I could imagine it swearing at me from the cooler in the back seat, promising disaster for the indignity of being squished next to leftovers . I turned the radio up and tried to think of something else, but the fact was inescapable: at some point in the near future I was going to cook a prime rib for my family.

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before (but am too lazy to go back and check), I don’t generally cook for other people. If it’s a potluck, sign me up for bread. There are things I can cook fairly well, like risotto and casseroles, but my Achilles heel has always been meat. Let’s just say at my house you’ll never wonder if the chicken is fully cooked. Doneness is apparent the instant a shriveled hunk lands on your plate. While I have no issues sadly chewing my way through a piece of pork with less moisture than the Sahara, it’s not something I want to inflict on anyone I actually LIKE.

So you can imagine my apprehension with this PRIME RIB in my backseat.

Night Before The Big Day

Seasoned His Evilness (aka HE aka prime rib) with salt and pepper. Then sat on the couch and pondered all that could be going wrong in my fridge. Got up to check on HE; it just sat there, mocking me. Go back and play some video games. Between outflanking zombies and bartering for better equipment consider whether I put too much salt on. I followed a recipe that PROMISED perfect results, but what if?! Check on HE again, wonder if leftovers will give it a funny taste. Throw away leftovers. Back to video game. Re-think timing approximately eight times.

The Big Day

Set oven to highest temperature. Put in HE. While running around getting everything else ready and pondering my limited oven space versus casseroles that need warming, notice I’m blinking a lot. Then notice smoky haze throughout apartment. Run to windows in valiant race to beat smoke detector. Open windows in 18 degree weather. It can’t be helped. Smoke detector thankfully doesn’t go off.

Over the next hour or so raise and lower the oven temperature per Magical Recipe. HE looks good in oven light, and the thermometer shows a steady creep towards medium rare. Still smoky, so make sure bedroom door is closed so I don’t smell like prime rib all next week at work. Realize I can’t fit chicken in oven; call brother to pick up KFC (grilled) for my dad.

Family has arrived. HE comes out looking beautiful. Majestic even. I have pulled this off. Tent with aluminum foil and put casseroles in to warm up while cooking risotto and pouring drinks and trying to tell my dad how to use the TV through my kitchen wall. No one has to wear their coat inside despite windows having been opened earlier. Gas heat FTW!

Cut open HE. Stare. Blink a few times hoping it’s just the smoke haze making it look like HE is brown all the way through except for a tiny medium rare part at the bottom. Resist stabbing HE ferociously.

Me: It’s overdone! But I followed the recipe!

Mom: It still smells great and look how juicy it is!

Me: Overdone!

Mom: It’s going to be fine.

So I served it, and she was right. The rest of the food turned out well, my family gamely passed on steak sauce, and I enjoyed having them over. The dinner was a success. In the end HE only served as a catalyst for a quest to cook a prime rib to a delicious medium rare. Quiver in fear all you potential HE’s out there. In the end, I am determined to have the last laugh.

1. Wait… what?
2. Oh, right, the whole ‘I should really eat better’ virus that invaded my brain over the weekend.
3. What’s this sticker on the front? Dry ice? Isn’t that made from the stuff fancy chefs use to make instant ice cream?
4. AM I GOING TO GET INSTANT ICE CREAM?! *happy office chair twirl*
5. There is no ice cream in this box. *sad office chair drag*
6. So apparently I now have a box of Discs Infamously Manufactured Erroneously Assuming Tongues Imagining Nomming Greatness or DIMEATING. There is goof good in this situation somewhere. I just need to think.
7. *thinks hard*
8. Visions of steak, pasta, and molten chocolate cake appear frolicking through a beautiful field.
9. Then a veggie burger, dragging it’s dry carcass over a hill to ruin the fun.
10. Decide to look up dry ice on the internet, because hopefully that will distract you from the Thriller dance DIMEATING are now doing in your imagination. Wait, dry ice can BURN you?! I HAVE ORDERED A WEAPON. WITH FIBER.
11. Fan yourself to get over panic of dry ice. Doughnuts brought by contractor catch your eye. You already ate two this morning. That is more than enough; however, this is an emergency. Like, resorting to a plain cake donut emergency. (If only you’d worn white instead of navy, that powdered sugar one would be yours).
12. What do you even put on these things? Ketchup? Relish? Ranch Dressing?
13. Whoa, whoa, whoa… ranch dressing goes on a salad, so according to science… these things are a salad!
14. Celebrate science with a doughnut.

I’ll warn you right up front: the next few posts are going to be pictures from my recent vacation. We were fortunate enough to go to Europe for twelve days, and while words fail me when trying to describe how awesome the trip was, I have no shortage of pictures to fill in the gaps.

1. Friend announces adoption of Incredibly Cute Child.
2. Immediate excitement about toy store visits. For the child.
3. Find out he likes building things; locate store that sells tiny blocks used to make big things. In hindsight, this store is unfortunately close to your home.
4. THE STORE IS HUGE AND SHINY AND COLORFUL.
5. Wander around store looking at all the things that can be built. By the child.
6. There is a play area full of shiny blocks.
7. Wait, what was I doing?
8. Shake yourself to regain focus and resolutely go towards age appropriate section.
9. Store employee looks at pile of boxes on counter and suggests signing up for their club.
10. Once home, look at boxes. A lot.
11. What are the instructions like? What if Incredibly Cute Child needs help?
12. Open box.
13. Build tiny digger toy and roll it around on desk. Since the instructions are pictures that answered that question. Go back to other things.
14. Make sure boxes are still there.
15. I wonder if the directions are different in the bigger set?
16. They aren’t, but this sliding door feature is really neat!
17. Decide it’s really a good idea to test all the ideas included with the set, just to make sure they work.
18. You’ll have to mail this unopened set out. Going to the post office is such a hassle. You should just order another one and have it sent directly. No sense wasting gas going back to the store to return this one though…
19. Look online, discover massive sets for adults. They are quite awesome looking.
20. Contemplate storage options for numerous tiny blocks that somehow ended up all over your desk.

