The first family Easter dinner I brought my husband to we dined on lamb. I guess you could call it tradition, we eat it every Easter, though I never gave it much thought until my newly made husband balked on the ride to my parents house over the sacrilege of eating lamb on the very day celebrating the resurrection of…the Lamb of God. At nineteen I just shrugged. It didn’t bother me a bit, or even occur to me to make the connection. To me, it was the only time each year I got to feast on a lamb dinner and I was not about to have my husband and his teasing accusations interfere.

Besides, the joke was on him. No sooner did he get over his mockery of my family’s blasphemy and shimmy a piece of roasted meat on his plate than he got wide eyed and slightly judgmental that we ate our sacrificial blasphemous heretical lamb with green jello. Green jello! We still chuckle and shake our heads whenever we think about his barbaric sheep meat ignorance — not knowing that lamb is eaten with mint jelly.

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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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We went to the dentist last week. We’re still getting over it. Yes, I am one more in the mass number of people who hate/loathe/are tempted to put off (read: skip) their routine cleanings. I’m still all nerves about the ordeal and I’ve had almost a week to recover. On top of the typical scraping and scratching and poking and vicious vibrations, the cracked lips, the jaw tension and tension induced migraine that all comes with the procedure of professional mouth cleaning, they also gave me the added bonus of a nasty cold and sore throat I was sure would turn into strep if I made one mistake (read: did not follow their instructions to floss 5,000 times a day and after each meal, including snacks, like gum.) You would think that a regular, normal, compassionate human being would not want a profession of making someone elses morning so cruelly dreadful. I mean, it’s kind of a risky profession when almost every human being would rather the alternative of letting their teeth fall out instead of having to worry about the blood bath their mouth is about to undergo.

Anyway, after they did whatever horrible thing they do inside mouth caverns, they told me in big, large, medical jargon that my mouth was a diseased black hole. I should note that I did not, and do not have any cavities. I’m just saying, 24 years without cavities deserves some recognition, like a party, or my picture on their wall of no-cavity-mouth fame, right? But no. I was accused of not wearing my retainer, which in my defense I never pretended like I wore it, and invasive pictures of my gums were then flashed before my eyes and I was told shame on you Meg. Shame. And I walked out feeling terrible about my life’s non-flossing ways and how I was told if I even wanted a remote chance of keeping the remaining teeth I had (read: that would be all of them) then I needed to be an avid, aggressive flosser and to never eat a single thing again to protect the careful scrape job just preformed on my pie hole. Oh yes, and I needed some fancy, vibrating tooth brush because my arms (which are super strong and built from lugging my 24-pound toddler baby around) were just too weak to use a manual, normal, grounded person’s toothbrush.

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Almost two years ago I made coleslaw for the first time. I admitted doing so only to keep my better half, the one who funds my kitchen, happy as he wanted a coleslaw topped pulled pork sandwich replicating the kind we had deep within South Carolina barbeque country the year prior. I, for one, was not going to poke the bear. Along the way I realized coleslaw was not nearly as horrible as my dramatic woes led me on. Coleslaw did not need to be a bowl of mayonnaise soup (my biggest fear) and my taste buds actually enjoyed the flavor of a lightly dressed cabbage salad. Like, a lot.

Unfortunately I’ve only made it once. Despite being decidedly uncreamy, as the name implies otherwise, it seemed to have more steps than I thought a simple cabbage salad should have. It required a four-hour wilt marathon over the sink before it had to be rinsed it off, patted it dry, and coated with a light dressing before being served — unless you prefer it chilled, and then time would need to be factored in accordingly. It’s not that I am unable to make myself useful during that four hours — frosting cupcakes, form smacking burgers for the grill, or splashing in the pool — I just frankly am impatient. I want it now.

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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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