find me a cuter baby and i'll pay you (hint: you can't)

oliver and i made it through our 3 days/2 nights completely unscathed. he was a good baby and slept well for me, and he was at day care all day, so no one got hurt. we actually had some very nice evenings together! after he went to bed both nights, i was able to get a few things done around the house, work out, and get in bed early. tuesday night, i even managed to can both the pickled green tomatoes as well as some escabeche. i think we'll try to do some more escabeche, but i had the jars sterilized so figured i'd at least get a few done. i'm really looking forward to enjoying all our canned treats this winter!

a few pics of ollie and i pal'ing around:

tuesday evening, he was being cranky as i attempted to prepare dinner for him. so i gave him a whole pear to eat. the kid LOVES pears and you'd be shocked at how quickly he can eat an *entire* pear. needless to say, it shut him up!


after dinner (and a bath) we took a walk. his fire truck had to come along. notice the big spot of dirt in our yard - that's where the tree used to be.


after our walk, we played around a bit before bed. he loves sitting in the bay window (yes, i know i am creating a bad habit by encouraging it).




i decided that since bryan would be arriving home right at dinner time on thursday, and knew neither of us would be in the mood to cook by the time we arrived home, wednesday night i prepped ingredients for crock pot chili. tossed that together thursday morning before work; added some masa after work thursday; and by the time we got home from the airport on thursday, we had a lovely chili. i just did ground beef, onions, red kidney beans (yes, chris, i know that is heresy!), tomatoes, cumin, oregano, and ground chipotle peppers. we added sharp white cheddar, sour cream, and green onions, and it was a great belly warming and EASY dinner.

friday, i worked from home, and oliver was very well behaved, so i managed to get some work done too. i was a bad mom, though, and he watched lots of blues clues. he's officially addicted to the tv, i think. that night for dinner, bryan took me out to el matador for dinner. we had never been, but always drive past it on the way to and from the zoo, and wanted to give it a try. can i just say, it was terrible! first, we had to wait at the hostess station for 5 minutes. no hostess. it was 5 p.m., so they were not busy yet. a bunch of the bus boys and waitresses were sitting in the corner looking at us. finally one of the waitresses seated us. we asked for non smoking since, duh, we have a baby. the non smoking section is literally 4 tables in the corner of the smoking section. i wish i were exaggerating. a guy 2 tables from us lit up a cigarette and i was like, what the heck? so we finally got out water and placed our order, and the food was just barely mediocre. so, needless to say, we will NOT be going back again (and i'm giving it bad reviews on every web site i can find).


we mostly spent the weekend just hanging out. saturday we hit tarket and office depot (so we could have oliver's birthday party invites printed out - they are SO CUTE). we stopped by gram's house and then aunt mo's house to drop theirs off, then went to see mom and dad for a bit. that night for dinner, bryan made me his famous pizza, which i had been dreaming about. i know it looks huge in the picture but have no fear - bryan and i put a pretty good hurt on it. you can always count on us. oliver wasn't in bed yet, so i didn't have any beer with it, but that would have gone perfectly.

sunday, we went for a bike ride on the oak leaf trail. we rode for 30 - 40 minutes total, and oliver loved every minute of it. he can definitely go longer, so i think we're going to try for an hour next time. it was a gorgeous day, and the trail is very nice (and flat - which works well for bryan pulling the 50 lbs of kiddie trailer). he really seems to love riding in the trailer - which makes me so happy. every time i ride up next to him to check how he's doing, he gives me a great big grin. i really can't wait to take long (as in ride all day, camp overnight somewhere) type rides!


that night for dinner, mom came over for stir fry. bryan and i are far less intuitive when it comes to asian cooking - french, mexican, those are easy and well known. bryan has been wanting to learn how to make a kick ass stir fry so he decided that the first step is to make a few by following a recipe. a novel concept for us. he used some pork butt, carrots, this really awesome celery from our csa, green onion, bamboo shoots, and garlic. mom joined us and we all agreed that it turned out very well, though i think the flavors of the sauce (soy, mirin, and sesame oil) could have been a little more pronounced. i guess that just means he'll have to practice some more!

monday night for dinner, bryan made carnitas with the rest of the pork butt. he served that along with some super cheesy mac n cheese and frilly red mustard greens, which he sauteed quickly with a hot bacon dressing. it was a big hit - even oliver was shoveling big pieces of pork into his cute little mouth! this was after eating ham, even. that boy knows what is good for him, and obviously takes after his momma. viva el pork!

last night for dinner, we finally got around to having the whole trout we had. bryan seared it on the flat top in bacon fat (oh yeah, you heard me right - bacon fat), then finished it in the oven. we came up with a great salad to serve that on top of which included the rest of the frilly red mustard greens, arugula, beet greens, turnip greens, israeli couscous, french breakfast radishes, blanched green beans, sauteed baby bella mushrooms, and a lovely heirloom tomato from our garden. we used the leftover hot bacon dressing. some toasted pecans probably wouldn't have hurt it all that much, either. it was absolutely delicious! oliver was fascinated by the whole trout cooking on the cast iron griddle. it may be my imagination, but i swear he loves watching things cook. which is good, otherwise he'll be very, very bored for the next 17 years.