Okay not really. But my mom came to stay this past weekend, and during the shenanigans it struck me how many ways my mom is a most awesome mom. And not for the first time either. So I decided today is Mother’s Day II. It took me a while to whittle this list down, but here you go:

1. Forget Yelp and Open Table, Mom’s Restaurant Radar can find a good place to eat no matter where we are, regardless of whether she’s been to that area before or not. Cases in point: best fish ever in Buffalo, an ultimate Boston cream pie, and our rather unfortunate discovery of the divine guacamole at Rosa Mexicana.
2. She is a fountain of common sense with answers to questions like ‘how do I get this burnt food out of my pan’?
3. Snacks are not an option. They are a necessity.
4. She’s always up for an adventure (riding huge Ferris wheels, standing outside in the freezing cold to see a Christmas tree light, strolls down Bourbon Street).
5. Behold a MacGyver of Crafts… some sparkly ribbon, an odd looking round thing, and some scissors = beautiful fall wreath.
6. Her picnics are the ultimate picnics. And her pasta salad is the best in the world. So is her turkey dinner, pork and sauerkraut, cookies, vegetable beef soup, corned beef, shrimp and grits, chicken corn chowder… you get the idea.
7. She puts up with my crabbiness. A lot.
8. Her favorite meal is the one where you sit around eating tiny food and drinking tea for hours.
9. I like to drive, she likes to ride. She drinks a nice, leisurely cup of tea in the morning while I sleep in. We both love aquariums and art museums. These are some of the things that make us a great travel team.
10. ‘Mom… can I borrow some mousse / how do you do this / can you pin my dress / where are the spoons / what channel is Food Network / no the tiny spoons /  can I do my laundry at your house?

Sometimes it’s best to judge success in tiny, tiny increments. Joining a hat in knitting without somehow, despite your most careful efforts, finding it twisted when you’re halfway done. Making it through an entire commute without a single eye roll. Passing on the donuts, going back to look at the donuts, passing on the donuts again, then actually leaving the store without a donut. Everyone has their small victories worth a happy dance and maybe a cookie. As you probably guessed I had one this week.

I really, really suck at cooking meat. Veggies? No problem. Sauces? Bring it on, I can kill a sauce. People have actually eaten seconds of my mushroom risotto. I can even make a mean steak. But the rest of the meats? Elusive. Which in my world means dry, tough, etc. Now I realize that many will say ‘you can cook steak? What exactly is the problem again?’ I see your point, but while a diet entirely of red meat, potatoes, and veggies is probably as amazing as it sounds, I’d prefer to not send my doctor’s family to Disneyworld if I can help it.

After purchasing enough pork to feed myself until sometime early next year, I asked people how to cook it. I got a multitude of recipes, all of which recommended low and slow in the crockpot or oven. Since I am rather zealous about my crockpot, I enthusiastically dumped the unfortunate meat into the machine and left, happy in the knowledge I was going to come home to a tasty dinner I didn’t have to pay someone to make for me. The smell was delicious. The taste was… a lesson in not confusing pork loin with pork tenderloin (stop laughing, I only missed one word).

Desperate to save the other half of the rations and making sure I was looking for recipes for the right thing, I stumbled across a crockpot recipe that was so simple even I couldn’t mess it up. I hoped. The time was shorter and the sauce covered the pork, so I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

Victory. At last. I even saved the leftovers.

The fact that cheese fries contain dairy, carbs, and protein does not automatically make them a suitable dinner option. Neither does adding a side salad.

The likelihood of checking to make sure you closed the freezer door all the way is directly proportional to the amount of tasty food stuffed inside.

Putting together a new vacuum cleaner can make you weep more than Steel Magnolias.

The elation of finally, FINALLY winning a game of Hearts on the computer. Do you know this feeling? Because I certainly don’t.

The whole cheese fries equation is going to be exactly the same no matter how many times you think it through. Or how big the salad is.

Folding laundry is not exercise.

The 90’s really were that long ago.

Eating wings with one hand so you can play Words with Friends on your phone… difficult but possible.

Watching Beauty and the Beast then staring really hard at a pile of dirty dishes doesn’t cause them to magically wash themselves.

Both sets of laundry machines are open? Happy dance!

Munched through a prodigious number of delicious, delicious Maryland blue crabs.

Swearing and evil thoughts limited to five-ish when cat woke me up at 2:30 AM in worst way possible.

Started a massive cross stitch. Again.*

Found cool retro candy store. Bought cool retro candy. Agreed when brother declared cool retro candy tastes like sugary chalk.

Watched enough MST3K to qualify for danger pay.

Cool new wallpaper… for the phone.

Averaged one fluff book a day on the weekends.

Got up ‘early’ enough to enjoy a lot of this:

Fortified myself with multiple Italian meals.

Managed to limit traffic related facepalms to three per trip.

*Only the third try on the same beast of a pattern; this time I shall persevere!