Growling at Julia

Okay...so as a disclaimer, I will tell you there are a ton of pictures in this post. So...if you are only interested in seeing pictures of Mya, scroll down. Otherwise, you can read what we did this week and scroll through all the pictures. To begin, this past week was so much better than the previous one. No tears were shed. So I figure that is a major success compared to the week before. The weather is perking up in Utah. Today it was nearly 60 degrees. Tim and I took Mya to the park and ran around with her for about an hour without needing sweaters. It was gorgeous. Mya even wore shorts yesterday trying to coax the spring air to stay around.

I looked forward to our Friday night out all week. It was the week of our long awaited Julie & Julia party. (For a little background, we recently began having a girl's night once a month, but this month men were invited because food was involved.) Tiff designed invitations and hand delivered them to all the guests. Misti made the food assignments a week ago. And we, as guests, had to show up on time with the food in hand. I was in charge of making the Quiche Lorraine, Crepes a la Florentine, and Galletes au Fromage. I tried making the cheese crackers the night before the party and was left with an absolute disaster. The 1/2 lb. of butter used to make the crackers just flat out melted in my oven creating a sticky, yellow mess. Frustrated, I put the batter in the fridge and went to bed. I figured a new day might inspire new motivations to make this ridiculously rich and hard to make food. I worked until 2 on Friday and came racing home praying Mya was napping so that I could start on the two main dishes. She was asleep. I think Tim knew how much I had to get done, so he put her to bed to help me out. She slept until 4 allowing me to make a mess of my kitchen and get mostly done with my two dishes. I gave up on the cheese crackers when I realized that the 1/2 lb. of butter had completely solidified as I forgot it would when placed in the fridge. There was no kneading that dough into cracker-like objects. I just threw it in the trash and focused on the two other beasts. With bacon frying on the griddle, spinach blanching (I learned what blanching was thanks to Julia), and crepes slowly...and when I say slowly...I mean 24 slowly baked crepes going at the same time, I had no idea how I would finish the task. Mya didn't want me to focus on cooking when she woke up and seeing how I had no time to waste, I put her in her high chair with a scoop of french silk ice cream and a bib and let her go to town. And boy did she ever. You will see the pictures I took so I could capture the sweet mess. She sat in her chair for about 1/2 an hour before screaming, "Down....down. Mama...down." I put her down and resumed my previous cooking when all of a sudden I hear a crash and Mya's famous whine, "eeh, eeh, eeh." I turn around to see cans thrown on the grown from the pantry and all of the opened spaghetti noodles scattered on my recently cleaned floor. Bummer. I was at a breaking point in my cooking and just ran over to grab Mya because she thought I was going to yell at her. But I was in a surprisingly good mood considering the situation and just laughed and kissed her cheek. Sometimes I am a good mom. I grabbed the two brooms from the closet and taught Mya how to sweep. She loved it. She loved it so much that when I tried to get the broom back, she whacked me in the face with it and gave me a fat lip for about an hour. Another bummer. Oh well. At least, she likes to clean.

Somehow, I got everything done. I dropped off Mya to the babysitter and showed up at Tiff's place only 5 minutes late. Amazing. The dinner was amazing. I was pleasantly surprised by the French cuisine. My meals were delectable. (I am sorry...but I have to be honest.) It was nice to visit with friends. I think everyone had a great time. Thanks to everyone for all they did to put this event together. The only thing bad about the whole thing was the mess I came home too. I definitely growled at Julia Childs when I walked into my kitchen and remembered how many dishes went into making her buttery dishes. Gratefully, my husband did the dishes the next morning when I ran errands. He is amazing. I can't wait for our next girl's night...especially since it will be much more simple.

So here are the pics...I tried to capture all the moments of my cooking adventure. Here is Miss Mya eating/loving her ice cream. A treat she rarely gets.

Blanching spinach...not very hard at all (Just put the fresh spinach in boiling water for about a minute and transfer it to ice cold water right after.

The crepes...Julia style

The bacon...Janine style. Julia's recipe said to place the bacon in boiling water to get rid of the smoky, salty taste. Umm...no. That's why we eat bacon.

The finished crepe product. Minus the cooking. Delicious. Seriously...mouthwatering.

The mess

Now...I will not take credit for any of the following pictures/designs. Tiff did all of this. She is amazing with Photoshop. I am very jealous.

Now for those of you who didn't read anything I wrote above, here are the pictures of Mya. I love this first one of her eyes. You can really see their true color.

I thought this picture was so sweet. Mya loves her bear and rubs its ears against her face all day long. I even love the silly thing. Sometimes when Mya isn't looking, I just hug it.

Mya fell down hard this week and scraped her knee. She was pretty sensitive about it when we first picked her up from the babysitter's house. I think she has totally forgotten about it now. Bring on the ouchies and the scars.

And finally, a few last pictures of our messy girl. She is a little ball of sass. I just adore her.