But, unfortunately, now it is autumn (worst word), and Julia has too many reasons to Pinterest. While Pinterest has the reputation of being for girls, that’s only because they’re abusing it, using it wrong, and simply making it hard for guys to find useful stuff. Julia has pinned a thousand things. I’ve pinned approximately three. My first pin was of a cool tattoo design, and I got it drawn on my body in forever ink the very next day. My second pin was of a Grinch-themed Christmas party decoration that led to the most successful event in our four years of marriage. My third pin was a baby announcement photo idea that turned into the most adorable thing ever (again, this). I’m batting 3000%. I’m good at Pinterest.
Girls don’t insist on efficiency. They want a place to categorize their dreams in a worse version of Google Images. I thought Pinterest was supposed to keep your inspirations organized, but Julia’s boards have become a landfill for a slaughterhouse-amount of wasted food products. It’s gotten to the point that when Julia finally attempts a Pinterest recipe, I rely on my 1989 San Francisco earthquake experience and hide under a door frame until the blender goes off. Here’s a recap of her worst (this list is not comprehensive) Pinterest failures:
1. Cauliflower crust pizza. Trying to make a “healthy” pizza is a terrific way to put yourself in a bad mood before you call Round Table. This crust has the crispiness of a bag of wet sand and will conveniently crumble off the pizza stone and onto the floor so that you can treat your neighbors to your favorite profanity. Dog tip: When I say “Pinterest” in front of Daphne, she runs to the kitchen and starts sniffing the floor for disasters.
2. Lavender ice cubes. These are perfect for Halloween (timely!) but not for a refreshing summer beverage. Why? Because pieces of lavender in ice look like frozen spiders. After screaming “kill it, kill it!” to a mason jar of lemonade, I furiously spilled this whimsical idea (again) all over the kitchen floor. The tile was beginning to look like a crime scene at Williams-Sonoma.
3. Gluten-free snickerdoodles. I’m not only mad that I have to relive this, I’m mad I have to hear the word snickerdoodle in my brain as I do it. SD cookies are delicious and SIMPLE, so when Julia pinned a version that was slightly less indulgent, I was willing to participate. As expected, somewhere along the way from pin to oven, something went haywire. I blame poor translation software on this one because I have to believe there’s no way that Julia would see “almond flour” and read “hamster cage bedding.” Once, in second grade, I ate a baseball card and that tasted like a more on-purpose cookie than the pile of crumbs Julia offered me for dessert.
4. Raw brownies. I should have seen this one coming, but the ingredients were basically just dates and walnuts, and I have a vivid imagination. Put a date in one hand and a handful of walnuts in the other, pop them in your mouth, delicious. Put them in a blender with some other basic ingredients and something unholy happens. I can’t explain it and neither can science. At least I now know why our Vitamix screams like the bad guy from Roger Rabbit when he’s melting.
5. Banana-egg pancakes. I can imagine a person eating regular, glutenful pancakes with banana slices on top. That concept sounds bogus but I’ve seen them on a menu at Denny’s, so I assume that they’re not just a joke that the fruit industry is playing on fast food junkies. In another episode of “Let’s Take Something Decadent and Ruin It By Trying To Make It Healthy,” Julia attempted these two-ingredient pancakes and they were…great? They tasted exactly like normal pancakes should except the consistency was a bit…off. I don’t know. Maybe it was because they looked like she poured a chunky smoothie onto a griddle and tried to pass it off as breakfast. If that wasn’t enough to trigger your gag reflex, it’s exactly how normal pancakes would look if you went straight from Denny’s to a Gravitron.
6. Metallic letters. Julia did some arts and crafts and made letters that spell “T E A.” Tea! I love tea. All types. Earl Grey is my favorite. But, no. According the Julia, the letters spell “E A T” and that is what is on our wall by the dining room table. Eat. Eat? Ok? You’re right, that’s what we do here. She didn’t appreciate the suggestions for other obvious verbs in all other rooms of the house.
I sound way disgruntled, but I’m mostly happy that Julia is attempting creative food and household experiments. To be fair, there have been numerous success stories—like the Oreo cookies baked in chocolate chip cookies Inception-style that Julia made for my birthday—but that’s not funny. So, before you pin something, ask yourself the hard question: Will I ever put in the effort to bring this abstract vision to life? Otherwise you’re just “liking” pictures of food in yet another app and that doesn’t seem productive. Go ahead, make those sugarBOMB cookies for dessert tonight or go get that tattoo tomorrow. Don’t give yourself a creative space to catalog the dreams that you will never achieve because that’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever written.
Also, forget trying to make healthy versions of things, especially if you have a husband. Just eat the thing that looks good, then go for a run.
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