Nesting, 1-2-3

Will dropped (ok, threw) something out of the cart at Whole Foods a few days ago, and a man immediately offered to pick it up for me. Ten minutes later, someone else offered to unload my cart for me at checkout. (Seriously? These shoppers are NICE.) It's time to face it, this baby is coming soon. I'm so pregnant I look helpless.

I'm 35 weeks today, which means I should have plenty of time to get ready for this new baby, and I'm still very capable of unloading my own grocery cart.

Try telling my hormones that. Perhaps it's because we didn't even move into our new house until I was 38 weeks pregnant with Will, and there was neither a chance nor much energy for any nesting to go on after we'd unpacked (with a GREAT deal of help, luckily!).

Maybe that's why this time around, my nesting has gone to such levels that much of what I'm doing is either ridiculous, unnecessary, or both. Too bad that realization doesn't prevent the feeling of panic I incur when I think of NOT implementing one of my preparation plans.

Some of my ideas are great. So that our family who comes to take care of Will when Greg and I are both in the hospital aren't also faced with the tasks of grocery shopping and cooking, we've stocked our freezer with homemade meals, frozen loaves of homemade bread, and (I'm really proud of this idea) bags of chopped raw ingredients to be thawed out and thrown into the slow cooker for an effortless meal. Makes sense. Let us know if you want to come over for lasagna while I'm in the hospital. There's probably enough for fifteen people, which is good since it may need to feed five.


Lasagnas for the freezer! (Allrecipes.com search for "World's Best Lasagna")



A loaf of Grammie Ruth's Oatmeal Bread recipe (see end of blog post) with thawing instructions



One of the crockpot meals with instructions

Some of my ideas, however, are a little over the top. I'm currently putting the finishing touches on a "Toddler & Household" manual that consists of 13 separate word documents. Yes, it's a good idea to leave out emergency phone numbers, a quick schedule of when he usually naps, snacks, and goes to bed, and his bedtime routine. The idea isn't the problem, it's the level of insane and potentially insulting detail with which I've executed it.

For example, look at this gem of a paragraph:

"Diaper Stations: There is a diaper changing station in the powder room on the main floor, and a changing station in between the two sinks in the jack and jill bathroom. The main floor diapering station has Will’s wipes, diapers, diaper wet bags, and pre-folds to line the changing pad all in the top drawer. In the jack and jill bath, cloth wipes are right below the changing pad in the top drawer, diapers in the middle drawer, and everything else is in the bottom drawer. In case we run low on cloth diapers, both diaper drawers should have some disposables that can be used as back-ups, or the entire time you’re caring for Will if you’re uncomfortable cloth diapering. (Please don’t hesitate to do what works for you, we are so lucky to have your help taking care of him!) Likewise, there are disposable wipes in each drawer as a backup or they can be used whenever you’d rather not use one of the cloth wipes."

This SHOULD read: "If you can't find something, open the drawers near the changing stations and look." Or better yet, delete the whole thing entirely. Greg's parents were both teachers, for goodness sakes, and are rather smart people. And CLEARLY I'm a genius so my relatives probably aren't dumb. WHY do I think they need a PARAGRAPH on where things are in the changing station?! AND WHY CAN'T I PRESS DELETE WHEN I CLEARLY KNOW IT'S NOT NECESSARY?

I hate it when people blame hormones for things. I blame my hormones. They're also responsible for the excessive amount of baking I've been doing recently. It's maternal. Making oatmeal chocolate chip craisin cookies when I should be cleaning, laundering, making dinner or (heaven forbid) resting, is clearly helping get ready for this new baby's arrival.

Now, some of you may be thinking that I'm crazy. That's because I'm crazy. Coconut, guano crazy. (Look how much better I am at not swearing. Such a stellar parent.)

I'm going to go work on that unfinished baby afghan in the next five minutes of naptime.



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Grammie Ruth's Oatmeal Bread:

2 and 1/2 cups lukewarm water
1 Tablespoon yeast

Dissolve yeast in water, then add following ingredients:

1/2 cup brown sugar
2 cups oats
1 Tablespoon salt (I usually add about half a tablespoon instead)
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
5 cups of flour, more or less to reach kneading consistency

Mix, and then knead. Rise. Punch down. Rise again. Form into loaves and place in greased breadpans. Allow to rise in breadpans while you heat the oven to 400 degrees. Bake 30-40 minutes or until tops are brown and bread sounds hollow. See my very first post on baking bread for more details on the process of baking yeast breads.

What Will Has Taught Us

Here we go again! My due date for our second son used to seem like it was forever away. February - as in after Christmas, after New Year's, ages from now. But NOW, it's hit me full force that sometime right around the corner, I'll have a newborn to take care of as well as my little toddler-bug. (This is one reason I haven't been posting, I am WAY too busy nesting. More on that in future posts.)

