Cooking

Dinner Week 2

I didn’t take my own pictures this week, but I promise everything looked delicious. We had a snow storm, an ice storm, and my parents staying with us for two nights so there was a lot going on. It was tough to get all the cooking in but I managed to eek it out.

Baked Dijon Salmon

Served Tuesday,  salmon recipe and asparagus recipe from allrecipes.com

salmon

RevolvingDork notoriously does not like nuts, but I followed the recipe as written for the topping. Surprisingly he didn’t mind the mixture of chopped nuts and breadcrumbs, and claimed it was the best salmon I’ve made. The breadcrumbs could easily be left out for a gluten-free meal.

Penne Pasta with Spinach and Bacon

Served Thursday, recipe form allrecipes.com

pasta

I made this for lunch since we had dinner plans with family. It’s a nice light quick option and reheats well. The only thing I dislike about it is the number of pots/pans used: a skillet, a saucepan, and then a huge serving bowl to combine it all.

Crock Pot Chicken Marrakesh

Served Friday, recipe from allrecieps.com

marrakesh

I made this as-written, and like many of the other reviewers I thought it came out too mushy and bland. I might try it again, but I think I’ll start with just the tomatoes / chicken / spices and add the veggies halfway through.

Sad Vegetable Soup

Served Saturday, recipe below

After two weeks of cooking I had various veggies odds and ends that were still good but wouldn’t be for much longer. It turns out these are great for pureed vegetable soup. I may be the last person on earth to learn how to make vegetable soup, but just in case here’s an outline of the process:

  • Round up all the sad vegetables in your fridge. I had a bowl each of greens (spinach, cilantro, and basil), asparagus, and broccoli. I added an onion for flavor.
  • Chop said vegetables into 1″ pieces and sautee them in a big pot with a bit of oil until the greens look bright green and the onion looks translucent.
  • Add 4 cups of broth (I used beef) to the vegetables, maybe a splash of wine, and bring to a boil
  • Add some salt, pepper, and any other spices you like. Simmer for about an hour.
  • Puree the vegetables in the blender

Pro tip: blend this in batches, filling your blender no more than 3/4ths full, and make sure there is room for air to escape so your blender lid doesn’t blow off. Place a dish towel over the lid in case anything escapes. After pureeing I returned the soup to the pot and fine tuned the seasoning and served it with brown rice.

Cooking

Dinner Week

I’m taking two weeks to really focus on building good habits with my eating and exercising. Rather than obsess over the number on the scale I’m focusing on eating healthy, home cooked, from-scratch meals instead of eating out, and building up my strength and endurance.

I cooked four meals this week, three of them totally new to me. We had one restaurant dinner, one dinner at grandmom’s, and one night of leftovers.

Tilapia tacos with chipotle-lime dressing

Served Tuesday night, recipe from allrecipes.com

fishtacos

Prior to this recipe the only fish I’ve ever cooked was baked salmon, and going into the store I honestly had no idea what tilapia even looked like. It looks like fish. Because it’s single-digit cold here at night this time of year, I baked the marinated tilapia chunks rather than grilling them. Since fish doesn’t keep well and the recipe serves 6 we invited a few friends over for dinner. It seemed like just the right amount of food for the four of us.

After reading a few reviews stating that the sauce was too hot, I cut the adobo sauce down to just 2 tsp. I fried the corn tortillas for a few seconds to warm them up before serving, and they were a huge hit.

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

Served Wednesday night, recipe from allrecipes.com

StuffedCabbage

The fish tacos called for shredded cabbage but only used a few leaves, and a friend suggested I make cabbage rolls with the rest.  I wasn’t sure what time RD was getting home I made them in the slow cooker instead, leaving them on high for 4 hours.

The hardest part for me was getting the leaves off the head without ripping them. Larger leaves are easier to work with so next time I’ll cook the cabbage rolls on the first day and then use the smaller inside leaves for the tacos. The rolls were delicious but a little homogeneous. Next time I think I’ll serve them with rice instead of adding rice to the stuffing, and make sure to cook some fresh veggies to go with them.

