You guys, I handled raw meat tonight. Not only did I handle it, I mushed and mixed and molded it. Like play-doh.

Since my last post, something in me has finally come to terms with the fact that I will spend 3/4 of the year indoors whilst living in this corner of America. And this something in me (ps – I said “something…” not “all of me”) has me spending more time in the kitchen. Barefoot and pregnant.

It started with my daughter going stir crazy in the house on a blustery day. Colors, books and toys were all suggested and nothing sounded good. I must have felt the same way because I decided we would make cookies together. All three (four?) of us. JD stocked us up a while ago with dark chocolate chips and I pulled them down from the cupboard for Operation: Something To Do… aka bake cookies.

A note on baking: I decided in college that I was going to be the baking type. I was not much one for cooking and instead steered toward items involving chocolate and strawberries. Fast forward to the summer following graduation as an engaged gal and I wound up with the world’s best bake ware on the planet. Analon heavy duty non-stick goodies in every possible desirable baking dish created (including three cake molds). You may disagree, I just like to make bold, over-exaggerated statements occasionally sometimes often. And then we moved to Hawaii where it was expensive to ship said bake ware and the last thing I wanted to do was bake in a hot teeny tiny kitchen. End of baking “phase.”

Until now, apparently? Those cookies were GOOD.

And tonight when JD suggested meatloaf, I scrambled to the computer, opened up Pinterest, and became decidedly torn between two recipes. This one and this one. We lacked ingredients in each recipe so I decided to turn myself into a cooking genius. I took bits and pieces of each recipe, following the general understanding that meatloaf is in fact meat held together by eggs, bread and a number of other ingredients, and created the best meatloaf I’ve ever tasted (for those curious, I combined meat, onions [wherein I wept while mincing], garlic, red pepper chili flakes, fresh parsley, fresh grated parmesan cheese, eggs, sourdough bread crumbs and a ketchup concoction involving ketchup, mustard and hot sauce). Look at me cook! Look at me being so excited about a recipe that I BLOGGED about it! 2012 must really truly be the end of the world.

Tomorrow I’m making cranberry orange scones for small group.

Oregon, you’re doing weird things to me.