New Blog!

This blog is set to my old email address, and I am not allowed to change it! So, I have created a new blog: www.myclusterofjams.blogspot.com. I hope you will read it :)

Hello World

This is our daughter, Maple Beth Parsons. Her sweet little face came into this world on April 11, a little after 3:00 pm. She was born a week early, at The Birth Center, all natural, after just 14 hours of labor. It was the most insane experience of my life. If you want more details, feel free to ask, I love talking about it. I feel so blessed to have had such an amazing experience, and am so grateful for Jesse, my mom, and Bess, who were all there to support me as we waited for Maple. She is a really good baby, and we love her so much.
She is breastfed, sleeps in bed with us, and I wear her on me a good deal of the time. Some people might call this attachment parenting, we call it, what works for us. I fell like I am an advocate for things like these, but I realize that everyone has their own way of doing things. Maple is only two months old (which is crazy!), but I already know how important it is to not force your opinions on other people, no matter how strongly you feel about them. With that said, I feel like the methods we use, help me to be the best mama that I can be. Being a parent is hard! Being a parent is also amazing. Her little body is sleeping on me right now, and right now there is no where else I would rather be, and nothing else I would rather be doing. Notice that I say, right now. Later tonight, or tomorrow, or next week, I might not feel the same way. It is hard losing your independence. Sometimes I want free hands, so I can cook a nice dinner for my husband, or water my plants, or practice my hula hooping skills (yes, Jesse and I just bought a hula hoop). Anyway, we are adjusting, and it is totally worth it. I feel like there is so much more to say, but my brain is not functioning at fully capacity yet.

Baby Baby

So obviously I am already failing at my food journal. Such is life. Jesse is back to work this week. I am relieved, but reminding myself that he works for crazy people, so anything can change at anytime. For now, things are back to normal.
Our housemate John is moving out this weekend, to make room for the baby! I am so excited to start fixing up the room. I have had an amazing pregnancy, and love being pregnant, but nine months is so long to wait for something so exciting!

Lemon Olive Oil Cake

Good Lord! This cake turned out beautifully. It is a chiffon cake, and the recipe can be found at www.epicurious.com. I topped it with some sweetened sour cream, sour cream with a little bit of agave nectar, and it was perfect.

Breakfast for dinner

What do you do when you do not feel like cooking dinner? Make breakfast! Scrambled eggs, roasted potatoes, sauteed kale, and whole wheat toast (I made that bread!).

Seitan Pot Pie

This was dinner from one night last week. It was an experiment, that I would say was successful. I sauteed some onion, garlic, and carrot. Once it was soft I sprinkled a spoonful on flour over it, to create a roux. I stirred in some veggie stock, and a little bit of milk. Then I added in the seitan, frozen peas, salt, pepper, and thyme. I did not feel like making a crust for it, so I made biscuits instead. I used one of Mark Bittman's recipes from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, which I had used before, and loved. The seitan mixture goes into a casserole dish, and the raw biscuits go on top. I baked it for as long as the biscuit recipe called for, which was around ten minutes. Oh I just remembered that I wanted potatoes in there at the last minute, so I cut some small yukon golds into quarters, boiled them, and then added them to the mixture.

I love yerba matte.

Tuesday......
Breakfast: steel cut oats with maple syrup, toasted walnuts, and sliced banana
Snack: scone
Lunch: leftover udon noodle stuff
Snack: crackers and cheese
Dinner: seitan pot pie (pictures and recipe coming soon)
Dessert: chocolate tart

Wednesday.......
Breakfast: eggs and toast
Snack: carrots and hummus
Late Lunch/Early Dinner: Nodding Head! french dip and spanish fries
Dessert: chocolate ice cream with peanut butter and crushed homemade graham crackers (pictures and recipe coming soon, these are totally worth making from scratch)

Jesse's mom gave us some hope last night. She is a school bus driver, therefore has three months off every summer when school is not in session, and is able to collect unemployment during that time. Did you know that you do not have to get laid off in order to collect unemployment?! If you are available to work, and your job is not providing you with work, you can collect. So guess what? We are going to take advantage of this system that we have been paying into for years. The first week is a "waiting period", but after that you can collect. So starting next week, we should be getting something. If Jesse's job provides him with work again, great, he will work. Anytime from here on out, if they do not provide him with work, he can immediately start collecting again. You can start and stop it whenever you need to, and only have to deal with the one week "waiting period" once a year. It is a weird thing for us to have to do, but we are so grateful that we are able to.

