Another installment of...Look what I did this week!

It's Sunday night, and I remembered, so it's time for another (non-chronological) installment of (drumroll, please...)

(1) I actually stuck to my resolution and picked another cookbook to cook from this week. This time I cheated a smidge and picked one I know I like, but from which I've still only cooked a couple things. This week's winner is:

Sorry about the crappy picture. I grabbed it from a website and am too lazy to get a better one.

I cooked lentil soup, a cheese souffle, and country captain (which is a chicken curry dish). They were all excellent. I'd make any of them again. I only took pics of the souffle, though, because lentil soup always looks like dog food no matter how good it tastes, and I just forgot on country captain night.

I'm so pretty!

I deflated. I guess that's what we souffles do. Wah wah.

(2) On Wednesday, I took Asher to Mommy & Me Day at Raley Field (which, for those of you not from these parts, is where the Rivercats play.) (The Rivercats, for those of you again, are the Oakland A's AAA minor league team.) He was kind of in a funk, which is too bad, since he usually loves this event, but we still managed to have fun.

(3) At M&M day, we scored a free lawn seat for today's Rivercats game, so we went (I'm a sucker for free). We love going to the games and camping out in the lawn. The weather was lovely, so lovely that I took a nap on our blanket and missed half an inning (hey, I'm pregnant, ok?). The only thing that rained on our parade was that security wouldn't let us play ball on the lawn, which was ok last year but is apparently ix-nayed this year.

My husband making his "whatever, guy" face right after the security guard pooped on his game of ball with Ash. Is it bad that I think he looks hot when annoyed?

After the game, the kids got to run the bases. I didn't think Ash would do it since parents weren't allowed on the field, but he did. I was very proud of him.

He's looks so little on that big ol' field.

Crossing home

(5) Hubby & I seem to have an affinity for buying houses with useless fruit trees, the kind that bear truckloads of fruit you'd only want to eat in small quantities, if at all. Lemons, limes, oranges? No. Figs and persimmons? That's what our last house had. The current house has kumquats. Don't get me wrong, I actually quite like kumquats, but they're like sourpatch kids: you need to limit your intake unless you want your tongue to feel like it's covered in battery acid. And unfortunately, the tree bears all its fruit at once, so it's hard to space out your kumquat consumption. This is just what I didn't let fall on the ground this year:

This container is bigger than your average shoebox. Mr. Squirrel approves.

I did learn an interesting, if totally impractical fun fact while harvesting: the number of kumquats I can fit in my sports bra is at least 19. (I learned this at one point when I had a handful of fruit and realized my basket was just out of reach, so I improvised.) I also harvested the peas I grew. The peas have already been blanched and frozen. The kumquats are waiting to be made into marmalade and candied in wine. Hopefully I'll be posting pics of that in a few days.

(6) I think I've mentioned here before that we have a great yard with a lot of potential that just needs love. Yesterday, hubby and I combined to put 10 total (wo)man hours of love in the backyard. I actually kind of adore yard work. Hubby hates it. We (he) amended the soil, worked in the amendments by hand (because we can't till due to tree root situations), dug holes in our hard clay soil, planted a bunch of new plants, and transplanted a bunch of others. I looks soooo much better now.

 

Hopefully by next year this will be all filled in and lush looking. We really only need to plant one more azalea and wait. Oh, and do about 20 more feet of refurbing that rock river, mulch around the trees, weed the lawn... And then there's all the veggie garden stuff. Hmmm.

See you on the flip side.

April/May resolution

Subtitled: Who says resolutions are only for January 1?

We have the following conversation a LOT in our house:

   "What do you want for dinner?"

   "I don't know, what do you want?"

   "I don't know. Nothing sounds good."

   "Yeah, me neither."

   <Collective sigh>

This is especially true since Jake started eating paleo ( = no pasta, no rice, no couscous = there goes a lot of my ideas). I have come to realize that even though I theoretically enjoy cooking, my repertoire is extremely limited. Besides a few standbys (fish tacos, chicken & veggie stir fry, standard soups, pizzas, mixed veggie salads with some sort of meat), I rarely cook anymore. 