Thai Green Curry

Served Friday night, recipe from about.com

GreenCurry

I tried to cheat this one by using store-bought curry paste, and it came out really bland. I’m not sure if it’s the brand I used (World Foods), the quantity (3 heaping tablespoons), or if curry paste just isn’t something you should use from a jar. It wasn’t bad, just boring, and I think I’ll try another brand before I go nuts trying to find all the curry ingredients in the local Asian supermarket.

Stuffed Green Peppers

Served Saturday night, recipe from allrecipes.com

stuffedpeppers

I added lean ground turkey to this vegetarian recipe, and quadrupled the recipe as we were having friends over for dinner. It was very well received, and two stuffed pepper halves each seemed like the right amount of food. No side dish needed, this is a nice all-in-one meal.

Exercise

Workout Routine

My first step towards building more strength and endurance is just to work out more consistently. I find that if I don’t carve out dedicated time in advance I certainly don’t “find” any during the week, so I’ve started waking up earlier so I can get Bitmap to daycare and hit the gym for at least half an hour before starting work.

I’ve been thinking of ways to track my progress that aren’t scale based, and decided to make a silhouette of my current shape see how it changes over time. I guess these are slightly graphic, in the way that a medical illustration of a woman in a bikini could be considered graphic. Apologies for offending anyone’s delicate sensibilities.

SilhouetteFront-1-2-2014SilhouetteSide-1-2-2014

I just finished my first week as a bona fide gym member. I did strength work at the gym 3 days, aerials class, hand balancing class, and two runs, plus one day of total rest.

Once I figure out a regular routine I’ll start tracking the weight / reps for my strength training. I’m working with the trainer at my gym to come up with some routines to make sure I’m working all the muscles I need to.

 

 

Exercise

Hard Reset

Following my miscarriage I did a lot of loafing and moping. With said loafing and moping I also did a lot of eating and drinking. In the last two months I’ve gained more than 15 pounds and my body fat has shot up, while my strength has deteriorated to the point I can no longer do a pull up, much less the two I could do this past summer. So it’s time to crack down on both my eating and my exercise habits.

Track My Weight on Fitbit

First up is my diet. I did Weight Watchers for a while a few years ago, and had a lot of success with it.  I know what I should and should not be eating (as well as how much). While I may decide to go the tedious account-for-every-bite route later on, for now I want to focus on simply eating healthy food. A nutritionist friend of mine pointed out that small, incremental change is easier to maintain so I’m starting with dinner. I’m planning a week’s worth of meals at a time, aiming to cook fresh food 4 days a week. By planning dinner ahead, I can avoid a lot of the last minute “I don’t want to cook* so let’s order in / eat out.”

I also joined a cheap gym. I do have a treadmill and pull up bar at home, which I haven’t been using enough, but since I work from home there’s a psychological advantage to going to an actual gym. Mine is on the way to/from my daughter’s day care, so I can easily stop there on the way home from dropping her off. It helps to go to the gym before I check my email and start getting into “work mode.” I find that if I can force myself to go, I work out longer at a gym. But mostly I joined it for access to weights and dumbbells, which are both too expensive and large for me to want to invest in for home. It does, however, mean I need to get up earlier and go to bed at a reasonable hour. No more playing video games until 1am.

I’m not expecting any dramatic Biggest Loser style transformations. I know how to lose weight, and that’s not my goal here. Instead I’m hoping to break out of the habit of eating mostly junk food and then loafing around because I feel too tired / lazy to exercise. I have a feeling I’ll slim down a bit in the process, but this is for the long game.

* Full disclosure: RD does almost all of the cooking around our house, so this is a big change on that front too.

Crafting

Sweater Finished

2014-01-18 10.49.28One of my goals before going on vacation was to finish the sweater I’d been working on, so I wouldn’t have to lug a sweater to Florida. I’m happy to say I succeeded!

