Coming out of a blogging fog

I haven’t blogged in a long time. Usually I’ve noticed my peaks and valleys of blogging correlate with the seasons. In the spring/summer I have more to say because I’m inspired by the ingredients on hand. This time, though, my absence was more related to an extended period of constant nausea, sleeping poorly and generally having a much less energy than usual.

What do all those things add up to? If all continues to go well, it means a new little person is going to be joining our family in early October! We’re thrilled! Even little man seems excited about it.

Meanwhile, you can see that I have my energy back. And with it came my crazy ideas, back with a vengeance. After watching a movie about lasagna-style gardening (Back to Eden, if you’re interested in watching), we decided to forego the idea of removing our sod before planting a vegetable garden. Instead, we laid newspaper, compost and wood chips directly over the grass. Here was the truckload of free wood chips from a tree trimming company. Thank goodness I said we only needed one truckload!

Memorial day weekend, with the help of many friends, we completed the project wheelbarrow-full by wheelbarrow-full. It was quite a weekend, but so far the veggies seem to be doing well. I will do a more in depth post about the process soon. For now, thank you thank you thank you to the friends who gave us their time and efforts to help us!!

Whew….having that first post after a long absence feels good. Now I can jump back in with everything going on at our crazy house. It’s feeling more and more like the urban homestead I’ve been dreaming of. I love it and can’t wait to share it with you!

Thanksgiving catch-up

Last week was a busy week. Little man, my mom and I went to gather chestnuts, I got the house ready to host Thanksgiving dinner, cooked (and enjoyed) said Thanksgiving dinner, and then enjoyed the long weekend as a family. I promise to post pictures of the chestnut excursion soon, but for now, here is a synopsis of our Thanksgiving (Little man’s first as a solid-food-eating child!).

I made roasted brussel sprouts, based on this recipe by Ina Garten. Since I only have one oven and I didn’t want the turkey to rest for 45 minutes and get cold while the brussel sprouts were roasting, I par boiled them for about 3 minutes and then plunged them in ice water before roasting them. Here they are on the jelly roll pan, tossed with olive oil and salt. Ready to be roasted.

My mom made the chestnuts, freshly gathered, then boiled and peeled. She also made the cranberry sauce because it’s her specialty. I made the mashed potatoes, below.

I didn’t get a picture of the yams on their own, but they turned out really good! I peeled and sliced them. Then in a small saucepan I combined 2/3 c. chicken stock, 2/3 c. apple cider, 2 Tbsp brown sugar, 4 cloves of garlic (minced), and some salt and pepper. Then I brought all these to a boil until the sugar had dissolved and poured it over the yams, arranged in a baking dish. I baked them at 375 for about 30 minutes, covered in foil. Then I set them aside until after the turkey was cooked and put them back in the oven for 20 minutes of so with the brussel sprouts.

Everything turned out as I’d hoped. Yay!

 

Of course, dessert was involved. I made an apple pie and a pumpkin pie. Unfortunately, no picture of the apple pie was taken before cutting into it and now it’s long gone. It was tasty though, thanks to my North Carolina uncle who shared his recipe with me.

I used a new recipe for the pumpkin pie and was kind of disappointed. I usually use the Classic Pumpkin Pie recipe from Martha Stewart and it’s always turned out great. I’m not sure why I decided to change it up, but I’ll be going back to my tried and true one next year.

Picture catch-up!

I’m sorry that I’ve gone missing again. I was in such a good routine of posting at least weekly, and then….our main computer died. Ok died is exaggerating a bit. It wouldn’t move past the gray screen. We called Apple Care and got it boot up, but now it moves slower than snail’s pace and we need to call them back, but haven’t had a chance. I have my laptop, but I don’t typically upload pictures onto it for fear of slowing it down with all the extra megs. Anyway, I finally gave in and uploaded my pictures to the laptop. So here are some pictures from the last few months!  Also, forgive the odd fomatting. Blogger has changed their user interface since the last time I posted and it’s wonky to me. I’ll have to get used to it.

This is an old picture (from March). Quentin is helping me tear up newspaper to add to  our worm bin. We add toilet paper rolls to the worm bin too. Those were his favorite!

Steamed beets and carrots from our CSA! A perfect finger food for baby.

Mr. Q likes to feed himself. Momma doesn’t like pea puree on her walls,  but he’s gotta learn sometime, right?      Exploring the grape vines. Thanks to Trevor, who figured out how to prune them  currectly, there are little grapes starting to grow on them!  They are Muscat grapes…very flavorful!

Hmm…what’s hiding in here?