Luckily, Will has taught us a lot about raising children, and we're pretty sure we can do things more efficiently and with greater confidence this time around.

Here are some of the things we've learned:

How to Adjust Nap-times

Be Creative Problem-Solvers

Have a Backup Plan

Get Out of the House - Regardless of Weather

Sleep BEFORE They Are Born

Don't Start Solids Before They're Interested

How To Keep Your Child Quiet at the Library

Let Someone Else Hold the Baby While YOU Eat

Sometimes, "IT" Hits The Fan

Keep Your Sense of Humor

How To Take a Shower After the Baby is Born

How To Break Up Long Car Rides

Sometimes, You Can't Be Subtle With a Toddler

(MOMMY'S stove. YOUR stove.)

And last but not least, we are so lucky, and it is so worth it.

Cookie Party!

Visiting family in Maine this week for Christmas, and was too busy to post yesterday because we were having a COOKIE PARTY, which may just be the best idea ever for a holiday open house. My Mom made five different kinds of cookies, and supplemented with a few from Trader Joe's. (Yes, five different kinds of cookies, the week before Christmas. See where I get it from?)


My mother and sister, with a display of about half the cookies actually baked!

Mom flipped through recipes that are family favorites, and chose a few new ones from (of course) the Martha Stewart Cookie cookbook, and provided an amazingly tasty variety with coffee and tea and spiced cranberry apple cider.

We had almond cookies, a butter cream cheese walnut cookie, chocolate cookies, pinwheels, gingersnaps, and peppermint cookies from Trader Joe's.

Among the winners was our traditional favorite, Mamie Ruth's chocolate cookies, a recipe that's been in the family for generations. It's one I make every year, and was actually features on our Christmas Card this year.

Here's the recipe:

4 oz. unsweetened chocolate
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
confectionary sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt the unsweetened chocolate in a double boiler and allow to cool. Cream the eggs, vegetable oil, sugar, vanilla and chocolate together in a mixer. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt, then add to the wet ingredients and mix well. Refrigerate for an hour and a half or overnight. Drop by rounded tablespoon into confectionary sugar, flatten slightly, and bake 10-12 minutes on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Cookies should still look slightly moist as you pull them out of the oven - do NOT overbake! I often will make a batch, cool them slightly, and then try one to ensure I haven't overbaked them.

Makes approximately four dozen cookies.

Merry Christmas!

A Christmas Dinner

Greg and I recently watched a documentary from the History Channel about the History of Christmas, and it got me all fired up to host my own Christmas dinner complete with an eclectic mix of my favorite Christmas traditions. One of the interesting things in the documentary was just how much Christmas "traditions" have evolved and changed over the centuries, and the origins of the varied ways we celebrate the season. (Christmas trees? German. You can thank Queen Victoria's husband Albert for introducing the custom to the English speaking world.) One take-away from the film was that it really is in the Christmas spirit to borrow and mix your favorite holiday ideas to develop your own family "traditions" for how you celebrate and make it a special time of year.

So this year, I decided I'd like to celebrate by having a small gathering of friends over for a Christmas dinner early in the season complete with warm, spiced wine and figgy pudding for dessert. (I've never even had figgy pudding. But hey, it's tradition.) Part of the fun of hosting your own holiday dinner is choosing to make your own favorite holiday foods; I served just the foods I loved and had a blast making them.

Here was our menu:

Appetizer:
Goat cheese and fig jam on toasted baguette slices
Warm spiced wine

Main Course:
Roasted Orange Chicken
Caramelized Onion Glazed Ham
Baked Stuffed Portabello Mushrooms
Paula Dean's "Ol' No. 7 Yams"
Spiced Buttered Carrots
Wild Rice with Cranberries and Walnuts
Cranberry Sauce (sort of - I left it in the fridge :/)

Dessert:
Warm figgy pudding with caramel cream sauce and a dollop of vanilla iced cream
Chocolate Almond Butter Balls

We served dinner at 5:30 so Will could join us. I prepped everything in the morning and had it ready to go in the oven or on the stove-top before guests arrived.

I had a wonderful time. It was so much fun to plan a menu of my favorite foods to share with friends and have a chance to cook it while my amazing husband alternated between chasing after our toddler and cleaning up my dishes. It also gave us incentive to finish decorating the house for Christmas, and have the decorations enjoyed by more than just the two of us.

I am so, so, so lucky

It's now, while Will is young and our second isn't even born, that we'll start figuring out what celebrating Christmas means for our family, and develop the traditions our children will look forward to each year that will make the season special. I'm looking forward to everything from Christmas stockings and cookies for Santa to that mulled wine and figgy pudding with friends!

