On Anna's Plate

If there’s one thing I tell my English students time and time again, it’s that reading is lame. Why read something like a nerd when you can look at a picture, like a cool person would? Now that Anna got Photoshop, I can make turn everything into a visual and never have to read again (plus, I can put Photoshop the dogs’ heads on the bodies of famous historical figures. Prepare to meet Napoleon Boneabark). Inspired by these visual recipes, I decided to create a visual recipe for Cooking Light’s Miso Chicken Recipe (but in a shocking twist worthy of M. Night Shaymalananan, the chicken has been replaced with salmon. Gasp!) So stop reading this, dweeb, and check out the recipe below.

I guess that’s how I’d describe myself these days.  I do usually have a vegetarian breakfast and lunch…but then dinner almost always involves some sort of meat. 

Yesterday, I had a vegetarian wrap for lunch, starring this:

…which, I know, looks like something the cat would hack up.  But it’s actually black bean “hummus”—I just mashed a bunch of black beans with about a tbsp. of sabra hummus and a good shake of nutritional yeast.  Easy!

The full wrap:

Purely veg!  Dinner, on the other hand, was meat-tastic:

Homemade spaghetti sauce with ground beef, crushed tomatoes, lots of onion and garlic, and dried basil. 

It still feels a little weird to eat a big dish of meat for dinner…but I have to admit, this was really good.  Nothing beats good old-fashioned spaghetti and meat sauce. 

In baby news, we had a successful doctor’s appointment this morning—got to see little Lila’s face in all her 3D glory!  Truthfully, the 3D ultrasounds have always freaked me out a little bit…but it was actually so neat to really *see* her—I feel like now we have a little bit better of an idea of who will be coming out to greet us in a few months!

I think she takes after Ryan…she was goofing around during much of the ultrasound, kicking her legs behind her head.  She also covered her face with her hand at one point:

….I’m pretty sure that she did this right after Ryan told a lame joke to the ultrasound technician.  She’s already embarrassed of her old man. 

That’s not to say that she’s all Ryan.  Like me, she seems to have mastered a pretty effective lip pout:

…which I’m sure we’ll see a few hundred thousand times in the first few years when she doesn’t get her way.  Just like mama. 

Hope you have a great Tuesday!

Ryan and I were saying over the weekend, January is a hard month.  When we were up in Pennsylvania, I always assumed that it was just a sucky month because we usually found ourselves trudging through three feet of snow to go anywhere…but now that we’re in Alabama, I know that’s not true.  We’ve yet to see snow stick here (although we did get big flurries last week!), and other than a few freezing days, the temps have been satisfyingly mild…and still, I find myself feeling…just blah.  Spring feels so far away in January, even in the South. 

At the same time, in this year’s January, I find myself wishing that time would slow down a little bit, because spring = baby = EEK!!!  There is still SO much that we have to do—we’re meeting with a potential pediatrician today, and hoping that it goes well.  If we like this doctor, that would be a huge scratch off on the to-do list.  The process of preparing for a baby is (duh) completely overwhelming at times.  We went into our giant Babies R Us last night, hoping to pick up some essentials.  We wandered up and down the aisles for about 45 minutes, and then left with a ten-pack of baby clothes hangers, because…well, that was all I could wrap my mind around us needing.  There are so many choices, so many “must haves”—and the thing about the “must haves” is that you know you’ll only end up using about 1/3 of them, if that. 

Sigh.

I’m not complaining,  because honestly, I do find the whole nesting/preparation element to be pretty fun—but it’s also overwhelming and intimidating.  What if we don’t pick the right sheets?  What if we don’t buy the right swaddler?  What if we buy ten pacimals, only to discover that Lila really prefers the wubanub???

Deeeeeeep breath.

Sometimes I think the hardest thing about pregnancy isn’t the nausea, or the stretch marks, or the hammer constantly driving itself into your lower back…it’s the waiting.  Because it’s during the waiting period that you can drive…yourself…crazy.  Crazy with happy anticipation, but also with worry, angst, and fear.  One of the strangest parts of being pregnant, for me, has been an increased feeling of constant anxiety, because somehow the baby growing inside of me makes it seem like there’s suddenly more at stake. This is not at all to say that my life pre-pregnancy didn’t matter…only that I now find myself thinking more and more about how lucky I am.  And along with that awareness comes that perpetual thought of how easily all of this could be taken away. 

See?  January makes me fun. 

This was supposed to be a post about chicken:

But I guess I kind of strayed, huh?  

