Karen and I use a grocery shopping app on our phones (GroceryIQ, if you care to know), so we can see what the other person has already found and what remains. We each get a set of aisles in the store, and we check off the items as they go into our respective carts. Add in a quick text message as needed, and we can fly through the store with a manic efficiency.

Except. Sometimes.

Sometimes, you get a call from your wife saying, “We’re in the seafood section. Get over here. Now.”

I spun the cart around with one of the girls in it, her Hello Kitty sandals barely holding on to her feet, and we found them all peering at a steel table as Karen wielded a set of long tongs.

“Get it, mom!”

She plunged her hand down, carefully squeezing the tongs. After a minor struggle, she lifted her tongs, just as she saw me approaching. She lifted her catch high in the air as I came closer and triumphantly called out, “They’ve got crawfish!”

Some of the best things going here in Atlanta are the farmers markets. Except, they're not farmers markets at all. Your DeKalb Farmers Market is Karen’s favorite (I prefer Buford Highway for the tortillas and Korean produce). Your DeKalb is more like a crazed import/grocery store hopped up on a fresh batch of meth after a three-day bender that involved a few crates of persimmons, a barrel of olive oil and a half-dozen smoked pig feet (if you follow me). It’s part bulk produce and spice shop, part bakery, part specialty cheese shop, and part butcher. Now take what you have in mind and triple the chaos and volume and you’re somewhere closer to an accurate view of Your DeKalb. So, it's pretty great. But do not, under any circumstances, go there on a Sunday afternoon around 1:00. Because this is when churchgoers pull into the parking lot by the hundreds, and shit gets real.

Karen happened to be in the seafood section showing two of our kids the giant trout swimming around in clear plastic tanks above their heads when a worker came up and dumped out a large bucket of crawfish. Karen said grown men dove for the tongs. The kids shouted that they “MUST SEE THE BABY LOBSTERS, NOW!” And that’s when she called me.

As I pulled up with the cart and the third child, we immediately lost control of the situation. That’s when one of the girls, with the Hello Kitty sandals, nearly climbed in with the crawfish.

Here’s the thing about our kids...they are a lot. They are amazing. They are funny and exasperating and just as prone to make each other laugh as they are to make each other cry. But god love them for having no fear, or almost none, in situations where I would expect them to freak out and cower. Instead, our kids dive face first into a mess of what they call baby lobsters.

We took turns with the kids, helping them use the tongs to grab a crawfish gently enough to not crush it and then place it in a plastic bag to take home. Then each of them wanted to hold a crawfish by its back. Which we helped them do in spite of the sign in front of us that clearly said children were not allowed to handle the seafood because they will probably get hurt and bleed on the floor and don’t sue us for your bad parenting choices, thank you.

We got a ridiculous amount of crawfish. For less than $8.00. And our kids got to be brave and grab on to the backs of baby lobsters.

And then we headed home. With absolutely no clue what we were going to cook.

Some quick searching for crawfish étouffée recipes led us to Saveur. With some adjustments, we made it our own, playing up the heat and black pepper and downplaying the amount of oil in the roux. The heat hits hard, but in the best way possible, demanding you eat faster.

One bite and Karen declared it the best she had ever tasted.

And by the end of our bowls, we were a little sad we hadn’t let the kids put even more crawfish in the bag to bring home.

Recipe | Crawfish (or Crayfish, whatever) Étouffée , adapted from Saveur

• 2 pounds, live crawfish

• 2 tblsp. + 2 tsp. kosher salt, divided

• 1 tsp. cayenne pepper (or a little more)

• 2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

• 1 tsp. dried basil

• 1⁄2 tsp. dried thyme

• 1⁄4 c. canola oil

• 1/2 c. flour

• 1⁄4 c. finely chopped onion

• 1⁄4 c. finely chopped celery

• 1⁄4 c. finely chopped red bell pepper

• 3 c. chicken broth

• 12 tbsp. unsalted butter, cubed

• 1 c. finely chopped scallions

• Cooked white rice, for serving

Prepare the Crawfish

Please note that we realize that people get very passionate (read that as "crazy") about their crawfish/crayfish. As Karen says, "We didn't use spices while cooking the crawfish because we did all the spicing up in the étouffée. Make some kind of statement that we're not from Louisiana and there are many ways to boil and spice crawfish. We did it the Protestant way." I think that says it all.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. 

