I usually set up camp at a cozy Starbucks near my house, but a few weeks ago the weather was nice so I decided to enjoy a margarita out on the patio of a local Mexican restaurant.  I’ve enjoyed a few alcoholic beverages since Aidan was born, but Wes has, at my request, made them all pretty light.

This margarita was not light.  But I didn’t know that until it was too late.

There I am, murder mystery novel in one hand, empty margarita glass in the other, and I take stock.  I’m feeling nothing.  No buzz, not drunkity, nothing.

Curious, I figure they watered down the margarita or something so I order another one.  I figure, “Hey!  I’m relaxing, who knows when I’ll get to do this again, why not do it up right?”

Well, a quarter of the way through the second margarita the first one hits home.  And I am plastered.

Wes texts me to ask if I’m having fun and I can barely type back.  I self-correct my hundreds of little typos and assure him that not only am I drunkity, I’ve solved the murder mystery to boot.

Now I have a little bit of a problem.  I’m hammered, sitting in a public place, and, because I never really did any partying in my youth, I’m not really sure what to do about it.

So I start shoveling tortilla chips into my mouth like I’m a bulldozer operator on a Friday afternoon.  In between mouthfuls of tortilla chips, I pound glasses of water.  Over the next hour, I receive no less than three scornful glances from the waiters, who all watch me inhale the chips with something like disdain and disgust.  This doesn’t matter, though, because my intoxication level drops from drunkity to merely slap-happy.

I estimate that I’ll be safe to drive in another hour or so, so I gather my things, pay up, and hit the grocery store.  Where I discover something magical: Shopping is approximately 1000% more fun when you’re slightly buzzed.

The same annoying people were still there, but I just didn’t care.  I floated through the aisles, admiring the pretty displays and really taking the time to examine the different products on the shelves.  I smiled and made polite chit-chat with the clerks and cashiers I crossed paths with.

By the time I sobered up and climbed into my car, my grocery shopping was done and I couldn’t have been more relaxed.  Let this be two lessons to you:

• Lesson the first: If you’ve recently been pregnant, you are a lightweight.  One margarita ought to do it, lady.
• Lesson the second: If you find grocery shopping (or crowds {or the exorbitant price of food}) as stressful as I do, maybe go grocery shopping with a little buzz.  Or, conversely, if you run into a total grumpus at the store, try suggesting to them that they hit the bar before hitting you with their shopping cart again.

I don’t recall having thicker hair when I was pregnant.  My hair’s always been unruly and thick, so maybe I just didn’t notice, but regardless of what it was like a few months ago it’s noticeably thinner now.  It’s especially horrifying in the morning after I brush my hair and it looks like I just shaved Hispanic Barbie and then cleaned it up with my hairbrush (I say Hispanic Barbie because I’m Hispanic).

To say nothing of my personal horror at losing so much hair, it’s wreaking havoc on my vacuum cleaner.  The poor thing needs to be resuscitated after every use!

In other postpartum news, I found out yesterday that I’m back to my pre-pregnancy weight!  I’m still highly suspicious the scale is broken, however.  Why?  Because I am eating like a wild, savage beast.  I have an appetite that is no respecter of waistlines and a hunger that is distracting, all-encompassing, and undiscerning.

For example, here’s a sampling of what I ate over the weekend:

• A Burger King Whopper with small fries and a small Oreo shake
• Half a loaf of French bread soaked in butter
• Waffles soaked in butter
• Pancakes soaked in butter
• Biscuits soaked in butter (noticing a trend? We here at casa de Mitchell are a fan of all things churned)
• Strawberry shortcake with homemade whipped cream
• A chocolate chip cookie
• Pumpkin scone with hot chocolate
• Half a Cinnabon

Dudes, that was just from the weekend.  I seriously ingested enough calories to keep a small African village happy for a week.  And I lost weight! (And also dignity, but that’s another matter entirely)

So let this be a lesson to you all: Breastfeeding.  It’s awesome.  For sure it’s a lot of work at the beginning, but short of becoming an Olympic athlete who trains all the time, how else would you ever be able to eat like that without turning into a walking ad for gastric bypass?

We just signed up for it, as a matter of fact.  For the last four years I’ve bought our dairy products faithfully at the store, and almost every week Wes has complained about how lame those dairy products have been compared to the dairy of his youth.

I discounted Wes’ greener pastures of youth dairy products out of hand because, well, my family always bought milk at the store.  That’s where milk comes from.  In fact, when I was little, I thought they kept cows in the back of the store behind those swishy doors they always have by the refrigerated dairy section.