The pattern is called Antler Cardigan by Tin Can Knits. I knit it out of Ella Rae Classic Superwash. It took about a month, I started it in early December.

I’ve actually been knitting a lot lately, and knit a baby sweater for a friend of mine who is expecting any day now. It’s a pattern called Tiny Rocky Coast and features little mini-cable waves all over. It’s knit in a hand-dyed sock yarn which is a blend of merino wool and nylon.

2013-12-08 15.19.24

I really should work on some of my in-progress projects, but instead I’m starting something new. I’m attempting to draft my own pattern for an irish sweater, having been unable to find any I particularly liked. Just charting the thing out has been daunting, I’m a little afraid to attempt to knit it.

Family

6 week checkup

After you have a child you’re considered “postpartum.” I don’t know what the analogous word is for miscarriage, but at this point I am 6 weeks post-miscarriage. And still bleeding.

It hasn’t been constant and it hasn’t been much, but it’s clear my body is still processing the miscarriage. And like seemingly every other pregnancy-related symptom I have it is “not common but not unusual.” Just what every girl wants to hear!

To be fair, it’s better than hearing “yes, something is wrong, let’s schedule you for surgery.” Or at least that’s what I tell myself. I met with my midwife yesterday and was told the same thing I’ve been hearing the last 6 weeks: wait and see. Although at this point it’s more “wait it out.” Unless I start massively hemorrhaging or having other go-to-the-ER type problems, there’s not much left to see.

All my lab work and exams came back well within the range of normal, my body is just taking its sweet time getting all the pregnancy hormones out of my system. In the mean time my body is trying to ovulate, but not quite making it, so it’s in what my husband creatively described as a “race condition.”. Or in more concrete terms, it’s like a toilet with a broken flapper. It’s just constantly filling and flushing. It’s just as glamorous as it sounds.

I had a good cry at the midwife’s office. She reassured me that everything is normal and there is really nothing to indicate I can’t carry another child to term. I told her I didn’t believe her, and she said that was normal too. She expects the bleeding to resolve “within a few weeks.”  I’m trying to focus on all the awesome that fills the rest of my life, but it’s hard. As I come up on the due date from my first miscarriage (February 28) I’m trying not to obsess over calculating the earliest I could possibly have a second child (January 31, 2015), but it’s impossible.

So that’s my situation, a series of unfortunate events. Nothing major, nothing wrong, just a nice tidy pile of bad luck.

Family

Now is the hard part

Three weeks ago I had my second miscarriage. It was very different than the first, in nearly every way. I was farther along, it was a home, and 3 weeks later I’m still not back to normal physically. Nevermind emotionally.

The reaction from friends and family has largely mirrored my own: how could this happen? One miscarriage is not so unusual, but two? Well, it turns out they’re not so unusual either. At least, not unusual enough to justify the extensive testing that comes with recurrent miscarriage, which is done after your third.

No one is surprised that it’s an emotional time for me. Now, at three weeks out, it’s starting to get hard. The remaining physical symptoms make it impossible for me to put the miscarriage out of my mind for more than an hour or so. But everyone else has moved on. Even my husband is pretty much business-as-usual at this point. Meanwhile I’m on my third package of maxi-pads, knowing full well that the longer this continues the longer it will be until we can consider trying again. I was originally due in February 2014, and now the soonest I could have another child is 2015. Or, from where I’m sitting, an eternity.

One of the hardest things to navigate at this point is well meaning friends who try to point out silver linings, or “at leasts.” At least you know you can get pregnant. At least you’re young and have plenty of time to try again. At least this will give you some more time to sleep in. At least you already have a child. They’re genuine expressions of sympathy, and they’re true, but to be honest they’re not very comforting. I have a hard time remaining gracious when people say them, but I know they just don’t know what else to say.

To their credit, there are a lot of silver linings. We’ve made quite a bit of lemonade from the situation, not the least of which is planning a family trip to Disney World. The first time I went I was pregnant with Bitmap, and couldn’t go on any of the rides. RevolvingDork is excited to take me on Space Mountain.

