A Tale of Two Movies

I finally snapped out of my slump once Matt got home yesterday. We made a big creamy pot of tomato soup, which was delicious, and went out and rented a free movie (thanks, Redbox!).

Unsure of what to rent, we went with Cleaner, a movie neither of us could remember hearing much about but which looked like it had, at least, a somewhat promising cast. Samuel L. Jackson is always a favorite, and Ed Harris is generally pretty good too.

We ended up loving it! Samuel L. Jackson plays a retired cop who runs a business cleaning up crime scenes. While a little stomach-turning at times due to the nature of the main character's line of work, it was nothing we couldn't handle, and the thing I liked most about it was that it was a smart, suspenseful drama (actually quite sad at times) without being overly violent or scary. It also had unusual and interesting cinematography. We'd definitely recommend it!

Today, I slept most of the day away, which isn't terrible considering I'm supposed to work overnight tomorrow night and which also leads me to believe I'm still fighting off the tail end of my cold. Matt graciously allowed me to do so and buzzed around the apartment, sewing diapers and doing other little odds and ends around the apartment. We also went and worked out, and switched from recumbent bikes (which we've been doing, but which is getting harder for me as my lap is getting smaller) to upright bikes, which we both enjoyed. It felt good to work out again after a hiatus of a week or so, and we're hoping to get back in the swing of things now.

Then for a movie at the other end of the spectrum. We'd seen trailers for Fireproof and were cautiously optimistic about it. While we consider ourselves serious Christians, we've both found the Christian art/movie/music scene, for the most part, to be...uh...lame. But this one looked like it might actually be pretty good, and so we were hopeful, and happy to see that Redbox had it in.

We only made it through the first 20 minutes. From the get-go, the acting was very contrived--which we were willing to overlook, if not for the terrible fighting scenes between the married couple who are apparently the protagonists of the movie. Shoving, screaming, name-calling--there are ways to get marital tension across without shoving it down our throats for fifteen minutes at a stretch, and personally I found it more gratuitous and upsetting then a lot of similar scenes in "secular" movies. It was so unnerving to both of us that we finally just looked at each other and agreed to turn it off. Whatever redemption ultimately came for these two wasn't really worth putting ourselves through the stress of watching them get there, and with laborious acting on top of that. So that was our experience of that movie--disappointing.

Bleh.

This is one of those days where I haven't felt like doing anything.

I've actually gotten a little schoolwork done, but I feel like I hit a frustrating roadblock at every turn, so it's not nearly as much as I'd like.

I know that we should go to work out tonight, but our recent colds, plus my expanding girth, have lately made me feel anything but energetic and athletic. I have a decent amount of energy for my daily activities, including 12-hour shifts, but lately exercise has just not been sounding (or feeling) appealing at all. What does? Not that much, to be honest. I think I'm just in a funk today and have to wait for it to pass.

The pregnant girl's substitute for a good mojito at the end of such a day? Peanut butter cup ice cream. Stereotypical, I know, but oh so good.

Called on Account of Snow

Matt and I enjoyed much of the day at home together because schools and workplaces alike ground to a screeching halt today. All schools were canceled, and when I did venture into work for an important meeting, people told me that "The roads were fine, but when I got here and saw all that slush in the parking lot, I just about turned around and went back home."

On account of SLUSH?!?

Granted, it was a little bit icy, but it was also 39 degrees and truly a tropical day compared to what our kinfolk have been buried under for the past several months. We never cease to marvel at the panic that a little winter weather--in the winter--can incite in the DC area.

Apparently we're not alone: President Obama has noticed the same thing.

Don't Call Us, We'll Call You

photo by JonJon2k8

We canceled our cell phone contracts in a fit of rage today, effective immediately. Future contact information will be forthcoming to those who need or desire it.

In the meantime, feel free to send an email or leave a comment on the blog.

Facebook works too.

Note to self: canceling all phone service while one is on call for the hospital displays somewhat poor planning on my part.

Back to Life?

Good news for the electric car. Or at least something like that.

Meal Planning

Here's what's on the menu for this week (assume a green salad added in with each dinner):

1. Hamburgers and corn
2. Tamales with sour cream and salsa (need to make salsa)
3. Enchilada casserole (need to make enchilada sauce)
Note: we will likely end up with a hybrid between this recipe and this one. I like the beans in the first one, as well as the casserole technique, but would prefer to leave out the beef/chicken.
4. Spicy peanut
5. Spicy peanut again
6. Cream of tomato soup + grilled cheese
7. Cauliflower soup (what can I say--it's delicious, nutritious, and in season!)

