Baby on the way

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It’s already “Facebook official,” so I’m just catching up on the blog. Here’s the first picture of the littlest Wiard.

We are 10 weeks along and due on October 1st. Hannah is very excited about a baby coming. She is very nurturing toward younger kids and babies, so we are excited to see how she embraces her new role.

Our first appointment was on Monday, and we feel good about the ob/gyn group we have chosen. The staff is half doctors and half midwives, and we think this will be a good fit for the type of delivery that we are hoping for.

We are so thankful for God continuing to bring gifts to our family. Please pray that this pregnancy continues to go well, and we look forward to meeting this little person in the fall!

Sister productivity

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Sometimes when Brett has a business trip coming up, I give my sister, Kristen, a call and beg her to come and have some girl time. She has been blessed with jobs with a crazy amount of vacation days, so she is usually willing and able to come soak up some Texas sunshine.

I love the company, and she loves the warmer weather (and hanging out with the pigtailed one), but we have mutually beneficial ulterior motives. I usually have a major project I need help with, and she has this strange desire to rescue me from my life of chaos, clutter and disorganization. She knows I have good intentions but lack motivation to follow through. Kristen = motivation.

We tackled several projects in our most recent weekend together, most involving the kitchen. We pulled several items to donate and rearranged some cabinets to better use the extra space. The cabinets with my plastic storage and baking dishes were probably the worst.

before

after

That felt good. Clutter makes me panicky.

There was also pantry clean-out, recipe organization and matching things with lids (or not). For all our hard work, we rewarded ourselves with good food. Check out this Superfood Bowl we made.

Seriously good – amazing textures and pops of flavor. And if you’ve never had quinoa – try it! It’s just as easy as making rice and is crazy good for you.

So Brett came back from his trip to a cleaner kitchen and a happier wife. And Kristen went back home to start her awesome new job. So I call this a WIN, except for Kristen teaching Hannah lines from “Mitt Romney – Bad Lip Reading.” Cleaning, jalapeño margaritas, good sister talks and one exciting Target trip – good times.

Date with Daddy

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The church where Hannah goes to preschool was hosting a Daddy-Daughter dance, so Brett and Hannah put on their fancy clothes and headed out on a date.

They were only there for 45 minutes, but with a toddler attention span, a lot gets squeezed in a short amount of time – pictures taken, cookies eaten, pink punch, and of course dancing.

Hannah was thrilled with the whole experience. I think we’re going to make this an annual event.

Baking bread

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Yeast scares me. It intimidates me with its bubbling and kneading and rising. So far, I have only tackled a couple yeast recipes – pizza crust and an easy focaccia. Recently, I wanted something to add to a pasta dinner and decided to be brave and try a French bread recipe that my mom made a lot, from the More-with-Less cookbook.

I’m not writing this as a bread tutorial, just to share some pictures of Hannah and I tackling the project together. She was a very willing helper and wanted to carry around her piece of dough for the whole day.

Kneading

Rolling

Silly face

Sorry I didn’t get any of the finished product, but it was good! The recipe makes a lot, so I got several meals out of it. We ate it in nice warm slices, then I made garlic toast, then I made french toast, then I made French bread pizza. Quite a bit of work and time (in my opinion), but lots of payoff!

Texas winters

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Seasons in Austin are different. Summer is long and hot. Fall lasts a couple weeks, but the trees either stay green or just go to brown. Winter could be anything. Usually, it’s mild and pleasant. Every couple of years, there’s some random snow or ice. This year, it seems like spring has already hit. Yesterday, it was almost 80. Here’s what it was like a year ago:

That was the most snow we’ve seen in our seven winters here. This year, we’ve been playing outside almost every day, usually without a jacket. Great for working off toddler energy. I wouldn’t mind a hard freeze to kill off some bugs, but, for the most part, this works for me!

Dinner tonight – Vietnamese noodle bowl

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I took Brett to his first Vietnamese restaurant in 2003, and he was hooked. Our favorite menu item is “bun” which is a noodle bowl, nothing involving a bun. This seems fairly straightforward – some kind of grilled meat or tofu on rice noodles, but the magic is in the sauce. Sweet, tangy, spicy.

A few years ago, I was able to track down a good recipe from an unexpected source. Emeril Lagasse – BAM – apparently makes a lot of Vietnamese food. So I’ve been making his sauce for years with a couple alterations. This link is to his sauce on the Food Network, here’s my version:

Nuoc Cham Sauce

  • 2 small garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 tsp. crushed red pepper
  • 2 Tbs. sugar
  • 2 Tbs. fresh lime juice
  • 1/4 c. rice vinegar (or whatever you have on hand)
  • 1/4 c. fish sauce
  • 1/4 c. water
  • 1/4 c. shredded carrot

Combine all ingredients in a glass container and mix until sugar is dissolved.