There’s a second type of reaction I get: people who are afraid it could happen to them. They want to know as many details as they can acquire politely. What caused my miscarriages? Is it something I did? Something I am? Is it likely to happen again? I actually don’t mind these, and try to be as forthcoming as possible.

Here’s what I know: having two miscarriages in a row is uncommon, but not abnormal. In most cases miscarriage is a way for your body to handle a fetus that wasn’t going to make it to begin with. It happens often enough that it’s well within the statistical realm of “bad luck.” Lacking other complications or signs of problems, most doctors won’t refer you to an endocrinologist until your third miscarriage.

My two miscarriages were very different. The first one was ‘missed,’ we only found out about it during the ultrasound, and was surgically removed. It was more or less painless, and I recovered within a few days. The second was exactly like going into labor. I had contractions for eight hours, my water broke, and then I delivered something. It was terrifying and painful and three weeks later I’m still wondering when my body will be done with it so I can move on.

We did genetic testing on the first one, and it came back genetically normal. I also had a lot of genetic testing done on myself, and all of that came back normal. Thyroid problems sometimes cause miscarriages, but mine is normal. Add to that a totally normal first pregnancy with a happy healthy baby girl (which itself rules out a few major causes of miscarriage), and it looks a lot like bad luck. I know I should be glad to hear there isn’t anything obviously wrong with me, but at the same time not knowing what went wrong doesn’t feel great.

I’m not sure where to go from here. My doctor, midwife, and husband all feel confident I can carry a child to term again. I waver back and forth. On good days I gather the strength of all the women who came forward to tell me about their multiple miscarriages. I look at the wonderful children they were rewarded with for their perseverance, and think “of course we’ll try again.” Other days the thought of going through this again is just too much to bear, and I start mumbling to my husband about maybe investigating adoption.

I know eventually I’ll start to feel more normal. The bleeding will stop and I won’t have such an ongoing reminder. When spring comes I’ll almost certainly want to try again, and if I do get pregnant I’ll be a neurotic mess for at least the first four months. Meanwhile I’ll try to focus on other things, like my business and my existing family. I have a lot of good things going on right now, and I haven’t forgotten them. But some days I just feel sad and crappy, and I think that’s OK too.

Family

Unsolicited Advice for Parents-to-Be

I have about a million pregnant friends right now. Here’s the new parent advice post no one has asked me to write. Because if there is anyone who gets unsolicited advice, it is new moms.

The first few months might totally suck, or they might not.

Some babies come out cooing adorable blobs who sleep and smile and are generally great. These are called “easy” babies, and I hope you have one. But you might not. Some babies just are not happy with their lot in life. For the first few months my daughter had two states: crying and sleeping. She almost never slept. When people told me to “just enjoy” the newborn phase I wanted to punch them in the face.

I’m not saying this to scare you. Most babies are not as hard as mine was. But if yours is, it’s OK to not like it. It’s OK to wish your miserable grub would hurry up and start becoming a sentient being. The good news is they will grow out of it, and quickly. It’ll feel like an eternity while you’re living through it, but it’ll pass. Really. Once Bitmap got mobile she was like a totally different (happy) kid.

If the newborn stage sucks, just hang on. It’ll get better. And don’t be afraid to ask for help in the meantime.

You will feel like you are screwing it up. Maybe a lot.

worlds_okayest_mom_mugIn a world of mommy blogs and pinterest familes, it’s easy to feel like you’re fucking up. Whatever your parenting “style” is, you probably won’t be able to live up to it 100%. There will be times when your kid eats nothing but kraft cheese, or watches TV for 2 hours straight, or stays up till 10, or you’re just too goddamned tired to get out of bed to rock him to sleep for the 27th time. This doesn’t make you a bad parent, it makes you a human. It’s OK to be less than perfect. Shrug it off and try to do better next time.