So I decided in April and May to try something new: each week I'm going to pick a cookbook off the shelf and select four or five recipes to try throughout the week. The only rules are that I haven't made the recipe before and that I make an effort to follow the recipe exactly (which I don't usually do unless I'm baking). This will be easy, since although I love cookbooks and have many, I almost never actually use them after I've had them for a couple weeks (I have some I've never used at all). I enjoy reading the recipes and looking at the pictures, but when it comes time to actually cook, I think of something I want and google a recipe, hence the lack of variety. I'm giving myself bonus points (prize tbd) for using ingredients I already have in the house, since I hate wasting food.

This week's selection: Pillsbury's The Best of Classic Cookbooks

I like this one because I can imagine that I'm a 1950s housewife, a favorite pretending game of mine (minus the smoking and ennui, but with all the afternoon drinking)(when I'm not pregnant, of course). Also, most of the appetizer recipes, predictably but also hilariously to me, involve crescent rolls. My goal for the week is to use up the perishables that are in the fridge before I head to Michigan next week to meet my new nephew. 

Progress report later.

ANOTHER blog? OMG, srsly?

I know, I know. Everybody and their dogs have blogs now. Everybody except me, you mean. And if I'm one thing, it's a sucker for peer pressure. That's not the main reason I'm blogging, though. I'm blogging for purely selfish reasons.

The first is that I've been terrible about documenting Asher's life. I take lots of pictures, yes, but my Asher journal is pathetic. It has approximately six entries in it, all of which are sentence fragments. I always think, "Oh, I'll remember this," but all I remember is thinking that I'll remember. I forget what it was I was supposed to remember.

The second is that I, as you know if you read my "about me," have a lot goals, toward which I take very little progress. In my head, I have all sorts of interests and skills. I'm a regular Martha Stewart/Ansel Adams/pioneer woman with a sprinkling of elite athlete mixed in. In my head. In reality, I get stymied every time I try to pursue a new goal by feeling like there is too much to learn, not enough time, etc. etc. All the usual excuses. But no more, I say! If there is one thing I learned during my 6+ years of psychology grad school, it's that one way to succeed at your goals is to make yourself publicly accountable. So, though I'm no big Oprah lover**, think of this as my online dream board. I'm going to blog about what I want to do/be/accomplish, and voila, it's going to happen.

(** Ok, full disclosure, I USED to be a huge Oprah lover, a few years ago before she became such a know-it-all, and all her interviews became just an outlet for her to talk about her personal quest for self-improvement. Back then, I wanted to be the next Dr. Phil. I was going to find a way to parlay my psych degree into being Oprah's relationship expert. But then she got really, really annoying, and my dream died. It's probably Oprah's fault that I ultimately decided not to be a career psychologist, actually.)

So along those lines, a few New Years resolutions:

(1) Work on my photography. I really, really, really want to be a good photographer. I want to take beautiful, artfully composed pictures of my children and maybe, one day, other people's children. So far, I've upgraded my camera and taken one photography class. What I want to do next is buy more lenses so I can have more control over my shots, but this is one of those situations where I get mired in the information overload and make no forward progress. But I resolve to read my new photography book I got for Christmas and do all the necessary research so that I can have my next new lens by Mother's Day.

(2) Start cooking again. I like to cook, but ever since my husband started his paleo diet (which deserves, and will get, its own post), I've lost the motivation to cook. I'm sure there are lots of delicious, even interesting, paleo-friendly things I'd enjoy cooking if I made the effort.

(3) Run a race. Even if it's just a 5k. Next year, my goal will be to train for a sprint triathlon, but for right now, just one race will do.

(4) Successfully grow some vegetables. My gardening skills (or lack thereof) will also get many posts I'm sure. Suffice it to say, my garden plants have no will to live. This year, though, I'm going to grow enough to can at least one jar if it kills me.

That's it for now, but this list will evolve through the year. I feel no need to keep the resolutions to 1/1, although it's a good place to start.

Thanks for joining my on my long, circuitous journey to become the person I actually am in my head.