Neither of us is feeling overly ambitious today, so we're hoping just to squeeze in the shopping and maybe a little meal prep (making salsa and enchilada sauce for later in the week). As you may have noticed, our shopping philosophy and strategies are constantly shifting and evolving and changing; at this point, our MO is to buy canned and pantry-type goods (including cat litter, dry goods, etc) at Trader Joe's, where they're usually eco-friendly and cheap; buy most produce at Whole Foods (where we've found it's consistently the highest quality around); and buy our milk, eggs, and dairy from local farms. We're also hoping to get involved with a local natural foods cooperative buying program that would replace a lot of our Trader Joe's shopping with equal but slightly less-expensive options by buying in bulk. We still spend a little more each week than I'd like to, but we're constantly striving not to be pennywise and pound-foolish with our health by eating lower-quality foods and having it come back to bite us later.

Happy Saturday

Today, we decided, was the day we needed to break our months-long activity stalemate (brought on courtesy of my crappy-feeling first trimester) and get out and do something. Despite the fact that my cold is now so bad that I fell asleep last night crying in self-pity because I felt so bad.

Getting out and about seems like just what I needed. First we drove to the Falls Church Farmers' Market, one of the markets in the area that's open year-round. There was a dazzling array of seasonal winter produce, including turnips, potatoes, yams, wild mushrooms, and several different kinds of greens, as well as apples. We picked up some apples for the week ahead and sampled a few other things, and are planning to figure out something to make based around root vegetables for next week.

The market is very near a Metro stop, so we got on the train and took it into the city to go to the Smithsonian Museum of American History. It's been closed ever since we moved to town and has recently reopened after renovations.

Us in front of 1760's house that was moved into the museum

An immigrant woman breastfeeding

Historical instruments, including oboe and French horn

We had a nice time, and afterward walked down to the Eastern Market and picked up 8 heads of garlic so we could make 44-clove garlic soup in an effort to beat our colds. Since we made Silky Cauliflower Soup last night (which was delicious with the substitution of cheddar cheese for Parmesan), we've recreated both soups from Matt's original Silly About Soups post of just about a year ago. Both were made indescribably more delicious (if such a thing is possible) by the addition of some exceptionally heavy cream we got from a local farm recently--cream that's so heavy you literally can't pour it, you have to spoon it. It's like pure milk lard. And it's shockingly good in coffee, soups, and probably just about anything else. We're planning a sinfully rich cream of tomato soup later in the week--we can't wait!

Anti-midwifery legislation pending in Virginia

picture by Voxphoto

Virginia, which is actually pretty midwife-friendly (CPMs and homebirth are expressly legal, etc), has unfortunately had some very anti-midwifery legislation recently introduced into the Virginia House of Delegates. Essentially, they would deny Medicaid reimbursement for any Certified Professional Midwife performing services for at-risk women. Apparently "at-risk" initially included simply being low-income, but due to well-crafted protests from the constituency, that has since narrowed to just cover women seeking Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC). You can read the full story here, as well as other's (well-written) letters here and here. My own modest addition is below:

Dear Delegate Lohr:

I am writing to you as a Virginia citizen, registered nurse, and certified nurse-midwifery student, as well as a pregnant woman, to first applaud you for your commitment to withdrawing HB 2163. This displays a willingness to make decisions based on information and evidence as well as a sensitivity and responsiveness to the concerns of your constituency that is invaluable. I write secondly, however, to express opposition to bill HB 2167. The spirit and letter of this bills were it to become law, would have the chilling effect of denying safe, legal healthcare to recipients of Medicaid simply because they are low-income. This is unconscionable discrimination, especially since countless studies have demonstrated not only the safety but the superiority of midwifery care to women. (The most recent and rigorous of these is the Cochrane review found here: http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab004667.html, which ends with the conclusion that midwifery care has superior outcomes even to care that is shared between obstetricians and midwives; thus, it continues, midwifery care ought to be offered to all women. No qualifiers as to income, risk status, or previous uterine scar.)

On the contrary, obstetricians cannot cite hard facts, merely overblown scare tactics, in their efforts to deny women midwifery care and thus retain the bulk of the market share of births. While midwives have historically always worked to improve access to care and women's ability to educate themselves and make choices about their own healthcare, obstetricians have increasingly sought in recent years to restrict their options and suppress their access to quality care. As people of all political and economic backgrounds agree that the time has come for a new era of personal responsibility, a choice such as midwifery care (and homebirth, and VBAC versus mandatory repeat Cesarean) which promises to raise health outcomes, improve satisfaction, lower cost, and provide jobs for hardworking and caring women cannot be savagely attacked by such legislation as is proposed in Virginia. Please withdraw your support for HB 2167, which would only hurt women, midwives, and taxpayers.

