Spazz-aholic

So, two things: first, the apocalypse has descended upon Nashville in the form of red-eyed minions of Satan:

About which I was totally being cool, even enjoying their weirdness and laughing at everyone else's disgust. But then they went from a couple hundred to a couple thousand to hundreds of thousands to the point where you can't walk down the street without ending up with one in your mouth and you can't drive with your windows down and you can't walk on the grass, and they make this horrible screaming sound when you try to politely discourage them from sitting on the sandwich you are currently eating. Basically they're proliferous assholes, and also very creepy, as they crawl around on the ground among the carcasses of their friends and family.

Second thing: I went from working about 80 hours a week on project work and homework and data collection and studying for and taking PhD comprehensive exams to having only about 20 hours a week of work, and I think something broke inside, because I made two shirts and a skirt and a pie and crab salad and I cleaned the house and committed the perfect murder, all except the last one (probably). Here are some pictures of what I cooked:

Yay!

Misses and Kisses

Hello out there? How has everyone been? Let's discuss and compare notes! I recently discovered that the internets are like every other relationship out there, which is to say that most of the time I want nothing to do with you because you smell like cough syrup and sweat socks, but every once in awhile you throw a party that I'm not invited to, and there are balloons shaped like owls and a make-your-own-sundae bar and it goes late into the night and ends with you all lying in the grass looking up at the stars, and then I wish that I hadn't ignored every email you sent, even if they were all forwards and mostly either pro-something or anti-something-else, even though you know that I am staunchly under-everything and also don't find babies to be cute unless they are furry or look like old men.

Anyway, all that is to say that I'm ready now to hear about your vegan no-cook cheesecake recipe and the time you stubbed your toe on the cast iron door stopper at Crate and Barrel and the ensuing lawsuit and how you really think you might be psychic so you need to borrow $150 for those DVDs that will help you harness your power, but you should still know I don't have $150, even if it will pay off in immense dividends in years to come.

We invented something and now it can't be uninvented

This is a Toad-in-a-hole grilled cheese.

What the hell does that mean? You might ask, and I might ask you to tone down the language because there are kids listening, because there are always kids listening, because you know how kids are with bugging our shit.

In our house "toad-in-a-hole" refers to the egg and toast dish, not to the disturbing-looking Yorkshire pudding and sausage dish that the hegemonic Wikipedia has declared to be the normative definition. And since I prefer my food to be named after animals rather than made of animals, I'm going to keep using toad-in-a-hole for this, rather than their preferred nomenclature of "egg in a basket," because who wants to eat a basket? And everyone wants to eat a toad because it is well known that they cure both the hiccups and acne, even if they're just metaphorical toads.

Anyway, Houseboy took two of these and put cheese in between them, and this is what came out:

P.S., that is ketchup, not blood, so don't freak out on me.

It's awesome and yet I fear for us all because just like the robot revolution and the invention of that game in Tron, this is probably going to change all our lives forever and possibly lead to the end of civilization.

But really, who wants civilization if you can't have fried bread, eggs and cheese all in one package?

Tacos from a truck.... but not

So, every time I complain about the Mexican food around here, someone goes: "You should try the Taco Truck!" and I go: "I'm not into drugs."

But really, I have no problem with foods served out of trucks and/or trailers, it's just that this one actually uses its wheels and drives around town. Which means that no one can tell me where it is right now, they can only tell me where it was that one time or where they've heard it goes often, and to me that sounds like one of those cool kid parties I heard about on Veronica Mars where you have to know the code and even if I happened upon it they'd recognize me as an undesirable and I wouldn't get any tacos.

Lo and behold, however, the "taco truck" of Nashville also has a permanent, brick-and-mortar location and is actually called "Mas Tacos" (that link is to their Twitter account, by the way, which was almost a deal breaker for me, as I prefer not to Twit in any way). So, Houseboy and I braved the Saturday traffic through downtown and over the river and picked up some tacos:

My selection: fried Tilapia with a dill sauce, red cabbage, cilantro and some other stuff.

YUM!! The picture of Houseboy's didn't turn out as well, but he got the breakfast taco with chorizo, and seconded my "YUM!"

So, I have joined the chorus. If you're in the Nashville area, and you have any idea what Mexican food is supposed to taste like, I suggest you head to the taco truck (or its more convenient building analog), bypassing all other tempting options that will most likely feature Queso Sauce.

Hockey in Tennessee

So last night for my birthday Houseboy took me out to see the Wild play the Predators, and I talk more about the sportsy part of that here. The most important thing that happened that YOU should know about, though, is this:

That is nachos topped with barbecue sauce and chicken. And what's great about it is that 1) they smoosh all the chicken together in the center so that vegetarians can share it with their omnivore husbands and have reasonable belief that no flesh will touch their gullet, and 2) turns out that nacho cheese (or "queso cheese" as they call it here) and slightly spicy mostly sweet dark barbecue sauce go together reallyreallyreally well.

MMMMMMMMMMMM.