girlfiend

There is currently a watermelon in my refrigerator that is not absorbing the vodka I would like it to absorb. I tried The Naked Chef’s recipe first and it didn’t seem to be going anywhere so I tried this one which didn’t seem to be going anywhere either. So I cut a bigger hole in the top, encompassing the two holes I’d previously cut and the vodka is currently sitting there.

I want to drink it with a straw but I will refrain from doing so (at least until tomorrow morning) so I can see if any of the vodka eventually gets absorbed.

Any words of wisdom from professional vodka watermelon makers?

I don’t vacation like most people. I’m on vacation right now, I just finished a Tae Bo workout, and I just wrote a blog post about the four cooler’s worth of food I brought on vacation at Farm to Philly. Here’s a full list (as opposed to my abridged list of local foods) of all of the food I packed.

Fruit

2 quarts of Peaches
Cantaloupe
Pint of apricots
quart of cherries
Quart of blueberries
Two bananas
12 limes

Vegetables

Beets
Bunch of kale
3 zucchini
4 green peppers
bunch walla walla onions
half pint of sun gold cherry tomatoes
garlic
quart of green beans
quart of wax beans
pint of new potatoes
bunch of swiss chard
bunch of carrots
one shallot
6 ears of corn

Fresh herbs from my garden

Rosemary
Basil
Tarragon
Parsley (not from my garden)
thyme

Meat
2 lbs hamburger
2 filet mignon
4 new york strip steaks
1 whole chicken
lb bacon
short ribs
spare ribs
4 smoked sausage links

dairy
cheddar
Jack
Raw milk Colby dill
Raw millk herbed jack
Herbed goat cheese
Parmesan
Amish butter- both salted and unsalted
half and half from pastured cows

Miscellaneous

Tofurkey Italian sausage
Morningstar grillers (veggie burgers)
whole wheat pasta (2 bags)
whole grain brown rice
whole wheat hamburger buns
whole wheat hot dog buns
peanut butter Puffins
blueberry cereal bars (from Trader Joes)
salt and pepper kettle chips
lightly salted chips
peanut butter
2 jars bruschetta (from Trader Joes)
newman os
2lbs coffee
sugar
olive oil
peanut oil
seasoned salt
garlic salt
red pepper flakes
pepper grinder
kosher salt
pizza seasoning
spicy seasoning
nutmeg
balsamic vinegar
ketchup
mustard

And I forgot the Cheddar Bunnies. I was forced to buy Goldfish.

If you think the food list is nuts, you’d never believe the packing/to do list. All four pages of it.  Perhaps I’ll scan it in all of it’s glory upon my return home. Until then, I may or may not write again. I am on vacation. Many adorable Fiendling at the beach photos are on flickr.

Boyfiend’s sister and her boyfriend bought a house a few blocks from us and Boyfiend’s been over there non-stop all week leaving me alone with the baby. He’s been home to put the Fiendling to sleep and he’s been around in the mornings, but he’s very conveniently missing the fussy late afternoon/early evenings.

Yesterday the temperature was in the 90s and the Fiendling refused to nap. I tried for more than an hour to get him to sleep indoors because it was way too hot for him to sleep in the stroller or the car. Then I walked him around in the stroller forever, trying to get him to sleep. He never fell asleep and by the time Boyfiend got home at 8 to put him down I really wanted a drink. I’d cooked dinner, but I was way too hot to eat it so I made a margarita. Then another. Then one more. I may have eaten something at some point, but I have no recollection of it if I did.

By the time Boyfiend got home at midnight I was passed out on the floor. He shook me awake and I told him how to properly prepare beets. Then, after seeing if I’d be up for some drunk sex and realizing I was way too drunk for that kind of activity, he tried to get me to bed and failed. He said he slept on the floor with me until 3. I woke up around 5 to the the sound of sad baby. I brought the Fiendling into bed with me and we slept until just after 8.

Surprisingly , I’m not too hungover. Standing and walking is a bit difficult, but I don’t have a headache or feel sick. Boyfiend brought me coffee and a bagel so I’ve got some food in my system. I’m hoping the nap strike is over so I can have a nap this afternoon.

The Perfect, Potent Margarita

3 oz Tequila

2 oz triple sec

1 oz fresh squeezed lime juice

1 teaspoon powdered sugar

shake with ice until the shaker is frosty. Serve in a glass with a salted rim with wedge of lime.