Sincerely,

Katie Sullenbrand

Surprise, surprise: the delegate introducing the legislation didn't pluck it out of thin air, or craft it out of concern after evidence that midwifery care was unsafe (which doesn't exist): instead, it was proposed to him by a local obstetrician. Who I'm sure is up nights unable to sleep because of the idea that women are able to make an informed choice about the increased risk of uterine rupture posed by VBAC.

How conveeeeeenient: forcing poor women to undergo mandatory repeat Cesareans, and taxpayers to pick up the tab--while funneling 100% of the profits into the pockets of obstetricians.

They've always said doctors are smart.

If you live in Virginia, I'd encourage you to send an email as well. It only takes a minute!

Me and My Ricola

are spending the day curled up on the couch again. I woke up at 4 with a much sorer throat, contemplated calling in to work sick, and considered that the money really would be nice and so decided against it (as a PRN nurse, I don't get any paid time off, sick or otherwise). But when they called me at 5 to put me on call for low census, I went ahead and asked them to put me down as sick anyway. If they don't need me, I figure it's in my best interest and theirs (and the patients') for me to stay home and rest it out without having to worry that there's going to be a flurry of activity in the afternoon requiring me to get up and hurry in (and thus possibly spread my germs around).

Meanwhile, I'm being introduced to the world of having a cold while pregnant, in which even the most benign-seeming natural remedies are supposedly contraindicated, in all likelihood to cover the manufacturer's (or the advice-giver's) behinds, and potentially divest women of their confidence to treat themselves at home using time-honored remedies, instead of turning to a doctor or pharmacist for a drug. An "Ask Dr Spock" article views Sudafed and Robitussin as "probably safe" (despite the fact that one is a stimulant more potent than caffeine and the other works by thinning and drying mucus throughout the body, including that which lines the cervix), yet I can find advice warning against everything from menthol and peppermint oil (found in these beloved wonders, which are not only delicious and infinitely soothing to a sore throat, but are blessedly free of corn syrup or any other such nonsense) to elderberry extract (ie Sambucol, which we love) to Throat Coat herbal tea.

To me? This kind of scare-tactic regulation against natural healing seems like a continued insidious effort to foster dependence on pharmaceuticals and medical doctors instead of gentle home remedies. Somewhat akin to the witchhunt against midwives and against chiropractors, if you want to know the truth. To see the same thing at work in the food supply, witness how the FDA and CDC will slander unpasteurized milk (you're kidding me-- two suspected milk-related deaths in the country in SEVEN YEARS? Oh, the humanity! And I love how they note that the "number is almost certainly higher due to underreporting"--in fact, the number is almost certainly lower, due to the fact that a) public health officials are very aggressive about rooting out cases of food-borne illness, and b) if a person with suspected food-borne illness admits to consuming unpasteurized dairy at any point in the recent past, any further investigation into possible explanation for their symptoms comes to a screeching halt after that, the smoking gun considered to be found) and restrict an individual's right to choose it (if you choose just one article to read about raw milk, make it the previous link, since they report on many of the FDA and CDC practices I allude to above)...meanwhile, FDA-approved PEANUT BUTTER has killed at least six and sickened almost 500 others just in the latest outbreak. And let's not even get into what's in the pork they regulate.

Which is all to say I will take my calculated risks with nature versus man and his government any day.

More on BPA

photo by pfly

NatureMomsBlog has an informative post up about BPA--specifically, a report on the suppression of information by big business (and allowed by the government) regarding how harmful it is to humans. Since this has been a trend in the United States for a long time (she mentions out lead, PCBs, tobacco, and DDT; we could also add in pesticides, parabens, childhood vaccines, and countless others), as she points out, "This is why consumers need to educate themselves about BPA [and the other substances infiltrating our food, water, air, and bodies] and let their money do the talking." Amen to that. Though it would also be nice to think that just maybe, we're entering a new era of accountability...as for that, time will tell.

Inauguration Day

I was hoping to make it down to the inauguration today, but alas, the fact that it was only 20 degrees, the subways were jammed, and I'm both pregnant and fighting a cold seemed to be too many strikes against me. Given the weather and the crowding, it seems like staying home was probably a good choice. We were happily surprised, however, to plug in the TV and find that we actually get basic cable--so were able to watch the inauguration with no problems. We thought the whole thing was really very inspiring, particularly the new president's speech.