Food Journal

My friend Lana has been keeping a food journal, which I am super into, so I am going to do the same. Yesterday, 1/18, I had:
Breakfast: egg, cheese, and veggie sausage on a whole wheat bagel
Snack: scone, two clementines
Snack: chips and hummus
Dinner: udon noodle salad
Dessert: chocolate tart
I am not going to play the pregnant card, I feel like I always eat as much as I do currently. Well, maybe I eat a little more since being pregnant, but not that much more. I was running around yesterday, so I did not have lunch, just a couple of snacks.
It is funny how I recently wrote about how smooth my life is. Jesse's job has been pretty unsteady the last two weeks, so he has decided to look for a new job. Great timing right? Nothing like a little job/money stress right before you have a baby. So I have decided to stay at my job an extra month, taking us to the end of February, about six weeks before the babe graces us with her presence. I know that something will work out, but staying calm is easier said than done. I guess we need to be taken out of our comfort zone every once in a while.

Udon Noodle Salad

Last night's dinner did not come from a recipe, it was one of those, just throw it together meals. It consisted of udon noodles, fried tofu, grated carrot, bean sprouts, scallions, cilantro, chopped peanuts, and peanut sauce. It was warm when we ate it, but I will eat it cold today for lunch, it is great either way.

Peanut Sauce:

all natural peanut butter

soy sauce

sesame oil

rice wine vinegar

brown sugar

fresh garlic

fresh ginger

Sorry, you know me, I do not measure, I just add things until it tastes good. You can whisk these ingredients together, but I like the sauce really creamy, so I use my mini food processor. This is a super easy weeknight meal, and it is so good!

Orange and Oat Scones

On Sunday my friend Mae and her co-worker Kelly came over for a hair cutting party. I round up five or six people, and she cuts our hair for the awesome price of $20. I made some orange and oat scones for us to snack on.......
They were so yummy! The recipe can be found at www.101cookbooks.com, one of my favorite blogs. All I have been wanting lately is a cup of tea, and a lightly sweetened baked good. Scones fit the mold perfectly.

Hiccups, Dr. Bronner's, and Snickerdoodles

Yesterday I experienced something very strange in my belly. It was a consistant thump, too strong to be a pulse, and too consistant to be kicking. It was totally weird, and stopped after a few minutes. I was reading the weekly growth update on baby center this morning, and read that the baby might start getting hiccups around this time! So, miss baby must have been hiccuping yesterday. I am six months pregnant today!
I know that it is not good for you to shower and wash your skin everyday in the winter, but I cannot help it, I have to shower everyday. I tired showering and not washing my skin, but it was too weird. Then I turned to my old buddy Dr. Bronner. I always keep a bottle of Dr. Bronner's around, but do not use it everyday, I like other body wash too. Well Dr. Bronner's is AWESOME on your skin during the winter. Jesse showers everyday during the week because he is usually pretty dirty after work, but his skin get crazy dry and rashy in the winter. He has also been using Dr. Bronner's everyday, and I think it is helping.
I made snickerdoodles the other day for cell, and man, they never disapoint. I use whole wheat pastry flour, in place of regular white flour, whenever possible, and it makes me feel a little better about baking goodies :) You can hardly tell the difference when you use whole wheat pastry flour, and I actually prefer it now. Of course, I forgot to take pictures.

Happy New Year

Jesse and I drove to Miami the day after Christmas, in a 24 foot box truck. He had to take some furniture down there to install in his boss' vacation condo, in a Trump Tower. We drove 15 hours the first day, and 17 hours the second day. By the time we got there, my ankles and feet were doubled in size, from not moving around enough. Jesse and his coworker spent the next four days installing the furniture, while I slept, read, and cried. We finally left at 6:00 pm on New Year's Eve, drove for a few hours, and then got a hotel. Jesse had beer, I had sparkling cider, and we fell asleep around 10:30. We then drove for two days, and returned late on the 2nd. Our puppies greeted us at the door, and home never felt so good. Miami is the worst place in the world. I do not recommend doing this while five months pregnant. Sitting in a bouncy truck for that long was painful, eating fast food makes me want to die, and my emotions are raging, so the whole thing was a nightmare. Happy New Year? I think not. Luckily my spirits were lifted once I got back in my kitchen :)

