Bad Smells and Good Smells

Today is Nancy's 30th birthday! Happy birthday, Nay!!!

Gabriel invented a really good baby sign today. While he was eating lunch, he kept wrinkling his nose and breathing in and out of his nose really hard. He did that about 3 or 4 times before Patty realized that something was burning on the stove. He was telling her that it smelled bad!

We went to play group happy hour today at the Flemings' house. Gabriel's friends Jake, Zoe, Jonah, Sofia, and new friends named Mackenzie and Allie were there with their parents. We had drinks (wine for Patty and beer for Matt) and the kids played. It was fun.

We got a few more things prepared for the Chipster today: Anjou pears, squash, and zucchini (two different types mixed) - all organic, of course. We keep underestimating how much we need of each type of food and only end up with about 6 servings of each every time we make something. Patty punctured the muffin tin when she was using a knife to pry out the pears - it went right through like the metal wasn't even there. She forgot that Matt sharpened the knives.

We also finally finished making that bread that we've been talking about for a couple of days. It's from a recipe on the Food Network - Alton Brown's recipe, of course. His recipes always turn out really well. We've made the best turkey we've ever had, we've made some killer yellow cake, and we always make our own chocolate syrup, all from his show. He hasn't steered us wrong yet. He's also got a really good web site. But we digress. Anyway, as of press time (ha ha!), the bread is still cooling on the rack and smells fantastic. It's really crusty, and since we had to cut the cooking time by about 10 minutes because it was starting to burn, we're hoping that it's nice and chewy on the inside. We are fanatics about crusty bread.

We found a really good web site today called 8Legged.com. It has a lot of really good cooking information, including some really informative cooking shows given by an animated octopus named Tako. The shows have interesting tidbits of information while you watch, and related links show up - and stay in the corner - from time to time. That way, you can learn more or buy something for the recipe very easily. It's funny, interesting, and educational all at the same time. It's done by one of the writers of Good Eats, Alton Brown's show.

Incidentally, we got started as Good Eats fans back when Patty was up against a scientist from Georgia Tech for a role on the show. Before that, we'd never heard of it. It turns out they asked for a thermodynamics expert when they really wanted a ceramics expert, so they went with the professor. Of course, it was the worst episode ever...