In celebration, we made something special for dinner--Mushroom Bourguignon from Smitten Kitchen. Can I just say YUM?! It's an adaptation of Julia Child's Beef Bourguignon, which is fine with me, since I like mushrooms about 100 times more than beef anyway.

It was delicious. It looks like something that would take hours to make, but start to finish, including homemade egg noodles, it took the two of us just under an hour from start to table. I questioned the need to add the roux at the end for thickening, but I ended up using it and it was absolutely perfect--just enough to take the sauce from broth to gravy. It had a rich, complex flavor, plenty of meaty portabello chunks, and were perfectly complemented by the tender homemade noodles. We accompanied it with a green salad (a nightly feature these days, and one which I'm enjoying in spite of myself) and followed it up by making an angel food cake: we realized that a double batch of Betty Crocker's egg noodles calls for the same amount of egg yolks as her Angel Food Cake does egg whites, a happy coincidence if there ever was one! (The alternative? Apparently either baggies or an Angel Food Cake Jar.)

Here are the recipes:

Mushroom Bourguignon (from Smitten Kitchen)

Serves 4

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter, softened
2 pounds portobello mushrooms, in 1/4-inch slices (save the stems for another use) (you can use cremini instead, as well)
1/2 carrot, finely diced
1 small yellow onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup full-bodied red wine
2 cups beef or vegetable broth (beef broth is traditional but vegetable to make it vegetarian; it works with either)
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves (1/2 teaspoon dried)
1 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup pearl onions, peeled (thawed if frozen)
Egg noodles, for serving
Sour cream and chopped chives or parsley, for garnish (optional)

Heat the one tablespoon of the olive oil and one tablespoon of butter in a medium Dutch oven or heavy sauce pan over high heat. Sear the mushrooms until they begin to darken, but not yet release any liquid — about three or four minutes. Remove them from pan.

Lower the flame to medium and add the second tablespoon of olive oil. Toss the carrots, onions, thyme, a few good pinches of salt and a several grinds of black pepper into the pan and cook for 10, stirring occasionally, until the onions are lightly browned. Add the garlic and cook for just one more minute.

Add the wine to the pot, scraping any stuck bits off the bottom, then turn the heat all the way up and reduce it by half. Stir in the tomato paste and the broth. Add back the mushrooms with any juices that have collected and once the liquid has boiled, reduce the temperature so it simmers for 20 minutes, or until mushrooms are very tender. Add the pearl onions and simmer for five minutes more.

Combine remaining butter and the flour with a fork until combined; stir it into the stew. Lower the heat and simmer for 10 more minutes. If the sauce is too thin, boil it down to reduce to the right consistency. Season to taste.

To serve, spoon the stew over a bowl of egg noodles, dollop with sour cream (optional) and sprinkle with chives or parsley.

Betty Crocker's Angel Food Cake Deluxe

1 cup cake flour
1-1/2 cups powdered sugar
1-1/2 cups egg whites (about 12)
1-1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1-1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract (we skipped this because we didn't have any)

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Mix flour and powdered sugar. Beat egg whites and cream of tartar in large mixer bowl on medium speed until foamy. Beat in granulated sugar on high speed, 2 tbsp at a time; continue beating until stiff and glossy. Add salt, vanilla and almond extract with the last addition of sugar. Do not underbeat.

Sprinkle flour-sugar mixture 1/4 cup at a time, over meringue, folding in just until flour-sugar mixture disappears. Push batter into ungreased tube pan, 10x4 inches. Cut gently through batter with metal spatula.

Bake until cracks feely dry and top springs back when touched lightly, 30-35 minutes. Invert pan on funnel; let hang until cake is cold. Remove from pan.

They also have a very intriguing alternate recipe for a brown sugar angel food cake, which I've never heard of and which we'd like to try one of these times.

Bread, continued

The bread is out of the oven, and featured at the bottom right of the bread collage above (which also features two different versions of whole-wheat no-knead bread across the top, and Betty Crocker's whole-wheat bread to the bottom left). It wound up rising nicely, so much so that I couldn't bring myself not to do at least a second mini-rise (which also went well). I baked it for the full 60 minutes and was rewarded with tall, ample loaves that taste pretty good with a pat of butter on them.

