Dear Houston,

Sometimes I see pretty parts of you, and you’re not as ugly and concrete-jungle-ish as I thought.

DC's Black Bean Hummus (in his own words)

Note from Stephanie: my husband is an amazing cook and is THE BEST at putting things you have in your fridge together to make something fantastic.  Like, you could have a squash, some cherry jell-o, some leftover pork chops, and some seltzer and somehow he makes gourmet mac-n-cheese out of all of it.  I do not lie.

Ingredients:

• 1 can black beans drained and rinsed in the can
• Like, a half a jalapeno...a medium one
• 2 pinches of chunks of yellow onion

• 2 gurgles of Olive Oil out of a bottle

• dash of kosher salt
• dash of pepper (fresh ground)
• full ringing of one tired lime...scrape a little pulp out too

• put it all in your bullet, and turn it on (Note from Stephanie: if you do not own a Magic Bullet, you are not living)

but you gotta shake it a little

Done and Done.

Delish.

Note from Stephanie: I love when he makes this.  It is SO good, so healthy, such a great vegetable dip (we put together small things of fresh veggies for our lunches during the week and add a scoop of this to it) or chip dip (we decided to keep our Snyder's Chips around...the ingredients fit our 5 ingredients or less requirements!  Try them out, for serious).  You can also spread hummus on a sandwich, or eat it off of your finger.  Not that we do that.

You Are What You Eat...In Which Case, I am Mostly a Box of Hot Tamales.

As stated in my 2010 goals, DC and I are attempting to clean out our fridge/pantry and start eating food that has less ingredients (the semi-flexible rule is 5 ingredients or less), and we are trying to buy more local and more organic. I have to tell you, it has been amazing cleaning out the pantry. Seriously, if we're going to clear it out and not be wasteful, it is completely necessary for me to eat the entire box of Hot Tamales. and the bag of Light Lays Ruffles. and everything else. You could say I am making great sacrifice to get us started on the right foot.

Saturday morning we made our way to 2 farmers markets. Bliss for this one right here. Bliss. I love them. I love the people, I love the farmers, I love the coffee...

But I mean he had to be the weirdest barista I'd ever seen. No matter, Katz coffee is superb. I look frumptastic. Wait, I remember why. DC and I woke up and I'm like "Let's get it over with and go to the store (before we thought to check out the FMs)" and he's all "LET'S GO IN OUR PAJAMAS!!!" like a 6 year old who ate his whole Halloween candy bowl in one sitting. Oh wait, that's DC every day. Lord help me when we have children. But anyway, I thought it would be fun, but mostly funny, and then I walk in the bedroom to get shoes and he's all "I think maybe I'll put on jeans". Anyway, pointless story short, I threw this on and that's why I look like a bag lady.

We found some really delish stuff that you can't find in the grocery store. I mean you can find lettuce and stuff in the grocery store, but it's not this fresh or big or fun.

One of these things is not like the other. These tomatoes are to die for. DC and I could each eat a tomato for dessert.

We're working on figuring out what to do with everything we bought. We have some research to do, some books to read (like Mark Bittman's Food Matters), and some trial and error to get through.

Eat your heart out.

Pioneer Woman’s Meatloaf: Semi-fail.

Good start to a new post…I can’t even find the recipe on PW’s website for this. Maybe I’ll post it later or maybe you’ll have to buy her cookbook…if you still want to after reading this hot mess.

I made PW’s meatloaf. I was stoked. Devin was still recovering from being sick and was not so sure about eating a “real meal”. But I convinced him it would be great. Then what did I go and do? I cooked a dadgum meatloaf, like, medium rare.

Before you topple over laughing…or after because you probably already are, I can explain…ish.

I actually followed the recipe EXACTLY (except I used turkey bacon instead of real bacon because I just cannot do it…but this shouldn’t have mattered) including the oven temperature and cook time. Her cook time was WAY too short (I think I’d blame this on the cheap apartment oven before I’d blame it on Ree), so I left it in even longer. But, there came a point where I was about to either faint from hunger or start eating whatever I saw, and I just decided it was ok to just get the freakin’ thing out of the oven and try to eat it.

I am gagging as I write this.

The first bite sent me dry heaving (but the salad was so good!). DC liked it but said he liked my recipe better (HA!!) and he tried to convince me it was just like eating a burger cooked medium,

but deep inside, he was so skeptical.

Random: I’d like to think I would make it on Amazing Race, but in reality, if they made me eat anything like this during a food challenge, I would lose the game and DC would be livid. Perhaps I need to work on my eating-it-anyway game face. What am I saying?

We ended up eating the nastygrossloaf. I KNOW!!! HURL!!! And for “some unknown reason” DC got to feeling a little worse that night.

Wife fail. Cooking fail. Meatloaf fail. Healing the sick fail. I could go all day.

But wait! The next night DC made open face meatloaf sandwiches (we still kept the leftovers…) and cooked the slices in the toaster oven before he put them on the sandwich. Much better.

I can always count on him to make fun of/save my cooking failures.

Go buy PW’s book. Especially if you want to learn to cook some really good southern dishes, which I promise I know how to do (ish). Remember? He liked my recipe better.

Enough. Get the book.

I Tend to Dive Right In

Apparently, I don't waste any time leaping right into my 2010 goals. Saturday, I went and cut 153 inches off of my hair. It seems like it, okay? So, I'm all, "Dev, I need you to take a picture of me for the blog to show my new haircut to prove to all of my readers that I'm all about the follow through", and he's all "mmmk". I sort of procrastinated about it on Saturday, naturally. Procrastination was not something I wanted to change in 2010. I have fully embraced my procrastination and do not intend to let go of it. So, Sunday afternoon, just as I was thinking, "Let's get that picture here pretty soon", DC sat next to me on the bed holding a bowl full of baked kale (at my request I should say) and the next thing I know there are fumbling hands...and this sound: ooooooo-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOH! and then I realized that gleaming white light coming toward me was actually not the rapture occurring, but a bowl headed straight for my face. Then there was a loud THUD.

And, so, behold. My "New Haircut of 2010" picture.

Complete with a Lightning McQueen boo-boo fixer ice pack. And don't even say you love my hair (I guess I shouldn't jump to conclusions; you may hate it) because 1. I edited it funny so you can't really see it very well (I didn't change the color. I love my natural color. It cannot be bottled) and 2. It's a terrible picture.

But DC felt so so so bad. So bad that he serenaded me on the guitar while I iced my goose egg. Swoon.

The moral? Marriage is rough; wear a helmet.

After reading this, DC requested I put another picture up

He picked out my hat. And shirt. I love him.