Meanwhile, get another large pot and dump the crawfish into it. Crawfish are filthy and angry creatures, so get ready. Start filling the pot with water until the crawfish are completely covered. Let them hang for a few minutes and then dump the mothers into a colander. Repeat this two more times or until you no longer see sediment in the bottom of the pot. 

Once the water is boiling, add two tablespoons of salt (Kosher? Yes) to the water and then add in the crawfish. Congratulations, you just murdered your dinner.

Boil the crawfish for two minutes. Then put the lid on the pot and move it off of the burner. Let it sit for 15 minutes, then dump the crawfish into a colander and rinse well with cold water to stop the cooking process. Let them cool until you're ready to rip apart their bodies.

Yank the tails of the crawfish by holding on to their backs with one hand and then tug/twist their tails off of them. You are a monster. Now get the funk off of it. Karen yelled at me not to wash off the funk because it rinses off the flavor. So be strong and get the funk off as best you can. Also, grow up. You just murdered your food. Let's not get all delicate now, sweetheart.

You can get the tail exoskeleton off by squeezing the sides firmly until you feel it give away, and then peel it off from the tail meat.

Now go drink some wine or gin. You just turned your kitchen into a slaughterhouse. Wash away your sins with something stronger than a diet soda. Unless it is Tab. Tab is the best and goes well with any situation, including mass murder of small creatures. Everyone knows this is true.

Call your mom and apologize for all the shitty things you did growing up. Cry.

Better? Great. Now let's get our roux on.

Make the Étouffée

Combine the remaining two teaspoons of salt, cayenne, black pepper, basil, and thyme in a little bowl. Set the bowl aside.

If you have an enameled pot, get it out and heat it up. If you, like us, buy cheap enameled pots at Marshall's that chip easily and you shouldn't be using that thing anymore, then get a large, heavy-bottomed pot heating on high.

Add the oil. Once it starts smoking, add in the flour evenly across the oil and whisk like crazy, for a minute or so.

Now, ideally you're going to turn down the heat to medium low, and stirring frequently with a big wooden spoon, you'll brown the roux you just made for 30 minutes until it's looking like dark chocolate. Or, if like me, you forget you're cooking with an electric stove that retains the burner heat, this will happen in 7 minutes.

Add the onion and cook until softish, around 5 minutes.

Remove the pot from the heat and add in the bell pepper and celery along with one tablespoon of the spice mixture. Stir until combined.

In a saucepan, heat up the chicken broth until it boils. Once it's boiling, get the roux mixture back on medium heat and slowly whisk in the broth until combined, about two minutes. Move the pan off the heat. I know, it's a lot of moving it on and off, but buck up, you murderer.

In another saucepan over medium-high heat, melt 8 tablespoons of the butter. Add in the crawfish tails and scallions. Stir. Cook for a minute and then add in the remaining spice mixutre. Stir and then add it all into the roux, stirring until mostly combined. Add in the remaining butter and stir until shiny and glossy.

Serve the étouffée in a shallow bowl (or eat directly out of the pan) and top with rice and the chopped scallions. We made yellow rice by adding tumeric and a pinch each of cinnamon and cloves while the rice cooked.

“These are the best spaghetti and meatballs I ever heard.”

So proclaimed one of our three-year-old twin daughters. We try so hard not to laugh at her approximations, but when I asked her to say it again, she knew. She knew she’d said something funny, and we were asking her for a repeat performance. A giant smile crossed her face. She had us, and she knew it.

She brushed her bangs out of her face (they grow down past her eyes because there’s no time to take her to the groomers. Or stylist. Wherever we’re supposed to take our kids for haircuts).

