Posted on August 30, 2009 - by Ashley Jackson

Four and twenty lizards baked in a pie

No worries, there was no lizard eating in today’s post.

I do have a confession, though. When I was at Harris Teeter on Friday evening, I bought a box of Krispy Kreme glazed chocolate cake donut holes thinking that maybe this time I could control myself. By Saturday morning most of them were gone (and I had a tummyache), and my Saturday evening the box was empty. This is why I can’t buy donuts, potato chips, cans of soda…I did pretty well with the brownies last weekend, though, so I’ll give myself credit for that. Oh well. On to better things…

I had a late and leisurely sleep on Saturday morning and waited a while to eat (well, to eat anything other than donut holes). When I started feeling peckish, I grabbed the leftover blue cheese colseslaw out of the fridge and plated it because the bowl looked a little weird after a night in the fridge.

I had some of that delicious bread from the farmer’s market on the side. Mmmm. The slaw was good the first time around, but I think a night in the fridge definitely improved it. The flavors of the blue cheese and the red pepper flakes were much stronger this time around.

Later in the afternoon, I packed up my Seven Layer Salad and headed over to my brother’s townhouse, where we had dinner to celebrate his wife’s birthday. I guess this was the last celebration of this sort at their place–next week they’re closing on their new house!

Upon my arrival, I was greeted exuberantly by their dog, Ziggy.

I took a picture of my Seven Layer Salad….

Before stirring it up and turning it into this:Since there was a vegetarian among us, only six layers made it into the bowl–I kept the bacon crumbles out on the side for garnishing individual portions.

In the kitchen, there was this chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting and melted chocolate, made by my brother.

While we were waiting for our parents, my brother asked me to get some boxes out of the storage unit underneath the townhouse. I was told that there were giant crickets in this storage space, so no one wanted to go into it (which is to say, my brother ran off like a little girl when I opened the door and crickets flew everywhere). I went in there and hauled the boxes halfway out, but when I reported that there were three dead rodents and one live lizard in the top box, I was ordered to abort the mission. My brother swears there were at least four lizards in the box, but I wonder how he can be so sure of this given that he was hiding up on the deck the entire time?

My parents arrived soon after with the evening’s entree. My mom made three kinds of lasagna–regular (aka meat) lasagna for herself, my dad, and my brother; a lasagna filled with Asian vegetables for me; and a meat- and vegetable-free lasagna for my sister-in-law. There was lots of lasagna!

I only ate half of the gigantic piece of lasagna that made its way onto my plate; the rest went back into the container, which is now sitting in my fridge, waiting to be eaten. I had two helpings of the salad and a piece of delicious bread.

And a small piece of cake afterwards.

My parents gave me a bag of tomatoes from their garden before I left. It’s a good thing I like tomatoes–I guess they’ll be featuring in my meals all week!

My brother currently lives near Trader Joe’s, so I headed over there after I left and spent over $50. For once there were few enough people in there that I was able to look around, so I picked up a lot of little things that I’d seen on other blogs and wanted to try.  I encountered several annoying yuppies who blocked the aisles and then talked about me while I was standing two feet away after I finally just walked between them, and another one who was in front of me at the checkout and informed me that my very full basket was why she always got a cart. So I informed her that I got a basket because the aisles were always so crowded that it was easier for me to navigate with a basket, which she realized made sense. Silly yuppies…

Yes, I’m a yuppie, too. (And I make snide comments about people who push past me without excusing themselves. Ah, hypocrisy…)

A few trips to Trader Joe’s ago, I grabbed a few containers of the Cat Cookies for People and left them on my desk at work with a sign inviting people to eat them. And they did–and those containers last forever, since there’s so many cookies in them. Finally this week I took the nearly empty remaining container and put it on the table in the break room, where it vanished. And during the day or two that I had no cookies on my desk, several people came looking for a snack and found no cookies to saite their hunger. The horror!

So I grabbed two new kinds of cookies for us to try. The first kind I’m putting out are lemon crisps–thin lemon cookies with chocolate drizzled on them.

A little melty, but soooo good. I have a feeling these won’t last long!

Before bed, I broke into the box of Tofutti Cuties I got at Trader Joe’s. These are minature frozen “snack-size sandwiches”–notice no mention of ice cream. ‘Cause they’re made of tofu! Well, not entirely.

Not a fan of tofu, but these were good. Definitely didn’t taste like ice cream, but it was a good taste all the same.

I cleaned my pantry out last night and today it’s on to the fridge…oi…