I will be six months pregnant this week! While having our first cell meeting of the new year last week, people were talking about where they are at, and there seemed to be a theme: everyone is trying to figure out what they should be doing. While sitting there listening, I came to my own realization, I do not have anything to figure out. I have a child growing inside of me. In about three months, I will give birth to this child, and then I will take care of her. Obviously, there is a lot to figure out when you become a parent, but until I become one, I am just sailing along. This is both an amazing, and weird feeling. I will be done with my nanny job at the end of this month, leaving me with two to three months of free time before the baby is here. I have come up with lots of fun things to do during that time......
*Finish making quilts for myself, my sister, and my brother, out of my dad's old tee shirts
*Master the art of baking homemade bread
*Prepare the baby's room!
These are just a few of my ideas. I am super excited about all of the other babies on the way! It is nice to know a lot of other people entering parenthood around the same time as us.
It feels good to feel "ready" to have a baby, especially when said baby was not planned. We had been talking about trying this year, which I think helped prepare us for finding out I was pregnant, last year. We would not change it for the world. We already love this little lady so much, and we are so freaking excited. We have more money in our savings account than we have ever had before, and we have no debt to speak of, other than our lovely little home. I am not bragging, we just feel so blessed, and as prepared as we possibly can be. Parenthood, how wild!
I want to be better about blogging. Maybe I will post some pictures of all of the new awesome kitchen gear I got for Christmas, and try to be better about taking pictures of all of the food I spend my time making. Oh, I have also been spending a lot of time cleaning out the house, and organizing. Nesting? Maybe. All I know is that it is very satisfying.

Freeze!

We really need to get a new camera. There have been many photo ops lately, but nothing to capture them with. I think we might get around to fixing that this weekend.
I spent a lot of time back in the kitchen this week, which felt really good. Now that we are entering our second trimester (!), I am getting some of my energy back, and have not been quite as picky about what I want to eat. On Monday I roasted a bunch of pumpkin, and froze it for future use. It is slightly cheaper than buying the canned stuff, and I just really enjoy the process. The smell of the pumpkin as it is roasting, roasting the pumpkin seeds, all of it is great. I also had my first go at cooking dried beans. If you have a pressure cooker, this is one of the best ideas ever. Normally you would soak the beans overnight, and then spend 4-6 hours the following day cooking them. With the pressure cooker, you are done, start to finish, in 30 min! I have been wanting to do this for a long time, because it is way more cost effective. A can of organic beans is roughly $1.19. One pound of organic dried beans is roughly $1.29. You are getting four times the amount, for nearly the same price. We eat a lot of beans at our house, so this is awesome for us. They do not last super long once they are cooked, but you can freeze them. I bought 16oz containers, so I have a bunch of can sized servings waiting for me in the freezer. Now we need a second freezer.
Who knows if anyone reads this, but I like writing about the things I enjoy doing.

Neither Here Nor There

Ah, life. The past couple of weeks have been consumed by house hunting. Jesse and I really want to get out of the city, but I am not sure that now is the time. We had been looking at possibly moving to Lansdowne, a cute suburb 12 miles outside of the city. Unfortunately nothing that we were interested in, ended up working out, provoking more thoughts. Every part of us wants to get out of the city, except the people part. Even though we would not be moving very far, our friends would not be as close as they are now. We are going to have a baby in April, which will obviously bring many changes. I am terrified of being isolated. I have no idea how to remedy these things. So for now, I think we will stay in the city. I cry every day, and am never sure of what we should do.
On a lighter note, we saw Whip It last night. I totally want to do roller derby after this baby is born.

Life

There obviously has been a lack of posts. Excuse number one, I am pregnant, and nothing has sounded appetizing lately. Well nothing other than sushi, which I am not allowed to eat. Excuse number two, our house got broken in to, and the bastards stole our camera. This will probably turn in to more than a food blog. All I think about is this baby, but I will try not to bore you :) I am ten weeks, and things have been decent so far. There has been a lot of exhaustion, and some nausea, but I have yet to throw up. I am very grateful. We have our very first appointment at the Birth Center tomorrow, which I have been anxiously awaiting. My mom had gastric bypass surgery on Monday, and is recovering well. My nephew just turned one, and is amazing. He is going to love having a cousin. I was in three weddings this summer, and attended six I think. Fall is approaching, which I am ecstatic about. I am so excited to be pregnant in the fall and winter. Oh I lied when I said all I think about is this baby, I also think about moving. Germantown seems to be the best option, because we want to get out of the city and have more space, while also staying connected to the people we love. Dream house has yet to be found, and unfortunately I do not have any patience. I think that is it, in a nut shell.

