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November 24th, 2009
November 6th, 2009
11:29 pm - update
I nursed the bug to sleep--twice--and when she was, yet again, awake and screamy, I put her in the swing. Poor overtired child.
I made really wonderful Chocolate Chocolate-Chip Mint Cookies yesterday from Mollie Katzen's new cookbook, one for adult beginners called Get Cooking. Tonight for dinner we had black beans and rice (sort of) from Vegan Lunch Box Around the World. I say "sort of" because the recipe was on the front and back of one page and Bear read the spices from the *next* recipe and added them. So we had black beans, rice, coconut milk, and scallions with chili powder, cumin, coriander, and turmeric instead of the intended thyme, cinnamon, and allspice. Oh, well. A couple of nights ago we had the Asian Portobellos from the same cookbook. The mushrooms were baked in a marinade of garlic, ginger, Chinese five-spice powder, coriander, mirin, tamari, orange juice, and toasted sesame oil. They were really good. We had them with brown jasmine rice and steamed broccoli. (My steamer basket? Is from 1973. It belonged to my uncle's mother once upon a time.)
Rowan is trying to roll over (and not just from her back to her side, which she has done since birth). Instead she winds up wiggling her way around in a sort of circle, while her head stays in the same place, as if she's a compass. I left her asleep on a quilt on the floor upstairs (where she'd been practicing) and when I heard her squawk and went to get her, she, again, wasn't where I'd left her; she'd scooted over towards the leg of the guest bed and got stuck. Poor bug.
Today I dug out the baby book my aunt gave me and worked on filling it in. I already can't remember what Rowan weighed at her first couple of doctor visits, or when, exactly, she began smiling.
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November 4th, 2009
10:28 pm - book ?
Does anyone own the book The Help and want to loan it to me? :) The new moms' group book club is reading it and I'm #708 on the library's wait list. Clearly, it's not going to come in before December 8th. Now, I'm on the wait list for the meeting anyway, so I can just change my RSVP if I need to. I just hate to spend $15 on a book I may or may not want to keep.
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October 19th, 2009
02:52 pm - vent
Baby is sleeping, I've eaten lunch, and I don't WANNA do chores.
Okay, vent over, time to clean this house. It's a disaster.
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October 18th, 2009
09:14 pm - update
We've decided to call our doc and ask about getting Rowan seen/medicated for reflux. She wakes up sounding hoarse every morning, she refuses to nurse and arches her back and screams, she spits up not just milk but mucous (and spitting up makes her scream as well), she's "forgotten" how to nurse to sleep at night and only falls asleep upright (though I can lay her down once she's really out, as long as I lay down, too)--she's clearly in pain and I hate that I can't just snap my fingers and fix it. Weight gain be damned, this is not right. It's gotten dramatically worse in the past few days and my diet hasn't changed. It's time to treat it.
I just finished reading a really interesting book called Saving Sammy. The author's son developed OCD due to strep, and was cured with high doses of Augmentin. The author (Beth Alison Maloney) talks briefly about other mental illnesses being caused by infection. She's not a quack--this isn't "OMG don't get the H1N1 vaccine because it's actually going to KILL YOU!!!" Anyway, anyone who has dealt with mental illness (or children with special needs in general) might find the book interesting.
Bear made chili for dinner. We decided to double it to use the whole package of ground beef, so I had to go to the store for a second can of Rotel and everything else we needed for the week. I had forgotten why I never, but never, go grocery-shopping on Sunday at dinnertime. The store was such a zoo, I spent 15 minutes just waiting in the checkout line, before she even got to me. I got home and Rowan was SCREAMING. Bear thought she needed to eat, but it turns out she just wanted to sleep--once she fell asleep and had a little nap, she woke up totally happy, and hungry, but not "OMG MY WORLD IS ENDING FEED ME NOOOW!!!", just hand-sucking hungry, which is a much easier time to feed her. :p
Rowan's pattern seems to be: Wake up, need a diaper change, eat, be happy and awake for awhile, begin to fuss, go to sleep, wake up happy. The problem is that "go to sleep" doesn't happen without major help from me or Bear. She'll fall asleep in the swing on her own, but I try not to keep her in there all day, you know? One nap a day, I'm okay with. Hours in there, not so much. So I hold her up against my shoulder (her favorite position) and walk with her, or sway from side to side, or rock her and sing lullabies, or whatever.