He might grow up thinking everyone has figgy pudding at Christmas :)

Merry Christmas :)


Recipes:

Warm Spiced Wine: Burgundy is traditional, but a pinot noir or grenache mix would also work well. This is not something we'd do to an expensive bottle of wine, but something mid-range is going to taste better than the least expensive bottle you can find. (Spend more than you would if you're making sangria, less than if you're serving it alone or with a nice meal to company.) Heat over very low heat just until warm with a stick of cinnamon and some cloves secured in a cheese cloth or tea ball. Can remain on low heat, just don't let it come to a boil!

Roasted Orange Chicken: Rub the outside of a chicken with orange slices, then place the orange in the body cavity and truss the chicken. Brush the chicken with olive oil, sprinkle with coarse kosher salt and pepper to taste, and roast at 425 degrees until the exterior skin is krispy and the chicken has reached a safe internal temperature according to your meat thermometer and juices run clear. (About one hour for a five pound roasting chicken.) Let sit for twenty minutes tented with foil prior to carving.


Caramelized Onion Glazed Ham: This recipe was inspired by "Jimbo's Hambo", a Guy Fieri recipe from the Food Network. The original is excellent - I just didn't have all the ingredients on hand.

Glaze:
Olive oil
1/2 a yellow onion finely chopped
2 Tablespoons minced garlic
1/2 cup of coarse mustard
1 six ounce can of pineapple juice
1/2 cup of honey
1/4 cup of Jack Daniels
2 Tablespoons Brown Sugar
salt and pepper to taste

Lightly coat a large saute pan with olive oil and turn heat to medium. Sautee the onions until translucent (they'll caramelize as the glaze reduces and in the oven). Add the garlic and stir for another thirty seconds. Remove from heat to add the Jack Daniels and deglaze the pan. Add all other ingredients, stir well, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until greatly reduced to a glazing consistency - I let it simmer on very low heat for about an hour and a half while I prepared the other dishes.

When the glaze is ready, take an uncut, precooked ham and place it in a roasting pan with a little water to prevent burned drippings. Cut it about half an inch deep in long diagonal cuts, then criss cross the other side. Dot the ham with cloves to hold the cuts open so the glaze can seep into the ham. Pour the glaze over the ham and cook it until heated through - this will vary based on ham weight, see directions on the ham you've bought. I glazed my ham in advance and left it in the refrigerator for the afternoon.



Baked Stuffed Portabello Mushrooms: I used Mark Bittman's recipe in "How to Cook Everything" for stuffed button mushrooms, but substituted Portabello mushrooms for a heartier version to serve with the meal.



Paula Dean's Old No' 7 Yams: This is a runny, delicious sweet potato casserole that makes amazing leftovers. I double the amount of sweet potato and reduce the water called for by a cup because the sauce is always so runny. Recipe is available online at the food network website.



Spiced Buttered Carrots: I used a recipe from the Bon Appetit "Fast Easy Fresh" cookbook.

Wild Rice with Cranberries and Walnuts: This is inspired by a Martha Stewart recipe from one of her Thanksgiving magazines. It calls for candied pecans, which I had trouble finding at Whole Foods, so I substituted plain chopped walnuts this time. I sauteed onions in olive oil until transluscent, then added wild rice and toasted it for a few minutes until fragrant. I added water according to package directions, simmered an hour, and then drained away excess liquid. I then tossed the wild rice and onions with about half a cup of orange juice until reduced to a glazed consistency, and mixed in dried cranberries, dried parsley, and topped with chopped walnuts just before serving.



Figgy Pudding: I found a modernized version of figgy pudding online on the food network website. The recipe makes way more than it claims in terms of batter and sauce. I used muffin tins instead of individual ramekins, and made 18 individual figgy puddings. (The recipe's instructions say to fill four one cup ramekins 1/2 to 3/4 full. If you do the math on the recipe's ingredients, that would require absurdly less batter than you make.) I used half figs and half dates for the dried fruit, and I used half brandy and half water when I brought the fruit to a boil and pureed it. I also reduced the sauce recipe by about 1/3 and still had plenty of sauce. I made the batter and placed it in muffin tins in the fridge for the afternoon and then put them in the oven shortly after we began eating in order to have warm pudding ready after the meal. Reheated the sauce and served! Despite it's being a little non-traditional (baked, not cooked by immersing a container in hot water, not nearly enough booze, etc) it was an easy recipe, had a very nice fig flavor, and certainly felt like Christmas to me!



