nathan and audrey

My kids have both recently undergone growth spurts.

I’m almost 29 weeks pregnant, and Lito should be about 2.5 pounds. Dude.

Banzo just grew significantly and is actually fitting into clothes that are his “suggested” size. He’ll be two soon, but at least he was in his 18-24 month pants for part of that time period. His feet also grew, which was kind of weird to see them jut out there and demand new shoes, but there you have it. I found a couple of pairs on clearance, so I picked up not only the size he’s in now, but the next size up too so I don’t get caught off-guard by future growth spurts.

Banzo’s personality has also grown as he’s becoming more independent and developing his own opinion. This has produced more conflict for us, but most of the time, I find him adorable enough to not get upset by his random screaming or the sudden insistence that he has to do things his way right this very minute. Also, I find that not letting him bother me (read=ignoring him) often deflates his meltdowns, and he recovers quickly. He’s still not talking much, but in the last week or so he’s picked up a ton of sign language, so communicating is at least growing easier.

We are still cloth diapering, and we’re planning to cloth diaper #2 as well. I’ve organized the boys’ room, unloaded all of the little baby clothes, and am coming to terms with carrying around a diaper bag again. I’m also trying to get all of “my” stuff done before the baby’s due date, knowing that when he arrives, I’ll have to be a little more selfless and once again answer to the demands of a small helpless human being. At least this time I expect the first six months of his life to involve practically no time for me. I’ve taken up quilting in the last few months, and I really enjoy sewing, so I’m hoping there will still be occasional times for fabric projects.

But growth spurts mean hunger, and my big one needs a snack, cutting this update to a quick halt.

Nathan and I are expecting a second child.

Oh boy.

Things are about to change dramatically.

But we are incredibly excited!

The pregnancy is progressing much like my pregnancy with the Banzo Bean. I had some “evening” sickness until about week 12, and I’ve just started to feel the baby move. Our families are ecstatic, and everyone is hoping that this Bean will be a girl. We will all be happy with a healthy baby, but man! They want a girl!

Until we discover this new Bean’s gender, we’re referring to the baby as Beansprout. If the baby cooperates, next month we should have a gender-specific Bean name. Cross your fingers for November!

My son is learning life skills with a gusto that ceases to amaze me.

At nearly thirteen months, he can:

• Cram up to eight cheerios in his mouth. (Without choking!)
• Remove his own pants.
• “Hide” from Mom by holding a blanket in front of his face.
• Pretend to offer Mom or Dad food, almost deposit it in our mouths, then yank it away at the last minute with this adorable grin on his face that prevents repercussions.
• Redecorate an entire room by yanking everything off of tables, shelves, and chairs to make a more eclectic and “lived-in” sort of feel. He’s genius, really.
• Open cabinets and drawers and pull out their contents to add to his design scheme. His granola bar work is relatively unheard of–a new design strategy sure to catch on, probably first in Europe, then the States.
• Use his uncanny “sense” to zero in on everything that Mom doesn’t want him to touch.
• Work on Mom’s patience levels by massacring her books.

And:

• Smile so dashing and sweet that I am glad every day that I have such an amazing son.

Our son is getting big. At nearly a year, he is pulling himself up, standing, and taking steps with the aid of furniture or mom and dad. He is starting to look like a boy–no longer a baby–and I would be lying if I said that I don’t get mushy and sad at the thought of him getting older.

But he’s not completely grown up–not yet. I used to sing to him a lot when he was much smaller, but that practice has dwindled. Today he was fussy at naptime, and it seemed like a good idea, so I sang my version of a lullaby to him.

Je t’aime.
Je t’adore, mon petit fils.

Tu t’appelles Noah,
mais je t’appelle Banzo.
Tu es mon petit prince.
Tu tiens mon amour.

When I started singing this morning, he lay his head on my chest and fell asleep. Good thing for me, my son still needs me.

This weekend, we had a chile/chili showdown! Actually, it wasn’t so much a showdown as an opportunity for me to explore another version of chili and to provide some tasty green chile chicken enchiladas to my friend J who had 1) never heard of green chile, and 2) never heard of enchiladas! (Oh, what a sad sad world it is to know there are people who haven’t heard about or tasted enchiladas.)

And of course, this would’ve been the perfect opportunity to take photos, but once again, I failed at remembering to use my camera, so you’ll be stuck with my verbal descriptions instead.

