My diet these days is, if we’re being completely honest, a bit of a mess. On the plus side, I take vitamins (and yes, I 100% feel entitled to medals for this) and generally enjoy balanced-diet-type foods. But these small wins are massively outweighed by the fact that much of my food consumption comes via whatever is left on my children’s plates.
Why? For two reasons.
Hey, remember a few years ago when pretty much every post I wrote included a Mason jar in one way or another? What that time period resulted in was me owning a lot of Mason jars.
Which is fortunate, because now - thanks to Diana Snyder's Young And Hungry: Your Complete Guide To A Delicious Life, which I'm slowly making my way through both for the easy recipes and just because it's so sweet and funny and reminds me of my early 20s - I am aware that I can use my Mason jars to send Kendrick off to work in the morning with homemade ramen. And homemade ramen is the kind of thing that earns me points in the "Who Wakes Up Early With The Kids On Saturday" tally, which is kiiiiiiind of everything.
Thank you for the extra hour of sleep* this weekend, Diana Snyder.
Cinco de Mayo is one of those holidays that only occurs to me when I'm in the middle of it - as in, when I'm sitting in a restaurant and notice the poster reading "CINCO DE MAYO CERVEZAS ONLY $2!!!" and think, Ooh. I should have a beer.
This year, Cinco de Mayo occurred to me several days prior to the actual event for two reasons: The first is that Mollie is throwing a party on Friday, and I just got the email reminder, and the second is that a few days ago I went over to Mollie's house and she showed me how to make the tissue-paper flowers and Ranch Water cocktails that'll be featured at this party. (Related: going to Mollie's house is always a good idea.) So, really, I suppose there's actually only one reason that Cinco de Mayo occurred to me before actual Cinco de Mayo, and that's "I have a friend named Mollie."
These tissue-paper flowers are so cute, and so versatile - you can make them bigger or smaller depending on the size of tissue paper you use, and can choose whatever color palette you want - and they're easy enough to make that you can hand over assembly duties to the kids (so you can focus on those Ranch Water cocktails).
This is so much more delicious than you think it is.
I was at Mollie's house last weekend for a pre-Easter parade lunch, and MAN do she and her husband ever feed us well when we're there. (The dishes generally include a lot of mayo. I am okay with that.) Her husband made deviled eggs that were so delicious that I ended up eating my daughter's leftovers. By which I mean the leftover bites that had actually been in her mouth, and that she had decided needed to come out again. (If you are a parent, you know this is relatively normal and often your best chance of getting to eat anything over the course of the day. If you are not...sorry.) I learned that HoneyBaked Ham isn't just...like, ham baked in honey, but an actual thing that people wait on interminably long lines to buy (and I totally get why because oh my GOD it's so good). And finally, I ate - with considerable reluctance - a broccoli salad.
When faced with a table of deviled eggs and ham (and pumpkin muffins and potato salad and mimosas), my default tactic is to skip the green stuff, lest it take up valuable space in my stomach that could otherwise be dedicated to muffin-consumption. But then I overheard Kendrick saying about Mollie's broccoli salad, "Oh wow, there's bacon in this?" and Mollie said, "Yup!" and okay fiiiiiiiiiiine if I have to, I'll try it. Reluctantly.
The good news: Oh my GOD is Peepshi - a.k.a. sushi that has been constructed from Peeps and an assortment of other cavity-creating substances - ever cute.
The bad news: Cavity-creating substances are frequently insanely delicious, which means that you will make Peepshi "for the kids"...and in the process eat millions of little Peep remnants (you know, the ones that you cut off in pursuit of a perfectly-shaped piece of nigiri) yourself.
Okay. Now that we've established that you're making Peepshi, because of course you are, let me tell you how to do it. This geniusness was originally created by Serious Eats, but now that I've made one batch and am thus clearly an expert, I'm going to tell you the little discoveries that I made over the course of the Peepshi-making process that I thought were extra wonderful.
