We Had Biscuits with Dinner

Dear Carbs,

I love you.

Domestic Diva

I am a domestic diva, y'all. Or at least, I have been for the past few days. It comes in fits and starts. :)

Here's why:

• I made this Cream Cheese Chicken, and it was oh so good. It actually reminded me of La Madeleine's chicken friand, with its creamy, mushroomy, chickeny goodness. And this is where the diva part comes in: I actually made the cream of mushroom soup that it calls for. Yes, people, I did. I know, I know, I am pretty impressed, myself. Truth be told, I just don't like the cream of mushroom that comes in a can. I think it has a funky flavor or a weird aftertaste or something. Anyway, I made the mushroom soup overnight, froze the excess, and kept out just enough to make the cream cheese chicken, which was what we had for dinner last night. It was good over pasta, but it was divine when mopped up with some Maple Buttermilk White Bread, which I made in the bread machine. Next time, though, I will use less salt and will add a little white wine.
• I am also making the bulk of Noah's baby food. Courtney recommended a book called Super Baby Food, and it has great ideas for how to make and store baby food. It also tells you what they can eat when, and so on. Now, before you rush off and buy this book, I must warn you that it is the worst written book I've ever read, and Courtney and I agreed that the author must have self-published it, because no decent publisher would have let this through, what with all its grammatical mistakes, horrible organization, and emoticons. (Yes, you read that right. She does things like this: "Your baby will love this :) !") However, it has a ton of good information. Anyway, my point here is that I feel like I'm doing something so good for Noah by making his food myself. That way, I know exactly what's in it. Plus, it's cheaper. And not too much trouble. You bake four sweet potatoes, puree and strain them, freeze them in ice cube trays, and you've got a month's worth of sweet potatoes. Nifty.
  
• Kendra's garden is producing tons of fresh, homegrown tomatoes, and this most wonderful girl is passing several off to me (everyone together, now: "YAY SUMMER!"). For dinner tonight, I am making Granny's Tomato Gravy. Oh, people, you have no idea. You just don't. Did you try the Banana Pudding? Remember its glory? The tomato gravy is right up there, too. It's going over some nice, fluffy biscuits. I might post the recipe tomorrow. If you're lucky.
• Last night, for dessert, I made Paula Deen's Fried Peanut Butter Banana Sandwiches. I saw her make them on TV yesterday, and y'all, that is the most decadent peanut butter banana sandwich EVER. It is the epitome of southern cooking: throw in extra sugar and fat, and you're set (in this case, you use an unholy amount of butter, then you roll the finished product in sugar and cinnamon). She suggested making these for breakfast or giving them to your kids as an afternoon snack. I was like, "WHAT Paula?! That is like an 879 calorie afternoon snack!" But I was mighty taken with how amazing they looked, so I made them for dessert last night. Yum.
• I made my quilted coasters! Here are a few of them:

What do you think? I think they turned out so cute!

Randomness

1. I have noticed that since I'm right-handed, I always carry Noah with my left arm in order to leave my right hand free to do things with. I really hope I don't end up with a Popeye arm on one side only.
2. I have lost approximately 13 lbs. since I started trying to lose the pregnancy weight. I'm finally starting to see my figure again. Can anybody say YAY? I did plateau for about a month, but something clicked and now I'm losing again. I have about 12 more lbs. to go before I'm down to my goal weight. Halfway there! I'm doing Weight Watchers online. It's the only diet that has ever worked for me.
   
3. I am a sewing maven. Okay, so I've only had my machine for one day. And I just figured out how to wind the bobbin and change out the presser foot (which is way basic). And, well, I haven't actually sewn anything yet. But I have a lot of confidence. ;) You can look for me on Project Runway in about a year, okay?
   
4. The Boy is growing up. He inhales food. He also slept like 11 hours last night. Blessed child.
5. Nathan just got back from a week in the Canadian Rockies, working for his advisor. He's a geologist, in case you haven't read my nifty little profile on the right. So he gets to go there every summer and meet people from all over the world who come to take a class from his advisor. Not to mention that he gets to spend some time in one of the most beautiful areas in North America. The other day, he called me from the hotel where we spent our honeymoon. I'm glad he got to go, but I'm also glad he's back. So is Noah, who has been incredibly smiley since his daddy got home.
   
6. Noah is teething. Ick. Enough said.
7. This zucchini casserole is so yummy! I served it with homemade bread and a rotisserie chicken. Then I made another one and mixed in the meat from one of the chicken breasts, and it was a one-dish dinner. It was good, y'all.
   
8. I just got a bunch of bread machine recipes, and I am going to town, y'all. (Apparently I like saying "y'all" today.) I got really inspired and made three loaves the other day. And Nathan was out of town, so what was I going to do with three loaves of bread? I gave one to my landlady, who was thrilled and said that no one had given her fresh baked bread in 15 years. Aww. I'm glad she was so pleased. There is something about homemade bread that is so, I don't know, caring or something. Even if it's from a bread machine. :)
   

Noah's New Stats

I keep forgetting to put up Noah's new stats. He had his six month pediatrician's appointment last week.

