When did THAT happen?

Well, shoot. I turned away and my kid turned into a pre-teen on me. He's going to junior high and collecting beer bottle caps (at parties, not beers he drinks himself, yet) and in my dreams he's asking girls to marry him. Where did time go?

And now the little one is saying things like "apple juice" and "one two three five seven eight nine" and knowing if we take the long way home when we're out walking.

I refuse to have another kid just to feel younger. The process takes too much out of me. And I'm too old. And tired.

Thanksgiving, here we come!

I can't account for my time this year. Somehow time has flown by and I haven't blogged...but I really haven't cooked, either. Two years ago I burst out of bed on Thanksgiving morning, thrilled to be getting to cook. This year we go to my sister-in-laws, and I'm kind of happy about it. No mandatory cleaning beforehand, no need to clean-up after.

I cooked an $8 Safeway turkey ten days ago, and made a stock from it on the weekend. I now have to reduce that so I can actually have the pot back, as I have been assigned the potatoes for the Thanksgiving dinner. This family always has Bubble and Squeak, and I shall make a simple vegetarian version of that--and will make my fancy one on Christmas

CHRISTMAS! I've been given CHRISTMAS!! I will be making roast pork, with all the trimmings, whatever those may be. I will make my fancy bubble and squeak dish then, which has bacon and tons of cheese and those Durkee fried onion bits. It's a heart-clogger, for sure, but it's del-i-cious!

I'll post tomorrow's B&S recipe, with the feedback from the family (which amounts to...how much was left in the pan and on the plates).

Regarding the baby: HUGE. He's not yet 18 months and is in 4T clothing.

Bits and Pieces

There is so much to write about, and some how I've managed to wait until it was tomorrow, again. It's too late to write anything properly. This past week has been a blur of food and visitors and my trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. I still don't have an answer for that, but I do know some new things about food.

1) Country-style ribs from Safeway are not ribs. They are pork shoulder cut into rib-shaped slabs. They are, however very tasty barbequed, and don't take nearly the same amount of long, slow cooking as regular ribs. I don't know why though. Maybe if they were cooked long and slow they'd be even better?

2) Cooking country-style ribs in the oven wrapped in foil with braising liquid for a long, slow period isn't nearly as good as grilling them outside, over hickory chips.

3) S'mores are just as good made in the microwave as over the 'que. And faster.

4) Dim sum is normally a brunch thing. Don't show up at 4pm in Chinatown expecting dim sum to be served...anywhere.

5) Duck is very tasty. Duck five ways is even better.

6) Babies like duck broth.

7) Husbands like a never-ending supply of chocolate-chip cookies.

8) Homemade vanilla ice cream is not appreciated by four-year olds.

9) Barilla Plus is a great pasta to feed to kids--fiber, protein and omega-3s.

10) The Bug knows that he likes calamari with tentacles. Seriously! I still won't touch the stuff.

Oh. I'm tired. Should that be the title of my blog? Seriously....

Buying Too Much and Carrot Soup

I've been wondering lately how people without much money are handling the rise in...everything. The rising price of gas, of milk, of bread, of cereal, of rice, of bell peppers, of onions even. It seems my food costs have gone up about 20% in the past six months. I've been crabbing and kvetching...but no more.

Last night I threw away a produce drawer full of food. A drawer...you know the one I mean, the one at the bottom of my fridge. I'd gone to the Farmers' Market two Fridays in a row. And bought way too much stuff. Even I knew that at the time. And then I went to Whole Foods. And then I went to WinCo. And after that I did my necessity trips to Safeway for milk and baby food and red wine (which are much cheaper than at other stores...).

In the end, produce never got eaten. It was as though everyone was overwhelmed by the bounty, and when they opened the fridge just thought, Oh. There's nothing in here to eat because I just see a forest of food.

Too bad there aren't any trees.

And so, when the trees began to smell, I finally tossed them.

I made a new rule yesterday. The cupboards and fridge can only be 1/3 full at any given time. I'll do the disaster stash someplace else. I think we don't force ourselves to eat what we have. From now on, I only replenish when we're absolutely empty.

Today for lunch I made carrot soup with all the carrots that made it out of the forest. They were still needing to be eaten, and I had bags and bags of them in baby version, sliced, and shredded (remember, the Bug has two false front teeth and can't bite into his favorite veggie). So I browned some red onion, two cloves of garlic, and a whole mess of carrots with salt, pepper, and a little curry powder. Then I threw in a box of generic chicken broth, a little extra water, and simmered till they were soft. I blended it with an immersion blender (a fantastic baby present!), added about two cups of shredded carrots, let it reduce another 15 minutes, and gave a quick whir again.

