Is Today the Day?

I've struggled with a lot of things over the years. Most of them are pretty common. My weight, my job, my relationships, just to name a few. Right now my biggest struggle is with waiting. For anyone who doesn't know, and I doubt there are many, I'm having a baby. He is due in two days. October 23, 2011 is supposedly the day he will make his grand entrance into the world. That is if he falls into the 5% of babies who actually come on their due date. I feel like this whole pregnancy process has been nothing but a big wait. First it was waiting for the test results to come back to see if I was indeed pregnant. Then there was the wait until the first doctor's appointment to have an ultrasound, giving me my first inside look at the little alien growing inside.

Next came the waiting out of the first trimester, that in itself was quite the feat. Most people are about six to seven weeks along before they find out a baby is coming. I was three. This fact made the wait feel so much longer. When I finally made it past the first trimester milestone I was forced to wait once again for the 20 week mark to find out what we were having. God bless modern technology for allowing us to at least find out the sex. If I had to wait nine months for that I would have driven myself more insane than I already did.

Waiting got a little easier once I found out we were having a boy. I now could focus my attention on coming up with a theme for the nursery. My days began to fill with vacations, decorating, planning and various other activities. This was a pleasant distraction while I waited for the day of my baby shower. Once that day passed it was time to wait until the first day of my maternity leave. That started 2 weeks ago. Now all I can do is wait for the big day.

Everything is ready for Baby J's arrival. The nursery has been complete for almost 2 months. I have cooked more meals in advance than I can count and frozen for those first few weeks after we come home from the hospital. My house has been scrubbed from top to bottom. Hospital bags are packed, awaiting the day they are loaded into the car for the big adventure. I have a rockin birthing playlist loaded onto two separate iPods in event of a malfunction. An entire cloth bag of various snacks sits patiently on the freezer waiting to provide Jim and my mom with the much needed nourishment during labor. The car seats are installed. All in all I would say I'm ready for this major change in my life to occur. But alas I must wait, and this is by far the hardest wait of all!

Valentine's Day Cooking Class

So I know I have been away for awhile, but I'm back! I vow to blog at least twice a week for the next year.
Anywhoo, this morning I took the most wonderful cooking class at the Sacramento Co-op. It was Valentine's chocolate desserts. My sister-in-law took it too and we had an absolute blast. I had never taken a cooking class before so I wasn't sure what to expect. It turned out to be a mixture of lecture, demonstrations, and hands-on cooking. To start, our instructor, Jill, demonstrated how to make a truffle filling. She went into detail about the various ways to select chocolate, melt it and work with it. While we waited for the mixture to melt, she told us about the origins of chocolate and how it is processed. She also passed around various types of chocolate for us to sample and compare.
Next she demonstrated the chocolate cake recipe while we sipped hot chocolate and ate cherry chocolate scones. At this point I was starting to feel a little icky. It was a lot of chocolate to be sampling at 10:30 am. The Chocolate Pot de Creme demonstration was next and of course we got to sample that too.
Then the fun part came. We each got to hand roll five truffles, dip them in chocolate, and take them home. It was nice and messy and in the end, mine turned out pretty well.
After the truffles, came the making of the chocolate cherry scones. This we did as a table. We each took turns pouring in the ingredients, mixing, and preparing the scones for baking. Once they were done we each took one home.
As if that wasn't enough, we then each frosted a chocolate cupcake with chocolate ganache frosting and decorated it. Oh we also got a glass of sparkling wine, because even though it was only noon, it was 5 o'clock somewhere!
Finally, we decorated our boxes to take home all our treats. It was a great class and I can't wait to take another one!

A New Recipe

I have been watching too much Food Network lately. The last week I have really been into creating my own recipes. Tonight I think I came up with a big winner. We have a ton of tomatoes and cucumbers in our garden so I have been focusing on using these ingredients in my recipes. When I asked Jim what he wanted for dinner he said his only request was that it was something light. I said okay and went to work on my creation. This is what I came up with and it was quite yummy if I do say so myself:

Eggplant Quinoa Salad

This is a perfect summer time meal or something to take to a potluck. It cooks up quickly with minimal effort. Please keep in mind these measurements are just guidelines. I don't really measure anything when I cook, I just go by taste.