Look momma! I found some dirt!

And he’s on the move!

Yum…a stick!

Enjoying a Sunday afternoon party at his grandparents’ house

Catch-up post

Alright so clearly I’ve gone on an impressive blogging hiatus. A lot has happened since my last post, so an update is in order. Let’s pretend I had actually been updating this whole time with a few choice mini posts-

January 16, 2011- I am so excited to finally be able to share our wonderful news….I’m pregnant! I’m 16 weeks along and expecting our first baby in late June. We can’t wait to meet him or her!

February 11, 2011- We had our 20 week ultrasound today and found out we’re having a baby boy!! We were shocked…for some reason we fully expected this little bundle to be a girl, but we’re thrilled either way.
February 24, 2011- We closed escrow on a house today. It’s in a cute neighborhood of San Jose and we love it! Now we have room for our growing family.
Most of March 2011- We’ve been hard at work painting our new home. We haven’t moved in yet because we hope to have it all painted before filling it with all our things. Don’t worry…we’re using no-VOC paint so preggers is OK to paint.

April 1, 2011- We moved into our new house today. Thank you SO much to all our wonderful friends who lent a helping hand (and very strong upper bodies) to move all our things. You are amazing! No pictures from today, unfortunately…you’d think I’d have had time to do that considering no one let me lift a thing.

April 30, 2011- We had a housewarming party today to welcome our friends and family to our new home. We purposefully set this date to force us to be all moved in a settled by the end of the month. It was quite a feat but we got everything done and had a great time. Thanks to everyone who came to help us celebrate!

May 1, 2011- Part of the “getting ready for housewarming party” last month was finishing up the nursery. We got some stencils to paint a farm theme on the walls. We love how it turned out!

In progress…

…aaaand done!

May 8, 2011- Finally a foodie-related one for you. Today is Mother’s Day! Since I am not technically a momma yet, I made lunch for my mom (and dad and husband) today to thank her for being a wonderful mom! We had a lentil salad on a bed of butter leaf lettuce, topped with roasted bell peppers and a poached egg. Turned out pretty tasty.

Giant belly on Mother’s Day

June 18, 2011- Father’s Day! I went significantly less fancy for today’s breakfast, but hey…give me a break. I’m 9 months pregnant. Plus, this is one of Trevor’s favorite breakfast dishes- sauteed potatoes with onions, cheese and avocado with eggs on the side. Mmm!

June 26, 2011- Our sweet baby boy, Quentin, was born today at 8:36am! He is absolutely perfect and we are completely in love.

Proud parents

July 26, 2011- Quentin is 1 month old today. The last month has been wonderful, albeit more than a little tiring. But wonderful all the same. Little Q is starting to look at us more and pay attention to momma’s voice. He loves to nurse and to cuddle. He loves to sleep on our chests.
August 26, 2011- Quentin is 2 months old today! He started giving us smiles a few weeks ago, but he sure makes us work for them! He’s been smiling and giggling in his sleep since he was 3 weeks old, but isn’t ready to giggle yet while awake. He is getting so strong already and is looking like he might roll over any day now!
September 26, 2011- Quentin is 3 months old today. He rolled over 2 days after his 2 month birthday. He kept doing it for a few weeks and then decided he’d had enough of rolling over and stopped. That’s ok though…we’re getting tons of sweet smiles now, especially when he first wakes in the morning!
October 12, 2011- Quentin is 3.5 months old and already getting his first taste of apple sauce. This was definitely not the plan…we were going to wait until 6 months (as recommended by the WHO), but our little man has reflux and kept spitting out his medicine, so his nurse practitioner suggested hiding it in a little bit of applesauce. The first day, he was very confused about what this foreign substance entering his mouth was. By the second day, he was taking my hand to help me shove the spoon in his mouth. He is quite a fan of applesauce. Must be because we all went to an apple orchard to pick the apples together and then momma made and frozen the sauce into baby-sized cubes. Lucky boy!

First taste of applesauce- confused

2nd taste of applesauce- big success!

October 15, 2011- Today we took Quentin to the pumpkin patch to pick out his first pumpkin! He was pretty intrigued by the sea of orange surrounding him, and all the other kiddos running around looking at pumpkins.

With his momma

With his daddy

Alrighty, I hope you enjoyed my collection of “mini-posts”! It has been quite an exciting 10 months since my last post…hopefully I wont neglect fraises et tartines for another 10 months. I have recently started taking pictures of my culinary creations again, and while they’re not quite as complex as in my pre-baby days, we’re still eating pretty well around here. Cheers!