Well, Darn

I was just skimming over earlier posts. I had such aspirations for this blog! And then I had a baby, and it's like life as I knew it before is nonexistent.

But it's not all bad.

I do, however, have to streamline my kitchen time. It's a sad fact of motherhood at this stage. But I know me, and I am happiest when my feet are in the kitchen, and my hands are in some dough or veggies or whatever.

And Thank goodness for the Ergo Baby carrier.

But here is the big news: I am now 15 lbs below pre-baby weight! That means I kicked myself out of the work out online group "Mom's focused on pre-baby weight" or whatever. Because I'm now more toned than before I squeezed out the kiddo.

This has made for some interesting changes and hesitation for my normal kitchen routines. I'm not exactly sure how to balance my long love of baked goods with my new habits.

In case you're wondering how I did it, I'll tell you!

Nuts!

I ran across this article at Penniless Parenting and something kind of clicked for me. So I have been tracking what I eat on the Daily Plate (a free service from www.livestrong.com. It's amazing how just tracking calories, and realizing a kind of calorie budget changes your perspective. I realized that dieting has always failed for me before because I have cut fats and made myself very hungry, and then I started to overeat in reaction to that. So I have been trying to eat more regularly and round things out with some almonds, peanut butter, or avocados whenever I'm just feeling hungry. Also, I'm still breastfeeding Ellie, which gives me about a 500 calorie cushion.

When the weather was nicer I found myself walking for about 60 minutes a day. I'd walk Dottie with Ellie in the ergo carrier for about 30 minutes before her morning nap. And then in the evening I'd walk for another leisurely 30 minutes (although I tried to walk as briskly as possible, it was still pure leisure).

I was seeing great success with this and feeling awesome. But I wanted a little something more, especially on bad weather days. So after hearing some other people rave about it, I ordered Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred DVD. And then I really started getting results.

Anyway, I want to continue making the good nomz, but not sabotage my hard work. What do I do?

For now I'm trying to simplify my meals. It's easier to track calories on "chicken breast, brown rice, spinach" than "chicken a la king on homemade sourdough crescent rolls." No wonder people buy processed diet food, it's easier to know your calorie bottom line that way.

So here are some things I've been inspired by lately: Jamie Oliver, FlyLady.net, Jillian Michaels, and (gasp!) myself!

Oh, and I made sourdough banana muffins this morning. Ellie & I enjoyed them.

Gross Stew

Adam said, "Geeze, did you make enough stew for two people?" He was very relieved when I told him it was not stew, but chicken stock in the making. Because it looked kind of gross with chicken bits and veggie scraps floating around.

I loosely followed this recipe which I had run across a while ago. I started saving chicken carcasses and scraps from carrots, celery, and onions. I also had a leek in the fridge to use up. It came together with minimal effort. The worst of course being cleaning the pot afterwards, only because of it's awkward large size.

I had been saving yogurt containers for storing stock in the freezer, so this is very much a tightwad endeavor.

I have big plans for this broth! Especially since the weather is cooling off, it will be soup city! This week we'll have butternut soup or risotto or both.

Stay tuned!!!

Long Time. No Cooking.

So this motherhood business leaves me with little time for cooking, grocery shopping, researching recipe ideas, or a lot of other things for that matter.

But I'm about to step it up a bit. For once cooking is required as Ellie is about ready for solids! That means cooking for baby!

My baby food mill is arriving from www.cottonbabies.com today. (Free shipping)! And brown rice is simmering on the stove as I type.

All baby stuff is surrounded in polarizing opinions and advice. It's been a figurative swamp to wade through. Lots of information on breastfeeding insists to wait 6 months and then in the same paragraph say, "watch your baby, not the calendar." That being said I didn't just blindly proceed to starting rice cereal at 4 months but waited for her to let me know she's ready. Now I can't eat without her grabbing for my plate or drink without her trying to yank my glass and smear her mouth on it. So she's at least ready to experiment with some rice cereal and sippy cups.

In other food news I've been cooking on a more regular basis, but nothing sexy enough to post on a blog. I've been a boring, busy mom dumping a small fryer chicken, onion, celery, and potatoes into a crock pot every week. I even bought Adam some Budget Gourmet and Chunky Soups for his lunches (a step up from fast food?).

What is the special occasion for the update out of the blue? NAPS! Ellie is napping like a champ! The good news is I have some more time to get important things done like update facebook and drink hot tea. The bad news is that she's such a light sleeper it's hard to get anything done in the kitchen while she naps.

Coming up: general unsolicited advice to new moms and moms to be in a blog entry so I don't have to bug anyone directly. Lists of baby & nursing mom must-haves. And more pictures of my kid!

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Edit: 6-29-11

Don't feed solids to your baby before the age of 6 months. I didn't read the best baby book ever, Baby Led Weaning, until Ellie was 8 months old or so. Anyway, save yourself a lot of time and effort, do BLW!

Laziness

So I've been lazy. Or more accurately pregnant.

In the last few weeks I've just been too tired to do a lot of cooking. I've been too tired to do a lot of grocery shopping. Between my big belly and horrible leg cramps I have been hobbling around and looking really funny and off balance.

My lazy cooking includes a lot of pizza. Since it's lazy I use jiffy crust. Sue me. I was also too lazy to take pictures.

