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.