He now weighs 16 lbs., 12 oz. and is 27 and 3/4 inches long. He is still around 90th percentile when it comes to height, but he has dropped below 50th for weight. That's not a bad thing, but I am trying to beef him up a little bit, anyway. He has taken to solid food extremely well, which is helping a good bit. He's long and lean, and I think he is just perfect, personally. Right down to his invisible blonde eyebrows. :)

Literary Thought

I am reading a biography of C.S. Lewis ("Jack"), and in it, the author states the following about Lewis's opinion about how Christianity should be approached by writers:

At this stage in his career, he was not often so explicit about his intent, because he was only gradually coming to realize that he had the power to evangelize through the writing of popular books in which Christianity was implicit. . . . He pointed out that the difficulties of the Christian writer or lecturer arose from the fact that the culture was not at all Christian. This meant that the influence of a Christian lecture or article would be undermined very quickly by the influence of films, newspapers, and novels in which an opposing point of view was taken for granted. This made it impossible for the Christian writer to achieve widespread success. What was wanted was not more 'little books about Christianity,' but more books by Christians on other subjects in which the Christianity was latent. All his fiction is of this sort, as are his philological books and works of literary criticism.

I think this is interesting. It reminds me a little bit of the Trojan horse--sneaking Christian ideals into the culture. Actually, this biography reports that this is exactly what Lewis was aiming to do with the Narnia stories. They weren't intended to convert but to implant Christian ideas and make kids comfortable with them so that when they encountered the Gospel later, they'd be more likely to accept it.

Modern examples of this are bands like Switchfoot and movies like, well, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

What do you think about this idea?

Vacations

So Nathan and I are optimistic that he will be finishing his degree next June. (However, you really can't tell with a Ph.D. until you get a little closer to defending your dissertation, so I have to state this date with the caveat that it may not happen, but we are hoping it does!)

Graduating will be great for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that the time between graduating and starting a job will be the perfect time for a family vacation. Which is a BIG deal. At least to me. Because we haven't gone on vacation since our honeymoon, four and a half years ago. I mean, we've spent the occasional weekend away from home, but we haven't gone on a real vacation in a really long time.

Speaking of our honeymoon, let me just tell you that it was FANTASTIC. We went to the Canadian Rockies, to Banff National Park. We stayed right on Lake Louise, and if you know anything about the area, you know that that is a fabulous hotel. It was a dream. There was snow everywhere and it was like zero degrees (we got married in December), which was a total novelty to a couple of kids from central/south Texas. We loved it. We did some really fun things like hike around the lake, take a gondola to the top of a mountain, and hike through a canyon (which was hilarious, because you would have thought that it was the only canyon in the world by how melodramatic the signage was--like "You would think that this rock would last forever . . . but it won't.") But hands down, the most fun thing we did was go dog sledding. It was a blast.

However, we haven't been on vacation since. There are several reasons for this. First of all, hello, Nathan is a grad student. That means we don't just have all the disposable income in the world. Secondly, we've used all our vacation time to visit family in Texas a couple times a year.

So for the last little while, I've been talking about when we're going to get to go on vacation and where. We figured out that the most likely "when" will be next summer, right after Nathan graduates (if he graduates in June), before he starts his job.

So that leaves us with the "where." At first I was thinking it'd be fun to go somewhere out west, like Yellowstone or Glacier National Park. Nathan is so fun when he is outdoors, because he enjoys it so much. You can tell he kind of comes alive. He has missed expansive space, the smell of the desert, animals, and having a nice tan. :) He is not one to love the city all that much. And although I'm not exactly what you'd call an outdoorsy kind of person, the fact that he gets excited about something makes me excited about it, too, so I think I would enjoy a trip out west. So that is Option #1.

Option #2 is to go to England. Matthew and Emily (Nathan's youngest brother and his wife) are definitely moving to Cambridge in September for Matthew to work on his graduate degree there, and I would love to go visit and tour around England and Scotland. I spent a summer studying abroad at Cambridge in college, and I had the time of my life. I would totally go live there. I loved Scotland, too. And I'm such an Anglophile. I love most things British: the history, the literature, the culture, the accent, the tea. :) Nathan's parents are thinking of going over to do some research next summer, and I just think it would be an awesome vacation to go when all of us would be there at the same time. Nathan loves it there, too--he was actually born in Cambridge and grew up there off and on until he was seven or eight. But he hasn't missed England like he's missed the west.

So what do you think? Where would you go? Would you opt to go out west, to the UK, or would you pick something else?

My New Hobby

I ordered a sewing machine yesterday, and I am DYING for it to arrive! I am so excited!

I am nearly a total novice when it comes to sewing, but I really want to take it up. Meredith inspired me with her cute projects and the fabulous fabrics she uses. So over the last few months I've been trying to decide whether or not I really want to invest in learning how to sew (i.e. whether or not I want to take the $200 plunge and buy a machine--which is actually not much for a machine, if you ask anyone at a sewing store, who all own the $900 versions and think you are scraping the bottom of the barrel with a low-end machine which in reality will last plenty of people 10-20 years). I kept getting more and more excited about the idea of making my own tablecloths, napkins, curtains, gifts, etc., and I also realized that it would be a good thing to have a sewing machine around and have some basic skills as my kid(s) are growing up.

So here I sit, obsessing over my soon-to-be hobby, thinking about what projects I want to start with, and I decided on some quilted coasters. I saw the pattern for these in a book I gave Meredith for Christmas. I drooled over nearly every page in this book. It's called Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts, if you're interested. Anyway, here is the picture of the coasters from the book:

And here is the fabric I chose.Aren't they going to be so cute?! I love that blue fabric. I think I might make a tablecloth out of it eventually.