Your instincts know better than Dr Sears

Parenting book are great for the “what the hell do I do when…” stuff, but don’t let them override your gut instincts. You know your kid better than any book does, and if something doesn’t seem like it’s right for your family, just don’t do it. Parenting books are written to help manage the average child, but no child is actually average.

You’ll run into this a lot when talking about anything sleep-related. Let them cry. Never let them cry. Co-sleep. Never co-sleep. Every kid is different, just try stuff until you find something that works.

Take care of yourself

A kid whose parents are insane from sleep deprivation or running around like crazy people isn’t gaining much. Not every naptime needs to be spent making organic baby food puree. No one who has actually done this before will judge you if you grab a jar of Gerber and pour yourself a glass of wine every now and then. Find a qualified babysitter and get out of the house on occasion. Yes, it’s expensive, but not as expensive as the years of therapy your kid will need if you start resenting them for ruining your life. Don’t wait until your kid is off to college to have your first postpartum date night.

Speaking of postpartum life, stand up for yourself if something feels off. Giving birth is a huge thing for your body to go through, and it’ll take a while to recover fully but you shouldn’t feel totally broken. Occasionally, weird stuff happens. If it’s been a few weeks and things aren’t getting back to normal, body-wise, talk to your doctor and insist they take it seriously.

Find yourself a village

Raising a kid is about 8,000 times easier if you have a local network of people you trust. If you have a group of friends with kids around the same age, you can trade babysitting services on credit and have a social life without breaking the bank. For some people, family is a godsend. If your family sucks, you might find your village at church. If your’e not religious, try a local parenting group.

If you’ve been thinking of going back to church/temple, now is a great time. Being pregnant or having a young child is a pretty good ice breaker. Also, if you go to a new church and no one talks to you, find a church that sucks less. It’s OK if it’s not the same denomination as what you grew up with, the basic principals are usually the same. Finding friendly people who share your general world view is more important than going somewhere you agree with the priest or rabbi on every bit of religious minutiae.

If you’re not strongly religious, but like the idea of a church community, try Unitarian Universalists (sometimes described as church for agnostics) and if you’re atheist try the Secular Humanists.

Cover all upholstered furniture

Seriously, babies are puke factories. That tiny burp cloth is adorable, but ultimately useless. Just cover the whole damned couch with a waterproof mattress pad and some cheap sheets from Target. You can reunite with your couch once your kid’s stomach valve has figured out how to close.

 

Congratulations, you now know everything I do about parenting. Good luck.

New Construction Townhome, Organization

It turns out you can wash pillows

I was browsing Pinterest for work (yes that is an actual thing) and saw a pin on how to whiten your pillows. It links to a “magic whitening formula,” most of which is probably just OH MY GOD DID EVERYONE ELSE KNOW PILLOWS WERE WASHABLE?

Somewhat skeptical, I went to the Closet of Old Gross Pillows (aka the guest closet) and read the tags. Lo and behold, they all say they’re machine washable. By George, I’ll try it!

Since I have a high efficiency front loader, the recipe in the article won’t work for me. But with a little improvising I came up with something that worked really well.

  • 1 tbsp powdered laundry detergent
  • 1 tbsp borax
  • 1 tbsp dish detergent
  • bleach to the “max” line in my machine’s bleach dispenser

For the love of god, defer to the instructions on your machine if you decide to try this. I use a very low-suds detergent, and did not have any issues in my machine, but please use common sense and err on the side of caution.

My machine has a pretty good soak setting, but for the grosser pillows I stopped it during the rinse cycle and ran them through again. Then I chucked them in the dryer. Martha says to make some felted dryer balls to fluff them up, but aint nobody got time for that. They dried just fine on their own.

So how’d they come out?

When I pulled them out of the dryer I thought “meh, they still look kinda dingy.” And then I set them down next to the ones that hadn’t been washed yet.

Whiten old pillows

Prior to washing, the left and right pillows were the same color. Gross!

I think most of the credit goes to simply washing the pillows, rather than the “magic” whitening solution, but I’m happy either way.