crazy hair/no heat curls

(First, let me apologize in advance for the terrible quality of these webcam photos. And for the crazy hair in the "before" pictures you are about to see.)

My gal Erin of City Mouse In a Country House posted about this hair tutorial. If you don't want to watch the whole thing, essentially you twist your hair around an elastic headband, sleep on it, and wake up to bouncy vintage looking curls. With no heat! Or curlers! I tried it and it worked- even on my riDICulously wild before hair.

This is what my hair looked like all day. Up in a bun, naturally curly hair that hadn't been washed in three days:

I took it out of the pony and it looked like this (crusty):

I brushed it out and it looked like this (I know, I should wear it like this every day!):

I twisted it around the elastic hair band and it looked like this:

I slept on it and took it out in the morning and it looked like this! (Clara is post-tubby, watching Ernie and Elmo sing "One Fine Face" to keep her happy. Clearly, they are singing the part about eyes.)

So, I realize it's a bad quality pic but the technique really worked. I have boingy, Dorothy Gale-esque curls. I hear it works on hair of all types. Woot!

Easiest Seafood Dinner Ev.

This is going to be a quick post. It will take you approximately the same amount of time to read it as it will to make these scallops:

Bomster Scallops, from our local farmers market, are amazing! They don't need ANYTHING to make them taste delicious, not even salt and pepper. Here's what you do:

-heat up a little veg oil in a pan

-place the scallops flat side down in a single layer

-sear on one side for no more than two minutes

-flip and sear on the other side for one minute

-plop them on a plate

Seriously the easiest ever- they taste incredible and are done in literally three minutes. Even if you don't like scallops, give these a try. They are not the rubbery pencil eraser scallops you sometimes find in chowder. They are tender and meaty and taste super fresh.

Oh, and I served them with arugula salad which is also the easiest ever- arugula + olive oil + balsamic + salt and pep.

Now I'm sure you can use these scallops in some fancier dish but, in my opinion, there's no need! How great is it to have a delicious dinner that comes together in less than five minutes?

The end.

Enjoy!

Beach Baby

We are in full swing beach mode here in Rhode Island! This summer has been nice and smoking hot so far, with the occasional rainstorm. Perfect weather because it means that we can go to the beach most of the time and STILL never have to water our plants. Score.

Last summer the beach was, well... less fun. Clara was four months old and wasn't technically allowed to wear sunscreen yet so I spent most of the time under an umbrella with her. Plus she was still nursing every 2-3 hours during the day so I had to make sure whatever bathing suit I wore had easy boob access. PLUS she was a crappy napper and hated the car. Now, this didn't stop me from going to the beach- it just wasn't as enjoyable as it is now.

Now we can ALL appreciate the beach, just like good New Englanders who wait patiently all through the six-month-long/dull/gray/snowy winter should.

I have learned a thing or two about going to the beach with a baby. Here's my list:

*Sand! I guess I always knew there was sand at the beach I just never quite noticed until it was all over my baby and I was the one who had to get clean it off. There is sand places I never knew sand could reach. How did she get sand on her eyelid?

In regards to sand, this is the easiest way I have found to minimize the sand in your car (I said minimize! Let's get serious here; there will be sand- remember I said she got sand on her eyelid?): Pack up all your things and load the beach cart. Put on your Ergo or similar baby carrier. Strip your baby down nakey and run into the ocean with her to rinse off as much sand as possible. Do NOT put your baby down- put her right into your carrier no matter how mad she is to be leaving the beach. Plop her down on a towel in the back of the car, and remove the rest of the sand with baby powder. Finally- most importantly- just embrace the sand. That's why we all have tubs for our babies, and gas station vacuum cleaners for our cars.

*Just eat your lunch in the car on the way there. In our former life, my mom, sister, and I used to love to sit down and eat our lunch at a leisurely pace (usually tuna sandwiches, watermelon, chips, and oreos) as soon as we got to the beach- even if it happened to be 10:30 AM. Now there is NO leisurely sitting- only running and chasing and digging holes and finding rocks and kicking waves with babies. Plus, have I mentioned the sand? I have? Yes.

If you happen to have a wonderful beach partner you can take turns eating lunch but if you are flying solo... eat in the car.

*Same goes for a book. What are you, joking? Don't bring a book- you won't be able to sit long enough to read one page.

*Swim diapers suck. I mean, they are less bulky and contain the poop but that's it. Be sure to bring a regular diaper for the ride home or you will end up with a major pee-pee carseat situation.