We don’t talk about our kids much on here. But our son turned five in February. And one of our twins insists she’s four now, but the other twin remains steadfastly and accurately three. The fact they were born one minute apart does not faze them. These are now the facts, Dad. Learn to deal with them.

We are trying more family meals. Eating together. We know it’s important. We know they need us, more than ever. Most work days, I make it home just in time to put the kids to bed. Read their copy of Dr. Seuss’ Snow. Which they can recite with me. And then they ask why we never had snow this winter. Atlanta winters seem empty for them without bundling up and running around the backyard, throwing snow high into the air like a confetti cannon. “Where’s the snow, Dad?” Impossible to explain.

So we plan meals to eat together. Carve out the time before the time is gone. For good someday. And 99% of the time, we’re eating a family meal from a recipe by The Pioneer Woman.

We have a heavily woven Ree thread on our blog, and if you’re a long-time reader (hey, happy second anniversary to our blog last month), you know exactly what we’re talking about.

My mom is not convinced we know Ree. “But have you spoke to her? Have you met her?” she asks when we say Ree is our friend. Apparently, Mom has not seen the pictures of me with the gin. But when you eat someone’s food, when you cook from her books, and you watch the “selective” eaters in your house devour the meals, you feel like Ree is your friend.

Ree has a new cookbook out soon. We were lucky enough to get an advance copy. Scratch that...Karen was lucky enough to get an advance copy of Ree’s book, The Pioneer Woman: Food From My Frontier. Karen was one of the lucky folks to get a signed copy of the book with a personalized inscription:

“Love to Karen, who gave so much and asked for so little. XOXO Ree.”

So. She’s pretty much the best. And so is her food. So get your copy now. The food is great, every single time (especially that Spicy Caesar salad dressing).

And Ree has a recipe for the best spaghetti and meatballs I ever heard.

Get the recipe for the meatballs here. She serves them with rigatoni in the book, but our kids insist on spaghetti.

Buy the book here. Do it.

• Two Jill Silverman Hough cookbooks:
  • 100 Perfect Pairings: Main Dishes to Enjoy with the Wines You Love 
  • 100 Perfect Pairings: Small Plates to Enjoy with the Wines You Love
• An instant-read digital thermometer, perfect for getting a pork roast cooked just right.
• A four-piece serving set from Crate & Barrel. It is shiny. 
• A very cool six-piece set of Martha Stewart melamine serving/mixing bowls. The nesting kind. Saves space. Looks cool. 
• Oh. And $100 worth of American Express Gift Certificates. You know, to buy yourself something pretty.

• Check out the recipes from Jill Silverman Hough from the National Pork Board.
• Leave a comment below telling us your big wish for you and your loved ones for 2012. That’s it. It doesn’t have to involve pork (but most of our wishes do).
• Leave your comment by January 3, 2012 at 8:00 p.m.
• Please see the section below entitled “Here’s how to lose.” It contains the one thing you can say to automatically be disqualified.
• All qualified entries are entered to win the amazing awesomeness from the National Pork Board and the two of us.
• We will choose the winner randomly via random.org from all qualified entries and announce on January4, 2012.

(As an aside, if you were sitting with us at our dinner table, eyeing the wine bottle for a second glass, as I am this evening, I would tell you that Melissa Clark is magic and genius and probably poops kittens but this is an unverifiable fact by us, non-family members, but sweet baby j, we like her so much and her food is spectacular every time and I took her book to Brussels, Belgium OMG I am so not kidding I went to Brussels and now we’re making something inspired by her Brussels sprouts recipe in her second book but I took her book with me which was the only thing I took to read on the plane and it is full of magic and perfect writing and I want to be her at least her writing, if one can be like someone's writing, when I grow up, but that’s borderline creepy to say so I won’t but I do and also I need more wine.

That is an actual conversation you would have with us. We understand if you don’t ask for a dinner invitation.)

Melissa’s books, over the last year, have become our go-to recipe source for great food that never fails. Ever. So when we saw her latest book was coming out at the beginning of October, we pre-ordered on Amazon and then counted down the days.