We'll keep trying the Moby, but she's not a huge fan right now. Maybe if I could tie it so she's up against my shoulder....
We have almost-but-not-quite enough diapers for Rowan right now--we have one clean (in the diaper bag) and some dirty and the rest in the dryer, clean but still wet because it takes a couple dryer cycles to dry them (clothes too--our dryer is just wimpy). Anyway, I just bought a lot of 10 used girly Mutt 3SRs for $11 apiece, so soon we'll have plenty of diapers.
I still wish the laundry would do itself, though. :p Or that we had two dryers, so that laundry didn't sit waiting to be dried.
I feel like giving birth ate part of my brain. I have a book that someone on PaperbackSwap has on their wish list, and I finished reading it right after Rowan was born, but I have no earthly idea where it is, so I can't re-list it. And for me to not be able to find a BOOK, well, that's pretty weird.
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October 7th, 2009
12:42 am - soup
Approximate Soup
1/2 onion or whatever needs to be used up
a couple stalks of celery
carrots and/or a sweet potato
olive oil
Peel the onion and sweet potato, wash the celery and carrots, chop it all up. Heat the Dutch oven, add olive oil and swirl it around, add the veggies and saute till the onion is soft. Add:
6-8 cups of water or chicken or vegetable broth
frozen peas and green beans (Tip from a cookbook I'm reading: If the veggies have ice crystals on them, rinse them in a colander under cold water to remove any freezer-tasting ice.)
frozen or canned (drained, rinsed) corn
frozen or canned (drained, rinsed) cooked beans (black, kidney, whatever)
a can of tomato paste
a clove of garlic, peeled and minced or pressed
about 1/2 tablespoon each of dried basil and sugar
a teaspoon of fresh or frozen chopped parsley
black pepper (which I never measure, I just use the pepper grinder)
salt if you need it (if you don't use broth)
Bring to a boil and add a scant cup of orzo or macaroni or any other small pasta, and cook for about ten minutes, until the pasta is tender. Stir regularly so the orzo doesn't stick to the bottom of the Dutch oven. :p
Serves waaay more than the two of us!
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September 25th, 2009
10:14 pm - for my reference
More of my favorite style of fabric here (Sweet Treats by RJR Fabrics) and here (Farmers Market 2009).
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September 21st, 2009
02:02 pm - time to go back to bed
You know it's one of THOSE days when...
-You're measuring the cooked black beans into freezer bags and the first bag falls on the floor, upside-down, spilling beans everywhere. At 7:30 a.m.
-You've been treating thrush on and off for a month and when you change your daughter's diaper, the yeast rash is back. Again.
-You're re-packing the diaper bag so you can leave the house and when you stand up to get a clean burp cloth from the laundry basket, the diaper bag falls on the floor, upside-down, so you have to start over.
-It's 2:20 in the afternoon and you've had a single butter mint to eat today.
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September 16th, 2009
08:11 pm - for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) layers_of_eli
Cherry Pie adapted from Miriam's Cookbook
3 to 4 cups drained, pitted sour cherries
1/2 cup cherry juice
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons Minute Tapioca
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
Mix ingredients and let mixture stand for 15 minutes. Pour into 9-inch pie shell and dot with 1 tablespoon butter. Add top crust and bake at 425 degrees F. for 50 minutes.
Mom and I always make lattice tops for cherry pies. Here's a tutorial.
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August 17th, 2009
August 11th, 2009
August 8th, 2009
10:17 am - It's a girl.
