The Coy Pond

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying making Jarrod’s food. It’s so easy and so gratifying, and I can make so many servings for so little money! So far he’s eaten sweet potatoes, zucchini, and broccoflower (a broccoli/cauliflower hybrid, I think). He was iffy with each the first time he tasted them, but he learned to love them. He especially loves his sweet potatoes, but he’ll wolf the green vegies down as well.

So today, I was all excited while I cooked him up some pears. I carefully peeled, cored, cubed, and cooked until they were tender. I moved them to the food processor and ground them into ‘pear-sauce’. I tasted it. Delicious! I could have eaten the whole batch myself! I held myself back, after all, these were for Jarrod.

I filled one ice cube tray (still in the freezer) and put tonight’s serving in the fridge. I just knew he was going to love them! I mean seriously, who doesn’t love pears? Especially when they’ve been so lovingly prepared?

Bruce was sitting at the table when I fed Jarrod his dinner. I was so absolutely sure he would squeal with delight the moment he tasted the pears, I told Bruce he should watch.

Well, he watched. He watched as Jarrod took that first bite of pears and made the worst face since his last doctor visit. The second bite didn’t go much better. Third bite? Pretty much the same. I thought maybe he needed time to get used to them, so I combined them with cereal. As long as the spoon was at least 50% cereal, he’d eat it, but the more pears were involved, the less pleased he was. Eventually I stopped feeding him the pears and started feeding him only cereal, at which point he got very happy and opened his mouth wide for every bite.

That was when I decided to give him a spoon of 100% pears. The poor baby nearly gagged.

He loves broccoflower, but hates pears. Go figure!

We’ll give it one more try tomorrow!

Well here its been a few weeks since I posted. My first batch of beer was a mild success, completed a few weeks ago, but now that is almost gone and I was hungering for a new batch.

So two weeks ago I tried my next batch and ended up giving my outdoor plants a good soaking of really good/expensive beer. So another week went by, and I took a beer making class, and this inspired me to make my current batch, a Belgian Wit. Currently now fermenting x 1 week. This beer has combination of wheat and barley malts, and has flavoring from orange peel and Coriander seed. For any beer people, this is similar to Hoegaarden.

Anyway this batch seems to be going well, and fermenting away. But that did not satisfy my desire to brew. My mom is coming to town this weekend for Jarrod’s baptism, and she loves Ginger Ale. So why not brew Ginger Ale!
Christy picked up a book on soft brink brewing. So really I had no excuse not to brew. On Sunday evening I spent 4 hours fiddling with a less than explanatory recipe and finally brewing a pretty groovy Ginger Ale. I am really looking forward to trying this.

I should be able to refrigerate this in a day or so, after it carbonates. Of course I am a little nervous about this since it is carbonated with yeast and is in a glass bottles, which could mean a refrigerator explosion, but I have heard that this is pretty rare unless you keep it in there for a long time.

So I am hooked on brewing. I am reading all about homebrewing, great recipes, food pairings, etc. I picked up a 4 pack of beer on a homebrewer’s recommendation (yes a 4 pack since really good beer comes in 4 packs) of a fancy, and amazingly good micro brew beer. Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA is amazingly good, and surprisingly sweet, (for a beer that has so many hops that it should be barely edible). Anyway it is a lot of fun. Root beer would be my next soft drink, except that you can’t get the sassafras root except if you dig it up, and this stuff only grows on the East Coast! Booo!!! Well I will just have to live with that, and make some root beer with extract or with sassafras bark (which I hear is not as good for this).

Hope it all turns out!

He is so excited! (He seriously could not be more pleased with himself!)

Tongue used for balancing purposes only.

He is such a big boy! We are now facing a clothing dilemma. He’s six months old, and in this picture he is wearing a 6-month sleeper (Circo brand). It is pretty much to the end of its usefulness, as he can barely straighten his legs and when he does, the neckline gets tugged down about 1.5 inches.