It was a lot of fun, and it was the best chili I’ve ever tasted. J made an Italian version seeing as how she’s Italian, and that’s how she rolls. It had all sorts of tasty stuff in it, like ground beef and beans and tomato juice and brown sugar, and I was a little surprised when she served it over curly macaroni noodles, and then added oyster crackers and cheddar cheese to it. The oyster crackers seemed a little overboard–aren’t we satisfying the chili carb requirement with the pasta?–but she persuaded me to try the crackers too. They…were…wonderful! They added a nice crunch to them, and I went back and got another very large handful.

Now, to the enchiladas. I busted out my daddy’s recipe, and instead of plating them individually, I made a tray because there was a large group, and we were serving food more pot-luck style than sit down dinner. I’ve never rolled my enchiladas, and a 9×9 tray sufficed for the six of us partaking. Green chile sauce from El Pinto Restaurant had to serve as my green chile addition since I didn’t have any plain green chile on hand. It seemed to work out okay, though I had to use 2/3 of a jar to get them even a little bit spicy.  J watched as I made them, and when I had finished making the enchilada sauce, I layered the baking tray with the tortillas, sauce, shredded chicken, and sharp cheddar cheese. About that point, it occurred to me that flat trays of enchiladas are like a Mexican lasagna, and, to make things even better, J was thinking the same thing!

Now, I need to beg her to share her family’s chili recipe with me. It was tasty!

I doubt many midwestern restaurants feature Green Chile Stew on their menus, but where we’re from, it’s a staple. We snub our noses at poor quality green chile stew and angrily throw sub-par bowls of the mislabeled sludge against the wall. Perhaps that’s a bit extreme. But we certainly think about it.

Until yesterday, I had never made green chile stew, mostly because finding good green chile here is difficult, and I didn’t want to waste any of my dwindling stock for experimental purposes. Still, the mood struck, and I had to roll with it.

Green Chile Stew, a la Audrey
Serves 2

• 1 can chicken broth
• 1 medium russet potato, cubed
• 1/2 cup cooked and shredded chicken breast
• 1/2 tbsp. chicken better than bouillon
• splash of olive oil
• 1/4 onion, chopped into large pieces
• 2-3 heaping tablespoons of green chile (more of less depending on your chile’s natural heat and whether you want to burn your tastebuds off)
• 1/2 cup corn
• salt and pepper to taste

1) In a small crockpot, add the chicken broth, potato, shredded chicken, and chicken bouillon.

2) Heat up a bit of olive oil in a small sauce pan, then saute the onion and green chile until the onion is soft and transparent. Then add to the crockpot.

3) Thirty minutes before stew is to be served, add the corn. It’s important to let this simmer for some time–the stew-like qualities come from the dissolution of the potatoes. I let mine cook for six hours total.

4) Serve with warm flour tortillas, and if the chile is really hot, a glass of milk.

PS-The wonderful thing about green chile stew is that you can substitute. The chicken can be substituted with ground beef or shredded pork. Diced tomatoes lend a yummy flavor. Some people add lard to liven it up. Oh, the possibilities!

Hello!

Recently, we participated in an iron chef party: secret ingredient parsnip/persimmon. Fun, right?

We took this:

And transformed it into this:

Awesome, right? (BTW, that’s a parsnip and persimmon spice cupcake with ginger cream cheese frosting.)

For a more detailed account and the our recipe and its inspiration, check out Twenty-Fingered Cooking, where we’ve written up a piece on our daring adventure.

PS-Did I mention we had a lot of fun?

Last week I got to talking with a writer buddy of mine who drinks green smoothies every morning for breakfast. We writer folk are weird, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around a green smoothie until she told me the principle ingredient was raw spinach.

Um, gross much?

But then she went on about how the spinach wasn’t noticeable, and how these smoothies kept her full until lunch time. Trying to find a breakfast food to keep me full until lunch time has been near impossible, and if the addition of spinach to an otherwise fruit and goodness filled beverage would do it, then hallelujah! I’m more than happy to give it a whirl.

I present you, my very first “green” smoothie.

It’s not very green, though I’ll be honest, I threw a disgusting amount of spinach into the blender. At least as much as the fruit and banana I used. Granted, spinach is fluffy, so perhaps that skewed my color results. And I can taste the spinach, thanks-a-latte, but it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be.

I will let you know on the keeping-me-full thing.

Ingredients:

• one small banana
• 1/2 cup of frozen mixed berries (or really whatever frozen fruit you want to use)
• a big honkin’ handful of spinach leaves
• 1/4 orange juice

Apparently kale leaves are one substitution for the spinach, and other possible ingredients include plain yogurt–I imagine Greek yogurt would be lovely and add a bunch of protein–as well as flax seed oil, honey, milk, etc. I like the idea that you can throw whatever you’d like into the blender and pop out a relatively healthy drink. For all I know, this thing is loaded with calories, but as I’ve never been one to count calories, whatev. I just finished kicking back my first ever “green” smoothie, and while I’m disappointed that it didn’t achieve the glorious vibrant green of certain pictures I saw, if it keeps me full, I’ll eat ‘em. I mean, drink ‘em.

