Sunday Cooking

I did not help my mom in the kitchen very much while I was growing up, unless you count making my own school lunches and learning how to make certain foods that I wanted to eat over and over again, like mashed potatoes and chocolate chip cookies.

So when I was living alone as a younger adult, I soon realized that I didn't know how to cook real food.  Recipes had mysterious ingredients in them, like "stock", and unclear commands, like "cut the butter into the flour".  Obviously I avoided those recipes until I had made all of the other ones with easier instructions.  I even tried once to make soup not only without stock, but also without onions.  I have never liked raw onion, and I hadn't yet realized not only that cooked onion completely different than raw onion, but also that cooking an onion is the beginning of almost everything.

I made a lot of gourmet grilled cheese with tomato soup from a box and relied upon Amy's Organics frozen meals for my lunches at work.  I ate out a lot.  I was not unusual among my peers in this, but I know my parents were confused.  They knew that I should have been on a budget, so my habit of eating out frequently seemed strange to them.  But, that's what we did; as entertainment, as a vehicle for socializing, as a way to feel grown-up, and probably because suddenly delicious food was quite hip.

Big Girl Pants (Not the Maternity Kind)

People have been asking me how my new job is going.  I find myself not wanting to talk about it, for a variety of reasons.

I'm not sure how I feel about it yet.  Some of my initial reactions have been quite negative, but since I have a history of feeling that way when faced with a new job in a new field, I have been trying to fight those feelings.  And, since it is not full-time and I have not yet completed very much paid work, I have been resisting the urge to say terrible things about it.  The lulls in the schedule have also provided welcome moments for me to step back, take breaks to do something else when I have wanted to run screaming in the other direction.

I Love Carbs

I have written in the past about how irked I am by the Paleo diet trend.  It seems unsustainable, extreme and controlling, several qualities that do not feel comfortable in my food life.  I should care what other people are up to, but for some reason the Paleo thing gets to me.  Also, I just really love bread and potatoes, so even if the math added up on the Paleo diet, I could still see myself living with the risks of flour, just as people now openly encourage pregnant women to go ahead and have that occasional glass  of wine.

In fact, this year one of my goals is very flour-focused.  After years of hemming and hawing about wanting to make bread after one or two long-ago failed attempts, I have finally made some progress.  I have successfully caused dough to rise, and navigated my way around a packet of yeast.

For my weekly attempts in the beginning of the year, I stuck with one basic white/wheat yeast bread recipe and repeated it several times until it became more comfortable.  But this week, I have cleared a new hurdle: the soft pretzel.

We Almost Made it To a Food Truck (But Now It's a Cafe)

So food trucks are all the rage these days and Houston is no exception.  Since we tend to prefer fresh and casual dining over fine dining, I imagined that we would be tasting all kinds of goodies on the go when we moved here, but instead we have not really bothered.  To be honest, sometimes it is tricky to know where they will be and when.  Aside from that, we just don't eat out as much as we used to; disappointing and expensive restaurants combined with a tight household budget while we were in Calgary finally pushed my tastebuds to prefer homemade food.  

Pregnancy has reinforced that preference; eliminating all of the forbidden ingredients from a restaurant menu is not only an exercise in patience and sleuthing, but takes out some of the fun out of the restaurant experience.  Even though I try to be relaxed and not excessive while following healthy pregnancy guidelines, when I know that my body might be creating a brain that day, or strengthening a spine, I don't want to have that be the day that I give in to the listeria-contaminated feta, or let myself enjoy that (half) pint that I've been craving.

However, we recently had a chance to sample the goods of one food-truck-turned-cafe that has been getting some attention here in Houston, called the Eatsie Boys Cafe.  We enjoyed some fresh and tasty sandwiches on a sunny patio and it was quite delicious.  We didn't quite get there while it was still a trendy food truck, but at least we didn't miss the good food.

Old NOLA

We went on a road trip to Alabama early in February, and had the opportunity to stop in New Orleans overnight to see a friend.  We were able to time our trip with crawfish (and king cake) season, and I've been meaning to post a few pics.

Maternity 101

I started wearing maternity clothes this week.  I felt bad about it because it seems so early.  Nonetheless, suddenly none of my pants fit.  It was nearly overnight, and for a person like me who views a closet as something to be curated and tended to, like a garden, it was cause for minor mourning.  For some reason, I thought it would be a more gradual and less dramatic transition.  But no.

Let me say this.  I understand that many people in my life have already been through this at least once, or even multiple times.  I am late to the party.  For some, this experience was years ago, and for others it much more recent.  I have come to realize how isolating an experience this is, although I also recognize that to be part of nature's plan.  You aren't supposed to be focused on child-free aspects of your life when all of your body's energy is working to prepare you mentally and physically to produce and care for offspring.  Biology requires that I learn how to put the needs of another before my own interests and curiosities.  Since this is not easy, nature wants me to start practicing now,  months prior to birth.  I have never questioned the fact that my pregnant and new-parent friends kind of disappear, but before this, I had also never examined the minutiae which creates this dynamic, nor how it feels to be the one disappearing.

Curve Ball Trifecta

I'm pregnant.  Finally, I'm saying out loud what's really on my mind and what has been on my mind for six weeks now.  Technically, we should wait even longer to spill the beans, but since this situation colors my thoughts on most other situations lately, it's been very hard to keep quiet.  Also, often things do not feel real to me until I put them in writing (possibly the result of a liberal arts education?), and while my body gives me significant clues that this is real, it still seems murky and far-fetched.

It has been a season of surprises, pretty big ones.  We shouldn't have been completely surprised by the pregnancy, since we are people who paid attention in health class back in the day, but still.  I just never thought that I would be one of those people who would basically think about pregnancy and then become pregnant five seconds later.  So that was our first surprise, just before Christmas.