I recommend drinking these on a full stomach with some chips and guacamole.

If you ever decide to make a labor intensive Moroccan recipe using phyllo dough, don’t pick the easier recipe. Go directly to the complex, more authentic one. I made a b’stilla again last night, and oh my god, it was delicious.

Chicken simmered with onion, garlic, ginger, pepper and ras el hanout is shredded and combined with egg, parsley(fresh from Junkiegirl’s garden), cilantro (fresh from my garden) and lemon juice and layered with almond sugar then baked in phyllo dough. It was amazing. Even the Fiendling ate it.

I didn’t sleep well last night. I fell asleep around 11.30, but it was a light sleep, the kind where you’re not quite sure if you’re thinking or dreaming. Then the Fiendling woke up at 1.30 and I went in to nurse him and fell asleep in the glider, not waking up until 3. I slept for real after that but he was up again at 6.30 for the day leaving me exhausted. By the time we left the playground around 1.30 this afternoon I just wanted to go to the Mexican place nearby for a veggie burger with cheese fajita style and a very large margarita. Instead I went home and made hummus and falafel, swept and mopped the kitchen floor, and weeded the front garden.
After his nap and a snack and after we picked up the first box from our farm share, the Fiendling helped me spin the salad greens for a bit. Out of nowhere he decided he was hungry and he became inconsolable. I wrestled him into his booster chair and offered him a variety of foods which he promptly rejected through his wails. Eventually he calmed down when the cheddar bunnies appeared. I opened the fridge to get him something real to eat and he thought he wanted everything he saw but really wanted nothing. For dinner he ate a handful of noodles with mixed veggies and tomato sauce. Then he threw what was left and indicated he wanted the noodles with mixed veggies with no tomato sauce. Then he threw that on the floor. He pointed to the falafel and was outraged when I told him I had to cook it first. He thought he wanted the red Thai curry but after a few bites of broccoli realized he didn’t. He made it through one and half strawberries before deciding they weren’t what he wanted. The falafel, once cooked, appeased him momentarily but soon joined the rest of the rejected food items on the floor. At this point I made myself a margarita.

Margarita in hand I gave him a bowl of baby food (Earth’s best plums, bananas and rice) and a spoon and he was happy. He ate most of it with his hands and cried for more. I tried to spoon more into the bowl but he just wanted the jar so I gave it to him and cleaned up a bit while he ate out of the tiny jar with his tiny hands. To buy some more time to finish my drink I gave him a chunk of carrot cake which he covered in baby food before eating. Eventually I cleaned up everything but the floor around him, cleared his tray of all projectiles, wiped him down, shook him out over the sink, and occupied him with his shape sorter while I cleaned the floor as best I could in the few minutes I had.

He’s now bathed and asleep and I’m showered and exhausted and instead of going to bed I’m writing this. Boyfiend’s still not home and I’m debating mixing another margarita. But I think I’ll just go to sleep.

Because I’m obsessive and he’s only nursing twice a day which means he’s getting the bulk of his nutrition through real food I made a list of all of the foods the Fiendling eats and categorized them into things he loves, things he eats regularly, things he eats on occasion, and things that have passed his lips voluntarily on one occasion only. I won’t bore you with the whole list but I’ll tell you that Cheddar Bunnies and cookies fall into the first category,  Hot and Sour soup and hamburger fall into the last category, various fruits, vegetables, breads, pastas and rices fall into the middle categories. It’s a pretty long list, but considering that in a given day he mostly just eats string cheese, crackers and bananas and throws everything else to the floor it’s no wonder that I’ve become a mother who obsesses over what her son eats.

I probably wouldn’t be so obsessed if his iron levels were higher. They were low enough that he needs to take a supplement twice daily for three months which is pretty common- that’s why they test for it- but makes me feel like a failure nonetheless. I want to blame it on the six month appointment. Our regular pediatrician wasn’t in and we had to see a different one. She didn’t tell me to give him the multi-vitamin with iron so I assumed I didn’t have to even though I’d read that breastfed babies often need iron supplements. No one told me. But I should have asked our regular doctor at the nine month appointment which basically makes it my fault.