*Since we have already addressed embracing the sand, I recommend bringing a big shovel to dig a big hole for your baby. I've found the only way Clara will sit down at the beach- and therefore the only way I can sit down- is if I build her her own mini beach. It's a pretty sweet deal.

*Also embrace the seagulls. At our beach the seagulls are ruthless about stealing food- and I'm not just talking about if you leave a potato chip on your blanket and walk away. I mean if you are gesturing with a sandwich in your hand they will fly right up and snatch it from your fingers. So anyway, I always hated the seagulls but now I see them for what they are: Free baby entertainment. Clara chases them yelling "duck! duck! duck!"

*Be sure to enjoy it! Because it will be winter again before we know it. Summer is definitely the shortest season and therefore, in my opinion, the sweetest. (Which is probably why mint Oreos taste especially good on the beach).

Happy sweet summer, friends!

Banana bread

Yum.

This is, in my opinion, the perfect banana bread. Mainly because it is both the most delicious I have ever tasted AND it's super easy to make.

Some banana breads are too dense, or dry, or they involve creaming butter and sugar or something else that requires an electric mixer. Now, I love my Kitchenaid but sometimes I want to bake something fast that doesn't require using a bunch of stuff that doesn't fit in my dishwasher.

I'm pretty sure the secret to this bread's deliciousness is to super ripe bananas. Like, way beyond freckled. Like these bananas:

I wouldn't want to eat those plain. They taste like banana liquor which is freaking gross. However, I would want to eat them in banana bread because they make it sweet, sticky, and delicious.

Ingredients:

3 super ripe bananas

1 cup sugar (You can see that mine is not quite a full cup. You can easily reduce the sugar to 3/4 c)

1 egg, beaten

1/4 cup butter (1/2 a stick), melted

1.5 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

Preheat your oven to 325.

Oh, this was my view while I was working on my bread:

The guys working on replacing our garage roof, for whom I am very thankful. If I tried to do that business myself we would end up with a broken legged mama and banana bread for no one.

So. First you mash the bananas until they are super mushy. Add the eggs, butter, and sugar. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt in a separate bowl. Mix all the ingredients together. It should look like this:

At this point you could throw in 1/2 cup to a full cup of blueberries, chocolate chips, nuts, or any other crunchy bit. I prefer my banana bread plain but I won't judge you if you need an excuse to use up some chocolate chips. I've certainly been there!

Once your batter is all mixed and mushy, pour it into a greased loaf pan. You can use non-stick spray, butter, oil, whatever.

Put it in your preheated oven for about an hour. Just be sure to check it after about 50 minutes. I don't know your life. I mean, your oven. You don't want ruined burned banana bread! Tragedy!

Once a toothpick comes out clean, remove from the oven and cool in the pan for about 10 minutes.

Then cool completely on a rack and try not to eat it all before your husband comes home.

If you don't happen to eat it all in one day, wrap it tightly in foil. It will keep at room temp for about 4 days.

I like mine with cream cheese:

Clara likes hers plain:

Happy baking!

Egg Salad, My Favorite

Am I the only one who thinks of Big Top Pee-Wee when I think of egg salad? I couldn't find a video of the scene but I will paraphrase it for you:

Pee-Wee's girlfriend, Winnie: "I made you your favorite!" (for lunch)

Pee-Wee guesses and guesses: "Ham and cheese? Tomato soup? Tunafish?" etc, etc.

Until finally Winnie has to say, "No... Egg salad."

Then Pee-Wee has to say, "Egg salad! My favorite!"

Which I guess is a joke because egg salad is nobody's favorite?

And while it may seem like a strange/overly simple thing to explain, I've heard many people say, "I'm a great cook but one thing I always mess up is a hard boiled egg." Kind of like my brother-in-law who is a chef but still always messes up rice. The simple things can trip you up, folks!

Anyway, I like egg salad now but I had to learn to like it by making it myself. Here's the only way I had ever had it before:

Take a hard boiled egg.

Mash it in a bowl with mayonnaise.

Maybe add salt, too.

Put it on bread but DON'T toast the bread.

The end.

Then I got inspired when I was working as a hostess at a busy, fancyish restaurant in New York City. Being a hostess was not as great as being a waitress because we got paid less. But! Being a hostess was also BETTER than being a waitress because a) we had to do less running around, b) we didn't have to wear the terrible uniform and instead got to wear our own clothes, just in black, and c) when it came time for our break we got to order our food instead of eating "family meal."

