Reading Books and Cooking

Caitlin is really growing up fast. She is learning more about the world she is in every day. In addition to learning new things, she is also learning to express herself. For instance, when she wants something she points at it and says "Nah nah!", sometimes she says it really fast like she is demanding it! We take that opportunity to teach her the real word for what she wants. She is learning flower, which comes out "wowwr" but she really picked up Bubba, which is Journey's nickname. Every time she sees the cat she has to go over and give her a pet and say "Bubba!" She is really gentle with Journey and has learned not to whack the cat.

Caitlin used to come running over to us with a book and hold it at us so that we would take it and hold it open for her. Lately though, she has decided that when we read books to her she wants to sit in our laps so she can hold the book and turn the pages. She decided this all by herself and is very adamant about it. She is soo cute, sometimes she grabs a book and rushes over to the couch and points up to the cushion like "Well, help me up I'm not tall enough to get up there by myself!" She really likes to sit on the couch and read. She just decided this within the last week! When she is done with the book she gives it a toss off the couch and then starts rolling around like goof ball. We are careful not to let her get close to the edge though, we are good parents after all. She is especially funny when she is getting sleepy and wants to go take a nap. She rolls around on the couch and face plants into the cushions! She is hilarious when she gets sleepy! She decides that when she is ready for a nap she is "going" to take nap. She usually runs over to the couch and grabs a cushion and puts it on the floor and then lays down on it and hugs it. That's when we know it's time for bed. We are really happy that she doesn't try to fight naps.

So I tried my hand at cooking new things last week. Jen and I were flipping through a cook book and I found these really interesting crab cakes. The were a southwestern style, which we though would be a little different from the normal kind we usually get. They looked easy enough to make and the recipe said it only took 20 minutes from start to finish. So we got all the ingredients and I went to work on getting it put together. Two things I learned from this was to always pay attention to what the recipe is telling you (it is smarter than me) and don't get distracted while mixing the stuff together otherwise the following will happen. So, I laid out all the ingredients on the counter, there were a lot of them. Crab cakes are filled with way more than just crab as I found out. All was moving along great until I decided that talking to Jennifer would in no way hinder my ability to preheat the oven, start heating up the oil in a pan to fry the cakes in, then move them to the waiting oven. All while at the same time mixing the ingredients together! Well as you can assume, the conversation needed more brain power than I had to spare, so something had to give. Of course it was the "following directions" part of my brain that shut down, no big deal I'm just mixing about 100 different things together then throwing them into scalding hot oil, really what could go wrong? Well, first you could take ALL the ingredients and put them in the bowl together, which of course made perfect sense to me at the time. There was a huge list of ingredients and just before my brain shut off I was reading about putting them in a bowl to mix together, honestly where is the fault in that logic? Obviously they were meant to all be together at some point, and there was my problem, timing - as usual. So I mixed the very last two ingredients in the list in the bowl with the rest of the stuff - now unbeknownst to me, but by which I found out later as Jennifer so eloquently put; they always list the ingredients in the order in which you are supposed to put them in. Huh, I honestly never knew that. The last two ingredients for those of you waiting on the edge of your seats, was the cornmeal and the salsa. The cornmeal as I found out after I dumped it into the mix is used to cover the cakes just before you put them into the that scalding hot oil to fry. It gives it crust of sorts. Well, ours did have a crust, but it was a little gritty on the inside, but not really bad. The salsa was for dipping the crab cakes in. However, mixing it into the batch actually tasted great, even Jennifer agreed. So after my little snafu of mixing all the ingredients in the same bowl we decided that the next time we make them we will just put the salsa in there cause it came out really good, of course the extra cornmeal will be left out next time. The whole ordeal only took 40 minutes, start to finish. I think I'll stick with steak and chicken for a little while though before I venture back into the cook book. I will definitely not try to hold a conversation while playing with hot oil, the stove, the oven and mixing the whatever together.