riotbrrd

Princess goes camping

Right now, I'm going to attempt making a challah for Shabbat tonight.

Tomorrow, we go camping. Ick! Not looking forward to it, especially the part where Isaac wakes me up at 6:30 am to go poop, and I have to get out of my warm sleeping bag and creep through the freezing early morning to the latrine. Maybe he can just hold it.

Enough already!

Thursday, I hit my head very hard on the edge of a windowsill while trying to locate Isaac's monkey. I had a minor concussion.

Friday, I slammed my head really hard into a metal jungle gym while playing Ring Around the Rosie at nursery school. Apparently, the jungle gym rang out loud as a bell. Later that day, I went to a doctor to get checked out. She said I was ok, but should probably watch where I'm going a little better.

Today, I was riding in our VW with Christopher and Isaac when we got rear-ended by a large SUV.

Motherf*ing OUCH.

Conversations with a husband

A conversation with Christopher today:

I ask, "Are you going to Tahoe?"

He answers, "That's orthogonal."

And he thinks he's actually answered my question.

What my husband does in the garage

This story in Wired explains pretty well Christopher's obsession -- something I've been utterly unable to do.  Amateur Time Hackers Play With Atomic Clocks at Home

Marital harmony

My husband is crowing about his new headphones: "I have noise-cancelling headphones on, so I don't have to listen to you." But I don't need technological help to ignore him.

Baby's first solid food!

OK, not really. But today I had my first real food since Saturday night, when I came down with a nasty stomach flu. (Have you seen the Little Britain skit with the woman who pukes all over everyone? That was me on Sunday).

I've been subsisting on water, Gatorade, and white toast for several days, with the result that I'd lost 5 pounds at my two-week prenatal checkup yesterday. Schmiegel was hungry! So today he got some chicken and rice, courtesy of Stouffers. It's been several minutes, and I haven't gacked yet...a good sign, I hope.

The impossibility of bras

Being pregnant makes it basically impossible to find a comfortable bra. Right now I'm wearing the softest, underwire-free, stretchiest-fabric maternity bra that I could find. And it's driving me crazy. There's just no room between my boobs and my belly for anything to sit comfortably.

A first time for everything

In a rare-bit of non-kitchen-related news...

For the very first time in my life, I got on the scale this morning and was ecstatic to find that I've gained weight.

Reason for this anomaly? I hadn't gained any weight in the last few weeks, and I've noticed that my belly is small in comparison to others in my childbirth class, so I was starting to worry about little Schmiegel.

Ever the OCD Excel geek, I've been tracking my weight on a spreadsheet. OK, I know you're laughing. I get it, OK?  But the way I was eating in my first trimester I was pretty worried about putting on an extra 100 pounds or so. Which they say is not healthy.  And what's Excel for, if not for this type of mission-critical data analysis?

Anyway, back to my clever little chart...You'll notice the dip below the "recommended" line that was freaking me out, and then today's bounce up back towards the line.

Monday after Christmukkah

Victor has inspired me to post today.

My idea for a materinity t-shirt:

No, I'm just fat.

Seriously, though. I'm fat. At least I feel that way after eating, like, 7 deep-fried potato latkes and innumerable cookies in our Christmukkah food orgy yesterday.

In culinary news:

Christopher pioneers the use of a deep fryer in latke creation. Initial results are promising: a lot less oil splatter, perfectly crisp outsides. The remaining challenge is that they cook so fast in the fryer that the insides don't quite cook, so we tried finishing them in the oven. However, we left them in too long at too high a temperature (about 375, I think), and they came out pretty overdone. I think with a few adjustments we've got a pretty good method.

I go on a cookie-baking spree. My output this year:

• Linzer cookies. Yum! My favorite of the whole bunch. The cookies are a short dough with ground toasted almonds, and they're filled with either raspberry or apricot jam and then very lightly dusted with powdered sugar. Got the recipe from JoyofBaking.com.
• Oatmeal lace chocolate sandwich cookies (somewhere in between Pepperidge Farm's Brussels cookies and Florentines). These were an interesting recipe from Nick Malgieri's Cookies Unlimited. I think my guests liked them better than I did.
• Ricotta drops. Another Nick Malgieri recipe. These are Italian-style drop cookies with ricotta cheese, lemon and orange zests. The flavor was fabulous, but the texture not so great.
• Gingerbread cookies. This year in the shape of gingerbread people, dreidels, and 6-pointed stars. Recipe from Cooks' Illustrated. I thought they turned out pretty nicely, more chewy than crisp, which I prefer.
• Brownies. First I made a Cook's Illustrated recipe for Triple-Chocolate Espresso Brownies. I didn't like them -- the flavor was harsh. I think this came from the ground espresso beans and my use of Scharfenberger's chocolate -- their semisweet is closer to bittersweet than I'm used to, and I didn't figure this out till after I'd used it. I may try the recipe again with a different mix of chocolate and coffee extract. So then, I decided to just throw together our traditional family recipe for brownies: a box of fudge brownie mix from the grocery store along with a cup of chocolate chips, and then bake it for the minimum time possible. Damn it, I hate how those turn out so well!

Pictures to come soon...

Sorry, everyone...

I know I've been a little out of touch lately, but I'm reading the new Harry Potter and I can't be bothered by mere Muggle concerns.