I guess I’d better get used to it, because from what I’ve heard, parenthood is just one giant flaming ball of anxiety that never really ends. 

I’m trying to focus on the things I’m looking forward to, rather than worry about the things I can’t control.  I was working on photoshop again last night, editing some of our pictures from our Nantucket trip, two summers ago.  We’re going back this summer, and I’m so excited.  Just looking at these pictures gets me excited for spring…and summer…and everything that will come after that.

Plus, looking at this picture:

…never fails to put me in a better mood.  Lila…meet your father.  He is one goofy bastard.

Sadly, this is not what I woke up to this morning.  I woke up to a frosty lawn, a terrier wedged into my side, and someone else’s jimmy legs creating an earthquake in the bed. 

But I still woke up in a good mood.

Yesterday afternoon, my doctor’s office called and said that I PASSED my three hour glucose test!!!

You know, it’s funny—after getting so upset about the initial test, I calmed down and realized that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I did have gestational diabetes—I’d just deal with it.  Your comments and e-mails from other mamas-to-be and current mamas certainly helped…a LOT.  So, I went into the three hour test with the expectation that I wasn’t going to pass and that I would just need to deal with the cards I’d been dealt. 

And then…the cards dealt me a passed test!!!

As much as I’d come to terms with the fact that gestational diabetes might just be something I’d be dealing with in pregnancy….I was pretty pleased when I got that call.    I guess you just never know. 

Thank you again for all of your sweet comments and e-mails—this wasn’t the first hiccup in my pregnancy, and I’m sure it won’t be the last! 

I don’t have food photos to show you, but hopefully I will soon, because I opened up an early birthday present from my parents yesterday, and recently installed…photoshop!!! I am SO excited to play around with this software—I’ve been working with it all morning, revisiting some of our old photos to see what all I can do.  It’s pretty complicated, and I can already see that it’s going to take me a VERY long time feeling comfortable with the software—but I already love it!

Here are some of the photos I played with this morning, along with that Nantucket sunrise:

French cows:

Relaxing after a hike:

My two favorite guys (doing what they do best):

…and sweet Sophie:

I know I’m going to love having this software, especially once Lila comes along. 

Hope you have a great Saturday! The sun is out, so we’re about to go enjoy it!

No, not this one:

…although I do want to see this movie.  Meryl can do no wrong. 

Yesterday at my doctor’s appointment, my blood revealed not only a high level of sugar (and thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for your words of encouragement—I’ll definitely keep you informed on how the test goes tomorrow!!), but low iron levels too.

Sigh.

Low iron is something a lot of pregnant women deal with, so I wasn’t really surprised, especially with my partly vegetarian diet.  I’ve added meat back into my meals throughout the pregnancy, but I’ve hardly been downing steaks every night.  Anyway, my doctor gave me a prescription for an iron supplement, and I’ve decided to do what I can through incorporating more iron-rich foods in my daily diet—red meat, chicken, eggs, dark leafy greens, beans, and…artichokes?

Who knew?

I didn’t!  But when I left to teach my class yesterday afternoon, Ryan said that he’d have dinner waiting for me when I got back, and sure enough…

…it was an iron-fest of eats! Steak, along with a really tasty salad that he called the “Iron Lady Salad”—clever, Ryan.  This salad had beans and artichokes, which are very rich in iron, along with olives, bell peppers, parsley, and olive oil.  Yum!

A tasty dish from a very sweet husband. 

Lots of things going on on the pregnancy front today—we met with our doula this morning, and we’ll be attending our first set of parenting classes tonight.  Then, tomorrow, it’s up and at ‘em bright and early for the three hour glucose test.   Wish me luck!

Adios!

That might be a direct quote from this weekend.  And yes, I have been, admittedly, more irritable lately.  Not just more irritable—more emotional in general.  I’ve had some moments of inexplicable weepiness, some moments of extreme joy—it seems like these days, whatever I’m feeling is AMPLIFIED times about 25.  Or 50.  Or 100. 

And this morning, I was feeling…nervous.  This was my breakfast:

Mmmmm….nothing like 50 grams of sugar to get you going at 7 am.  I had a bad feeling about this glucose test, and I was right to be nervous: I failed. 

Now, a lot of women fail their first glucose test.  You drink the orange stuff, wait an hour, they prick your finger, and if your sugar levels aren’t below a certain level, you have to take another, more comprehensive three hour test. 

