Food

I mentioned in a previous post that I’ve been watching lots of Food Network lately and spending more time in the kitchen, and I have to say, I’m really enjoying it.  I’ve always “cooked,” since getting married anyway, and at times my dinners were great and at times they were not quite so delectable.  Clay and I always laugh about how in the early days of our marriage we ate a lot of “one bowl dinners” where I pretty much just threw together whatever I had into one pan and mushed it around, shook some soy sauce or cheese on it and called it good.  (not soy sauce and cheese together…yuck.)  My cooking has definitely improved over the past five years, slowly and incrementally, but I don’t think I ever really enjoyed it very much until we moved here and I actually had a kitchen big enough for more than one and a half people.

Since our food budget is so low ($250), I pretty much just buy whatever is on sale and try to rearrange it into different kinds of dishes.  This means that it’s very easy for me to get in a food rut, and two weeks ago I had one of those frustrating afternoons where I just stood staring into my pantry for about half an hour trying to figure out what in the world to cook for dinner and it was DRIVING ME CRAZY!!!   So since then I’ve been trying to be more proactive about gathering new ideas and recipes (thus, Food Network).  I’ve been branching-out a bit more lately and I’m having a lot of fun.   And surprisingly, much of what I’m cooking is just a different arrangement of similar ingredients I’ve always bought, I just had no idea how to put it together that way.  For example, last week I cooked North African Meatballs.  First of all, I never make meatballs, I always just brown and crumble my ground meat.  So yay, meatballs, something new!  But most of all, who knew that when you mix cumin and cinnamon and cayenne pepper (I didn’t have all the ingredients, so I subbed a few and left-out a few) it makes this amazing Morroccan flavor?  I mean, I’ve had those spices in my cabinet for awhile but I would have never thought to mix them, but now it’s my new favorite thing.  Simple!

My other favorite thing I’ve made is this Potato-Bacon Torte. A torte for goodness sakes.  I made the homemade pie crust and it was EASY and SCRUMPTIOUS!  I pretty much had all the ingredients, I just never knew how to mix them together to make a torte!  But WOW, was it good!  As you can see, I’m getting these recipes from Melissa D’Arabian’s new show Ten Dollar Dinners on the Food Network–love it!  I’ve never been one to copy a recipe that I saw on tv, but I’m so glad I did!

I’m also starting to fall in love with baking.  Of course I don’t know how to do hardly anything, but I’m fascinated by the process of stirring together a few random ingredients that hide in my cupboard (like baking powder… I mean, what IS that stuff?) and out comes something totally awesome to eat.  It’s so incredibly simple and obvious, and I feel like I’m discovering something the rest of the world already knew.  Like a few months ago I bought a can of cocoa (for the first time ever) and noticed on the back that it had a recipe for brownies.  I was so shocked, I had no idea that you could make brownies any other way than a box of Betty Crocker mix.  I KNOW!  How ridiculous is that?!  (of course I will say that when I made them they definitely weren’t as good as Betty Crocker!)  And earlier this year when we ran out of Bisquick I was like, “Hmm… I think I heard once that you can make pancakes with stuff like flour and milk…. I wonder….” and what do ya know, I now have a pancake recipe with nothing but flour and milk and stuff.  And bread!  I made the most awesome homemade bread last week… like, I kneaded it!  With my hands!  And it turned-out PERFECT!   I also made homemade bagels last week, but those didn’t turn-out quite as well…they tasted great but never rose very much, so they were kinda small.  But who knew you could do that, just whip together some stuff in a bowl and make BAGELS?!  I’m so incredibly annoyed that a lifetime of convenience and outsourced food has robbed me of this knowledge!  I also came across this awesome recipe for Ginger cookies, and I made it twice in a week and ate a TON of them (…and actually now I kinda want to go make them again now I’m thinking about it!  They were SO good!)