The iron supplements taste like ass.  Actually, they don’t. They taste like you’d expect them to- like metal - and they leave a nasty metallic tasting residue on sippy cups and hands. The drops also temporarily stain teeth. Charming, right? The Fiendling hates them and I don’t blame him. This is where the food obsession comes into play. To avoid the drops I’ve been attempting to slip iron into his diet through food. I’ve been cooking in cast iron, I’ve made farina stix and the recipe for farina muffins on the box (which are absolutely vile- do not even attempt them), I’ve mixed the drops into orange juice, I’ve tried mixing rice cereal into other foods and I’ve even tried giving him red meat a few times.

I’ve been foiled at every attempt. The kid is smarter than I am and won’t touch anything that will boost his iron naturally. So twice a day, carefully timed because dairy interferes with absorption and he can’t have dairy less than an hour before or less than two hours after taking the drops, I force the dropper to the back of his mouth and hope he doesn’t spit out too much of it. It sucks.

Finally, thanks to the help of the super-fantastic posthipchick,  I made something he’ll eat- Full-Meal Muffins. They’re vegan and smell terrible uncooked, but they’re surprisingly tasty once baked. Most importantly they’re healthy and full of iron. And amazingly he’s eaten them two days in a row.

Since I’m talking about food I should admit that since I’ve been on this mostly vegetarian diet I’ve gained 3 or 4 pounds. Awesome, right? I eat healthier and GAIN weight.

The chapstick stained clothes sat on top of the dryer for more than a month. After getting sick of seeing them there I washed them in hot water four or five times then gave up. Now I just wear them, grease stains and all.

My mom and her sister are back to being BFF. We all (except for my girl cousin who’s still on the outs with her mom and brother) got together for Passover and everything was fine. The day after the seder my aunt invited my mom over for a gefilte fish (gag) lunch.

Home cooked vegetarianism is still going strong. I just read the Omnivore’s Dilemma and if you have any interest in where your food comes from I highly recommend it. If you generally subsist on diet coke, supermarket meat, or organic freezer foods from Whole Foods that you think are somehow better than the Hungry Man special or Lean Cuisine meal in the regular supermarket you should probably skip reading this one. I’m thrilled I signed up for the farm share this spring.

Right now I’m reading The Friday Night Knitting Club which is truly terrible. The characters are like stereotypes of stereotypes. There’s the owner of the shop, a tough single mom with a half-black daughter whose absentee father, the successful, black architect returns from France after twelve years and wants to be a part of their lives again, the lonely Asian academic, the socialite with a distant, philandering husband, a Jewish widow in her seventies who’s afraid to date and others I won’t bore you with. I’m waiting for a Mexican landscaper to pop in for a knitting lesson with the veiled Muslim woman who everyone assumes is a terrorist. Really, it’s terrible. So of course they’re making a film version.

The Fiendling’s still only napping on the go. Here is he passed out on the porch, blurry because I took the picture through the window.

Every year for on the Saturday before Easter Boyfiend’s family makes Easter Pie, which they call something I don’t know how to spell and cannot find online no matter how many different spellings I attempt so I’ll do my best here and call it Scarchedde. (Two syllables- scar- ched.) The closest match I can find is the brief description of the Calabrian Easter Pie, “Calabrians favor ham, sausage, hard cooked eggs, mozzarella and ricotta” on the page about Italian Easter Pie at inmamaskitchen.com. The pie, which is crumbly as opposed to quiche-like has a sweet, thin crust and tastes a bit like anise, possibly from the fennel in the sausage.

Since I’m pretty much off meat these days I sampled the pie yesterday, but pretty much stuck to the other food items at the party, like the cheese dip, salad, fruit salad and dessert. Boyfiend on the other hand ate three slices.

Boyfiend, I apologize, but this story must be told.

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This morning the Fiendling woke up signing “eat” and “milk” repeatedly. I told him he could have milk first, then we’d go downstairs and get him food if he was still hungry. He nursed back to sleep and woke a few hours later still signing “eat” repeatedly.

Once downstairs, he ate most of half a banana, threw the last bite on the floor and signed for more. He motioned toward the bread I was eating. He took a bite, threw it on the floor and signed “more eat” again. I gave him the other half of the banana. A few bites and it was on the floor and he was still signing for more to eat. I made him oatmeal. Two bites then he refused it. I added pears to the oatmeal. He pushed the spoon away with his mouth closed tightly. I gave him crackers. He ate two then threw them on the floor and signed for more. I gave him iron drops. He gagged a little, spit some out and swallowed the rest. He ate another cracker. I gave him two orange sections (which give him diaper rash, but might help with iron absorption) which he ate after smushing in his hands. Then I gave up.