The noodle bowls are good with meat, but I usually just do tofu because it’s a great blank canvas for the yumminess of the sauce. I get vermicelli noodles from the Asian foods section (also where you can find the fish sauce).

I topped the cooked noodles with some stir-fried tofu, cilantro and green onions, and plenty of the magic sauce. For Hannah, I just mixed some noodles with shredded carrots and topped with tofu. She ate half the tofu and liked playing with the noodles, then we gave her the leftover cheeseburger from lunch.

This is fun to do for a “homemade take-out” night or just something to mix up the menu plan.  And it was a great, light dinner after stuffing myself with a double cheeseburger and french fries for lunch.

Oven cleaning semi-fail

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My oven glass has been bugging me for a while. Especially since Hannah loves to turn the light on and check out what I’m baking. We could barely even see what was in there!

I tried every cleaning product I own – I even used Bon Ami. This resulted in a minuscule amount of improvement. Then I found a blog post on this specific topic – Cleaning Oven Glass. I decided it was worth a shot.

Before

With the baking soda paste on

After 15 minutes, it looked pretty much just like before; I forgot to take a picture. Barely noticeable difference. Fail.

Then Brett took pity on me and wanted to show off his manly scrubbing skills, so he volunteered to give it some more elbow grease. The baking soda paste may have loosened up some of the grime, but I think it was the extra intense scrubbing that made real headway.

Much better! Unfortunately, there’s still a lot of baked-on brown-ness. Any tips on getting this truly clean?

Dinner tonight – Chili dogs

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It’s a winter picnic. Chili dogs, potato salad and brussels sprouts (like winter coleslaw?). We had our favorite Hebrew National hot dogs covered in vegetarian chili. For the potato salad, I did “baked” potatoes in the microwave, let them cool, peeled and sliced them, then tossed them with mayo (we get the olive oil kind), sour cream, green onions and some spices.

The chili is an easy way to stretch a pack of hot dogs. When one hot dog may not usually fill you up, one hot dog (on a wheat bun) under a mound of chili will probably do the trick.

Vegetarian Chili

  • 2 c. pinto beans (or one can)
  • 2 c. black beans (or one can)
  • half a jar of salsa
  • 2 Tbs. chili powder
  • 1 Tbs. cumin
  • 1 14 oz. can tomato sauce

Everything goes in the Crock Pot for several hours. The end. Super easy. Healthy, too, except I put some nacho cheese on the top. I did get Newman’s Own “All Natural” nacho cheese, but sorry, Paul, that stuff is not exactly health food. (by the way, “all natural” is an unregulated marketing term that can basically be slapped on any product, including ones with high fructose corn syrup, but that’s a post for another time)

For the brussels sprouts I tried this recipe entitled The Very Best Brussels Sprouts Ever. How could I not try it with a title like that? It was really easy and seriously good. I don’t know if they’re the best; I think they’re tied with roasting. The recipe says 4-5 hours on low, but they were done after 2 1/2 and got a little mushy, so if you try it (and you should!) cut the cooking time way down.

And that was dinner!

New additions/editions

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I love books. Duh. I have an English degree.

I don’t really like to read books unless I can finish them in one day. So I don’t start unless I know I have enough time to completely devour it. Some big ones take me longer; it took me five days to get through the four Twilight books.

With great excitement, I have added these new volumes to my collection in the past few weeks.

Some were Christmas and birthday presents; one is for Brett. I recently discovered that numerous books from our childhood favorite author Gladys Malvern were republished in 2011 after being out of print for decades. My mom got several for my sister and me, and we’ll read them then exchange.

I’ve been keeping a book wish list for a while, so I decided to use some of my Christmas money to get some. (side note: I don’t buy books that are available at the library, that’s a waste) Two of these books were published within the last two months, so I purchased them new, my only option. I was able to find used copies online of the rest of them, using Amazon and half.com. Buying used, I was able to save at least $3 on each book.

Buying used is the “greener” option as well as the cheaper option. And I had a nice surprise when looking at the list of my used book sellers. All were Goodwill operations from various parts of the country. So I was being green, saving money and supporting a non-profit that supplies valuable job opportunities. Cool how that worked out.

Yes, we have a Half Price Books store, but I’ve found that’s only a good resource when I’m randomly browsing for a general topic. When I go to look for a specific book, they rarely have what I’m wanting. And browsing just doesn’t work with a two-year-old, anyway, so online was the way to go in this case.

Anyway, now I’ve got a lot on my reading list. Four down so far. Hannah loves the preschool devotions book. Can’t wait to tackle the rest. Maybe I should give myself a couple days to catch up on housekeeping, though.