I’m trying to challenge myself to discover ingredients and foods that I’ve never cooked before.  And it’s kinda sad how many of those there are.  I bought fresh garlic last week and have been cooking with it for the first time instead of using garlic powder like I usually do.  I mean, garlic.  It’s not rocket science, it’s a pretty basic ingredient, and I love using the real stuff.  (I also like mincing it with my big knife like Rachael Ray!)  Tonight I cooked polenta for the first time.  I made it using this recipe and I loved it!!!!  (although it was very similar to cheese grits which, being from the South, I’m very familiar with!)  It was so easy, but somehow venturing out of my usual box made it so much more fun for me.  It got my creative juices flowing!  I also bought some panko bread crumbs, anyone have a good recipe using those?

And last night I read this:  30 Worst Foods in America.  And how depressing that I’ve definitely eaten some of those!  (Chili’s fajitas, anyone else?!)  I’ve been thinking a lot about our eating habits and after reading that last night I just got so disgusted at the food industry and how gross and processed so much of it is.  I’m decently informed about nutrition, I know what we should be eating and what it does for keeping our bodies healthy and strong.  And we don’t have a horrible diet, it’s just not nearly as good as it should be.  I don’t generally buy that much junk food, but we do eat too many processed things on a regular basis that I’d like to cut down.  (cereal, granola bars, crackers…)  So I’m going to try to change that.  I really want to try to focus on eating as many whole foods as possible and cook more.  This morning instead of my usual bowl of cereal, I cooked scrambled eggs in corn tortillas, and my appetite was more stable throughout the morning than usual.  I like cooking breakfast on the weekends, so maybe I should just start being more intentional about doing that and then gradually try to do more during the week.  Now if I could only get Evelyne to eating something other than Kix and Cheerios….

Any good recipes you want to throw my way?  Or favorite new ingredients or foods?!  Enlighten me!

I should really be Mom of the Year

So, as you know, we’ve been potty training this weekend.  On our first day, when I got Evelyne out of the bed from her nap, she had had an accident and was really wet and it was all over her pants and the waterproof pad I put on top of her sheet.  I changed her and got her set-up with her Little Einsteins and snack (her after-nap ritual), and a few minutes later I noticed something.  Mimi, her stuffed lamb who’s her favorite lovey and best friend and she plays with all day and chews-on all the time, was soaked in pee.  And yes, she had been chewing on her since I had gotten her out of the bed.  We were pretty grossed-out and immediately threw Mimi in the wash.

Last night when I went to Harris at 3:30 a.m., I noticed that the whole front of his pajamas were soaked.  I think it’s the new diapers we’re using because he did this the night before, too, and he had only eaten once before that.  So, I had to go through the FUN process of fully waking-up and changing a screaming baby in the middle of the night.  When I took off his wet pajamas I thought I threw them on the floor.  Clay woke-up with him this morning and before he left for work I told him that I had had to change Harris’ clothes in the middle of the night.  He gave me a weird look and said, “Well then, you probably don’t want to hear this.  Where did you throw the dirty pajamas?”  Apparently, as I tossed them into the darkness, intending for them to land on the floor, somehow they landed over the side of his bed, and when Clay found him this morning, he was clutching his wet pajamas and his lovey, rolling around and chewing on them.

So, in the past three days, BOTH of my children have chewed on urine-soaked objects.  Someone make me a trophy, please.

Daddy’s girl?

Oh my gosh, I’m loving reading all the comments about how you wipe your kids’ butts!  I think we’ve figured-out a good way for now (we scoot over the stool that’s in front of the sink, I sit on it and bend her over my leg and then wipe), but keep the suggestions coming because I’m a total novice at this!

OK, so I don’t want to call “success” anytime soon, but….. yesterday was Day 2 and we had NO accidents!  Nothing!  She went in the potty every single time!  She even stayed dry through her nap time!  My mother-in-law tells me that Clay potty trained in 1 day, so I’m wondering if she’s going to take after him?  Apparently he was a very clean child who hated messes, and that’s a lot like Ev.  Of course I’m sure we’ll have many, many accidents in the future, but for now I’m super excited that she’s doing so well!