Baby is here, we're both fine.
Rowan Mae was born at 1:09 p.m. Thursday, August 6th. We labored at home until about 3:30 a.m. Thursday morning, when we decided to transfer to the hospital for a couple of reasons, the main one being that baby was not descending. Arrived at the hospital, got an epidural and then a nap, and then baby had descended and was ready to be born. Stubborn little bugger.
She weighed 7 lbs. 10 oz. and is 19.5 inches long. She has long, skinny feet and hands, long fingernails, and a full head of dark hair. She's absolutely beautiful and Bear is in charge of getting pictures online ASAP. She's nursing well, though she prefers the left side.
We got home from the hospital this morning, about five hours before the standard 48-hour discharge. Would have been sooner, but we were waiting on 24-hour cultures on baby's blood, and the blood didn't arrive at the lab till 15 hours after Rowan was born. :p
Now, since baby is napping in a sling on her daddy, I'm going to take a nap.
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August 4th, 2009
10:21 pm - barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen
I soaked four cups of cashews in salt water, drained them, and they're in the oven at 200 degrees until they're crispy (probably overnight).
I sorted through a pound of navy beans and put them in my biggest bowl to soak overnight. I'll cook them in the Crockpot tomorrow.
I made hardboiled eggs earlier today and tonight I chopped them up and made the egg salad from the Cook's Country cookbook.
I made a turkey and Swiss sandwich for Bear's lunch tomorrow.
I hadn't had any problems with swelling since last week sometime, but an hour or more barefoot in the kitchen sure did a number on my feet.
Time for cross-stitching and watching trashy TV while sitting on the exercise ball.
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July 30th, 2009
10:52 am - uh-oh
I'm a leeetle bit freaked out: My computer updated while I was sleeping and now all of my documents, photos, Firefox settings are gone. *Poof!*
ETA: Bear fixed the computer: it didn't think I was logged in (despite, you know, the whole logging in, typing my password bit).
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July 28th, 2009
08:31 am - grammar police
You know what makes me crazy?
People who type "weary" for "wary." I am tired of being told to be "weary" of scammers.
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July 27th, 2009
09:42 pm - update
No baby yet. I'm reading lots of 40+ week birth stories and reminding myself that baby knows when it's ready, even if I'm already ready. :p
Butter chicken curry for dinner tonight. It was great.
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July 25th, 2009
02:34 pm - RRL tea that doesn't suck
So I thought I hated red raspberry leaf tea. I had bought a bag of loose RRL tea (Frontier brand) at Earth Fare early in my pregnancy and it took me months to use it up because it was so unappealing. Bear tasted it and layers_of_eli smelled it, and they can vouch for me: it really was pretty awful.
Yesterday at the Healthy Home Market I bought about a cup of loose RRL tea (still Frontier brand) from the bulk herb section. I brewed a pitcher of iced tea, added a couple packets of stevia, and put it in the fridge.
It doesn't suck.
It actually tastes like green tea, not like grass clippings.
I've almost finished my three-cup serving (one cup per trimester) in about ten minutes.
Learn something new every day.
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July 23rd, 2009
09:37 am - slow-cooking beans
Periodically Bear and I decide we're going to save some money by, say, cooking dried beans instead of buying canned.
And then I soak and cook black beans on the stove and they turn into mush. There must have been a 5-minute window (that I missed) between "not tender" and "goop." So, not a success, at all.
A Crockpot was on our birth-supply list (for keeping compresses warm, I believe), so I bought a $20 4-quart at Walmart.
I figured I'd try cooking beans in it--the temperature is low enough I thought I might avoid making mush again.
Success!
I started with kidney beans. Now, apparently kidney beans can't safely be cooked in a slow cooker unless they're first boiled on the stove, which deactivates a certain toxin. So first I followed the safety instructions here--basically, soak the beans for 5 hours, drain them, boil them in fresh water for 10 minutes, drain them, then cook them in fresh water in the Crockpot.
