marveling over the tiny, fragile, beautiful thing that I had just given birth to. How my hands had dressed her, and tickled her small feet, and held her so close to me, because even though I didn't understand how or why, I loved this small, screaming, giggling thing that smelled like the cleanest baby soap all the time.

I thought about all of the arguments with her father where I used my hands to expound upon my hurt and my anger and my frustration, because my words weren't enough. I thought about my hands signing the separation of custodial rights that I signed when my daughter was six. I was only twenty five at the time, and I hadn't really done much that could be considered grown up, intelligent, or selfless until then. One day, maybe my daughter will understand that my hand signed that separation because it was the right thing to do for her. She was miserable with me around, and I couldn't keep weighing us both down like that.

My hands were the instrument that I used to write, and those words helped me meet Allen. I remembered the awkwardness of our initial meeting, and how that melted away instantly. How I wanted nothing more than to put my hands in Allen's, and to keep them there. I thought about writing down the things he'd say in his sleep, and how I'd write them down when they were particularly amusing. How much that made me love him. How wonderfully vulnerable Allen let me be, and how he did his best to understand me and my insecurities. I loved Allen so much.

When I gave birth to my son, his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck so hard that my contractions were choking the breath out of him. He was so blue, and he wasn't breathing. Allen and I were terrified. The death that I've always been so preoccupied with could have been my son's, and he hadn't even gotten to live yet. But my wonderful doctors being as talented as they are, and the glory of modern medicine being what it is, Gabriel came out of it just fine. And eight years later, my son still loves to hold his mommy's hand and make her laugh. I love him for that. And so many other things.

I thought about the last time I saw Dan, leaving his car, saying goodbye, and how hard I was crying. I remembered grabbing his face with my hands, saying, "I love you", and then turning immediately and walking away, because I knew I wouldn't hear an I love you in return. I've written myself as a victim so much, but every single part of me is glad I'm not with Dan anymore. Hands and all. I loved him, despite my failings, and despite his, but what an awful pair of people we were.

And then I thought about my husband, sleeping in our room. And I love him so much. More than Chris, and Allen, and Dan. Derek doesn't try and understand me, he just loves me. And I don't think the former means the latter is impossible. Even though I can't sleep, I sneak into our bed randomly throughout the nights, and I wrap myself around my husband and kiss him right between his shoulders and whisper to him how much I love him.

And oddly, these things make it so sad to know that one day, I'll simply stop existing, but it makes it so amazing that I do right now. I've done so much, and experienced so much. Far more than most other people have. I'm extremely fortunate. I've lived. I'm not just alive.

These are the things I think about when I can't sleep, and I can't sleep a good deal of the time. Even so, and even knowing that I can't sleep because I'm anxious, I'm still thankful.

May induce sex nightmares and sleep crimes

This is going to tell two stories, neither of which anybody cares about. Buckle up, mother fuckers!

My daddy has been a waiter my entire life. I have never once been ashamed of that, or felt like my dad wasted his intelligence on something so small in the grand scheme of things. He's fucking amazing at what he does. Legitimately. There are bad waiters, there are waiters, there are exceptional waiters, and then there's my daddy. He really is the kind of person who could sell you your own shoes, and make you think paying him to take your shoes off just to put them back on was a brilliant idea. I've always envied that trait in him, because he's far better at schmoozing than I could ever hope to be. 

I've always talked about my dad being brilliant and engaging and fantastic. I brag about my daddy whenever I have the chance. When my dad came to visit last year in May, I lent him my signed copy of The Future of the Mind (signed by the great Michio Kaku himself), because I knew he'd appreciate it. When he came again for the wedding, he gave it back to me, with our wedding gift in it. Additionally, he put some letters in it that he'd written. To NASA. 

It reads:

Gentleman,

First of all, I cannot, in words, express my feelings of horror, disappointment, and loss over the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and the death of its seven member crew. January 28th, 1980 will burn forever in my memory as the most tragic day in the history of America's space program. I pray that it was the last such accident. However, in my opinion, the Challenger incident, obviously a setback, will not defeat America's manned exploration of space. This belief is the reason I am writing this letter. I wish to participate in the future space program. I want to be an astronaut. I dream of the day when I can become part of the NASA team.

I don't know what he wrote next, or if he ended up sending a cleaned up version of this. For some reason, I haven't asked my dad about it. I think I want to just imagine about it, and love my daddy for seeing the Challenger explode and instantly going, "I CAN USE THIS TO MY ADVANTAGE."

So that's kind of a brief introduction to the most wonderful man alive.

He used to work at a place in south Florida called Marina Bay. It was a nice restaurant, but my memory of it is from my six year old brain. I think I remember it being nice because it had two stories, and also I could feed the koi fish in the front of the restaurant. My dad has never really worked anywhere low rent, so I feel fairly confident that Marina Bay was as nice as I remember.

One of the benefits of my dad working at restaurant was being able to eat at said restaurants whenever I wanted. On one such occasion of enjoying food benefits off of the back of my father's hard work, there was someone playing piano. I had been sitting and eating my dinner with my mom, listening to this fellow play his piano. Something came over me, and I told my mom, "I want to go sing." And then I got up and found my daddy, and told him the same thing. My dad told me to wait, so I waited until the man playing piano was in between songs, and I asked him if I could sing a song with him. He said I could.

He introduced me to the crowd (did I mention this was a two story restaurant? That was at full capacity?), and then he played Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and I sang it. I remember standing up there, with everybody watching me, and feeling like a star. It went directly to my head when everybody stood up and applauded me, and it went even MORE to my head when people came up to my table and said nice things to me, and said even nicer things about me to my mom and dad all night. I was a fucking sensation!

The moral of this story? I peaked at the age of six.