We’ve made six recipes so far. Buy the book, as soon as you can. You need more good food in your life.

When Shauna at Gluten Free Girl and the Chef asked if we wanted to do an interpretation of Melissa’s Brussels sprouts, we jumped at the chance. We don’t make up our own recipes, so creating something new from the ingredients in Melissa’s recipe was a challenge, only for our lack of creativity. Go look at their version of Melissa's for realz Brussels Sprouts with Pancetta and Caraway. 

Then it struck us...SproutKraut. Melissa, in her introduction to the recipe, talked about looking at the pile of shredded sprouts and thinking about sauerkraut. That inspired her to include caraway seeds along with pancetta. Getting closer to sauerkraut with the caraway.

We decided to take it the whole way to krautland (differnt than Birdland, thank you Manhattan Transfer), at least a quick one. And the results made Karen think about childhood Thanksgiving in Baltimore. Every year, along with turkey and oyster stuffing, her grandmother’s Thanksgiving day table included sauerkraut. Whenever Karen sees or smells sauerkraut (her grandmother’s made with a nice slice of fatback), she’s transported back to South Baltimore near Brooklyn Park, not far from her grandfather’s welding shop. This makes her happy, so I’ve tried to learn to love sauerkraut

When we saw Molly Wizenberg’s
gin-soaked sauerkraut inspired
by her own Baltimore roots, we knew we had to try it. And I finally loved sauerkraut. The results were so good, we decided to use it as an additional inspiration for Melissa’s Brussels sprouts sauerkraut. Gin, pancetta, caraway, shredded sprouts, and sherry vinegar.

We ate it out of the pan. All two pounds (we made a double batch) of gin-tinged, tangy, salty, perfect Brussels sprouts. Make this for your holiday table as the kicky punch of happy.

Melissa Clark, in addition to the perfect pie crust recipe, gives you food that is full of flavor, easy to make, with a giant punch of happy. Cook This Now. And go be happy.

Brussels Sprouts with Gin, Pancetta, Caraway, and Sherry Vinegar (SproutKraut) inspired by Melissa Clark’s Cook This Now

1 pound Brussels sprouts
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 ounces pancetta, diced small (about ½ cup)
1 cup gin
½ cup water
¼ - ½ cup sherry vinegar (depending on how much punch to your face you want)
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 ½ teaspoons caraway seeds
½ teaspoon kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper

Remove the uglyish leaves from the sprouts. Cut off the weird core thing where it attaches to the stem. If you’ve got a food processor, insert the slicing blade and go to town. If you don’t have a food processor, go ahead and slice the sprouts by hand and hate people who have food processors because they sort of suck. Set the sprouts, and your seething anger, aside.

Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a very large pan. Like really big. Not roasting pan big, but big. Also, it should have a cover. Maybe use a cookie sheet if you don’t have a cover.

Add the pancetta and cook until a nice shade of tan/brown and then remove the crispy pieces with a slotted spoon. Place the crispies on a paper towel.

Tell everyone that you removed the pancetta fat from the pan but secretly leave it all in there because fat tastes good and people should live a little. Not like have a heart attack, but this fat tastes good and maybe don’t serve this to people with heart conditions. That’s our recommendation.

Add half the vinegar to the pan. It will let off very aggressive steam that feels uncomfortable and makes you cough. Carry on and scrape the brown bits of pancetta off the bottom of your pan until they’re all up in the vinegar/fat swirling goodness. You’re welcome, you just added a lot of flavor to your SproutKraut.

Add in the other ingredients except for the remaining vinegar. Hold on to that mother until you see how everything tastes after some cook time.

Place the cover on the pan. Set the timer for 10 minutes. Drink some gin.

When the timer goes off, remove the lid. Drink more gin and set the timer for 10 more minutes. Maybe 15. You’re looking for just a little liquid at the bottom of the pan. Sprouts will have a tiny bit of crunch to them.

