I took a week off to deal with the Blahs. Well, a week and a bit, I guess. How was the holiday weekend for you? Ours went very smoothly and calmly; apart from the baby teething (still) it's been a daily routine of playing, eating, medicating, playing more, random bathing, and sleeping.

The heat is awful. We're under a heat advisory, a serious one, because guess what- in the desert, in a drought, it's fricking HOT. The AC is being tempermental these days, but it's still churning out enough cool air to keep the house bearable. Which is nice. The bill from June arrived over the weekend and I was happy to find it falling within the average amount I expect in the summer months. Where I grew up, a 200ish electric bill is standard. That's still my emotional standard when it comes to such things. Less than that, I'm happy and not overly concerned. Above that, I choke. As in, heart in throat, choke.

So how do you continue to cook healthy meals in this heat without driving yourself nuts in the kitchen by throwing up even more heat? I've been doing a lot of microwaving and crockpot cooking. The stovetop stuff is done, as much as possible, using only one burner. I'm trying to forget the oven exists. Last night we had spaghetti- a few weeks back I made a huge pot of it; the big economy package of spaghetti and a ton of sauce filled the dutch oven. I put half in a container and froze it. Yesterday I pulled it out and found that when it defrosted the macaroni had absorbed all the nice sauce and got super happy. I added a bit more sauce and a bunch of parmesan and mozzarella, and microwaved bowls for everyone. And voila! I didn't have to cook over the stove at all, and we've got enough to serve leftover lunchs today, and then the stuff's out of our lives! You can be sure I'm going to do that again with another batch, now that I know how well it works.