He’s still, 40 minutes later, signing that he wants to eat. I don’t know what to do with it. If he’s this bad at 1, what will he be like at 2?

Though expectations were low, my birthday was actually pretty good. First thing in the morning the Fiendling and I headed to my mom’s so I could go to the gym, but traffic was heavier than expected and two accidents on Kelly Drive caused the 10-15 minute trip to take closer to 35 minutes. By the time we got there and learned that my mother isn’t going to the shore this weekend so I didn’t have to rush over there first thing it was too late for me to go to the gym anyway, so we hung out for half an hour and I opened my present, an enormous Le Creuset dutch oven, and came home with jewelry to wear to the wedding we’re going to Saturday.

We left my mom’s and went to the Fiendling’s one year appointment. His weight is low, probably somewhere in the 8th percentile at 19 lbs 12 oz, but he’s still in the 50th percentile for height (30 inches) and head circumference. The doctor, who I still want to call the vet after a year, seemed impressed by his 8 word vocabulary and said he was doing great. She also didn’t seem to mind that his weight, while slowly gaining, is dropping percentile wise. She told me that it’s totally normal for healthy babies to thin out and she’d rather see that than him be fat and when I asked if he should be drinking regular, cow’s milk she replied, “If he’s still nursing 3-4 times a day why would you give him cow’s milk when he’s already getting so much of the good stuff?”

Then came the traumatic part of the appointment- the bloodletting. They needed to draw a vial of blood for anemia and lead testing. The Fiendling was a bit fussy from the poking and prodding to begin with, so when they tied on the tourniquet and started looking for veins he was inconsolable. The nurses found a decent vein in his right arm and filled a vial while he sobbed uncontrollably. When they removed the needle from his arm, he moved suddenly and his blood splattered all over the floor and all over my leg. Then, to really cheer him up, they gave him two shots in his pudgy baby thighs.

We skipped playgroup in the hopes that a nap would happen. It didn’t, but he cheered up in time for us to go to Doodlebug’s house for wine and cheese and another excellent gift- a square ceramic pan, perfect for brownies complete with bar of chocolate and brownie recipe.

At this point, seven hours after I began this post, I’ve lost interest completely in telling you about the rest of my birthday. The important thing was that it was a good day. Instead of boring myself recounting the details of more wine, cupcakes, and leftover eggplant lasagna, I’ll leave you with the lasagna recipe because it’s really, really good.

Eggplant and Country Bread Lasagna (from Lidia’s Italy, but the recipe isn’t on the site so I had to watch the show and figure it out)

• Loaf of Italian Bread, sliced
• Eggplant (I used one large, but you could use a few small, Italian eggplants)
• flour (enough for dredging- maybe a cup?)
• Marinara sauce (Recipe is here- I made one batch but it wasn’t enough so I made a second)
• Parmesan Cheese (I grated maybe two cups)
• Fresh Basil ( five or six leaves)
• Butter (enough to butter the pan)
• vegetable oil for frying (maybe half a cup?)

Directions: Trim the stems and ends from the eggplant(s). Remove strips of peel about 1-inch wide from the eggplant(s), leaving about half the peel intact. Cut the eggplant into 1/2-inch thick slices and place them in a colander. Sprinkle with the coarse salt and let drain for 1 hour. Rinse the eggplant under cool running water, drain throroughly and pat dry.

Dredge the eggplant rounds in flour shaking off the excess. Heat vegetable oil (the oil should be deep enough to cover about half of the eggplant) in a large pan. Fill the pan with as many slices fit without touching and fry until golden brown, turning once. Remove the eggplant to a baking pan lined with paper towels.

Preheat the oven to 375. Butter the bottom and sides of a ceramic baking pan or lasagna dish. Cover the bottom with a single layer of the sliced Italian bread, overlapping if necessary. Pour about half of the marinara sauce over the bread, spreading it evenly. Top with a layer of fried eggplant, pressing down gently. Tear a few leaves of basil over the eggplant. Sprinkle a layer of grated cheese on top. Continue layering bread, sauce, eggplant and cheese, ending with shredded parmesan. (My lasagna layered as follows: bread, sauce, eggplant, cheese, bread, sauce cheese) Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil and continue baking until cheese is golden and bubbly, about 15 minutes more. Let rest for 15 minutes then cut into squares and serve.