My verdict? Mixed. I'm uncomfortable with how much I had to increase the flour ratio (and I ended up using probably 1/2 whole-wheat and 1/2 unbleached white, despite my intentions to use something closer to 75/25; I ended with white flour and just kept adding it until the dough reached a satisfactory texture). Other changes I made were to add about 1/4 cup of vital wheat gluten and a pinch of ginger for dough conditioners. On the whole, I'm fairly happy with the result, but I'd like something with a little more predictable formula. I think in the future, unless I had milk that needed to be used up, I'd be likely to go back to this recipe...or maybe give this one a try...

Sick day

I'm home somewhat unexpectedly today--work called at 5am and put me on call, after which I called them right back and asked them just to mark me off sick. Ever since last night's grand throw-up session, I've been achy and exhausted and my throat has been very sore. It's hard to tell whether it's just very irritated or I'm actually getting sick, but being as I haven't yet all year, and would like to more or less keep it that way--and my health is no longer just my own--I'd rather not take any chances. So I'm going to lie low, nurse my throat with plenty of hot water/lemon/honey, and maybe do some schoolwork on the couch.

My big endeavor for the day may be to try to get some bread made--we have soup on the menu twice this week, and it's always twice as nice with some fresh bread to go with it! Since we've never found a whole-wheat bread recipe we're totally in love with, we're always on the lookout for a new one. Up today? This one, which seemed promising until I added the required flour and it was still a gluey liquid mass. Most recipes will tell you to keep adding flour until you can knead a smooth, slightly sticky ball--but this one sticks firmly to its guns, saying only to add 6-2/3 cups of flour. I've probably added nearly twice that and what I've got still won't take any kind of shape. Supposedly this is a variation on a no-knead bread, but even that has to have the ability to hold some kind of form. The other day we made the old no-knead bread and it seemed like a similar thing happened. Matt convinced me to add a couple more cups of flour and we ended up with a beautiful loaf, so... I'm wondering if it isn't the weather or something. Other changes I've made the recipe already include substituting melted butter for olive oil, proofing the yeast (call me crazy, it just reassures me that all is well when I see those foamy little bubbles), and putting the dough in a warm place (rather than straight "room temperature") to rise. I've never had much luck rising anything at room temperature, although that could be because the temperature of our rooms is only between 55 and 60 degrees! The method I've come to favor lately is pouring a couple inches of hot (not boiling) water into a large pot, setting a bowl over it, and putting the dough in the bowl, covered, to rise. This recipe calls for a 2-3 hour rising time, so we'll take a look at noon and see how it's coming along.

What else we've done this weekend: watch Traitor, which we fully enjoyed. It was incredibly suspenseful, but without a lot of gratuitous violence--a combination that's rare these days. Matt also made a batch of hummus so good I was eating it out of the blender with a spoon (and not just a little bit, either). We also grocery shopped and just took it easy. All in all: a lovely weekend!

The weekend is here!

The second trimester is also here, which (at least so far) means that hearty breakfasts are back! We got up this morning and made a big batch of scrambled eggs, homemade biscuits, and sausage gravy. Thoroughly immobilized after that, we took a lovely nap on the couch and are now getting ready to head out and run errands--sell some used CDs, among other things. At the moment, I'm catching up on the billpaying and my incredibly longsuffering husband is on the phone with TMobile's customer service, trying to impress upon them why it's unacceptable to have to rely on cell phones that are completely unreliable. (Anybody who's talked to either of us in the past year will know exactly what I'm talking about.) These are, without a doubt, the worst cell phones and service we've ever had, and if Matt manages to get us out of them, I will be forever in his debt.

Last night we largely stayed in except for a quick trip to the gym, and watched Who Killed the Electric Car? from Netflix. This is an important movie I really believe more people should see. The answer to the title question is multifaceted, but suffice it to say that big business (like, oh, the oil and auto industries) had pretty much everything to do with it. I never realized that the events surrounding the rise and demise of the electric car happened as recently as 2003-2005; for some reason I thought it was further back in history than that. Anyway, the movie is eye-opening and well-documented and definitely deserves a look.

Spicy Peanut

Spicy Peanut is a recipe that Matt brought to the relationship--one which has since become a total cult favorite in our household, but one that I have to admit I wasn't so sure I'd like when I first read the recipe. As a matter of fact, I was so sure I wouldn't like it that I told Matt I didn't even want to be around when he made it. I was convinced that it was filled with nothing but things I didn't like. Regardless, the first time I came home and he'd made a batch, I was enticed to try some and now, the rest is history.

