In other news, my oldest son, Grey, turned 3 on the 15th. They grow so fast, no matter how many times people tell you that while you’re pregnant you never really believe it until it starts happening right in front of your face. It seems like just yesterday he was a tiny little baby, and yet I look at him now and he’s practically a teenager.  He started preschool on Monday, too, so it’s been a lot of fun around here with all the preparations.

I read a recipe this morning for a grape and pear pie, so once this place has been cleared of cake and cupcakes, I think I’ll make that and let you know how it goes.

Yes, that’s right, I launched a redesign before it was completely ready. Eat me, dev nerds!

So anyway, in the meantime I hope this makes for easier reading, with the added bonus of my random tweets, and if anyone knows how to replace the widget titles for K2 with images, feel free to let me know because I sure as hell am not finding it.

So at this point, you may be thinking, “Alicia, what gives? It’s been more than a few weeks. It’s been a whole damn month since you last posted anything, and that post wasn’t even about food! Isn’t this supposed to be a food blog?”

The answer is yes, yes it is. I even have at least 5 recipes, complete with photos, to post. The problem has been finding the time to do the writeups. I don’t know how PW does it, with 4 kids, when I can’t do it with 2. Maybe it’s that my two are 2 and 3 months old, respectively. But during this month, I’ve had approximately three hours of free time each night and that’s if I go to bed at midnight, and I do have a husband I try to spend time with, so there’s a balance to find here and I haven’t found it yet.

Things are looking up, though! My youngest has discovered that the world will not come crashing down if he sleeps more than 3 hours at a time, so that bodes well. I managed to make a chocolate tart yesterday – possibly the world peace tart – and this weekend will feature two recipes to be posted on particular days of great secrecy, so that’s something too.

Meanwhile, have you browsed smittenkitchen lately? How about Crepes of Wrath? No? Don’t forget about The Noshery, where Meseidy is always cooking up something good. And check back here soon for more good eats at the hands of a complete amateur.

This is Ethan, and I am pretty much in love with him. Conveniently my other future kitchen slave, Greyson, is pretty much in love with him too.

This does not, however, lend itself to extended kitchen time so I missed my Daring Bakers post, and I had some pregnancy-related health issues that kept me from cooking much lately anyway. 

I do have a strawberry meringue pie to share with you soon, and I think I’m going to start a once-a-week feature on making the most of quality prepackaged foods, like what we did with Zatarain’s red beans and rice tonight.

Til next time.

Also, what food I am cooking has taken horrible pictures. Last week I whipped up some of my hero Mario Batali’s minestrone siciliana and it was incredible, but it looks awful in the photo. Tonight was more soup, a dupe recipe of Panera’s broccoli cheese, and again, delicious but in this case I completely forgot to take photographs. Win some, lose a lot more seems to be my motto lately.

I hope to get back into the spirit of things soon – after all, baby or no baby, I still have some challenges to whip up!

And then I remember how I set the fireplace mantle on fire (pro tip: taper candles next to fresh garland is a Very Bad Idea, especially when copious amounts of festively-themed liquor have been consumed) – and at our housewarming party no less, which has a definite tinge of hilarity – and how I set a potholder on fire (pro tip: make a note of which burner you turn on before you turn your back) and then there was that time back in high school when I fell asleep with candles burning and the candleholders caught on fire…

…and I think maybe, maybe I should just leave the grill to the less accident-prone.

And so instead of writing about my backlogged recipes, like the Sole a la Grenobloise from Monday, I’m not writing anything at all, because I let someone else do all the work for me tonight. Being married is awesome.

So, my name is Alicia and this is my kingdom. It’s possible you came here from my other website, justthere.com, and I just want to explain to those of you who didn’t that this is to separate my kitchen adventures from the rest of my life. If you are not familiar with me, here’s a short story about who I am.

As it says in my “About” page, I live in Utah with my husband, Warren, our son, Greyson, and our completely neurotic golden retriever, Faye. I am originally from southern Indiana, and I moved here in 2002 to live with Warren after an internet friendship to courtship thing. It works for us. Our son was born in September 2006 and a few months shy of his first birthday was diagnosed with developmental delay. If you want to get really technical, it’s officially undiagnosed cerebral palsy, but we opted not to saddle him with that label unless it proves necessary to get him any treatment he may need. Anyway, as a result of cerebral palsy he receives therapy twice monthly to try to strengthen his speech and gross motor abilities. Utah has a great system in place through the school district and he has made incredible progress through it. He’s a healthy, happy and active toddler now and I am constantly amazed at the way he works.

Warren and I made everything official with a wedding ceremony in June of 2008, an intimate affair with our close friends and families. A couple of months later, we decided to try for a brother or sister for Grey, since his motor skills are at a point where he can handle me having divided attention. Considering I’m now 23 weeks pregnant, you could say we met with success, and Grey will have a little brother sometime in May.

The birth of my son and his subsequent problems made going back to work next to impossible, and we are lucky enough to be in a position where I am able to stay at home with him and provide the daily physical therapy he needs. Unfortunately for all of us, being a housewife is not something I seem to have any natural aptitude for whatsoever and I have been a cranky mess ever since. Every now and then I’ll slip into a groove with the cooking and the cleaning and the laundry and the blessed never-ending tedium of every day being so similar to the last and think, you know, this gig isn’t so bad. And then I wake up from that dream and it’s back to being bad at time management, dinner being way too late, Grey not getting a bath, and no one having clean pajamas.

Something happened, though, with this new pregnancy. I suddenly want to cook and bake, ALL THE TIME. It’s a compulsion, I absolutely need to do it, and I’m not just talking about nuking a hot dog and throwing fries in the oven. I pour over cookbooks and food blogs, collecting recipes for my Bi-Monthly Grocery List of Doom, I’ve stopped buying bread and started making my own, and possibly the strangest thing, I opted to buy a KitchenAid mixer for Christmas instead of photography equipment (the only –and most expensive- hobby that has never waned as so many frequently do). Would you like to see it? Here it is:

Man, I love that thing. Without it, it’s possible I never would have made a loaf of bread. Kneading is intimidating. Actually, a lot of things I cook and bake now I would not have tried had it not been for my KitchenAid – not that I used it to make short ribs or Carbonnade a la Flamande, but I guess my success with that first loaf of bread gave me a confidence in the kitchen that I did not previously have. See, internet, I am a timid creature at heart, and new things are very intimidating. New things make me not want to try them because I am genetically programmed towards failure, and that is not a pleasant thing to be reminded of. For instance, you’ll note that I’ve talked about enjoying baking now, but as a result laundry and cleaning have definitely fallen to the wayside. I even fail at hausfrauery.

So, long story short, this blog belongs to a woman who has a newfound love of her kitchen (oh man, the chauvinist jokes that could be inserted here….) and will contain posts about food, posts about life in general and other tales of housewifely woes. It will be a pleasure to share my misadventures with you.