Bec's Happybox

More Photos, More Food

If I'm not careful, this journal will turn into just a bunch of photos and some recipes.

But would that be so bad?

Today is my seventh wedding anniversary! I must say, this marriage is unexpectedly great.

As everyone knows, Tobias and I had a shotgun wedding and deep down inside, I don't think most people had a lot of hope for us. But, as Sahsez would say "Ha on you!" because so far, so wonderful.

To pat ourselves on the back for a marriage well-executed, we are going to Brasserie L'ecole tonight. Normally we go to a B&B on our anniversary but M'hijo is still getting up three times a night and I wouldn't want to inflict one of my nights on any of the grandparents, so we will return home to sleep. In separate beds. Me with the kids. Le sigh.

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Yesterday I took a nap in the middle of the day, and it's the first nap I've taken for three or four weeks. Somehow, even though the baby hasn't stopped waking up several times a night, I've been surviving without naps. But Monday morning he started a new thing where he is wide awake at 5ish and ready for action, and this is what really did me in. Hence the nap yesterday.

It's amazing how an hour or so of sleep in the daytime can somehow make up for weeks of lost nighttime sleep. Good thing too, because I realized on Tuesday how truly exhausted I was. At the grocery store, I had to reread my entire list after getting every single item and check the list against the contents of my cart each time. I couldn't keep two items in my head, just one.

It went like this: Read the list, check the cart, grab some rigatoni. Read the list, check the cart, get some milk. Read the list, check the cart, choose an avocado. Read the list, check the cart, choose an avoca---no wait, I just got one of those, see? There it is. Right there. So I can cross that off. Where's my pen? Oh, I didn't bring a pen. Okay. Read the list, check the cart, choose some parsley. Wait, did I get milk? Oh yes, there it is. I already got it. Okay. Read the list, check the cart, choose some parsl-- damnit! ad nauseum

That evening, being Valentine's Day, my dad and I attended a lecture on Flannery O'Connor, the Southern US writer of many dark, dark stories. The lecturer read a significant portion of A Good Man is Hard to Find, a short story that includes the execution-style murders of an entire family. Mmm, Valentine's Day!

The lecture was really good, but man was it hard to stay awake! If I was tired at 1:30pm at the grocery store, I was dead on my feet at 7pm at the lecture.

Exhaustion woes aside, though, M'hijo is an easy baby who is almost always happy and fairly predictable. The only time I can't count on him to be in a jovial mood is at the witching hour. This starts at about 5pm in our house. This is when I have to bring out the big guns. Just feeding and changing him isn't going to cut it during the witching hour. He requires a swaddle, bouncing, a soother and sometimes loud Ssshhing into his ear. But the good news is, if I do all those things, he is always consolable. It just takes a bit more work than usual. And I can tend to get quite frazzled in the process.

I have read online of other mothers' approaches to making the witching hour easier. It's usually something like put the baby down for a nap right before it begins, get older children involved in an activity, have dinner ready by then so you don't have the added stress of something burning on the stove while you console your little monkies, make sure everyone has reasonable blood sugar levels by having a snack at 3 or 4, etc. These all sound like they would work just fine, but they also involve work (which I try to avoid) and organization (which I lack), so I have made up my own witching hour solution. And it is called pour Mummy a glass of wine at 4:45. I tried this yesterday and it works wonderfully!

So basically yesterday was the beginning of a new lease on life for me. Nap + boozing = a happy family.

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Reading: The Lives of Saints by Nino Ricci. I am finding this pretty boring, but I will finish it. Also How To Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young. I don't actually need any instruction in this department, but I enjoy learning about other people's techniques. The Full Cupboard of Life by Alexander McCall Smith. These books are so formulaic, you'd think I'd stop reading them. But I can't. The sense of place he evokes is so soothing, I don't even care what happens in the story, I just want to read them to transport myself to Botswana for a while.

Listening to: All You Can Eat a podcast from the Pacific Palate blog.

Eating: Okay, the new recipes. Hmm, are there any? I'm at a loss. Oh yes! I've thought of two.

New Recipe Number 11: Vietnamese Caramelized Pork Chops - from a back issue of Gourmet. You make caramel, add lime juice, fish sauce, salt, and shallots and smother pork chops with it before putting them on the grill pan. This was okay, but the flavour of the sauce didn't really stick on the meat. Not sure if letting the meat sit in the sauce longer would help, since it's not really a marinade or anything. A recipe that looks better on paper, I think.

New Recipe Number 12: Vietnamese rice noodle salad - also from the Gourmet. Eh, whatever, I know how to make much more tasty versions of cold Asian noodle salads. This was too bland.

New Recipes Number 13: Grilled eggplant - sort of a no-brainer, but I'm glad I was inspired to put eggplant on the grill pan by this recipe in Nigel Slater's Appetite. Delicioso! I made Slater's "A creamy and unctuous potato dish" as well, this time using the stipulated heavy cream rather than cheating with coffee cream and milk, and man was it good! I think we are eating too much meat these days so it's nice to have a meatless meal that is so satisfying.

No time

I haven't been writing because I have too many events happening and I have no time.

I would like to ruminate on those things but I have NO TIME.

Instead, here is a photo of M'hijo, taken today, and below is way too much information about what I eat.

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Watching: The entire The Office, UK version. It was great.

Listening to: The Ricky Gervais Show, NPR: Books, NPR: Food, Winecast, KnitCast, Planet Japan. In other words, loads of Podcasts.

Eating: Hmmm, two weeks off and only five new recipes. Poor. Anyway, here there are:

New Recipe Number 6: Cream of Broccoli - This is from the All-New Joy of Cooking and it is one of the ones that was added in this newest addition. It's pretty good but I like it less than the broccoli soup recipe in Looney Spoons.

New Recipe Number 7: Spaghetti Pie with Major Onions - From my favourite cookbook that I don't own, Jurgen Goethe's Some Acquired Tastes. Anyone who gets me this book for my next birthday or Christmas or Mother's Day is a great person. This pie was okay, but I think I didn't add enough cheese. I may or may not try it again. It didn't quite match my taste memory of the spaghetti fritatta at Vincenzo's, the great gourmet grocery store in Waterloo.

New Recipe Number 8: Grilled Tomato Soup - also from the A-N JoC. Actually I used a combination of the "Cream of Tomato" and "Grilled Tomato" recipes. The result was so-so but I blame this entirely on the mediocre tomatoes. Next time I will try some Italian canned tomatoes. I bet the imported canned ones are better than fresh hothouse ones.

New Recipe Number 9: Broccoli rabe and provolone panini - From a back issue of Gourmet. I wanted to try out making paninis on my grill pan and this recipe looked good. It turned out to be not as easy as I had hoped to get those nice lines using one proper grill pan and one normal cast iron pan. I had to apply a lot of pressure to the top pan, and since my wrists already threaten to snap in two every time I pick up one of my cast iron pans, this was not trivial! It worked though, and the taste and texture and look were nice. I used broccollini rather than broccoli rabe because a) that's all I could find and b) I have a suspicion that these are the same vegetable with two different names. Any information on this is most welcome as Google has been unable to solve the mystery.

New Recipe Number 10: Krentenbollen - The English translation is currant buns and I got the recipe from Nick Malgieri's A Baker's Tour. I wouldn't normally make something called currant buns but Malgiere claims that these not-too-sweet buns are commonly used to make a sandwich with aged gouda in the Netherlands. I never saw them when we were over there in August, but we did see (and eat) lots of oude (aged) gouda. Tobias, in particular, is crazy about it. So I mostly made these for him. They were good! A nice compliment to the cheese. The recipe is online.