Life of Larisa or LOL

Still trying to detox from Grandma's visit, so I turned to my 500 Salads recipe book for inspiration. Winter (don't choke) in Hawaii does not often inspire me to eat salad, but since I've been off my Insanity (the workout) regime, I felt I needed to combat the lack of workout with some fruit and greens. Salad creation number one was a spinach and warm goat cheese combo. I used a goat cheese Brie I stumbled upon at Safeway. Another slight alteration I made to the recipe was leaving out bacon (but I know for all you carnivores out there, it would be a delicious addition). I also switched the nuts. Original recipe called for pine nuts. Here in paradise those cost $7.50 for a post-it note sized bag. No thanks. I used cashews we already had on hand (we have an addiction here). The end result of this spinach salad was terrific...for adults. Gabe was appalled that anyone would dream of eating goat cheese. The second salad was a fennel and orange salad. The dressing (made from scra...

Without Grandma Kathi in town, apparently we starve. We were lucky enough to have a week long visit from Isom's mom during the week of Valentine's Day (we actually had a date on Valentine's Day---Isom was a good sport and watched Beautiful Creatures with me). In honor of the day of love, we had a week long food love affair. Not much different than our normal food loving adventures except for the part where Chef Kathi made from scratch, almost every delicious morsel we put in our mouths. This visit was especially fun for almost 18 month old Zach. He really took to his grandma and laughed and played all day (in between the times when Grandma Kathi was in the kitchen). Isom even had a few days off from work to spend time at the beach. Between days off, grandma visiting, and Gabe being off for President's day, Zach was confused by the break in his normal routine. Now the dust has settled and he's stuck with regular old mom again. And regular old dinners. I think we bot...

I keep thinking of that ABBA song "Money! Money! Money!" But with pasta. Yesterday my new kitchen assistant made three types of homemade pasta. My newest addition to my KitchenAid family is the pasta attachment. She is a beaut. We decided to put this years birthday present to immediate good use. We chose to make spinach pasta. Anyway to sneak it into the diet seems good to me. The first go of the rigatoni was a nail biter, especially since Chef Isom was using the spaghetti attachment. When the combination of dry dough, tired Isom, and not realizing there is a tool to push the dough through (not the makeshift butter knife one he created) came to a head, we both agreed to add additional water to the remaining dough and switch to the rigatoni attachment. When that was perfected, we tried the large macaroni attachment. And finally, the small macaroni attachment. Fresh spinach pasta for my birthday/Chinese New Year was complete. We all licked our bowls clean...last night, and agai...

I saw an interview with Melissa McCarthy (Google her) the other day on Ellen. She was describing moments of parenthood with her blonde, angelic, sweet two year old daughter...who has a way of enticing people in and then poking them in the eye at the last minute. Oh, it's Zach! There are other such beguiling little monsters running around in diapers! This almost made me feel better. Almost. I have never seen a child more interested in destruction than this little blue eyed boy. This week alone I bore witness to red crayon art on our newly painted white walls, a broken cologne bottle that additionally jammed glass in my hand, a broken phone charm, string cheese bites spit in a trail from the kitchen to the dining room, total demise of our back screen door, throwing of baby wipes out the front door, writing on his face, loss of ten more book covers (loves the sound of ripping pages), rearrangement of all my phone apps, pulling all the DVDs and CDs out of their cases one by one, and cr...