Ingredients:

1 eggplant, cubed and sweated*

4 small red tomatoes seeded and chopped

1/2 c. yellow cherry tomatoes chopped

1/2 small yellow onion, chopped

2-3 lemon cucumbers, chopped

1 can chicken broth

1c. quinoa

1/2 c. mozzarella cheese cut into small cubes

1/2 c. fresh basil, chopped

1/2 tbsp parsley

1 tsp garlic salt

*to sweat the eggplant, place cubes in a colander and pour salt all over the cubes. Let sit for 20-30 mins. The salt will draw the water out of the eggplant so it doesn't come out tasting mushy when it is cooked. After the eggplant has sweated, rinse thoroughly with water to remove the salt. Lightly dry on a paper towel.

In a large skillet heat 2 or 3 tbsp of olive oil and saute the eggplant until cooked. Once cooked, sprinkle with parsley, garlic salt, and pepper. Let sit.

While eggplant is cooking, pour chicken broth into a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Once boiling, add quinoa, turn heat to low, and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Let cool.

Mix cooked eggplant, tomatoes, onion, cucumber, and cooled quinoa in a large bowl. Add cheese and basil and mix thoroughly. Serve immediately or refrigerate until later.

Corn is Born!

I know I am totally obsessed with my corn. But I can't help it. It is so fun to grow and it seems like it grows a foot a day. We now have 5 ears growing. I was so excited when I saw the first one that I called Jim in Vegas to share the news. I can't wait to taste it.

The Corn is Huge: A Veggie Update

I cannot believe how big our corn has gotten in such a short amount of time. It is taller than I am! Our tomatoes are also almost as tall as me. I'm not sure what Jim did different this year, but our garden is going to produce a lot of veggies. The peppers are of to a slow start, but that is to be expected because the weather has been cool for this time of year. Once it starts to heat up the peppers will take off. I can't wait until I can start eating things. There are tons of green tomatoes that I'm just waiting to turn red.

Review: Drood

The Spring reading challenge is coming to a close. Saturday is the last day. I finished my ninth book a few days ago. "Drood," by Dan Simmons, was one of the most interesting books I have ever read. It was a historical mystery about the last five years of Charles Dickens; however, it is not written from his perspective. It is written from the view of his real-life collaborator and friend, Wilkie Collins and really, I would say the book is more about Wilkie's life. I'm not quite sure how to talk about this book. Even though it was a slow paced book, I was still intrigued to continue on. Well reading, I often found myself getting on Wikipedia to look up facts from the book. Wilkie Collins was an author too, and makes reference to his novels and plays in "Drood." One of his more popular stories was "The Moonstone." I want to read this if I can find it at the library. I'm sorry that this isn't the best review, it's just so hard to describe it. I would recommend it though. Don't be scared by it's length (771 pages). It was wroth the time.

I going to try and finish one more book before Saturday if I can. It is a biography about Robert E. Lee. Jim got me interested in him while we were on our vacation. I was lucky enough to go in his home when we visited Arlington Cemetery a few weeks ago and he seemed like an intriguing individual. Once I finish that book, I am going to read a biography on Abraham Lincoln. I'm really into history right now. I hope to find a book on Thomas Jefferson so I can learn more about him.

Where is Cali?

Calicoon is one of our unofficial backyard cats and Rusty's girlfriend. I don't remember when she started hanging around, nor do I know where she came from. My thought is that she lived with a family whose home foreclosed and they left her behind when they moved. Who knows. Anyway, she's the most loving kitty who adores lying on your chest while you attempt to read a book on the lawn chair. She usually greets me each morning when I step outside to go for my run, especially if her food dish is empty.

To my knowledge she doesn't usually leave our backyard and she will defend her space when another neighborhood cat ventures in. This afternoon I was looking at our garden when I noticed there was a ton of cat lying on the grass. There where huge clumps everywhere. I'm assuming it belongs to Cali because she is the only long haired cat that comes around. Jim and I looked all over the backyard, front yard, and alley trying to find her. So far we have not had any luck. I hope she is okay. My fear is that she is hurt somewhere and can't move. I saw two of the other cats who tend to come around and neither one of them looked like they had been in a fight. So who knows, I just hope she comes around soon, or if she is hurt, that I find her.