Part of the beauty of SP is its versatility. It's basically a filling that you can eat as a salad, serve in a wrap (and handily freeze), or put over pasta. The only tricky thing about it is that it requires the concoction of basically two different sauces--Chipotle Paste and Spicy Peanut Sauce. The latter makes just enough for a single batch of Spicy P, while the former will stock your fridge with chipotle-flavored goodness for some time to come. (I think our last full batch lasted us almost two years, both in quantity and quality.) So, without further ado, here are the building blocks:

Chipotle Paste

1/3 lb dried chipotle peppers
2 tablespoons honey, molasses, or sorghum
2 tsp salt
1 T apple cider vinegar
Pinch of cumin
Pinch of garlic powder (or about 1 clove, diced)
Water to texture

Rehydrate the peppers by covering with water, bringing to a boil, covering and letting stand for at least 30 min. Then drain peppers and mix all ingredients in a blender or Cuisinart, adding water to thin slightly into a paste.

Spicy Peanut Sauce

1 cup peanut butter
1 can coconut milk (I think 15 oz)
6 T brown rice vinegar
6 T honey, molasses, or sorghum
3 T chipotle paste (recipe above)
1/2 lb sunflower seeds
About 5 tsp grated ginger
Black pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients over low heat and stir until smooth.

Spicy Peanut (Salad, Wrap, etc) 1 batch Spicy Peanut Sauce (recipe above)

15-20 tortillas (if making wraps; depending on size)
2 lb tofu
Olive or coconut oil
1-1/2 cup brown rice (uncooked)
Pinch of salt
Pinch of curry powder
3 tsp grated ginger
1 white or yellow onion
3 T Seasame oil
3 tsp chipotle paste (recipe above)
3 T Soy sauce
2 lbs cabbage (green or red is fine)
1-1/2 lbs broccoli tops

Drain and finely cube tofu. Fry in olive or coconut oil until firm and dry.
Cook rice with 3 cups of water, 1 tsp salt and a pinch of curry powder.
Chop onions, cabbage, and broccoli.
Fry onions with chipotle paste, soy sauce, sesame oil, and ginger until onion is translucent. Add cabbage, then broccoli and stir-fry until just cooked.
Add tofu and peanut sauce to vegetables. Stir in cooked rice.

If eating as a salad--eat! If serving as a wrap--wrap! This is also good over pasta. Wraps or salad can also be frozen.

This is a perfect dish for hungry pregnant women--convenient (once you make it), lots of flavor, tons of protein, plenty of brown rice and green vegetables thrown in too. Plus, it's hard for me to overstate just how delicious it is in a sweet-hot-creamy-crunchy-curry kind of way. There's something in it for everybody!

Cheese and Sausage, on the Cheap

I got a notice the other day that Hickory Farms has up to 75% off on almost everything on their website. While some of their food is pretty processed, blocks of cheddar and summer sausage are about the same wherever you buy them, and I have to admit that these are some of our favorite high-protein (and fat, and salt) snack options. Also on sale: nuts and dried fruit. For someone whose appetite is steadily increasing to require a snack or two every day, and who is trying to fit in more protein and fruit, it's a match made in heaven! Here's what we ordered:

12 gourmet pears
4 blocks of different kinds of cheese
2 lbs dried fruits + pistachios
Hot mustard
Snack crackers
Cheese ball
2 beef summer sausages

I think we got the Friends and Family Gift Box, which is normally $50 but reduced to $12. For the whole thing, we paid just over $30, including shipping. You can't get that at the grocery store (at least not around here!) and this will stock us with snacks for quite awhile. You can also dig around and find coupon codes for further discounts. While I was bummed to see that most of their nut collections were sold out, it's definitely worth checking out!

Mission Accomplished!

We finally managed to get the entire apartment deep-cleaned, along with getting rid of a number of things we didn't need. Here's an example of how our living room looked, before and after:
I'd say it's a definite improvement. Coming soon: one of our very favorite recipes, ever.

We're Still Here

I realize that since I've been pregnant, the blog has suffered. Part of it is that a huge component of our lives (and thus the blog)--food--suddenly became repugnant to me in most of its forms. Part of it, I admit, is that some content now goes onto our sister blog (though that hasn't exactly been hopping lately, either). And part of it is that with full-time work and full-time school (as well as full-time nausea and exhaustion for many weeks), plus the holidays in there somewhere, I've just been short on time.

But now that I'm rounding the bend into my second trimester, and all significant travel for the foreseeable future is over, I'm hoping to get back in the saddle.