Mimi's Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls: I used almond butter for this gathering, trying to be all gourmet. Big mistake. They weren't bad, but they weren't my great grandmother Mimi's peanut butter balls. I will stick to her original recipe in the future!

Makes approximately four dozen peanut butter balls.

2 cups finely crushed graham crackers (About 12 graham cracker squares, use food processor)
1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
One jar creamy peanut butter

2 cups chocolate chips
1/4 cake of paraffin cooking wax

Combine the graham crackers, peanut butter and confectioners sugar and mix well. Chill. Drop by rounded teaspoon full onto wax paper and chill several hours. Melt paraffin wax over double boiler. Add and melt chocolate chips. Dip balls into the chocolate (I use two spoons) and then place back onto wax paper and into the fridge to cool and harden. May be served at room temperature but store best when chilled.



Happy Cooking!




Don't wear yourself out :)

Thanksgiving Host's Gifts

Happy Thanksgiving!

We're lucky enough to be in Maine with our families, enjoying two Thanksgiving meals that we aren't cooking ourselves. We're also staying a few days with each side of the family, getting to watch Will play with his grandparents and greatly benefitting from their hospitality and home cooked meals.

To show them how much we appreciate being home for the holidays, we put together gift baskets for each family with some specially picked treats. Will and I took a walk to our local cheese and specialty goods store where we picked out things like squash ravioli, candied cashews, and specialty teas and crackers for the gift baskets. Greg picked out some special jams to add, and of course we had to put in some coffee since this time of year relatives manage to clean out our dads' supplies pretty quickly.

We finished the packages off with some homemade truffles, using recipes we found at www.marthastewart.com. Surprisingly easy, unsurprisingly tasty.

In previous years I've had trouble deciding what to put little gift assortments in - I don't have gift baskets lying around, and the recipients don't need a little wicker basket on top of their consumable goodies.

This year I came up with a solution I'm mostly happy with. We took a double layer of cardboard taped with packing tape and wrapped it with a solid gift wrap to make a durable and colorful base for the items. Then we arranged everything, cut pieces of cellophane wrap (available at craft stores and some grocery stores) and tied the tops with wraphia and a small handwritten note.

I wish they didn't use plastic, but they look great and were very easy to assemble. No box hiding half the items either :)

Elephant / Lion stocking stuffer is done!

Can't wait for Will to find this in his stocking, I bet he'll find the way it reverses even funnier as he gets older!

The elephant...



Turns into...



The lion!



This pattern is from Susan B. Anderson's Itty Bitty Toys which I got at my local yarn store and which you can also find on Amazon . I've knit quite a few things from this book and loved them! The patterns are well written and the toys are so, so cute.

Happy Knitting! Onto the next project - maybe something for baby number two?

What I've Been Up To

...which clearly has not been updating my blog. Our family has been pretty busy, what with 1 year molars coming in, the last half marathon of the season to run, and pumpkin pies that don't bake themselves. (Luckily they don't eat themselves either. Because that would be weird.)

Knitting: Currently working on a reversible lion/elephant toy to put in Will's Christmas stocking. Almost done! It's a Susan B. Anderson pattern from Itty Bitty Toys, my favorite book of toy patterns.



UPDATE: Lion is done, putting finishing touches on the elephant!


How cute is that?!?!

Sewing: Just adventured into the world of sewing clothes and turned one of Greg's old flannel shirts into a pair of pajama pants for Will. It was pretty easy following the instructions on another blogsite for making my own pattern: here and then for sewing the pants: here. It was pretty easy, and I liked turning something old into something new with the help of a little thread and elastic. Environmental, economic, and creative.



Cooking: I made some fun mini pumpkin pies for a Halloween gathering with Will's playgroup friends. I used mini muffin tins, a circular pastry cutter just slightly larger than the top of the muffin tin, and my normal pie crust and pumpkin pie recipe. Cook for less than half the time (crusts brown, center no longer jiggly) and pop them out of the tins for toddler and party friendly munching.



Reading: I'm currently reading Living Simply With Children by Marie Sherlock, and I love it. It's been good inspiration for rethinking what's important in our lives and how we can raise healthier children in this media driven world with too much screen time and consumerism, too little exercise and creative play. It might take a while to convince Greg to move the television into the basement, but I'm incredibly lucky he's the supportive spouse he is who would also rather play a game of pool or sit and talk after dinner than watch tv anyway.


Watching: About that tv we're supposedly not watching - we just saw a documentary called "Consuming Kids" that a friend recommended about the lack of regulation for children's commercials and how that's affected everything from kid's television programming to what they eat in schools. It's a little depressing if you're a parent, but worth watching so you can think about what you're bringing into your home and how to talk to your children about media influences.