The problem I am having? I can’t seem to find sleepers that fit. I bought a couple 12-month “union suits” at Target. They should fit, right? The arms are so tight, when I put one on him, he actually cried. I can’t find 12-month sleepers in the brand he’s wearing now, though honestly I haven’t given Babies R Us a chance. I’ll do that tomorrow night. Target is useless for baby clothes beyond size 6-month!

One last bit of baby news: His crib is ready. He’ll be trying it out tonight. I’m nervous on way too many levels. Being a mom is a very worrisome job! It can be very stressful! (Bruce says I read too much.) It’ll be a good thing in the long run if he starts sleeping in his own room, I know this. Still, I’m sad. And nervous. And actually scared. *sigh* Pray for Jarrod and pray for me, please!

In other news…

We had fish with apples for dinner tonight, and I decided to (sort of) photo-document the process. Maybe not so much the process, I decided to document the ingredients and the finished plate!

Sliced apples

Tilapia, flour-egg-whole wheat panko dredge station

The finished plate, with roasted asparagus (and a frosty mug of hoegaarden…yum!)

For dessert, we had “test cupcakes”. These are devils food whole wheat (that’s right, whole wheat) cupcakes. They’re not bad, considering that cake and whole grains just don’t really go together in my head. In fact, I might make them again, but probably only for people who would truly appreciate the grainy goodness they provide.

Honestly, they use some whole wheat pastry flour, and some all purpose flour. They are pretty much full-fat and full-sugar. There really isn’t a huge benefit to using this recipe. This probably isn’t the recipe if I want people to say, “Wow, these are amazing cupcakes!”

Of course, the frosting (vanilla swiss meringue buttercream) is fantastic and more than makes up for the average-ness of the cakes themselves.

Jarrod has been doing so great with his vegetables! He’s had sweet potatoes and zucchini so far. At first, he preferred the vegetables with a little cereal on the spoon, probably for the sake of familiarity. Now he eats them all by themselves, and loves them! Today, we moved on to one of my favorites… Avocado!

(Yes, I know it’s a fruit and not a vegetable. It’s not sweet and it’s loaded with nutrients, so for our current purposes, it’s fitting into the vegetable category.)

“Daddy, I have no idea why you don’t like avocados, they are YUMMY!”

We were going to give him bananas, but our nurse suggested we stick with the non-sweet foods until he’s totally used to them. I think he is, he’s really not a picky eater so far, but we are still going to wait a bit. So, I had some bananas to use up. Thus, whole wheat banana chocolate chip muffins:

They are 100% whole wheat, so they are 100% healthy! :) (and 100% delicious!)

OK, I admit it. I love making ice cream. It’s such a satisfying experience, so easy to do, and the results are amazing. So last week, when a good friend of mine (hi, Sonia!) requested I make ice cream for her visit on Saturday, I was all too happy to comply!

A few weeks ago, as documented here, I made anise ice cream with dark chocolate stracciatella. It was phenomenal, easily my second-favorite ice cream of all time (second to pistachio, of course). Typically, when I am in love with a cookbook the way I am with The Perfect Scoop (by David Lebovitz), I like to work my way through the various recipes, trying quite a few before repeating anything. The thing is, there is a variation on the anise recipe that absolutely could not be ignored: Biscotti ice cream.

No, it is not ice cream with biscotti crumbled into it. That wouldn’t really be all that exciting, to me. It’s actually anise ice cream with toasted almonds and marsala-soaked raisins — which just so happens to be almost exactly like Bruce’s very favorite biscotti recipe ever. When I make biscotti, if I make anything other than that (or a similar version, with fennel instead of anise and pine nuts instead of almonds), he invariably says something like, “Yes it’s good, but it’s not as good as the other kind.” So even though I made anise ice cream last time, I had to make it again, just to try the biscotti variation.