This past week was a pretty typical one for us, working and going to the gym a few times and otherwise going on with our normal lives. Last night we decided to splurge and go out for Thai food, which was delicious. (The restaurant we like in Reston doesn't get very good reviews online, but we've always had a good enough experience there.) I got my favorite standby, Panang Tofu, while Matt branched out with a spicy lamb curry. It also marked my first occasion stepping out in maternity clothes, which are quickly becoming less and less negotiable with every passing week. Luckily, I have a couple of older friends with better taste who have passed on so many nice things that I now have far more, and far classier, maternity clothes than I do regular clothes! We didn't take a picture but probably should the next time we go out (which is really the only time I bother to get dressed, pregnant or not).

We came home and topped off the evening by watching Pineapple Express, which we weren't sure quite what to expect from but which was absolutely crazy and so hysterically funny we wish we'd had time to watch it twice. Action-packed and yes, pretty foul-mouthed, it's very well done and something we wouldn't mind owning at some point.

Today, we spent most of the day running errands, largely in the buy/trade/donate realm. We dropped off several bags of items at our favorite thrift store (lots of things we don't use anymore, along with some remnants of a lot of maternity clothes I got off Freecycle), picked up some things we were donating to charities, hit Costco (for what we hope is the last time--we bought 36 lbs of baking soda, some bulk organic spices, and several very large cans of Italian tomatoes, and are hoping that will last us since the chaos that ensues from parking lot to store to checkout makes us feel like our last nerve is shot every time we go there), and grocery shopped at both Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. Here's our tentative menu for the week:

1) Cauliflower cheese soup with no-knead bread and carrots
2) Hamburgers and corn
3) Pizza and salad
4) Spinach frittata
5) Lentil soup and no-knead bread
6) Bean soup and salad
7) Pasta and salad

I say tentative because it's a lot harder for me to predict what's going to sound good to me these days, but I'm hoping that my appetite will continue to get progressively hardier as the weeks roll on. We were trying to include meat and/or poultry on a much more regular basis, but it's hard for me to say whether that was agreeing with me or not, which makes it difficult to justify the extra cost. So for now, we're sticking with old standbys like soup and homemade pizza.

Swedish Meatballs

I realized I posted a picture of our Swedish meatballs, but not the recipe! So here goes: this is adapted from a recipe my mom had in her recipe box from an old woman. We made a couple of minor tweaks and ended up with the following:

Swedish Meatballs

1.5 lbs ground beef
½ lb ground pork
2 eggs
3 pieces of bread, made into breadcrumbs
1 tsp salt
½ tsp ginger
½ tsp allspice
1 medium onion, finely diced
2 cups beef broth

Mix all ingredients except broth together and shape into meatballs.
Saute until brown on all sides, then add broth to nearly cover and simmer on the stovetop until cooked through, about 1 hour.
Thicken broth with flour to make gravy and serve.

Long Live Freecycle!

Crunch time is drawing near: we both go back to work in the morning, and we've still got our bedroom, storage closet, and bathroom to deep-clean. On the plus side, we've finished the kitchen, dining room, living room, and hall closets, all of which are looking great, and we've cleared out a ton of room by having Freecycled an absolute boatload of stuff. A lot of it was stuff like lotion and body wash thatcame from my days as a body product junkie, or my avid CVS-ing days, but especially now that I'm pregnant I've pared way down--and I really don't plan to ever start using things with long, unpronounceable ingredient lists again. High on our list of things to get rid of: anything including concerning ingredients like parabens and talc. Apparently everybody else out there doesn't feel the same way, though, because these things are getting snapped up literally within minutes of posting them.

Some other things we've found a home for: a four-foot long didgeridoo, 12 large flowerpots, a rusty hedge clippers, an unwanted toaster, and a ton of other things. We're getting efficient: I've developed a number of cut-and-paste Freecycle responses (like directions to our apartment) and a system of using up unwanted plastic grocery bags to bag up the items, then tape the recipient's name to them so I can leave them outside the front door.

Granted, there are probably a few of these things we could have made a few bucks off of if we'd had the patience to wait for them to sell, but a) we wanted them out NOW, and b) I've realized that the reason we live in such a thriving Freecycle community is that the people who are giving up jogging strollers and bagsful of maternity clothes aren't looking to make a buck either, and that part of contributing to that community (and, in turn, benefiting from it) is being willing to give away more than just the dregs.

Patches watching over the Freecycle basket
A couple of items awaiting pickup outside our apartment

Happy New Year!

Photo by Jessica Bee

I'm sure it was great. I wouldn't know--I was asleep on the couch by 10:30, after we spent a busy evening reorganizing our kitchen cabinets, making chicken noodle soup with homemade noodles, and baking a couple loaves of bread. We also watched X-Men 3. All in all? A perfect evening.

