Tribute to the Food Bloggers

I know what you're thinking. I only ever write about my baby. Well, news flash: I'm 24/7 around my baby. It's true. Well, for the last week it's true.

But today I have something else I'm going to write about. And also my baby. Two food things and one baby thing. Good compromise? I think so.

Food thing #1: My tribute to those who can make (and take nice pictures of) pretty food. Because I can't. This weekend I got all domestic, making cinnamon rolls for conference and then various other new recipes I found in my cabinet full of never-used recipes. (It's not that I don't like them. It's just that using a real recipe means buying real ingredients and then really standing over a real stove for like an hour. I'm not into that very often.) Apparently I wanted to stand over a real stove all weekend. And I made very tasty food.

But it was not pretty.

Not pretty at all.

For example, stuffed shells (tasty, but really ugly):

Or this marble cake I attempted to make:

Which actually looked like this:

Yeah. I'm good at tasty food. But not pretty food.

Food Item #2: Concerning Mike's irrational fear of cloves.

Sunday night I was making a lunch for Mike to take to work the next day, and it required my going back to our food storage for a new jar of jam. Whilst I was there, I yelled to Mike, "Hey, I forgot about this jar of apple butter. We should try it sometime." He said something about "Yeah, maybe." And I suggested he put it on his toast sometime.

Well, I guess he was hungry enough (which is fair when we have dinner at like 5) that he decided to try it right then and there. He was holding Katie when the toast popped, so I opened the jar to put it on the toast. And we smelled it.

Before I go on, you should know something about my husband. Most of the time, when I'm cooking and use any kind of spice, all Mike thinks is, "Huh, that smells good." He has no idea what it is that smells good. But if in any circumstances something has cloves in it, Mike will know the instant he smells it. And when it does, he somehow magnifies his sense of smell to know it across the room. And he hates it.

So when we smelled the cloves in the apple butter, he almost chickened out. I managed to talk him back into eating it, and when he did, the first thing he said was, "It tastes like Christmas!"

But he only made it through one piece of toast and got rid of the other. Silly boy.

Baby item: It seems the Katie is going to take after her mama. And by that I mean, never stop talking and sing all the time.

Seriously! About a week ago (maybe a week and half), Katie was lying on her changing table and just started talking to us. Now, when ever she is happy, she just starts talking and cooing. It's the best thing in the entire world!

It's a little bit funny sometimes because she'll start talking to us with this seriously concerned look on her face, like she's saying, "Mommy, there are few issues I think you should be aware of. For example, you never let Daddy feed me chocolate . . ."

Also, she loves to sing along whenever somebody else is singing. During conference (when she managed to stay awake) she cooed along with the choir. Whenever I sit and play the piano and we sing hymns together, she joins in.

We've discovered her favorite song is "I am a Child of God." Regardless of her state of fussiness, she will at least calm down and will probably start cooing along. Seriously. If you're ever with us, try it sometime. It's the cutest thing you've ever seen.

But we have yet to get her to sing along on camera.

This video happened last week, when I managed to go to class after my deathly illness (don't worry, I'm better now). Mike and Katie came home and she told him all about our day. I hope she didn't say anything to embarrass me.