For cooking them in the Crockpot, I follwed the directions here--basically, cook them with 1 teaspoon salt and start checking for doneness (and add a second teaspoon of salt) after 4 hours. The kidney beans would have been perfectly cooked (on low) in 6.5 hours, but I forgot about them and went for a walk, and they cooked for 7 hours. :p Some of the beans fell apart, but they still weren't mushy and nasty. Yay!
Out of 1 pound of dried kidney beans, we got 3.5 cans' worth: three 1 2/3 cup "cans" and 1 cup extra. (This is where I got that 1 2/3 cups = 1 can.) I saved 1 can's worth in the fridge for the chili we ate yesterday and froze the rest.
Next up, black beans for burritos; after that, navy beans for baked beans.
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July 22nd, 2009
05:10 pm - dinner last night
Last night I made quiche for dinner. I used my MIL's recipe for the filling (as always) and made the crust from the April/May 2009 issue of Cook's Country magazine. The crust had a lovely flavor and texture, but we're not sure it needed the extra salt, so feel free to leave it out.
Easy Quiche from Linda Sunderland
1 uncooked pie crust
3 eggs or 3/4 cup Better'n'Eggs
1 cup milk
1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 cup EACH cooked vegetables, cooked meat, and shredded or crumbled cheese (we always use broccoli, chicken, and Cheddar)
Press pie crust into a 9-inch pie plate. Set aside.
Mix in small bowl eggs, milk, flour, salt, and pepper. Set aside.
Mix together vegetables, meat, and cheese. Add egg mixture. Pour into pie shell. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Let stand for 10 minutes, then serve. Makes 4 servings (2 slices each).
Quiche Crust adapted from Cook's Country, April/May 2009
1 cup unbleached white flour
1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 teaspoon salt (optional)
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
2 oz. cream cheese, softened
Whisk flour, Parmesan, and salt (if using) in bowl. With electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat butter and cream cheese until smooth and creamy, about 1 minute. Reduce speed to low, add flour mixture, and mix until dough forms large clumps, about 1 minute. (Mine never did, but if I pressed it with my fingers, it clumped up.) Reserve 3 tablespoons dough. Flatten remaining dough into 6-inch disk and transfer to center of 9-inch pie plate.
Working from center out, evenly press disk over bottom and up sides of pie plate. Roll reserved dough into 3 8-inch coils and lay around lip of pie plate. Squeeze coil ends together and to sides of pie dough to make pie crust's cuff. Crimp dough, using knuckle of one hand and thumb and forefinger of other hand.
(Then I put the pie plate in the fridge while I mixed up the quiche filling, and then I baked it according to my MIL's recipe.)
On Monday we had Baked French Toast with Apples and turkey sausage patties for dinner; tonight we're having chili over spaghetti.
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04:11 pm - dinner lately
About a week ago we had baked beans and cheese biscuits for dinner. We cheat and buy the Bisquick Complete cheese-garlic biscuit mix--it's less than $1 and no, I purposely don't read the ingredients. :p
Baked Beans adapted from The Abs Diet
5 oz. smoked turkey kielbasa, diced
1 small onion, chopped
3 oz. fresh mushrooms, sliced (or 1 8-oz. can sliced mushrooms, drained)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 16-oz. can baked beans (we always buy Bush's Vegetarian)
1 16-oz. can navy beans, drained and rinsed
1 14.5-oz. can diced tomatoes
3/4 tablespoon ground flaxseed
In a skillet over medium-high heat, cook the kielbasa, onion, mushrooms, and garlic for 5 to 7 minutes. Add the beans, tomatoes, and flaxseed, plus salt and pepper if desired. Simmer for 20 minutes or until thick. Makes 4 servings.
Other meals last week included bratwurst, baked potatoes, and green beans; spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread; an Annie's meal with green beans; and the oh-so-classy hot dogs and macaroni and cheese. :p
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