Biscotti Ice Cream on a Meringue Nest

This ice cream was so absolutely phenomenal, I think it’s actually tied with pistachio as my all-time favorite. That is significant! Pistachio has held the top spot for as long as I can remember! It was so good, I actually want to make it for everyone I know, just so they get a chance to taste it. Sonia said she thought it was the best ice cream she’d ever had. Today, she told me she dreamed about it! I’m not kidding, it was that good!

I made the meringue nests because I was getting tired of tossing out 5-6 egg whites every time I made ice cream. It was an easy way to use them up, and cost little more than a bit of sugar, a few drops of vanilla extract, and a very small bit of time. Meringue nests are yummy! I loved the contrast of textures — the ice cream was rich and creamy, the meringue was crisp and light. I’ll definitely be making the nests again, probably most times I make custard-based ice cream in the future. Why not?

In other news:

Jarrod had his 6-month checkup today. I so much hate it when he gets his shots!

Official medically-certified six-month stats: 20 pounds/28 inches. He’s our big, sweet, healthy, happy (except when he gets his shots) boy! :)

First, the notes.

To the nice reader from Wendy’s International:
I like Wendy’s chili and baked potatoes. Also, if someone handed me a Frosty and some fries, I might just dip a few. Please do not have me ‘disappeared’.

Regarding my final order of fries:
I made it a full-on blowout! We brought lunch to Bruce yesterday, from Jack in the Box. BBQ Bacon Death Burgers with a side of curly fries. Delicious! Or good as fast food goes, anyway. That’s it! From now on, fast food will only be part of my life on road trips. If I go to a fast food restaurant for any other reason (e.g. a friend wants to go), I will be sure to order salad with no croutons and low-fat dressing.

There, it’s in print, so I’m committed.

So now… on to the birthday!!

I cannot believe my little baby is SIX MONTHS OLD! Where did the time go? It goes so fast! I mean I know everyone told me it would, and it’s not that I didn’t believe them, it’s just that I had no real concept of how fast it would actually go!

Here are some 6-month facts about our little boy:

He is unofficially somewhere around 19 or 20 pounds (amazing considering he was under 14 less than 2 months ago).

He is unofficially 28 inches long.

His favorite toy is a rattle shaped like a crab, though we have to limit the time he gets with said toy because he smacks himself in the face with it too often. And when I am holding him, he smacks me in the face with it too often!

He can roll front-to-back or back-to-front at will. As he cannot crawl yet, he uses his rolling talent to get around, thus nullifying the effectiveness of the once-handy Clean Blanket On The Floor.

He talks a lot. He obviously gets that from me.

He’s a very good, sweet, happy baby. He’s so fun! He loves to laugh, he loves to make us laugh, he loves to bounce.

He does NOT like to go to bed at night. This is our only real constant challenge. We pretty much have to wind him down in various ways, from singing “Jesus Loves Me” to walking him outside, to patting his back. He doesn’t wind down when he’s crying, so just leaving him in his crib doesn’t work. (At least, it doesn’t work for us.)

“Jesus Loves Me” is his absolute favorite song.

And now, on to the birthday celebration!

Today, for the very first time, Jarrod got real food!! I baked up some sweet potatoes and found that three small sweet potatoes was more than enough for today’s serving plus an entire ice cube tray of future servings. That means he’s getting something like 15 servings for about $2.00. Yep, making baby food is a LOT cheaper than buying it! Of course, that’s not the only reason I am doing it. I’ve been looking forward to making his food since before he was born!

The food processor did a great job pureeing the food. I strained it afterward and there was pretty much nothing left in the strainer. He liked it at first, but got tired of it pretty fast. He was the same the first time he had cereal, so I am optimistic that the 14 remaining servings will not go to waste. :)

And now… pictures!

pureed sweet potatoes

“Hmmm… I don’t know about this…”

“YUMMY!”

“Honest, I don’t know how the food got on my forehead. Or my toes.”

“I shall soon crawl, and you shall be sorry!!”

The cutest baby EVER.

I try to avoid fast food. I really want to avoid fast food. I used to be better about avoiding fast food.