Julie and Julia

As if I don't have enough time consuming hobbies in my life, I have felt the need to complete my 50's housewife persona by encouraging my budding love of cooking. This has been difficult to do since my creativity in the kitchen has fallen to an all time low. We were living off crackers and store-bought cookies.

Rather than subject myself to the chore of finding FoodNetwork shows on the internet, I decided to take a page from the movie Julie & Julia and cook through a cookbook. But instead of Julia Child's cookbook, I went for something more pedestrian- the 2009 Taste of Home cookbook my mom got me for Christmas 2 years ago. Everything I've tried from there up to this point has been good to the point of gorging, plus the ingredients are not exotic.

So I did some research, dividing things into categories, looking for ingredients, reading recipes. And I figured that I'd have to cook 8 recipes a week, approx. to get through the entire book in one year. That seems ridiculous until you realize that 3 recipes for one meal isn't unreasonable, so 2 meals a week, breakfast on Saturday, and a treat for game night and that's 8. Which leaves plenty of time during the week for consuming leftovers. Result=culinary bliss.

Which has been true thus far. Let's start at the beginning, my birthday and a Sunday. I made this delicious quiche and this magnificent cake.
Why yes, that is homemade ganache.

We had to cut the slices really thin so people didn't explode.

The rest of the week was tricky since we were flying to New York on Thursday morning. But I still found time to make the most delicious lemon sauce with the best fried chicken, lemon potatoes and a corny salad.
The dipping sauce definitely stole the show that night.

Then the next night we made taco salad. Really, really, really yummy taco salad that seems overly spicy to me, until I remembered that I did have two large, annoying cankor sores that emphasized the spiciness.
Not the best picture, but G loved it, as did Grandma, A.D., and both visiting little girls. I hear the leftovers were also good.

More to come!

February's Dress

Here's February's Dress. I call it my Kindergarten Teacher Dress, and if I ever get to go help out in my children's Kindergarten classes, you can bet I will wear this dress. Made from this pattern:

It's baby cord and so was very handy in an unseasonably cold Texas winter.

I wanted a little break between finishing January's dress on the 31st and starting the next, but I think I only gave myself a week. And during that week I did something I've never done sewing before, which is . . . read the pattern instructions before cutting anything out.

That is probably a horrible confession to make, I mean, I've been sewing for years now, but it's true. And in this case, it made all the difference. I made sure I had a pretty good handle on the mechanics of how the pockets went together, and more importantly, the collar.

Here's some things I'd never done before this dress:

• Worked with baby cord, which ended up being very easy to work with
• Fudged on seam allowances in the pattern layout. I really, really wanted to use this fabric, so I made it work. I just had to sew it pretty quickly after I cut it out so I could remember which seams needed to be smaller than 5/8".
• Clipped seams before I sewed them. This dress has A LOT of curved seams and they laid/sewed some much better when I actually used this method (which was in the instructions, which I actually read before hand). Again, this might not be something I should share, but hey, the whole point of this goal is to become more of an expert.

What I learned doing this project:

• When, where, and how you pin a seam is very important. Pinning seams was my saving grace making this dress because I fudged the seam allowances, and it made a huge difference if put the pins in on my lap or on the ironing board. Probably that's mostly because my lap is so uneven, but I highly recommend using flat surfaces to pin. Also, I recommend pinning in the direction you will sew. Sometimes that means I have to do a little puzzle in my head first, but it saves me a few swears and some pins during the sewing process.
• I am not an expert at collars. This was only my second one and was hugely more successful than the first, thanks to reading that part like 5 times in the instructions before I did it. However, I could stand to make about 12000 more.
• Putting in snaps rather than buttons was a good idea, especially covered buttons, which I'm still not very good at. I did use four covered buttons for the pockets and the sleeves, (the fabric is A, B, C, D, and 1, 2, 3, 4 in convenient squares, they were just calling out to be made into covered buttons. What could I do?) and I still think there's one that needs a head put back on. Good thing the dress has pockets to store these things in.

Toddler Eating

Technically, G has been a toddler since before he was 1 and started to walk. This has not kept me from calling him Baby, and a plethora of other emasculating nicknames like Sugar Muffin.

However, I have started noticing little changes in his behavior in recent months that signify a big change in our relationship. One of these areas of change is in the food department. G will still pretty much eat anything, though his current obsession with his tongue has him spitting out many foods he once enjoyed.

I have devised a strategy that has helped us to weather these new storms.

Step 1: Get a really hungry boy to sit in his chair.

Step 2: Let him use the spoon himself. This trick has allowed me to do many a dishes, since something yummy enough will keep him occupied for quite awhile. He still hasn't quite gotten the hang of it yet, though.

Step 3: Give him whatever's on my plate. That's clearly the yummy stuff. Most of the time for lunch it's the leftovers from dinner that he spit out. Give him 12 hours and suddenly it's delicious. Also, the awesome Buzz Lightyear cup from Grandma doesn't hurt.

Step 4: Quit while you're ahead. It doesn't take long for this happy face to deteriorate to grumpiness and food on the floor.

This is just the first of many changes, I'm sure. But we'll have to figure it out together. It's a good thing you're so darn cute, G, or you'd get in trouble a lot more.

Happy eating everyone!

Payback

So I felt like I've been a bad mother lately, what with the moving, and the trips and the whole I'm-tired-and-I-need-a-vacation thing. And our trip to NYC, while awesome, was not exactly relaxing, or long enough, so Tuesday was not a pleasant day for the G-Man.
I do yoga every morning and on Tuesday he got two time-outs for ripping the glasses off my face during my 20 min. yoga workout. And the day spiraled down hill from there.
So on Wednesday, I decided I'd had enough bad mothering. So when I was doing yoga in the morning and G went for the glasses, I dodged and decided to address the real problem: attention. I stopped for a minute, asked him if he wanted some attention, and put out my arms for a hug. He gave me the longest, sweetest hug he ever has.

And it was sweet payback for all the bad days up to that point. So miracles do happen. And mommies do get paid, just not in