After adjusting seasonings, we enjoyed it topped with some plain yogurt left over from our Greek dinner. The Bug, the Baby and I all quite liked it (the Bug and I added more curry powder and I added some red pepper flakes), and then I fed it to my mother-in-law when she arrived mid-afternoon. She wasn't sure about the yogurt, until she had it. I'm pretty sure she enjoyed it, too.

I wouldn't have made it today...had I not seen the carrots waiting patiently. I probably would have just opted for a quick canned soup. I'm glad I saw them!

On Formula

I realized at 2:30am that I haven't talked about the main food the baby ingests: formula. I stopped breastfeeding about two weeks after I returned to work--I learned that Juiceboy found it much easier to make a bottle of formula than b-milk and was letting it go bad. After all that pumping!

We started out using Similac, simply because they sent us free cans. That stuff is AWFUL and here's why:

1) It smells putrid.
2) It smells even worse when it's burped up.
3) Many babies are fussy on it, even the Sensitive or Soy formulas (including mine...who managed to eat that crazy lunch and ask for more!)
4) It's SUPER expensive. Try $28 for a regular-sized can at Safeway, or $30+ for the big cans at Costco.

One day I decided that the baby was so fussy, gassy, and spit-uppy that changing to a cheaper, store-brand formula couldn't hurt. And it didn't. The kid is 8.5 months and growing out of his 18-month clothing. He's 29 pounds and long, long, long. He's bright and curious and doing just great. When you do the side-by-side comparisons, you'll see the store brands stack up to the expensive brands, in every area but price. That's because of the FDA standards.

My recommendations on formula:

#1 TARGET--the store brand is about $13 a can.
#2 SAFEWAY--the store brand is off the shelves right now but I've been told by customer service that it returns April 18th with a new name: Mom-to-Mom. It used to be $11-$13.

Here's a Consumer Reports article on formula.

Lunch with Orangette

The baby and I are having a lovely lunch. Juiceboy is having a lazy morning watching The Thin Man and the Bug is out playing with friends across the street. So it's just the little Flea and me, tasting bits of this and that while I chat up on Orangette's travels in the Bay Area.

First, we started with some Ginger Carrot soup. It's Saturday, so it's time to clean out the fridge and cook soup with anything that might go dark and icky this week out of the veg bins. And for some reason, last week I bought an enormous bag of organic carrots, which have a "best by" date of April 6, tomorrow.

So, in with some olive oil went half a red onion, some cloves of garlic, a bit of sliced ginger, the rest of a celery stalk, half a bag of broccoli slaw, one yukon gold potato, and the giant bag of carrots. I'd browned the aromatics first, of course. Then I tipped in a big can of Swanson's chicken broth. I simmered it all for about 45-60 minutes, then pureed it all up with my wonderful immersion blender.

I added some curry powder to my bowl, but now that I've tasted how strong the ginger is, I don't know if it really needs any in the big batch.

Anyway, the baby enjoyed it greatly. When I realized how much ginger was in it, I decided he'd had enough (don't want to hurt his little tummy). But he wanted more--of anything. So next he had a little strawberry yogurt. But that wasn't enough. So I brought out cold, leftover tortellini in a spinach and tomato sauce. The baby had the soft, cheesy bits in the center of the pasta, and a few soft bites of pasta itself. And he wanted MORE. Aha, I thought. Cold spinach will end his curiosity of my lunch.

Nothing doing. More, more! He kept his baby-bird mouth open for me to cram food into it, until finally I put it all away, and gave him a simple cup of water.

Looking back I wonder, will my shirt be adorned with his lunch later this afternoon?

The starter

So the recipe for sourdough starter is so simple, there's no way I can mess it up. 1/2 Cup bread flour mixed with 1/4 cup room temp water every 12 hours. Easy, right?

So how was I able to mix in REGULAR flour instead of the bread flour?? I was so concerned about getting it in the right time period; getting the right amount of air holes in the plastic wrap--but couldn't get the FLOUR right?

We'll see if it's right.

Since I don't know if it's okay, I thought I wouldn't post the boring flour picture. Instead, here is a picture of our GIANT baby, who is 7 months, but in 18-month clothing. He is OFF the charts!

Our Little Coconut

The Bug just said, "The Baby is like a coconut: after he eats, if you shake him you can hear the milk inside!"

Bits and Pieces

I'm playing catch-up. I'm back to work (started right after Labor Day), working from home two days a week, and running around like mad the rest of the time. The baby is fat--today is the last day for his 0-3 months onsies, even though he's just two months. I think he'll weigh in at about 14.5 pounds at his appointment with the doctor. It's all that good, healthy mothers milk. Everytime I think I'm done with the breastfeeding/pumping routine, I remind myself that this kid is doing good on it.