So, that’s how it was.  I bought milk at the grocery store and Wes complained.

Then, he went to the farmer’s market all by himself and came back with Information.  Information about the evils of grocery store milk.  Horrifying stuff about how it’s usually months old by the time it gets to the shelf, that it’s so pasteurized that it barely has any nutrients left in it, that it has other growth hormones besides just the rBST kind.

I was summarily grossed out (months-old milk!) and resolved to go to the farmer’s market myself just to see what all the fuss was about.  The local milk farm representative was there handing out samples, so I took a swig.

And oh my goodness.  WHAT A DIFFERENCE!!!

I’ve never been a fan of straight-up milk.  But this milk?  This milk was ambrosia.

Not only was it a lot tastier, but it was nearly the same cost.  And it gets delivered by a milkman!  I was sold.

And that’s the story of how we came to have a milkman.  I just think that’s so novel.  So old-fashioned.  The milk comes in regular old cartons, not glass bottles, but still.  We have a milkman!

I am vastly comforted by the feedback I received on the post, however.  Sometimes you just need people to remind you that the situation is larger than your little monkeybrain can compute at the moment.  My hormone addled monkeybrain and I appreciate your comments and help.

I thought I might celebrate my (temporarily?) recovered sanity by sharing a funny little observation Wes and I made at our birthing class last night.

We have snack time in our birthing class, which is exactly as awesome as it sounds, and every week two of the couples bring in snacks for everyone.  The snack this week was string cheese, Babybel cheese, Ritz crackers, apple slices, and Oreo cookies.  Wes and I grabbed a plate with an assortment and sat down next to another couple.

I said, “I love this snack, it’s very fancy this week.”  I meant it.  Here I was with some cheese, some crackers, and some fruit.  In my mind, it was one glass of Pinot Grigio away from being a sophisticated repast.

The girl sitting next to me laughed and said, “Yes, just like kindergarten!”

And then we realized: Cheese, crackers, and fruit can either be a fancy snack or a kindergarten snack.  It just depends on what you drink with it.  If you add wine, it’s a fancy party.  If you add grape juice, bust out the nap mats and eat some glue because it’s kindergarten hour.

Silly, huh?

I blame the baby.

I was minding my own business at work when a Craving came over me.  Not a passing-fancy oh-a-brownie-sure-would-be-swell-right-about-now craving, but a Craving.  The kind that ambushes you out of nowhere and takes your mental faculties captive.

This craving?  Was for a Philly cheesesteak sandwich.  Not a namby-pamby slap-some-meat-inside-a-hoagie kind of sandwich, but a proper Philly cheesesteak.  I’ve only ever been to one place that made a proper cheesesteak, and it was in California (Philly’s Best in Lake Forest, if you’re curious).

Here are my qualifications for the perfect cheesesteak sandwich:

• Hoagie roll must be buttered on the insides and then grilled on the same grilling surface used for the steak.  It must be fresh and soft on the outside but buttery and delicious and toasted on the inside.
• Steak must be shredded/sliced paper-thin and grilled using skillful spices the likes of which I could never possibly hope to comprehend.
• Sweet onions and peppers must be likewise grilled in beef fat and delicious spices but they can be sliced a little thicker.
• Cheese must be melted to near-liquidity and must be full-fat honest cheese.  Not a plastic amalgamation.
• Must be served with thick french fries and these fries must come with a vat of marinara sauce for dipping.

Wes said he was willing to fly to California for me but I couldn’t bear the wait time so we settled on the closest sandwich approximation we could find: Quizno’s.

Not. The. Same. Thing. At. All.

Unless brined beef counts as steak, this was no cheesesteak sandwich.  Sure, it had beef, and yes, it had cheese, but the bread was toasted with the beef already on it so it didn’t get toasty so much as it got soggy and difficult to eat.

The steak was enough to satisfy the baby, but it was so salty I feel like I made out with a salt lick for a few hours.  I’ve been drinking water like a crazy person to make up for it but I have the feeling tomorrow’s looking swelly with a side of non-fitting wedding rings.

Also, let’s not even look at the fact that the sandwich had 1,000 calories.

So not worth it.

Am I missing something crucial in my Philly cheesesteak demands?