Butt wiping

So the potty training is going pretty well.  She pooped on the potty 3-4 times yesterday and peed several more times.  She had several accidents, but most of them she was able to finish on the potty.  And she totally freaks-out when she has an accident (as I expected), so I think she’s catching-on pretty well.  She adores wearing her big girl undies and doesn’t even want to wear pants because she wants to see them.  (and she looks pretty adorable in them!)  Yesterday she was wearing a pair with the Disney princess Belle on them, and she was standing watching tv and holding her butt, and she looked at me and said with a smile, “I’m holding Belle!”  Cinderella is her favorite and every time she sees a picture of her she says, “That’s me, I’m Cinderella!”  She has a tiny Cinderella figurine and yesterday I overheard her saying, “You’re Cinderella!  I saw you at Disneyland, do you remember that?”

OK, weird question… and maybe this is inappropriate blog talk, but oh well, I’m often inappropriate.  I’m still trying to figure-out the best way to wipe her butt.  How that work exactly?  Do you have them lean forward over your leg for you to wipe?  She has to lean forward so far for me to see that she almost falls over.  Do you have them get up and bend over?  (the only way I can really see everything)  Do you just do a blind wipe?  I’m so confused.  I’m used to a spread-eagle view and I don’t want to leave any mess on her poor little bootie, but I need some more practice on the best way to clean it off!  So, tell me, people.  How exactly do you wipe their butts?

Potty Training, here we go!

Today is Day 1.

Let me start this by saying that Evelyne has more or less been “ready” to potty train for quite awhile now.  It’s been ME who wasn’t ready, and for awhile I was actually discouraging her from using the potty because I totally wasn’t ready to tackle this job.  I really don’t understand why everyone tries to get their older kid out of diapers before the new baby is born because in my opinion, it is SO much easier to change a diaper whenever I get the chance than drop everything I’m doing and rush to the potty.  I love diapers.  Diapers are my friend.  I suppose if you have an easy baby who sleeps all the time it wouldn’t be so hard, but over the past 7 months, Harris has required a LOOOOT of attention and holding, like for hours at a time.  There were a couple of months there where I was holding him for all of his naps.  And as a newborn he would nurse for hours at a time.  It was much easier to change Evelyne’s diaper whenever I had a free moment rather than put him down and wait for him to scream (after I had just spent half an hour getting him to sleep) just so I could help her on the potty.  So, yeah, that’s why I waited.

I bought some big-girl princess and Minnie Mouse underwear about a month ago and contemplated doing it, but I chickened-out.  Yesterday, though, I realized that I don’t think I’m ever going to really feel ready, but she DEFINITELY already is.  We’ve already talked about it so much I think she’s probably been thinking, “Good grief, Mom, just go ahead and let me use the potty already!”   I might as well just take the plunge.  (I realized this as I watched her pooping in her diaper, IN the bathroom where she always does it…right before she comes to find me and say, “Mommy, I poo-pooed, change my diaper.”  Now that’s a child who’s ready to potty train!

So here we go.  She was excited to put-on her undies, and I think it helped that I told her that her cousin is wearing undies now, too, so she wants to be a big girl like her.  The first pee incident went all in her underwear, but they were the Gerber training pants so it didn’t make a mess.  The second one was in the potty.  The third one was half in her underwear and half in the potty.  The fourth one was in the potty.  The morning poop… the one that happens EVERY morning at the same time… it hasn’t happened yet.  That’s gonna be the real test.  This girl poops like 2-4 times a day and they’re all relatively loose (not to get too graphic or anything, but we’re not talking about something you can just plop in the toilet, they’re quite a mess), so we’ll see where she decides to dump.  Right now she’s taking a nap, wearing underwear and lined pants and sleeping on top of a waterproof pad that’s on top of her sheet that’s on top of another waterproof pad.

I’ll let you know how it goes…

I’m back.