And *I'm* still losing weight, though not working hard to do so. I'm down 22.5 pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight. Hooray! I had a baby two months ago and have lost a total of 39.5 pounds!

So here's some of what's going on:

1) I can cook rice again. And ooohhhh, is it good!
2) I have a good recipe for Faux Pho. I'll post it in the next day. No pictures though, sorry.
3) The heirloom tomatos at our local farm, Parker Farms, are beautiful and delicious. But even better is the yellow watermellon. It is sweet and unbelievably juicy. I asked the ladies at the stand what kind of watermellon it was, and they looked at me funny and said, "....yellow?"
4) Buying local and fresh is the way to go. I made a tomato salad that looked delicious. I layered tomatoes, cucumbers and "fresh" mozzarella (not the rubbery stuff but the more expensive kind packed in water). I seasoned with salt and pepper. I drizzled olive oil on it. It looked great but had absolutely no flavor. Why? Because the vegetables HAD NO FLAVOR. I bought them at Safeway. They were probably two weeks old by the time we got them on our plate. Blech.
5) We saved money on Juiceboy's birthday. Instead of going out to a steakhouse, I turned our house into one. I bought NY Strip Steaks from Costco (I've never paid $30 for three steaks...unless I'm at a steak house, and then I'm paying that much for one). I was very careful in how I cooked them, and they came out perfectly (I'll post the recipe here later). And with these gigantic brontosaurus steaks we had big baked potatoes and steamed cauliflower. Of course, there was bacon and chives and (light) sour cream for the potatoes. For desert? Ghirradeli brownies. We're not big cake people....

Must dash. The baby is about to do this:

Breastfeeding: What Not to Eat

There's lots of tips on what you should eat and drink when you're breastfeeding. But not a lot out there on what *not* to eat so that your baby isn't gassy and cranky all night long.

Here's the start of what I hope is a SHORT list:

What Not to Eat When Breastfeeding
Sauerkraut (made him incredibly gassy)

11/10/07: I've discovered that the Baby is generally gassy and cranky. In the first two months I all but cut from my diet:

Onions
Garlic
Beans
Broccoli
Cauliflower
and of course, sauerkraut.

Eventually, his dad found that he was better on formula--but only slightly better, and it has to be soy-based.

Now, this Baby is thriving. At 3.5 months, he's about 27 inches and 19.5 pounds. HUGE. He's in 9 month clothing. I've started thinking about feeding him rice cereal, as he's drinking us out of house and home!

What's on Your Grocery List?

Our grocery list is growing. Even though my mother-in-law was really kind and brought us a ton of ham, frozen chicken, and pasta sauce, I still have a rapidly growing grocery list.

Grocery list as of 8/10:

tortilla bread (Oroweat Outlet)
milk (Costco)
Special K w/berries (Costco)
Mini-Wheats (Costco)
boullion cubes
olive oil
tortilla chips
dried cranberries
chicken broth
tinned tomatoes
peanut butter (Costco)
tomato sauce
tom. paste
shredded carrot
cucumbers
salsa
scallions
clothes pins (Target)
garlic
red onion
frozen fruit (Trader Joes or Costco)
cocoa powder
honey (Costco)
AA batteries (Costco)
eggs (Costco)
OJ
nectarines or peaches
butter
strawberries
blueberries
bananas
toothbrushes (Target)
draino (Target)
jemima paper
decent vinegar
green chiles
cilantro
school lunch stuff

It's such a huge list that I'm going to wait till payday--I haven't even gone through and *made* a list yet. This is just stuff we've run out of in the past two and a half weeks. I meant to go shopping before the baby came. Hahahahaaaa.

About the Baby

Thanks for all your kind emails. Here's the scoop on this little burrito.

Dylan was born two weeks ago and weighed 8lbs 9oz and was 21.5 inches. He weighed in last week at just over 9lbs (good boy!) and has been enjoying a milk diet. I have lost a total of 30 pounds in just two weeks and am pretty much exhausted.

Food these days is a bowl of frosted mini-wheats with 1% milk for breakfast, a peanut butter & honey sandwich for lunch, and whatever is put in front of me for dinner. Tonight I think I actually have to cook, since I said today would be good for kielbasa & pierogies (it's about 57 degrees here in sunny Northern California). Though what I really want is a big guacamole burger from Carl's Jr. Or a bowl of soup.

I'm off to take a nap before the little blighter wakes up.

How to Lose 26 Pounds in One Week

How to Lose 26 Pounds in One Week:




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