Sweet Yet Sour

Summer means shortcake…

Monday, June 29th, 2009 | Cooking | 4 Comments

Now that strawberries, peaches and other delectable fruits are in season, it’s time for shortcake.  I never understood why people use angel cake or those crappy little cakes you can buy at the store for this dessert.  Shortcake is called “short” cake for a reason - it’s really easy to make and takes no time at all.  This is my mother’s recipe and we used to spend most of the summer piling peaches or strawberries on top of it with freshly whipped cream.

Last time I made it I got creative with the layering…

Strawberry Shortcake

See? Don’t you want some now? Good! Here’s the recipe…

Shortcake

Sift together:

1 and 1/2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup sugar

Mix together (I usually just do this in a 2 cup liquid measure):

1 egg beaten

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup butter, melted

Stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients until well mixed and there are no more dry spots.  Spread into a greased 8 x 8 pan (glass is best) and bake for 20-25 minutes at 400.  The shortcake will get golden brown on the top - don’t let it burn!

Once it’s baked, let the shortcake cool briefly before serving - it’s great warm, but I’ve also had it cold for breakfast.  Did I mention that I love shortcake?

While the cake is baking I usually cut up the strawberries (or peaches) and throw some sugar on them to make them nice and juicy.

Shortcake tastes best with homemade whipping cream, but the spray can stuff is just as good.  And if you’re like my husband, the spray can stuff is best enjoyed sprayed directly into your mouth, which you can’t really do with the homemade whipping cream.  Either way - bon appetit!

A Girl and Her Sandbox

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 | Anna | 3 Comments

A few weeks ago I was talking to my dad and I said, “Anna loves to play in the dirt.”  Before I knew it my dad had drawn up plans for a sandbox for Anna that he and Mike could build.  So here we are the proud owners of a new sandbox…

Here’s a “Before” picture of the spot where we put the sandbox:

Sandbox Before

Here is Mike and my dad working hard on putting the sandbox together:

Sandbox During

Once it was finished we put Anna in it - even though it didn’t have sand in it yet she seemed to like it:

Anna in the sandbox - no sand

Here is a picture of Foster, the dog that I rescued from the street while Mike and dad were working on the sandbox:

Foster

Foster brought the dog total to 4 in our house on sandbox day - it was a madhouse!  We found his owner, who lives down the street after about 2 hours…

Here is the first layer of sand we put in and all of the toys that we buried at the bottom for Anna to find when she really starts to dig to China:

Buried Treasure

Once all the sand was in we plopped the kiddo in with her new sand pails and let the fun begin!

Anna in the completed sandbox

And this is where I put Anna after she had thoroughly covered herself in sand:

Anna in the sink

She ate most of lunch in the sink, since she seemed happy there - I just kept giving her food while she splashed away…  Good times!

The final weigh-in

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 | Anna | 4 Comments

Today we had another weight check with Anna’s doctor.  As you may remember, for the past three months we have had monthly weigh-ins to see if Anna can gain some weight.  I’ve been feeding her plenty of mac and cheese, butter, half-and-half and other fattening things all along the way.

When she was weighed today at the doctor’s office Anna weighed 17.8 lbs.  This means that Anna gained a pound since the last check and has steadily gained a pound a month for the past three months.  This has pleased our doctor enough that we will no longer have to go in every month.  I still need to feed Anna every possible fattening thing I can - since she is still 3rd percentile - but she’s on her own little curve.  Perhaps in a few months she can catch up to the other 1 year olds she knows and weigh the proper 20 lbs to face forward in her car seat.

In the meantime the doctor said that her weight might drop off, now that Anna is walking (see below!) and is “more active”.  Apparently our doctor has not been listening to me about how active Anna is already.  I mean seriously, this is the kid who regularly climbs into her rocking chair and stands there rocking it while trying to climb up the back…

Anyway, Anna is walking more and more every day and more steadily each time.  Pretty soon she’ll be running and then I’ll have to just feed her sticks of butter to keep her weight up - but for the moment the “great fattening up” has worked!