• Wes and I saw “Inglourious Basterds” on Friday.  I enjoyed it fairly well, but it was definitely a Quentin Tarantino flick.  Not that that’s a bad thing, but it’s starting to feel a little rote to me.  Wes reminded me in the car on the way home (we discuss every movie we see ad nauseum on the way home) that there were several scenes in the movie that were particularly artful, and I do agree.  It would just be neat to see Quentin plumb the depths of his creativity instead of pacing the rut he’s created for himself.
• Consignment stores are awesome!  It’s completely hit-or-miss, meaning there’s by far no guarantee that when you stop by to shop you’ll find something that will work, but when you find something that’s perfect?  It’s like the skies open up and the sun itself beams down upon your face.  I found another $5 pair of jeans at a consignment event yesterday.  With finds like this, it’s small wonder I balk at the prospect of paying $30 for jeans, no?
• Is it just me, or has “Grey’s Anatomy” gone completely off the rails?  Wes and I started last year’s season last night (he watches it to humor me, but in no way has he ever enjoyed it) and I could have sworn I was watching a high-budget soap opera.  I mean, the main character (Meredith) has always been whiny and self-involved, but it appears her malaise has spread to the whole cast.  Even well-developed characters are behaving like complete morons and the plot points have all the authenticity of a fat-free, sugar-free chocolate bar.
• The new Muse album, “The Resistance”, was a hugely pleasant surprise for me.  I’ve been a rabid fan of the band for years, but I have to admit their last album, “Black Holes and Revelations”, alarmed me a bit.  It was just so synth-heavy, I yearned for that raw, virtuoso sound they had when you could clearly tell there were three men playing a variety of instruments during songs.  With “The Resistance” though?  It’s a really cool new direction that shows that the band has grown and developed (there’s a freaking symphony on this album!) but hasn’t lost sight of what they’re really good at (rocking out and making it sound really good).
• My grandfather mailed me a book of my Russian great-grandmother’s hand-written recipes two weeks ago and Wes and I tried out our very first one over the weekend.  We made pelmeni (tiny meat-filled dumplings, you boil them and then eat them with sour cream) from scratch and oh my gosh it was a lot of work.  It took us three hours to make them and it’s extremely likely that, unless I have at least three more people helping me, I won’t be making them again soon.  Yes they were delicious, but you can also buy them pre-made and frozen and they taste just as delicious and only take about ten minutes to make.

So, you’re Wes.  You’re studying at home and take a break to make some lunch.  There are no handy dandy leftovers hanging out in the fridge, so you survey your options.  They are as follows:

• Mac n’ Cheese
• Trader Joe’s chicken potstickers (2 mins. in the microwave and SO GOOD)
• Peanut butter and jelly English muffin sandwich
• Apples and cottage cheese
• Eggs

All decent choices, right?  Bear in mind, too, that any and all of these combinations can be eaten in conjunction with a banana or a pickle or each other, so it’s not like he was starving.  It’s no cheeseburger with fries and a lemonade or anything, but it’s also a fairly respectable array of choices.

What did he choose?  Eggs.  Just eggs.  He scrambled four eggs and made them for lunch.  And then ate them.

Now, in my opinion four eggs is just a bit much for one meal.  That’s quite a lot of cholesterol for one, and for another…Four eggs.  That’s a lot of eggs.

He’s of the opinion that four scrambled eggs is a perfectly acceptable repast.

Now, can you help us settle this?

For example, I’m trying to get some walks in at work in an effort to stave off that logy feeling that accumulates from staring at a computer monitor the grand majority of the day.  My favorite place to go walking is down the street where I can smell the food from the different restaurants nearby and browse the wares of the local PCC.  I never buy anything, but I do love to browse and stroll.

Today, I found myself craving an apple with a fierceness I normally reserve for baked goods and créme brûlée.  Not wanting to miss out on this craving for something so healthy, and mentally kicking myself for forgetting my perfectly good apple at home, I grabbed my wallet and phone and set off for a quick walk down to PCC to procure one shiny red(ish) apple.

If you’ve never been inside a PCC, it’s a natural foods store.  Everything in the store is in earth tones (think an overturned vat of urban camoflage paint) and also extraordinarily expensive.  I picked out an organic (of course! Because it wouldn’t be a very good natural foods store if the produce weren’t organic!) Fuji apple, paid an exorbitant sum for it, and walked back to the office.  Cradling that apple in my hands, I felt good.  The world was a healthy place.  I was walking with a healthy snack and the wind was blowing and my mouth was watering to think of the sweet juiciness in store for me once I returned to the office.

