I know this is exactly how you wanted to start your new year. With bacon, cream, potatoes, cheese, and everything that is right with this world minus resolutions. But here’s the thing. I’m just going to throw out a guess here, and say you’re a little like me. You are slightly neurotic finding it hard to keep new year resolutions when the new year starts on a Tuesday. Isn’t there an unspoken law that every new beginning starts on a Monday, the first day of the week — err, Sundays never count but as a last hurrah.

I mean isn’t that what we say? Monday I will start eating a salad everyday instead of Ben and Jerry’s Peanut Butter World (ohmygah!). Monday I will wake up at 7 a.m. instead of rolling out of bed when I hear the baby wake up at 9 a.m.. Monday I will start running off the extra baby toddler weight I’ve been lugging around for over a year. Monday I will finally get back into the kitchen since the play room is finished and our ghetto baby gate comprised of two dinning room chairs and a board are in place to keep my kitchen enthusiastic son locked away in BallBookToy Land, where all babies are joyful and not at all whinny because mama isn’t right next to them at all times playing and entertaining them and smooching their squishy cheeks and giving long soothing back rubs and caressing fingers through soft baby hair…

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For the past week my mouth has been drowning in soft foods. I guess I don’t need to specify “with ice cream”, as you all know me well enough by now to know that is what I mean. Ice cream with an occasional jello-whipped cream parfait top off to be even more specific. My wisdom tooth excavation was last week and as expected the IV was the worst part. You see I’m a little (read: more than any other person you will meet in 500 life times) needle phobic. My husband makes this the main point of his argument against the litter of kids I would like to have, but I digress. We are still in negotiations on what that number will be. For now, we will just say litter (I’m winning).

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I’ve made a pact with myself to not gratin. They warm my heart and soul. They make my insides tingly with delight. They are filled with cheese and cream and butter, perhaps the trinity of food goodness, and they make my hips grow far too big for the pair of fat britches I keep on hand just in case. Crash diets, much sobbing and depression ensues. Of course, things like this become even more of a problem after you flaunt (ha ha, I’m so funny) your post-baby bod around like “look at me, I’m only 25 pound heavier than I was a year ago!” It’s sad. So we don’t gratin.

It’s okay. I’ve come to terms with it. We’ve settled into a nice non-gratin dinner routine and up until this summer I was doing just fine not eating creamy, cheesy goodness. You see, I bought myself a little “congratualtions on the completion of your pantry. Now stock the shelves with all the cookbooks you’ve been wanting but have patiently held off on purchasing for lack of room” cookbook. It has almost 400 pages of seasonal recipes from market to table by the incredible Suzanne Goin. Folks in L.A., how I envy you and your Lucques. Anyway, her gratin had only 1 tablespoon of butter and 1/2 cup of heavy cream, which I mean, is totally do-able and non-hip enhancing since I refuse to do anything resembling a jog. Walking at a slow pace as if my 5’8″ self had the stride of a 80 year old 4-foot hunchback is more my speed as far as exercise goes.

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Nearly three weeks ago I told you about the purple potatoes I scooped up at the market because they were purple and then let them sit for weeks growing monstrous sprouts completely ruining them because I was in a funk. A funk due to cooking blocks that no matter where I turned were unbreakable. Thankfully Bailey’s helped turn that around, but after crossing my fingers and repeating please, oh please, oh please a million times on our way to the market, they thankfully still had the little purple orbs and I again grabbed them determining something beautiful would be made with them.

I nixed my previous thoughts about purple potato gnocchi as the images I googled looked like slimy purple goo balls on a plate, and decided to not go for purple mashed potatoes (mhm, exactly). I wanted something simple and easy, and something I could whip up quickly for a satisfying weeknight meal* while taking care of a grumpy baby who refuses to sleep because he’d rather roll over, and acts as if being on “his other side” equates to be starved, and/or tortured and/or whateverbabiesthinktheworstpossiblethingis. (Did I mention he only likes to do this while he is supposed to be sleeping? We’re a bit shut-eye deprived over here if you can’t tell.) What won out? Potato salad.

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I’m sure by now you readers are tired of me talking about naps, lack of energy and meal-less weeks because I’ve been, well, exhausted, but I’m afraid if I don’t make my constant excuse I would only have one thing left to talk about: my husband reenacting the five minute squirrel sequence he saw out his office window the other day — proving that we are clearly not ready to be parents or even interact with this superior race of humans. Despite these word lacking charade-esque conversations, I have had a sudden attack of revitalized energy, which is probably what a normal person feels like, except I’ve been without it for so long the tiniest morsel has sent me off the edge as I have begun scrubbing and reorganizing every nook and cranny of our living space in a feverish attempt to get things clean and pristine before welcoming a little bundle that will look a little too much like us (sorry kid).

Again, probably not the story you want to hear, but it does at least mean we got a hot meal that I now get to discuss. So pot pie, it is perhaps one of my more favorite dinners except this husband of mine had, once upon a time, long, long ago, a pot pie shell that was underbaked and raw and was “apparently forced” to choke this horrible thing down. Which basically meant he had me sign a prenup stating I would never make a pot pie for as long as we live and thus we started our marriage blissful, happy and pot pie-less. Thing is, I believe in the power of genetics. My dad, he is a cereal man. No, I mean, he is like made of cereal. I’ve heard legends of 10-bowl cereals sessions, Grand Canyon sized mixing bowls full of milk covered flakes for his immediate after dinner top off — and well, I sort of inherited this genetic malfunction. I really should think about buying stock in General Mills, but, this is not about cereal. It is about pot pie. My dad also has an addiction to puff pastry topped stews and, well, it has passed on to me as I seem to be addicted as well, only letting myself fall into the temptation of eating one while at a restaurant because of this stupid prenup I had to sign.

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