Summer Garbanzo Salad

Saturday, June 6th, 2009 | Cooking | 1 Comment

The parsley in my recycled garden is nicely always ready for harvest.  To celebrate this and the fact that summer is here - the perfect time for cold salads- I made my favorite garbanzo bean salad.  This is a cool salad that uses my fresh parsley well and is quick and easy.

Garbanzo Salad

I must thank my sister’s friend Lata for this recipe.

Combine in a bowl and allow to marinate for at least 30 minutes:

2 14oz. cans drained and washed chickpeas/garbanzo beans

1/3 cup lemon juice

1 chopped garlic clove

1/2 cup chopped parsley

2 Tbsp olive oil

1/3 cup shredded parmesan cheese

cracked black pepper and sea salt to taste

After the salad has marinated serve it on a bed of baby spinach.

Small girl walking!

Saturday, June 6th, 2009 | Anna | 2 Comments

Although I have no pictures of this phenomenon to post, the small girl is indeed walking.  Anna has been walking with us and taking little steps on her own, but she started walking by herself in earnest last week.  She was playing and then turned and just started walking on her own towards a ball that she had thrown.  Now she does this all the time, sometimes she crawls, because it’s faster and more stable, but most of the time when she needs to get somewhere, especially if she wants to carry something with her, she walks.  It’s still a little tippy when she does this, but she does love to just go for it and gets right back up if she falls.   So that’s my big news from here - I officially have a “toddler”.

I do have lots of pictures of other things Anna has been doing lately.

We went to the park last week and I caught this shot of Mike and Anna while they walked to the slide.

Mike and Anna

I guess it’s good that I didn’t catch him with his pants farther down…

Anna has been going through the drawer where her bibs are kept and every once in a while tries to put one on.  Too bad it’s backwards, but she’s got the right idea.

Backwards bib

Now that Anna knows that she needs shoes to go outside (which is her favorite thing to do), she likes to try to put shoes on to get that going.  This includes any shoes that are lying around:

Anna in Mike's shoes

Last week we had a day where Anna didn’t really nap - she was too excited about going to lunch with daddy.  So in the afternoon I took she and Cash for a walk hoping that she would sleep if I was quiet.  Bingo!

Conked out in the stroller

Anna has been wanting her own plate and since ours are breakable, I got her a new plastic plate at Target and gave it to her for lunch this week.  She thought it was cool until she was done eating and then she decided maybe it could be used as a hat:

Plate or hat?

Too bad it had mac and cheese on it when she decided to put it on her head:

Mac and cheesehead

This week it rained a fair amount which meant I needed to find someway to entertain Anna indoors.  She’s pretty bored of her toys, so I tried putting her on the floor in the kitchen with a bowl of warm soapy water and some water proof toys:

Bubble bowl

If you can’t tell, she’s totally soaked, because she did lots of this in the bowl:

Splashing

Looks like a good time, no?

The Recycled Garden

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 | The Daily Special | 3 Comments

I’m all about recycling as much as I can.  So when our trash company wouldn’t take our recycle bins back when we upgraded to the larger recycle bin I had an idea…

The Recycled Garden

After all, they’re large, plastic and come with drain holes.  I like green and blue pots anyway - I have lots of pretty blue pots for flowers already.  From the left I have a cherry tomato plant in one bin, a “Celebrity” tomato in another, and a bin that has strawberries, basil, tarragon and sage.  The last bin has parsley, chives, dill and rosemary.  I plan on using them all in the kitchen and hopefully enjoying the fruits of my recycling all summer long…

Stroller Pictures and Cash Update

Monday, May 25th, 2009 | Updates | 1 Comment

I’ve finally had time to offload the pictures that Mike took of the stroller after last Sunday’s “incident“.  As you can see, it was worth putting it into the trash.  Secretly, I thought the stroller, which was loaned to me by my sister, was really ugly, so I wasn’t too terribly sad to see it go.   But I still would rather not have had such a thing happen.

