Finally some Food

It's part of my blog title and I haven't even posted a decent meal yet. Ah well, today was a pretty boring day of laundry, BOLT (Avia's new favorite movie), and cloth diaper research (err drooling, I'll explain later). The most exciting event of today was the ending of a four year design contract that has been stressful to say the least. We are now done!

Any who, I cooked a great dinner tonight. We had roasted pork loin with roasted red potatoes and something new...

Broccoflower
It is a cross between broccoli and cauliflower. I normally do not venture out into science experiments of this magnitude but it was part of our Coop Basket last week. I have to say it looks pretty scientific, and not much like nature with how perfectly angled each crown is. It just looked plain weird to me, but the coop affords us the chance to try new things so we did and here are Avia's first impressions.



I had no idea what to make of this thing so I did what any good old fashioned American would do. Steamed it and tossed it with butter and salt.



I stuffed slivers of garlic in the pork, seasoned with salt and pepper, and created a baste of bay leaves, vinegar, and thyme. The vinegar keeps it moist, but it does smell funny when baking.





The potatoes were nothing special, just tossed with evoo, s+p (see Rachel Ray). The end result was a pretty tasty meal.




I will be working on my plating skillz.

The broccoflower got a thumbs up from Larry, a down from Avia, and a meh from me. Its taste and texture are more like cauliflower than broccoli and it was a little too sweet for me. It had a crisp where I like a mush, hard to explain. In the end it went well with the rest of the meal and the pork was outstanding.

Avia's phrase for today, "I need cut your nails mommy, you gotta be pretty and wear your princess!"

Fun and Fancy

We have had a very busy couple of days. Yesterday we had a visit from my friend Ayshah and her son Tristan. We went outside to play in our sandbox and she wore a stocking cap that she so accurately describes as her rabbit!





I love this one, "Mommy my lady bugs on my back!" (What she says when she itches)



And playing dress up later.

(No her hair is not combed yet, it still has sand in it, I will get to it I promise...)

Today we went to Bounce U with Veronica and her son Edgar. It's basically just an indoor collection of Bounce houses and she would NOT go in before he got there. And she refused to go in any of the bounces once she finally made it in the room! She did really enjoy the snack and little trucks that she could pick up though. We went out to pizza for lunch and she and dad kicked back after her nap while I cleaned our bedroom. We can see the floor!


Avoiding the bounce room.









Wanna hear a great preggo moment? While washing clothes today I managed to do a whole load of nothing! I unloaded the dryer and fully expected to have a washing machine full of clothes and it was empty. I distinctly remember wondering why I had left the lid opened there were tons of bubbles in it, and I just closed it. But I guess I left it open to remember to put clothes in it but the machine went about the load like nothing was up!

Avia's quote for today "DO, DO, DO, DO, DOULA!" As part of a song she made up. So cute!

Just to let you guys know, I actually kind of like blogging a little and have decided to add little snippets about why we live the way we do. Like why I am homebirthing, eat organic, babywear, use cloth diapers, things that are a little different or "crunchy/granola". So stay tuned I am out to educate, haha! And for the less tech savvy guys out there that are getting the email updates, if you click on the link that says Posted By Iana to The Walkers, family and food blog! it will take you to a website with all the pretty pictures.

Late Christmas and Dirty Daycare

What is it about when kids wear their nicer things that they somehow get them destroyed. I find out at 10:30 today she had gotten marker and paint all over her new Zutano dress?!? She had only been in there an hour and a half! Anyway to add insult to injury they went to the playground in the afternoon and she got sand all in her hair which happened to be in twisties. I must remind these people that little black girls with thick curly hair and sand = gigantic, catastrophic, meltdown, fiasco from mom.

Apart from all those pleasantries today we found out that our awesome lovely insurance that was going to cover 70% of our homebirth was just changed with a higher deductible and they will now only pay 50% after that higher deductible which we will not even reach! We were really counting on that reimbursement to get over our little financial bubble and it is not happening so now we will be paying 100% out of pocket for this little bean to be born. I am just a little ticked.

We had a great surprise waiting for us at home which temporarily got us out of our funk. A late Christmas gift from Grandpa Larry and Grandma Pam!



She enjoyed her new alphabet toy and Dora and Wonderpets dolls while Mommy made hamburgers, french fries and hot dogs. Nothing special because we needed to have a quick dinner to deal with the mess in her hair. We turned on Wall-E for her to watch and Larry so generously helped me take down her twists and wash her hair. By the time we were done in the bath it was past her bedtime and she still had sand in it! Larry concluded to let the child go to bed and deal with the mess in the morning since it probably would have taken me another 2 hours to comb her hair out. That stuff is LOOOONNNNNGGGGG. So she went to bed with a stocking cap and a prayer that tomorrow she will have the patience enough to sit and get her hair properly combed, sigh.

Avia's phrase for the day "Wanna play by myself with me?"

25 weeks!

I took pictures today of my growing belly bump. Here it is 25 weeks, only 15 or so to go! Just so we are all clear there is not a baby in there its a bouncy little jiggly puff according to Larry. This baby moves non-stop. I have to lay in bed an hour before I want to be asleep just so the baby can wear itself out enough for me to relax.

Dinner tonight was sour cream pork chops, it sounds weird but its fantastic. Recipe here. We ate this with leftover quinoa and fresh corn on the cob from our Bountiful Baskets Coop. Fabulous!

Avia's phrase for the day, "You can go home now Mommy Daddy," after we came to check on her in the staff daycare she was having too much fun without us!

Oh the cats came back, well...

This morning I was tasked with babysitting one of my friends (and former doula client) son. All in all it was a good morning, he and Avia had fun playing together and watching a Spanish song and dance video over and over and over again. She has two cats that she just got and wouldn't you know the UPS guy knocked at the door. She lives in a two story apartment. The first cat scurried out of the door but stayed on the landing. I grabbed the cat and stood by the door to sign for the package. While I am holding the first cat, my friends son got out followed by the other cat. OMG! I was freaking out cat in one hand, digital signing thing in the other and a kid, and second cat escaping. I sat the cat in the house closed the door, asked the guy to hold his thing, grabbed the baby, quickly stuck him in the house and closed the door. UPS guy goes "can you just sign this please.", "Nope" I replied, "I have to get this cat I am babysitting, this isnt my house." So I ran down the stairs to find the cat jumping over someones balcony, GREAT! Now the 5 month preggy has to launch over someones fence to get this cat with two toddlers alone in an apartment and a random mail guy waiting outside. I scooped up the cat signed the stupid machine and kicked the box in the house to avoid letting the other cat escape. Everyone was fine and we went on to have a wonderful lunch.

The rest of the day consisted of a late nap, grocery shopping and cereal for dinner because I was just too tired to cook!

Avia's phrase of the day: "Mommy kitty gonna fall down I need to save her!"