I thought I might fail the test, just because many women do.  But I didn’t think I’d fail so badly—my number was really high.  And now, because of that, I’ve pretty much convinced myself that I’m going to fail the three hour test too, and will be diagnosed with gestational diabetes. 

Rational?

Not necessarily.  I’ll take the three hour test on Thursday, so we don’t have to wait too long to find out.  But, as I said, my number for the first test was so high, I’m not very hopeful that the third test is going to go well.

And then what? 

Then, I guess I’ll be diagnosed with gestational diabetes, and we’ll take it from there.  It’s not the end of the world, which is what I keep telling myself in an attempt to stay rational. 

But irrationally…I’m pissed.  I’m at a healthy weight for my height, and haven’t gained excessive weight in pregnancy (I’m almost 29 weeks and up 16 pounds).  I eat healthy.  I’ve stayed active, exercising almost every day through weights, walking, and yoga.

It just doesn’t seem fair.

Earlier today, after we’d gotten the results of the first test, I found myself thinking, “Oh, maybe I can trick the three hour test by only eating pure protein for the next two days! Maybe I can jog before the test!” 

Obviously that’s a bad idea.  If I do have gestational diabetes, I need to know about it, for my health and definitely for the health of Lila.  The truth is, no one likes feeling like they’ve failed something, and you definitely don’t like feeling like you’ve failed your unborn child.  I keep wondering if there is something I should have been doing throughout the pregnancy to ensure that this wasn’t an issue…but I don’t know what I could have done.  Again, I eat healthy, I exercise, so if I have gestational diabetes, I have it.  The body does strange things in pregnancy, and so much of being pregnant has taught me that there are going to be times where your body is simply out of your control—and that’s a scary feeling.

Like so much else that’s happened thus far, I’m just going to do my best to roll with the punches, and to remember that at the end of all this, we get the best gift in the world—Lila Scott. 

Here’s a 28.5 week bump shot—officially in the third trimester!

(and fresh from a workout ). 

Have a great day!

That woman of mine she ain’t happy
Unless she finds something wrong and has someone to blame
If it ain’t one thing it’s another one on the way…

Remember back in my 20 week update when I said that I wasn’t having mood swings?

Those days are over. 

I’m going to do a third trimester update tomorrow, after we have our doctor’s appointment with the dreaded glucose test.  But suffice it to say that my moods have been a little…errrr, swingy lately. 

Obviously I blame the pregnancy.  And the rain—the rain hasn’t helped.  After my bragging about our gorgeous weather on Friday, it proceeded to rain allllllll weekend long.  It wasn’t too bad—perfect weather for cleaning out the house (which we did all weekend)…seeing a movie (My Week With Marilyn)…and lots of naps:

Is he kidding right now?  What a prince.  I stacked the dog beds on top of one another so that I could mop the house, and Baxter used the situation to his advantage.

We also made some yummy meals involving cheese…lots and lots of cheese.  Friday night, we made homemade veggie pizzas:

That one is mine…all mine. 

Then last night, we pulled out the panini press.  We got this press a few months ago when my mother and her sisters were cleaning out my grandmother’s house—my grandmother loved a good kitchen appliance.  The press was basically unused, and no one else wanted it, so my mom snagged it for me and Ryan.  I was worried that it might do the same at our house—sit and gather dust—but, Ryan has actually been using it quite a bit! And I have to say, it really does make a difference having a press—all of the sandwiches we’ve made with it have been delicious! Including last night’s dinner:

Eggplant, zucchini, and mozzarella with pizza sauce.  Pizza in a panini!

Well, the rain has turned into fog…which might be even more depressing than rain.  But, it’s time to get going—I have a long to-do list before my first class tomorrow.  Hope you have a great Monday!

January…sixty-seven degrees…sunny…lunch al fresco:

Of course, there’s a downside to all this warm weather and sunshine: the dogs want to play all day long:

Actually, only one dog wants to play.  The other dog prefers to use his tennis ball as a pillow:

Whatever floats your boat, right?

Happy Friday!

Well, another great vacation is winding down for us.  Our classes start on Monday, so we’re driving back to Alabama today and will probably be hard at work all weekend, setting up our class websites, putting the final touches on syllabi, and working on assignment details.

Sigh.

The fun had to end sometime, right?

We’ve been gathering up all sorts of baby stuff in our past few days in Louisiana.  While Lila has already gotten quite a bit of brand-new clothing items and other baby goods, she’ll also be rocking the hand-me-downs like no other. 