{Edit 12/15} The smoothie did not keep me full. However, I have to factor in that I’m currently producing food for another human being (El Garbanzo) so there’s a possibility that it may have kept me full otherwise. To be continued…

After breakfast, I decided to conquer the leaves in our front yard. There were a lot, but I thought to myself, one hour. Tops!

I raked them into several nice piles. That took about fifteen minutes.

Nathan came and joined me.

The bag decided to eat me. (Also, I can apparently be purchased at Wal-mart if you’re interested.)

Garbanzo woke up from his nap and had a lot of advice to give. Sue, his dinosaur, also added some constructive feedback.

Two hours later, between two adults, we managed this. There are nine bags waiting at the curb. Yikes!

For next weekend, the backyard……

When Nathan is scheduled to leave town for a few days, I always get excited and think of all the delicious things I am going to cook in his absence. Before you start murmuring about what a hateful woman I am, I’m talking about things that Nathan dislikes, and, in some cases, would use the word “loathe.” Big steaming pots of baked beans, fresh green beans sauteed in garlic with grilled chicken, and my absolute favorite Nathan-loathes-it-dish, lemon chicken. And whenever he leaves, I always wind up eating the same couple of dishes: cereal and peanut butter and jelly on toast. (Somehow toasting the bread makes it more sophisticated.)

This last trip, I was determined to break the cereal cycle and actually make something worth eating. True, I did have one PB&J toast meal, but I jazzed it up with apple juice and a banana. My crowning glory was a pasta dish I made that I am still thinking about. In fact, when I talked to Nathan, I bragged about how yummy it was and how he missed it. He asked me how it was so tasty, and in fact, I’m not sure. I didn’t go crazy with anything, try a new ingredient, or even deviate much from my classical cooking education (ha!) But it still managed to turn out glorious, and I thought you might like to know how to make some of this for yourself!

Pasta for One
(aka, let’s get rid of everything in my fridge that may be turning shifty in the near future)

Serves 2, took me about 20 minutes to get from basic ingredients to my table

• Two servings of pasta–I used penne
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• a couple of handfuls of sliced baby bella mushrooms
• 1/2 cup of dry red wine
• 1/2 teaspoon rosemary
• 1/2 teaspoon oregano
• pinch of crushed red pepper
• 1/2 cup cooked ground beef
• 1/2 cup spaghetti sauce–I used a tomato and basil version
• 1/2 cup mozzarella

I made a lasagna last week (which sadly wasn’t that exciting), so I had some leftover ingredients hanging out in my fridge. What else was I going to use the last of the jar of tomato sauce on? Or the tiny amount of ground beef? And those amazing baby bella mushrooms (which I have a really hard time locating, for some reason) could not go to waste. It would be a crime. I added my pasta to a boiling pot on a back burner and turned on the medium heat on one of the front underneath a medium pan. As you might’ve guessed, I started with the olive oil and the garlic, sauteed that about half a minute before throwing in the wine and the mushrooms. I didn’t time it, but I let the wine cook down.

Once the mushrooms were soft and yummy-looking, I added in the ground beef and the dried seasonings. I whirled everything around in the pan stirred for about a minute. I turned the temp down to low and let the pan’s contents make friends until the pasta was done, approximately 3 minutes.

Now, you are probably telling yourself, this is the part where I throw the sauce onto the pasta and say grace and eat my food. Wrong! That’s normally what I would do. But this was my special meal while my husband was away! I had to do something crazy! (And join the kajillions of peeps who already do pasta this way.)

I threw the drained pasta into my saucepan and stirred everything. While I’ve mixed white pasta sauces and noodles together in a pan before, never ever ever have I done that with red sauces. It seemed slightly…wrong. But! Before I could think further on the error of my ways my ingenious new idea, I doused my soon-to-be-dinner in the mozzarella cheese, gave the pan one last spin with my spatula, and plated that fantastic smelling mess of goodness.

It was wonderful. And though there was quite a bit of food, I still stick by my original idea: I made pasta for one. There may have been enough for two, but the leftovers swiftly went into the fridge with a large sign on them that may have hinted at severe and painful penalties if anyone other than myself so much as looked at my pasta the wrong way.

I did feel a little sorry for the Bean. I was eating this delectable dish, and what was he left for dinner? Carrots. Yeah, that’s what I thought.