Stroller after the wreck

As for Cash, the vet says that he’s mostly fine.  His cuts on his hind legs seem to be healing, although they do bleed every once in a while.  The vet left them alone, saying that his body was taking care of them just fine.  As for his neck, it seems to have either been wrenched by dragging the stroller for a 1/4 of a mile at 40 mph or the abrupt stop after it hit the pole.   The vet stretched his neck this way and that and decided that he was a little resistant to her stretching it up.  We now have doggie Ibuprofin for him if he seems sore.  He takes this buried in cheese of course…

This will all be funny later

Monday, May 18th, 2009 | The Daily Special | 5 Comments

Later, much later, I will be able to laugh about what happened to us yesterday.  For right now, it was just a little scary…

Our poor beloved Cash has always been easily spooked.  Since he had a pretty sheltered life when he raced on the track, when we first got him he was spooked by things like our electric toothbrushes, leaves on trees, stop signs, glass doors, etc.  Anything new and especially something moving scared the crap out of him.  He’s gotten much better in the past two years but yesterday proved that he’s still capable of a major scare.

Mike was out of town most of this week and since I’ve been a single mom, I’ve been trying to combine the dog walk and a visit to the park.  I have been walking Cash with Anna in the stroller and then have been tying Cash to the stroller and leaving him in a shady spot while Anna and I play in the park.  This has worked really well all week; Cash sat calmly in the shade and ate a little grass while Anna and I played nearby.

Yesterday Mike and I did the same thing, we walked to a nearby park, left Cash tied up to the stroller in some shade and then we played with Anna in the grass.  Cash sat quietly for a while but then stood up, pulled a little too hard on his leash and pulled the stroller over.  And that’s when he freaked out.

Mike, who was walking with Anna with me behind him, watched as Cash took off trying to get away from the stroller.  Cash ran full bore (that’s almost 40 mph) with the stroller dragging behind him down the park path.  Mike let go of Anna (she fell gracefully into the grass) and took off after Cash.  I grabbed Anna, the things that had fallen out of the stroller and took off after them.

The park path that Cash was running down meanders in between the houses in our neighborhood.  It runs for a few miles and connects several parks.  It was a nice afternoon so plenty of people who have houses that face the greenbelt were out on their decks or in their backyards.  All of them got to see our Greyhound running down the path while dragging the stroller.

Apparently, although Mike and I were not there to see it, Cash ran down the path and turned and headed toward the park that is closest to our house. When he got close to the play equipment (where there were several children playing), the leash and the stroller got wrapped around a sign in the park.  I’m pretty sure this gave him whiplash and it definitely almost took the sign completely out of the ground.

This was where Mike found him, trying desperately to get away from the stroller and still attached to the leash wrapped around the sign.

Cash is relatively uninjured thankfully.  He has some minor cuts on his hind legs and is going to see the vet tomorrow - (of course I couldn’t get an appointment today!).  Otherwise, he seems a little slower and a little sore.  I gave him some cheese today and that did seem to make him happy.

The stroller, which I forgot to take pictures of before it was taken away with the trash this morning, is a total loss.  We’ll get a new stroller and I’m almost positive it will take a little while before Cash is willing to walk next to a stroller - but we’ll see.  He could totally prove me wrong since the new stroller will look and smell different.  I will never again tie him to anything other than a tree or really large post.  And don’t let me get started on what would have happened if Anna had been in the stroller…

My father put it all in perspective when I called to tell him the story.  After laughing and intermittently saying, “poor Cash”, he told me that as long as everyone was alright it was all good and that I would find the story funny later.  He’s right, I will - the thought of Cash dragging that stroller down the path scared me yesterday and even today, but in a few years when we’re all healed I know it will be funny.  In the meantime, after we put Anna to bed last night, Mike had a beer and I had a gin and tonic while we breathed a sigh of relief and said thanks that no one was badly injured.

Anna Update

Friday, May 15th, 2009 | Anna, Updates | 3 Comments

I have been remiss about updates on Anna of late, so I hope to make up for that with this post.  As I type this Anna is in the next room refusing to nap.  I sort of expected this, since I’m trying for the first time to transition her out of fleece sleep wear with feet and into pjs.  Change always is difficult with babies, and I expect it will take a few days to get her used to the new sleep duds. In the meantime, she’s talking loudly to her teddy bears about something very important…