Wow, what a slacker I’ve been lately.  I think I’ve written one post in the past month or so?  I hardly remember the days when I’d blog almost every day…oh yeah, that was before I had a baby!  But still.  Really, most of my absence can be attributed to laziness rather than sheer lack of time.  Blogging is kind of like a healthy discipline for me since it forces me to sit down and take time to record my thoughts, something that I always enjoy doing and find is good for my soul, yet when I get in a rut of coasting through life on autopilot, blogging takes a backseat.  And I’ve been coasting, but hey, I’m still here.  I’ve actually had lots of things lately that I’ve wanted to blog about, I just haven’t sat down and actually done it.  Here are a few things that we’ve been up to in the past month or so:

*Harris is almost 7 months old and is totally awesome.  I’m still not getting much sleep, but eh, I’m used to it, and he’ll sleep through the night sometime in the next couple of months, SURELY.  He’s not doing an official crawl yet, but he’s on his way and scoots and rolls all around the room to where he wants to go.  He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, but he’ll get up on his knees or push with his feet and lunge his body forward.  Sometimes he’ll actually get his legs into almost a standing position while the front half of his body is on his belly on the floor, so it looks really funny like he’s trying to do a somersault or something.  Right when he turned six months old something happened and all of a sudden breastfeeding wasn’t exactly working out for us.  Either my supply suddenly dropped or his hunger suddenly increased and I couldn’t keep-up, but despite almost constant nursing for weeks, he remained hungry and mad after nursing, so now we’re supplementing with formula and solids.  I was able to do about half nursing and half formula with Evelyne for her first year, so I’m hoping that it’ll turn out like that with him, too, and he won’t get a bottle preference and leave me in his dust.  Either way, he’s gaining weight faster and seems much happier.  He has the sweetest smile and cutest squeal of a laugh, and we’re enjoying him more every day.  

*Evelyne is just hilarious these days.  I love that she’s old enough for me to have full-on conversations with, and she is constantly cracking me up!  She has a major Daddy preference these days, and she even went through a phase (I think it’s over) where I couldn’t even tell her that I loved her without her saying, “No, Daddy loves me!”  I’d have to remind her that Mommy AND Daddy love her, and I think it’s sinking-in now.  And heaven forbid I ever said that she was my girl, she’d respond by saying, “No, Daddy’s my girl!”  Ha!  She’s really starting to love Harris, and when she sees him for the first time in the morning she hugs and kisses him and he squeals and smiles, and it’s just the most wonderful thing.  She also regularly looks at him and says, “Harris, you so cute!”  A few weeks ago I think she decided that she would finally act her age and start having “terrible two” moments.  The tantrums and occasional red-faced screaming are finally beginning in our house, and wow, are we excited that she’s reached this milestone.  Her new favorite discovery is big-girl puzzles.  She’s always been crazy about puzzles, but I recently bought the real jigsaw kind and she caught-on pretty quickly and is now doing 25-piece puzzles by herself. All. Day. Long.  And of course they’re Disney Princess puzzles, and she’s decided that she’s Cinderella, Daddy’s Prince Charming (as he dubbed himself), I’m Sleeping Beauty, and Harris (bless his heart) is Snow White.  Whenever she sees a picture of Cinderella she says, “Look, it’s me!”

*About a month ago I’d had enough and I finally saw a doctor and started taking an antidepressant.  I think I had been really confused about whether or not I “qualified” for PPD since probably about 80% of the time I felt normal and like myself.  But the other 20% I felt like an unhappy crazy person who was very irritable.  Since I started the medication, things have been great.  It wasn’t a dramatic difference, but I feel like myself.  I’ve had a much more positive outlook on motherhood and life in general, and Clay has noted several situations during which I remained happy and calm when he had expected me to freak-out and get angry.  So I think it’s working, and yay for that.  