One of our goals for the new year is to cook more out of actual cookbooks--we have a ton of them, after all--and there's something pleasantly nostalgic about actually opening a book to find a recipe. So last night, the noodles, the soup, and the bread all came (at least loosely) from the Betty Crocker Cookbook we borrowed from Matt's mom while we were home. Now, times have changed a little, and while we won't be adding a heaping tablespoon of straight monosodium glutamate to our soup, or brushing the tops of our bread loaves with margarine, there are still hundreds of time-tested from-scratch recipes in there. In particular, our egg noodles (made with half whole-wheat flour and half white) turned out spectacularly! We used half of them in our chicken noodle soup, and plan to make Swedish meatballs to serve over the other half. Here's the recipe:

Betty Crocker's Egg NoodlesMatt, drying the noodles on our drying rack!

2 cups all-purpose or whole-wheat flour
3 egg yolks
1 egg
2 teaspoons salt
1/4-1/2 cup water

Make a well in the center of flour. Add egg yolks, egg, and salt; mix thoroughly. Mix in water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until dough is stiff but easy to roll.

Divide dough into 4 equal parts. Roll dough, one part at a time, into paper-thin rectangle on well-flour cloth-covered board (keep remaining dough covered). Loosely fold rectangle lengthwise into thirds; cut crosswise into 1/8-inch strips for narrow noodles, 1/4-inch strips for wide noodles. Shake out strips and place on towel until stiff and dry, about 2 hours.

Break dry strips into smaller pieces. Cook in 3 quarts boiling salted water until tender, 12-15 minutes; drain. ABOUT 5 CUPS NOODLES. After drying, noodles can be covered and stored no longer than 1 month.

I don't know if we'll ever buy dried pasta again!

The chicken came from a whole roasted bird we bought at Whole Foods. We made half the meat into chicken and noodles, and the other half into chicken and broccoli stir-fry (before we left for the midwest). We then covered the carcass with water in the crockpot, added a few carrots, onions, and celery, and cooked it overnight. We ended up with several quarts of nice chicken stock, as well as a decent amount of meat we'd left clinging to the bones. We put it all in the freezer to deal with when we got back. Yesterday, we cooked up about a quart of the stock, added some water, carrots, celery, onion, parsley, black pepper, and salvaged chicken meat. We put it all on to cook for about an hour, and added the egg noodles in the last 10 minutes of cooking. The white flecks in the soup? The egg whites (leftover from the noodles) that we couldn't bear to throw away, so we just mixed them into the soup, egg-drop, style, for a little extra protein.

The other thing we made was Betty Crocker's whole-wheat bread. We've had a variety of wheat bread successes and failures around here, but it seems like we have a tendency to get air bubbles in our loaves, and the loaves don't tend to rise/cook all the way. Betty includes a very specific method of shaping the loaf (maybe this is standard? nobody ever told me before) that seemed to cut down on the problem.


The result? A very respectable wheat loaf. It's not anything exciting, in terms of taste and texture, but it is pleasant and mild. I think we'd make it again.

Catching Up

The things that have come and gone since I last wrote: Christmas with the Wisconsin family. Our return journey. A nice visit with a childhood friend. The new year!

Christmas in Wisconsin was lovely. We had a great time just relaxing with Matt's family, enjoying yet more delicious home-cooked meals, and enjoying the (snowy) countryside in one of our very favorite states. We even managed to sneak in lunch at the Imperial Garden, our favorite Chinese restaurant anywhere and the only one where you can eat yourself full without then feeling like, as my dad would say, "you've been poisoned." Matt got the moo-shu pork and I got chicken and broccoli, and both were wonderful.

The return trip was relatively uneventful--once we got out of Wisconsin, there was very little snow on the ground anywhere, and we didn't face any kind of precipitation at all. Just slightly overcast skies, perfect for driving. We did split it between two days, stopping in Cleveland to stay with our friend Jessica, which made for both a nice visit and a good halfway point. The next day, we drove home, stopping in Pittsburgh to revisit our favorite Indian restaurant (noticing a theme here?).

And boy, does it feel good to be home! The cats were thrilled to see us, and it was great to be back in our own bed again. Since we've been back, we've been getting back into the swing of working out at the Y, and are trying to do a deep clean/"big sift" (as my mom would call it) of the apartment and our belongings, since this is the last prolonged time period we'll have off together before the baby is born. Yesterday we about half-finished deep cleaning the kitchen, and today we're hoping to finish that and tackle the bedroom. I work tomorrow, and then over the weekend we're hoping to plow through the rest of the place. We may or may not make it all the way through, but at least we'll have gotten off to a good start!