I wasn’t that surprised when we found out Lila was a girl.  I come from a *very* girl-heavy family.  Growing up, I was the youngest in the family for a long time, so I often wore hand-me-downs myself as a kid.  It didn’t bother me—some of the hand-me-downs were my favorite things to wear!  I can remember a patchwork cat sweater that cycled its way down to me from my sister, and I’m pretty sure it belonged to my cousin before that. 

Think about that for a second: a patchwork cat sweater.

Damn.

Anyway, now that Lila is on the way, I’m even more appreciative of our female-centric family.  We have 9 girls from age 13 and under in the family right now, and Lila will make number ten.  That means hand-me-downs galore!

Most are coming from Katherine and Sophie (and those have cycled through cousins before her), so when we picked up the giant tupperware boxes filled with onesies, dresses, shoes—even bathing suits and tutus!—I knew we’d hit the jackpot!

Sophie is one stylish tot, so Lila is getting some pretty cute stuff. I mean, Baby Uggs?!?  Could you just die?

It was fun to go through the boxes.  So many pieces were familiar—it was like taking a little walk down memory lane…

Remember the sip ‘n’ see we had for Sophie last year?  I found the dress that she wore for the first real shindig thrown in her honor:

Well, she wore it until she got a little more comfortable at the end of the night:

All great parties end with beards and nudity, right?

And I got a little teary-eyed when I spotted this onesie:

(pardon my hair and lack of makeup…)

…which she wore when she was only a week old:

So tiny! I can’t believe Lila will be that small!  But even more than that, I can’t believe that in less than two years, she’ll grow into a laughing, talking, running little girl:

…like Sophie is now. 

Well, we better hit the road…see ya in Alabama!

I tried to come up with a better title (something Bachelor-themed, perhaps?), but this was the best I could do.  Ignore the lame title.  Make the chili.  It will win you over faster than you can say Ben Flajanainkinik.  Faster than you can accuse someone of not being here for the right reasons.  Faster than you can drink too much wine and suggest that it might be fun to get some new “experiences” of the lesbian nature in the Bachelor mansion.  Faster than you can play “This Year’s Love” on a piano in a field of wildflowers.

Faster than that.

This chili is seriously good…and seriously easy, depending on the steps you take.  To make it really easy, you can do what I did and pick up a white chili kit at the grocery store—they’re right next to the regular ol’ chili kits.  I picked up the kit for the masa, and ended up using the spice pack as well, but you could easily just use the masa (or just get masa alone, sans kit) and put your own spices in the chili—it’s usually a combo of salt, cumin, chili powder, and cayenne pepper.  Easy.

White Chicken Chili

Ingredients:

1 white chili kit (make sure it includes a separate packet of masa powder)

1 onion, chopped

2/3 cup red bell pepper, chopped

1 can diced tomatoes

1 can green chilies

3 cans Great Northern Beans

2-3 cups chicken stock

3 cups cooked, shredded chicken

optional garnishes

Directions:

To start, saute an onion in olive oil:

Cook the onion over pretty low heat—you don’t want to really brown them, you just want to soften them.  After cooking them for about 10 minutes, you can add veggies.  I used about 3/4 of a chopped red pepper:

…along with a can of mild green chilies.  If you wanted to really kick up the heat, you could also add a minced jalapeno pepper here. 

Let the veggies hang out and cook for about 10-15 minutes until they’re very soft, then add one drained can of diced tomatoes:    

Then, to the veggies, add two cans of drained and rinsed Great Northern or cannellini beans, plus 2-3 cups of chicken broth and about 3 cups of cooked, shredded chicken. You can cook the chicken yourself, or do what I did and buy a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store and shred it into bite size pieces.  Easy.

You should also add your spices at this point—again, you can use the spices from your kit, or just add a mix of chili spices according to your taste and preference.

Now, here’s where things get interesting.  Take a third can of beans and put them in the food processor, liquid and all.  Add the masa packet from your chili mix (or about 2 tbsp. of masa, if you aren’t using a kit), and blend until smooth, then add to the chili:

This will give your chili a really nice thickness:

See?

After this, the chili should simmer for about 30-45 minutes so that the flavors can really meld.  And, a note—the chicken becomes *very* shredded during this final cooking process, so if you wanted bigger chunks of chicken, you could add them in at the very end, rather than in the middle of the process.  Your choice. 

Final product:

Chili is really all about the garnishes, isn’t it?  Some ideas: fresh Monterrey jack cheese, cilantro, tortilla chips, chopped tomato, or avocado. 

Mmmmm…this chili is here for all the right reasons.

Seriously.