Uncover and taste. Start adding in the vinegar and some salt and pepper until you’re happy. Stir in half of the crispy pancetta.

Place SproutKraut in a serving dish and top with the remaining pancetta for crunch and awesomeness.

Just in time for Halloween, we've reviewed Zilly Rosen's Zombie Cupcakes cookbook over at Cooks & Books & Recipes. The verdict? Our kids take turns going to bed with the book cradled in their hands. It's a must-buy.

Go check out our review and get the recipe for these fantastic zombie hands shoving through the cupcake grave. 

But before you go, check out Karen's photos below from last year's Zombie Walk at Asbury Park. Because they are awesome.

Recipe & Review: Zombie Cupcakes by Zilly Rosen at Cooks&Books&Recipes

Here's the thing...

We are terribly alone right now. We are far away from our old friends, the people who helped us know who we are.

We watch documentaries on Netflix streaming. They all take place in NYC. This, maybe, isn't the best form of entertainment choice.

Our house in NJ is trying to destroy us for leaving it. Then there was that hurricane that stopped everything in the real estate market in the northeast. Acts of god are not welcome. We are doubtful and hopeful.

And with a mortgage. And rent. We are squeezed so hard it's making us squirm to catch our breath.

Two months after moving into our rental house, we finally hung two pictures on the wall. Both in the girls' room they share. One is a picture of flowers that I bought at the IKEA in Elizabeth, NJ. It matches the girls' lightshade. The other is a large swatch of fabric from the nursing cover Karen used when she breastfed the girls. For thirteen months. I put them up yesterday in their rooms, right before we loaded the kids in the minivan to go to the pumpkin patch. I stood alone in their bedroom, straightening the pictures. And I was transported back to our house up north which now sits empty. I could feel myself standing at the diaper changing station, looking at the flower picture over and over and over. With twins, so much time was spent looking at that picture. And I remembered my heart breaking a little when Karen cut the fabric of her nursing cover so she could fit it into the frame, only because I knew we were done with it forever, two little heads bobbing under that fabric, Karen tucking them close to her body when we were out in NYC, usually at Shake Shack in Madison Square Park.

To see these two picture, on walls that aren't ours, here in Atlanta. A little something snapped in my head. And instead of going to pick pumpkins, I thought we should pack up and go home. Home to NJ. Go put the pictures back where they belong. In that empty house that soon won't be ours. Hopefully. And not so hopefully.

But in spite of it all. Being poor. Being alone.

In spite of it all, we are happy.

Here's the short version:

As part of the #afundforjennie effort which we blogged about previously, bloggers are raising money to support our friend, Jennifer Perillo, after the loss of her husband. Earlier this week, a random tweet from me (Chris) led to a photo of me in boxers, black dress socks, while holding gin during the premiere of Ree Drummond's (a.k.a, The Pioneer Woman) new show on Food Network, being auctioned off on Twitter while I slept.

Never, ever go to sleep is the lesson there.

We love Ree (from experience, we can say she does extremely nice things for people without ever taking public credit for her efforts), and we love her show and her food.

So $200 for Jennifer Perillo? Yes.

Supporting Ree? Yes.

Me in boxers? For these two women? Absolutely. 

The best person in this whole mess? Deb Puchalla, the editorial director of FoodNetwork.com and tons of other related sites. Deb is always encouraging me and Karen, and we like that she's a glutton for punishment for offering $200 for my sad, sad body pics. Deb will receive a pic of me and my gut (not sucking it in) while watching Ree. Gin also makes an appearance. Of course.

Here's hoping that Food Network eventually picks up our show, Cooking in Boxers and Black Dress Socks while Looking for the Gin. Catchy, isn't it? If they do pick it up, I promise to wear the lobster boxers in the premiere episode.

Love to Jennifer, Ree, and Deb. And to Karen for being a good sport and a very demanding photoshoot director. Deb gets a special, gut-centric photo for her office. Or wherever.

Below is the best shot from today. Minus the gut.

If you' like to see the start of the photo shoot, check out this tweet.