Little did I know that the organic apple would turn out to be in dire need of pesticides.  I cut it open at work and found the inside to be brown, and bruised, and what may have been a home for an industrious worm.  Ack!

What a fitting end to my healthy little adventure.  I hopped in my car, drove to the store, and exchanged the apple with no fuss.  The new apple was delicious but I couldn’t help but be struck by the irony of walking to a natural food store to buy a pest-ridden organic apple only to have to get in my car and drive back to exchange it.  It just seems like something went horribly wrong there, doesn’t it?

It’s times like these you learn how delicious salsa fresco can be.  I’m serious, if you’ve never had good salsa fresco you are missing out on what may be the best thing to happen to you all year.  It’s refreshing, healthy, and 100% guaranteed to make you eat too many tortilla chips.  My Dad was gracious enough to instruct me in the fine art of salsa fresco preparation when I visited earlier this month.  Now, I’m going to be gracious and share with you!

Ingredients

• 1 onion, chopped to bits
• 2 avocados, pitted and peeled and chopped to 1/4″ chunks
• 4 tomatoes, seeded and chopped to bits
• salt, pepper, cumin to taste
• 1/4 cup fresh chopped cilantro
• 2 toasted jalapeno peppers, seeded and chopped to teeny tiny bits (use tongs and roast them over the gas burner)
• the juice of 2 limes

Just mix all this stuff in a big bowl and make sure you don’t skimp on the lime juice!  It’ll keep the avocado from getting nasty and brown.  When you seal the bowl, smush the plastic wrap down so it’s flush with the salsa, this will keep your avocados fresh too.

I loved this recipe so much that I actually ate it for breakfast one of the days I was there.  With the right tortilla chips?  This dish will make your whole entire week.  I don’t even want to think about what this could do if you parked it right next to a well-mixed margarita.  You’d probably just get to witness the heavens opening up and a choir of angels praising your meal or something.

Now that summer is officially here (we started out this summer with a huge thunderstorm, because our weather is nothing if not always appropriate here in Washington) I hope this recipe gives you everything you need to justify eating tortilla chips for dinner.  Just emphasize the presence of fruits and veggies to any naysayers.  Once they have a taste they’ll shut up and start eating too.

The store was busy, and the aisle was full of small whining children, husbands on cell phones screaming, “I’m in the baking aisle, what brand do you want? … There’s like ten different brownie mixes here, which one do you want? … I’m not being grumpy, I just want to – forget it, I’m getting the Ghirardelli one,” and women barreling past me with shopping carts laden with food and shopping lists.

I selected the most promising bag of flour, the one bereft of obvious holes or obvious signs of spillage, and reached out to claim it.  As I pulled the bag toward me, I noticed something disturbing: the bag had a hole punched through the back.  And flour was spilling out of it like a tiny floaty blizzard.  Sheer inertia and disbelief propelled the bag toward me, until the bag was in front of me and my eyes could confirm close up the presence of a hole in the bag.

By the time I’d confirmed the hole, my pants and shirt were white.  I was a powdered doughnut with grumpy filling.  I shoved the bag back into its place and reached for another bag.  Swiveling it around revealed a hole in that one as well.  My ensuing investigation confirmed my flabbergasted suspicions: every single bag of bleached all-purpose flour at Safeway had a great gaping hole in it.

Never one to be content with spending my hard-earned dollars on a violated bag of food, I turned to alternatives.  The name-brand flours were all more expensive than I was willing to pay, so my eyes drifted to the right.  Where I spied the unbleached all-purpose flour.

Feeling more than a little dangerous from my flouring earlier, I bit the bullet and brought a bag of unbleached flour home with me.  Unsure of the difference in color, let alone taste, I considered this true culinary frontierism.

It was with trepidation that I pulled out my brand new bag of flour to make chocolate chip cookies.  I pried open the bag, peered within, and saw…flour.  I held it up to the light, I tasted it, try as I might I could not for the life of me discern a difference between it and the bleached flour.

The cookies turned out marvelously.  They look good, taste great, and, with the exception of being exceptionally poufy, appear to be regular cookies.

At the conclusion of this incredibly mundane tale of flour purchasing, I have to ask: What is the deal with bleached flour?  If it looks nearly identical, and tastes identical, why are we bleaching our flour?  Are we flour racists?  Does the bleaching process alter the flour in some way?  These questions beg to be answered.  If for no other reason than science, consider every person who’s ever stood in a grocery store wearing floury pants wondering, Dare I bring home unbleached flour?