*In light of my newfound mental and emotional stability, I’ve had an even stronger growing love for my kids lately.  I think it’s a combination of the Paxil and Harris just getting older and happier and more manageable.  Of course there are still crazy, stressful moments and days, but in general I’m just enjoying them so much more.  I really love the toddler stage so far, and I just can’t wait for Harris to get older so I can see what his personality will be like. I can’t wait to hear him talk, to sing songs with him, to get kisses from him, to watch him play games with Ev… all the fun things that I’m loving about Evelyne right now.  I’ve actually even start envisioning what having the third will be like!  Of course we’re still at least two years away from that, but the thought doesn’t send me into a panic anymore.  I’ll be really nervous, of course, but I’m really excited to see what God has in store for our family and what other sweet little blessings He will give us.  Last night before Evelyne went to bed she was being SO funny and SO cute, and Clay and I were talking about how much we’re going to miss this stage when she grows-up and how we’re going to have to keep having more kids so we’ll always have someone like this around us.  For those of you who have talked with me in the past six months, you know how radical a change of attitude that is from how I’ve been feeling up to this point, so I would definitely say God and the Paxil are working!  

*Been thinking about this lately:

The Bible is the story that delivers us the Gospel. It’s point is to get you to Jesus, the one mediator between God and man. It’s a big book to get you to a short message. You buy the whole field, but the treasure is the Gospel, not the book of Judges or financial principles from Proverbs. Once you have the Gospel right and you know what preaching is all about, then you can read and preach Leviticus or Malachi or whatever you want, as long as Jesus is in his proper place and the message is the Gospel, not the law, or the old covenant, or this week’s good advice.

                                                                                                                                                    - Internet Monk

*Next month my parents are coming to stay here for a weekend and watch the kids while Clay and I celebrate our 5th anniversary (which was last month) by going to Victoria, British Columbia.  We keep hearing that it’s beautiful, and I don’t think we’ve been away together since Evelyne’s been born, so I’m really excited.  Too bad I’ll probably be spending more bonding with my breast pump than with Clay.  

*I’m so glad that we survived the heat wave last week, although I feel like I barely made it.  One day it reached 105 which was the highest recorded temperature EVER in the Seattle area!  Our house reached 92 degrees a few times and pretty much stayed around 89 for a few days.  I just sat in one spot on the floor in front of a fan and as long it was blowing on me the heat was somewhat bearable.  But anytime I had to go to the bathroom or make something to eat and I didn’t take a fan with me (I usually did!), I would start sweating immediately and it would be rather unbearable.  The kids seemed to handle it much better than we did, and all of us pretty much stayed in our diapers/underwear for a few days.  Lots of nekkie time in our house.  Oddly enough, this week the temperatures have been in the high 60’s and low 70’s and the coolness has been a VERY welcome change!

*I’ve been really into watching the Food Network and other cooking shows lately.  I kinda go in phases with cooking shows and HGTV.  I get really obsessed with one of the other and watch a ton of cooking/decorating/real estate shows for a month or two and then I get totally burned-out and don’t want to watch any for a few months.  Then I rediscover the love and dive back in.  So right now I’m into food shows.  I discovered Top Chef for the first time, and thankfully Bravo has been running the entire season of Top Chef: Masters which I DVR’ed and have been watching.  I was also really into The Next Food Network Star and my favorite Melissa D’Arabian won (Clay was surprised that I let-out such a loud squeal of excitement when they announced that she won!).  She’s a stay-at-home mom with 4 kids under the age of 3 and no professional training and she was up against lots of professional chefs and she WON!  Her new show Ten Dollar Dinners just premiered on the Food Network and I can’t WAIT to watch it!  Oh, and I just discovered that her family recently moved from Texas to Kirkland, so I’m hoping to see her around town sometime.  (I still have my eyes open for Jason Mesnick, the former Bachelor who lives here)

*I’m a bit ashamed to admit, but I’ve also gotten into The Real Housewives of Atlanta on Bravo.  They ran the entire season last weekend back-to-back, so that’s pretty much what I spent last weekend doing.  I kept asking myself, “Why am I watching this?  This is ridiculous!”  but I couldn’t help it, it just SUCKS YOU IN, those ladies are so out of control!  Bravo’s really killing me lately.  This is why I haven’t been blogging.

*I don’t know what else.  But I’ll try to blog more and stay on top of things.  And because they’re so cute, here ya go:

 

 

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