Thursday, April 9, 2009

7 months!


The Frog has officially made it 7 months, and what a week he's had!


He's a pretty good eater, in that he really likes to eat whatever I'm eating... and he wants to do it himself. I always have to make sure he eats something on his own while I'm feeding him, or he gets upset.


We discovered that The Frog can sit-up by himself. I just didn't know because I never put him like that, besides in his high-chair, and he can't get into sitting position by himself. Although, as soon as he sees something he wants out of reach, he'll just topple over to get it.


As of Tuesday, he has started army-crawling around to get stuff. I ran to get the video camera as soon as I saw him do it, but he won't perform on command. I'm still not sure why sometimes he does it and sometimes he won't, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before he gets into everything.


And then, I couldn't help but include a couple of extra-cute shots :D

Monday, March 30, 2009

Recipe FAIL, Part I

I decided to start a new, on-going series called "Recipe Fail". Being a scientist at heart, I cannot help but experiment with pretty much everything I ever make, especially food.

I always claim to follow recipes, website/document or cookbook open as evidence, but on very rare occasions does that actually occur (as my husband often laments). I'm on a quest to make healthy food that actually tastes good, which means that I almost never follow a recipe completely - whether it be removing fat or sugar or adding fiber or veggies. And then there are those times when I just really want to make X, but don't exactly have all the ingredients called for, but I have others I would REALLY like to use up. (We don't want them to go bad, do we?) As you can imagine, this often results in, let's just say "interesting" concoctions that I would choose not to replicate later.

And this happens a lot.

So, I figure, even if I run out of blogging material, I'll always have this to fall back on.

Without further ado, I begin my Recipe FAIL by recalling a very infamous time from my youth.... The first recipe FAIL I can recollect:

Back in the day, everyday after high school, I would come home and make a snack which was always one of four things:
1) 2 chicken chimichangas (from Costco)
2) 4 pieces of toast with butter and jam (usually my grandma's strawberry jam)
3) macaroni and cheese from the box (I always ate exactly half* and saved the other half for Eve to eat when she got home)
4) a package of graham crackers and milk (for dipping)

Which thing I made mostly depended on what was available, my mood, or the weather.

One particularly unmemorable day, I decided to make "The Mac", and as I always do, I put the noodles in the boiling water, set the timer for 7 minutes (no more, no less) measured out the 1/4 c butter, and started to measure the 1/4 c milk when.. OH NO!! WE ARE OUT OF MILK!!

Panic ensues.

The noodles were already boiling! What was I going to do? I frantically searched the refrigerator for something dairy to use as substitute. Cottage cheese? No. Yogurt? maaaaybe... and then it hit! One of my most favorite dairy products was sitting innocently in the freezer. Waiting for me to call on it for help. Indeed, we had vanilla ice cream. It's made from milk, right? They're both white, right?

It sounded like a great idea at the time.

Needless to say, that was a complete Recipe FAIL.

In summary:

Milk != Vanilla Ice Cream.


*except that one time when I was really mad at her. I can't remember why I was mad, but I remember that to spite her I ate the entire box of Mac myself. I felt very sick after.

Excuses Excuses

I have 4 excuses:

1) I got shingles

2) The Frog has been teething like CRAZY!

3) My shingles gave The Frog the chicken pox.

4) We got our tax return i.e. I got a piano!!

Needless to say, these things have all led to sleep deprivation. Except for number 4, which has led to lack of extra spare time. (Since all my regular spare time has been spent playing my new toy.)

So the blogs suffers.

Happily, we're getting better, and really we lucked out on all accounts. Shingles gets more severe the older you are when you catch them... as do the chicken pox. And thanks to the new teeth, The Frog is incredibly cute being able to actually bite off pieces of cracker. I expect he will have 8 (EIGHT!!!) teeth by the end of this week. (So far, 6 are poking through)

No pictures for now. Soon. Very soon.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Recipe encyclopedia

I found an AWESOME recipe search engine. You give it any detail you can think of and it will search ALL the recipe sites for what you're looking for.

It's like the google for chefs!

We got this great new grocery store called "Buy Low" and they have amaaaazing deals every week. SO now I have a lot of lemons, broccoli, tomatoes and mushrooms and this site helped me find ample of recipes to work with.

Go team!

Quote of the Day

"Heaven wouldn't be heaven without potty humor... just like heaven wouldn't be heaven without you, Libby"
-Jay