But I still try to cover the pizza in as many vegetables as possible. So I cooked up onions, garlic, zucchini, mushrooms, & yellow bell pepper in some canola oil. Then I add some white wine and coarsely chopped kale and cover to steam. Now, some folks might be really grossed out by kale on pizza. Spinach, maybe, but KALE?! All I have to say is: Prego says Nomz! And I added pepperoni and mozzarella.

I like to cook up a nice veggie mixture, like the above pizza topping, use half for one meal and half for another. It saves a lot of time. Knowing that the next day would be busy, I put together a crustless quiche with my leftover veggies, cottage cheese that needed to be used up, and some feta. I fridged it overnight and threw it in the oven the next morning. Of course I went back to bed while it was baking. The cottage cheese was kind of a perfect filler-cheese while the feta packed an amazing punch.

My other lazy meal? Brown rice (cooked with chicken stock) with onions, garlic, green bell peppers, squash, black-eyed peas, and mozzarella. I threw this together with just stuff I had on hand.

I've been very squash centric lately.

Other things I need to do:

1) Use the damn chicken carcass in my freezer and make some chicken noodle soup.

2) Cook up that cabbage in the crisper before it rots on me. (Bierocks, most likely)

3) Make more flaxseed almond waffles to freeze individually! This is one of my favorite breakfasts & snacks. Definitely deserving of it's own post.

One other big project I need to get on is making meals to freeze for after the baby is born. Because if I think I'm tired now, I probably haven't got a freaking clue what tired is yet. So in between naps and crocheting, I'll get around to it.

Highlights of a Pregnant Appetite

Some stuff I've been craving...

I like to order meat from a butcher that wraps everything up neatly in paper.

This pork butt seems to be labeled with my Dad's initials as it was a joint order. Insert fit of laughter!

Decaf espresso break while the pork butt cooks.

Pulled pork sammiches! (Too busy stuffing myself to take pictures of the finished product).

Another day, another snack. I love some meaty mushrooms. Baby Bellas pictured.

I'm so hungry all of the time. I crave a lot of pasta.

And cream sauce.

Stay tuned for more random yum.

Fish in a Packet!

I had been lusting after this recipe for a while but had trouble deciding on what kind of fish because I'm in the middle of Kansas and I need to make smart fish decisions while I'm pregnant. After talking to my doctor and weighing my available options, I went with a farm raised tilapia.

When I cook (not bake), I either just think it up or find a recipe, or two, put what I like in it, skip what doesn’t sound good, add something I’d rather have or use up, loosely measure, or not measure at all. This normally works well for me. So I frequently have an initial published recipe for inspiration, but it quickly becomes my own thing. I stuck to this rather well in spite of myself.

It’s “French Fish in a Packet” from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home, one of my favorite cookbooks. My biggest change was instead of making separate packets for the two servings; I upped this to three servings and put it in one large packet. After it was said & done I wondered why I couldn’t have saved the foil and just made it in a casserole dish.

Into the packet went: sliced zucchini, sliced mushrooms (I had button and baby bella on hand), thinly sliced red onion, canola oil (substituted for olive oil due to realizing at the last minute that I’d used up all of my olive oil), juice of one lemon, dry white wine, dash of salt & freshly ground pepper, bunch of fresh basil leaves, and black olives. Oh, and I tossed in some garlic.

While my packet was doing its thing at 450° for about 35 minutes, I whipped together something else amazing. I browned onion, garlic, & mushrooms in butter, added zucchini, basil and more white wine and lightly steamed them. Then I added parmesan, cream, and lots of black pepper. I tossed it with some al dente penne. It was so delightful.

The tilapia was mouthwatering. I normally find tilapia a little bland, but the lemon, wine, salt, pepper, etc was a perfect balance for it.

Things I would change:

I would cut the vegetables into smaller pieces for the fish packet as I have better luck getting the husband to eat veggies when they are in smaller pieces. He had lots of onion and zucchini slices left on his plate, which made me cringe. “That’s not a garnish” might be my biggest mealtime nag. Seriously, eat your veggies dude. They’re damn tasty.

Things to make in 2010

So there are lots of things in the kitchen I've either never attempted- or never attempted alone. And there are other things with which I feel I've always fallen short. Some of these may not be all that complicated, but for whatever reason I've been too intimidated to attempt.

And part of this blog is going to be to prove to myself and everyone else that everyone can cook. Because advertisers are constantly trying to tell us we are too stupid or too busy to cook. This has been covered in a lot of places lately. Michael Pollan spoke about it on Fresh Air, and I ran across this in google reader today America: Too Stupid to Cook.

Some things I'm intimidated by, but wouldn't be if I had more experience doing them. So it's time to just do it.

Here's just a few things to do in 2010:

Dolmas/stuffed grape leaves

Pasta/noodles from scratch

Chicken pot pie or other savory pies

Smoke meat in my new hand-me-down smoker

Cook lamb

Multiple kinds of dumplings

Cook with sorrel

Mayonnaise from scratch

Try some other sourdough starters (I had some successes with this and a failure)

More polenta dishes

Cook new kinds of grains

Can tomatoes & other garden bounty

Make pickled cucumbers & okra

Beef stock from scratch

Yorkshire pudding

Master cooking various kinds of rice, try new kinds, too.

Fermented foods like sauerkraut & kimchee

Brew own beer! (But after the baby is born, so I can actually drink it).

And the other first in 2010, baby food. Although off the top of my head I'm not sure what month I'll be ready to start making that.