Bulgur Lettuce Wraps

Whenever I am at a loss for dinner ideas, I usually end up doing something involving a grain that I have on hand, and whatever else I have on hand. I just laughed as a re-read that, because it is so unspecific. I knew I wanted to use the fresh fennel that I had just received in our CSA. I love fresh fennel! Anyway, so I sauteed it with some onion, and then threw in some basil sausage (thank you TJ's) that I had thawed five min earlier in a bowl of hot water. Oh, before I started all that, I put the bulgur on the stove. Everything was done around the same time, so I mixed it all together, and then went searching for something green to put on the plate. There was heaps and heaps of lettuce in the fridge, lettuce wraps anyone?

White Lasagna

I love white lasagna, so much that I never make lasagna with red sauce anymore. Let me warn you, this is not the healthier version. Here is a break down of the layers:
1. noodles
2. cheese mixture (ricotta, mozzarella, parm, fresh basil, fresh parsley, fresh oregano)
3. veggie mixture (sauteed spinach, zucchini, onion, garlic)
4. bechamel sauce
5. noodles
6. cheese mixture
7. veggie mixture
8. bechamel sauce
9. noodles
10. mozzarella
11. parm
12. fresh basil
Bake at 400 degrees until brown and bubbly. Indulge.

Israeli Couscous Summer Salad

Sometimes things turn out good, sometimes things turn out bad. This lovely dish? Well it turned out good, let me tell you! I made the couscous, and then added some caramelized onions! Then I cooked some yellow squash in balsamic vinegar, over high heat, so it caramelized! Then I chopped up some fresh basil and sprinkled it over everything! I am adding so many exclamation points because I seriously loved this dish. The onions, squash, and basil all came from our CSA. It is so fun when you can make things come together, without any planning. I hope you are encouraged to get creative.

Trader Joe's

I have my complaints about TJ's, but I also love them. There are many specific things that I only buy from there, because they have awesome prices for awesome things. Let me start with the non food items, sunblock and aloe vera gel. These are things that I have only recently discovered, and am ecstatic about. I bought a 4 oz bottle of all natural Alba sunblock from Whole Foods for $7.99...... then I discovered that TJ's sells a 8 oz bottle of their sunblock for $5.99.......... and they are made of the exact same ingredients! I have been at the shore all week using this stuff, and it totally works. Their all natural aloe vera gel is under $3 for 12 oz, and is 99% pure aloe.
Another thing that I love is their 99cent pizza dough! Do not get me wrong, I love making things from scratch, but the reality is, I do not always feel like it. In comes the pre-made dough. Slap on some pasta sauce, mozzarella, fresh tomatoes, and fresh basil, and you have yourself a delicious quick week night meal. Or slap on whatever you have laying around, seriously, that is the way you have to roll.

This week's CSA

How beautiful is all of this? This week we got two bags of spinach, a head of red leaf lettuce, beets, radishes, basil, two kinds of green onions, snap peas, and zucchini. I have no idea what to do with all of these green onions......
but last night I put the beets and basil to good use. I made whole wheat penne, fresh pesto, and sauteed already roasted beets with some onion and the beet greens. Use the beet greens! They are very similar to swiss chard, and very edible.

For the pesto:

a bunch of fresh basil

a bunch of fresh parsley

some pine nuts

some fresh parmesan

olive oil

salt and pepper

Throw everything in a food proccessor, except the olive oil. Blend it, and then add the olive oil until you have the consistancy you want. You will notice that I did not give any actual measurements..... this is because I do not really measure anything. Add ingredients until it tastes good, it is hard to screw things like this up.

For the veggies I sauteed the white parts of some green onion, added in chopped beet greens, and then added in sliced roasted beets. Lucky for me these were already in my fridge, left over from last week.

Add the pesto and the veggies to some pasta, and eat up! I really loved how this turned out. Even Jesse liked it, and he says that he does not like beets.