Family meal was, nine times out of ten, terrible. I mean... it would be something like BEANS. That's all. Whereas I, as a hostess, could eat yummy gruyere grilled cheese or beet salad or, sometimes, egg salad.

The egg salad at this restaurant was better than any egg salad I'd ever had for one main reason: they separated the whites from the yolks before mashing. This made it much less mushy and, in my opinion, much more delicious.

So, now that I've written way too much about something simple, here is my version of that slightly-fancier, hostess-inspired, just-in-time-to-use-up-your-Easter-eggs egg salad.

(Oh, and if you hate eggs or mayonnaise, just run along and come back another day. I promise I will make something much less mayonnaisey and eggy- mayonneggy?- next time.)

You will need:

-eggs (I used six this time which made about 4-6 servings)

-mayo

-grainy mustard

-salt

-pepper

-dill

That's all! It's not hard.

-Start by covering your eggs with cold water and setting them over high heat:

-When the bubbles become pea sized (like a real pea, not like a frozen pea), remove the pot from the heat, cover, and set aside for exactly twelve minutes:

-Run the eggs under cold water:

-and peel- running them under the cold water makes this easier. (Sorry, I wear gloves when I cook because I have eczema on my hands. This is why you won't see my hands in many pictures.)

-separate the yolks from the whites!

-Dice the whites and set aside:

-Mash the yolks with a fork and add a couple plops of mayo (this is probably about a quarter cup), and a plop of seedy mustard (maybe a tablespoon):

-add salt and pepper to taste:

-Sprinkle dill all over the top and mix the whites back in:

-Eat it! I ate mine on toast with tomato and pea shoots. Added a little crunch to the mush.

And she's not walking yet.

So, baby Clara turned one in March. Since then, I have been asked more times than I can count what appears to be The Question to ask a mom of a one-year-old. Conversations go like this:

Person: "Awww! So cute! How old is she?"

Ashley: "Thanks! She just turned one."

P: "Is she walking yet?"

A: "Well... no but she's climbing stairs and standing and cruising along furniture and she is very verbal and says about thirty words and does so many other things she says about fifteen animal sounds and she can point to her tummy, ears, nose, mouth, eyes, feet and she can do all the moves for The Wheels on the Bus and..."

...and on and on until I run out of air.

Why do I feel like I need to do that? She is thirteen months which is well within/below the normal range of learning to walk. And she IS learning other things. She IS progressing physically. And even if she wasn't, who cares? She's still awesome. She's just... not walking yet. Which should be FINE except for some reason I can't resist that impulse for mompetition. You know, to show everyone else how GREAT SHE STILL IS even though she's not walking yet.

I mean... why?

(And it's not to say that I don't think people should ask that question, because I find myself asking things like that all the time. It's just how we make conversation, and how moms/people connect to each other.)

I just feel like I need to make her a t-shirt like the ones they make for pregnant ladies that say things like: "It's a boy. Due in May. No, he doesn't have a name yet. NO, you can't touch my stomach."

OR like the t-shirt my friends made me when I lost my voice on my twenty-first birthday that said: "YES, I lost my voice. Now buy me a drink."

You know, just to save time and energy when people ask the same questions over and over again.

I think I'll manufacture it myself: "I turned one in March. And no, I'm not walking yet."

I can't be the only one who needs something like this, right?

We're back!

Remember when I started this blog and kept saying things like "I'll post again later," and then never did?

Well, that was two years ago. Let's try this again!

Many things have happened, and many of those things would have made awesome blog posts. Unfortunately I was a major slacker so I'll just do a quick re-cap. Here is what has happened in the last two years:

-I cooked some food, we both ate a LOT of food. I learned to like beer AND olives, but not mushrooms yet.

-We traveled to many places near and far, including:

Connecticut

Provincetown

New York City

Fishers Island, NY

Washington, DC

Baltimore

Camden, ME

Kennebunkport, ME

Charlottesville, VA

Franconia Notch, NH

Las Vegas

Athens, Crete, and Santorini Greece!

(They were varying degrees of far, but all 100% fun.)

-We re-did our kitchen. By "we" I mean, "the people we hired to install all the stuff we picked out."

-We got pregnant! Well, one of us was pregnant, and one of us helped.

-We had a baby! Clara was born March, 10, 2010. She just turned one and our life rocks even harder than it did before.

We continue to be lucky, lucky, lucky.

I'd say "more to come later," but we both know how that turned out last time. For now, some pics:

(Clara, Clara, Greece, Nellie)