First, the updates on her health - both her weight and the thing on the bridge of her nose.  I say “the thing” because we’re still not sure what “it” is exactly.  When we got the results back from the MRI in December we were told it was a “probably” dermoid cyst and to see the plastic surgeon at Children’s to have it removed.  At the end of April we finally went to see the plastic surgeon and now we’re more confused…  After reviewing the MRI the plastic surgeon said that he thinks the bump is not a dermoid cyst, but a vascular malformation.  Further, he’s not willing to take it out unless we REALLY want it out. He thinks it will bleed a lot unless he does this really gory way of taking it out, the details of which I will save you from.  Suffice to say Anna would have a curvy scar on the top of her head. So we have been advised to simply watch the bump, see if it gets larger and we can review again later whether we want it removed.  At this point it’s apparently not necessary to do anything, and that’s fine.

Last week we had our monthly weight check with Anna’s doctor.  Anna had an ear infection the week before which required a late night trip to an after hours pediatric care place, so the doctor was more focused on her ear than her weight.  When I asked about Anna’s weight, the doctor, who was not the same doctor we saw at Anna’s 12 month check (there are two doctors in the office), said that she had not gained much.  But, she said that Anna is “on her own weight curve” and was much more relaxed about the whole thing.  She wants us to come back in a month and do another weight check and in the meantime continue on with the fatty diet.  More butter and cream please!  “If” Anna’s weight continues not to be okay there is the chance that they will want to do blood tests to see if her kidneys and electrolytes are okay, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it…

Anna is not walking yet, but I expect that to come very soon.  Several times in the past few days she has been taking a few (two or three) steps on her own before plopping down to crawl.  She does love to walk holding onto our hands and with her walker toys.

Otherwise, Anna has been liking playing outside and especially playing in the dirt.  It’s hard to see here, but she has dirt all over herself, including around her mouth, since she tried eating some dirt:

Covered in dirt

Since it’s summer I’ve been trying to get Anna to wear sunglasses, but she’ll only wear them for a few seconds before taking them off.  I had to be quick to get this photo:

So Cool

Anna has been going through my cabinets and playing with pans and bowls and enjoying all the noise that entails:

Making Noise

And she’s been playing on the little playset we have in the backyard a lot, even getting into it all by herself:

Playset

For my birthday we went to Hudson Gardens and hung out in the grass where Anna played and looked cute:

Playing in the grass

And then Anna helped Mike set up his camera for those tulip shots he took at the gardens:

Photographer's Assistant

Wednesday we got Anna’s new car seat and as soon as I unpacked it she wanted to try it out.  Not necessarily the right way, but still, she’s in it:

Car Seat - first try

Later we went out on our maiden voyage with the new car seat and she seemed to like being up a little higher:

New car seat

Yesterday I was unloading the dishwasher and I had some “help”.  I say “help” because I turned away to put the silverware away and turned back to find the helper had gotten in the dishwasher:

Dishwasher

Mike is always disgusted by the fact that I lick my ice cream bowl.  I swear I haven’t done it in front of Anna, but yesterday I let her play with the mac and cheese bowl after lunch and this happened.  This means she’s definitely related to me:

Bowl licker!

It’s genetic, we can’t help it! My mom is a bowl licker too!

Moving Again!

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 | The Daily Special | 3 Comments

I’ve decided to move the blog to a different url - so prepare to redo any bookmarks or rss feeds you have…

I do hate to move and mess everyone up but I will feel better once it’s done and I’m more anonymous again.  For most of my life I was a Jones and frankly, the anonymity that came with such a common name was lovely.  I only once had to spell my last name and if I gave someone my full name that I didn’t like it would have been difficult for them to find me in the phone book.

My new married name is so uncommon that it would be easy to find me in the phone book.  Since I blog mostly about Anna I’ve decided to stop being so easy to find.  She’s really cute and even if I hate Oprah for making me afraid, there are creepy people out there.

So, I’ve decided to move to www.sweetyetsour.com.  Mike has a few things he needs to do to make it fully functional, but it should be ready soon.  If you want to know the logic on the name, here it is: a) sweetandsour.com is already taken; b) I make sweet desserts and have a sweet tooth, but am sort of a sour person.   It seemed logical for me to have a url that took in both my penchant for sweets and yet my sour attitude.

The old url will still work until it expires, but I’ll see you at the new url…