oliver has expanded his vocabulary (which i define as words he uses consistently and correctly) to include "hi" (so now he knows 2 words - "uh oh" and "hi"). it is the CUTEST THING EVER. he had said it randomly before, but i realized on friday he knows it as the word you say on the phone. i was changing him when the house phone rang, and he put the toy he was holding up to his ear and said "hi!" later i had a conference call, and when they dialed me and and i answered, oliver kept saying "hi" and trying to grab my cell phone. so he will push buttons on the phone, and say "hi" into it, and pretend to talk. holy bejesus, it's so cute. i got some video of that last night - enjoy!

bunch new pictures in the october gallery.

WFD: tuna casserole and brussel sprouts. i got some fancy pants tuna from the outpost, along with some lovely egg pasta. we're out of mushrooms, but we'll make a nice thyme cream sauce (none of that condensed soup crap in our house!), and top it with homemade bread crumbs (but of course). bryan makes the best brussel sprouts ever by blanching them, halving them, caramelizing them in butter, and adding bread crumbs at the last minute. if you haven't yet made your reservation, i am sorry - we're all booked up.

sweet things

last week friday was a pretty awesome day. i skipped out of work at 12:30, along with a bunch of other coworkers, and drove up to cedarburg for a bike ride along the interurban trail. we rode from downtown cedarburg, to port washington, ending quite literally on lake michigan. it was about a 25 mile ride there and back, and we couldn't have asked for more beautiful weather. i was worried that i wouldn't make the whole ride, since it's been a long time, but the group i rode with was, shall we say, a little slower than i normally push myself. so i did fine (and was dying to go faster!). i'm looking forward to trying to squeeze in a few more rides before the real cold weather hits.

i headed home through rush hour traffic (which included some slowing due to rubber necking - apparently traffic on 43N was shut down due to a truck with animal parts falling over on the highway, and no, i sadly don't have any more details on that). bryan and oliver met me at home, where we played, ate, and i got ready to go see cirque du soleil with mom. mom and dad had bought tickets, but as dad was running a marathon sunday and decided not to stay out late, mom took me instead. we saw saltimbanco. i've seen 2 other cirque shows, but this was mom's first. this was a little different from the others in that they performed inside the bradley center arena, rather than the tents. since the arena is huge and they didn't sell out, we were able to get closer seats for free, score! mom and i really enjoyed the show. now mom is spoiled and will never think a normal circus is all that great ever again. an added bonus of the evening was that bryan had to put oliver to bed. which, given ollie's dependency on me, i wasn't sure was possible - but they did great! i think he went down even faster than he does for me, the little punk.

saturday, bryan headed out to madison to do computer whatever with dirk. oliver and i hit up the outpost to get our grocery shopping done. as usual, i had a blast, and oliver flirted with everyone. everyone thinks he is just the cutest, happiest, most well behaved baby they've ever seen. i invite any of them to come spend an afternoon with him.

bryan arrived home shortly before oliver woke up from his afternoon nap, and we all headed to the mall together to get oliver some new clothes for fall and winter. seriously, they make the *cutest* stuff for kids!! we picked up some really adorable stuff, and had fun bumming around the mall together.

that night, we made taco trash for dinner. the meal was inspired by danielle, one of the moms from my message board. i can't resist tacos, and taco trash sounded like too much fun. in short, it was tortilla chips piled with ground beef, green onions, my bread and butter pickled jalapenos, corn, pinto beans, gold tomatoes, and a cheese sauce bryan made with provolone and muenster. i forgot the sour cream. but it was very tasty! bryan had the leftovers for lunch yesterday, and said it was even better when he mixed all the toppings up before putting it on top of the chips.

sunday, i canned a bunch of beets. we had some golden super sweet beets from our csa, and a bunch of beets in our garden. so i canned some plain to have over the winter, and pickled some others. i made 1 large jar of champagne vinegar pickled beets, 2 small jars of cider vinegar pickled beets, and 3 small jars of your plain ol' white vinegar pickled beets. we'll see how they turn out!

oliver and i went to kohls to do some more shopping while bryan stayed home to watch football. i was disappointed kohls didn't have as much boy baby clothes as i had hoped, but we still managed to get a few things. including a winter jacket and snow pants! he looks freakishly adorable in the entire get up - like a big, blue, puffy marshmallow! i'm not sure how much we'll take him out in the snow this year, but at least once to try out the snow suit!

that night, mom and dad came over for dinner. bryan made an amazing timballo, a baked pasta dish inspired by the timpano dish in the food movie big night. we used italian sausage from the co op. i hadn't picked up swiss chard, thinking we had some, but we didn't - so bryan used beet green from our garden as well. we made a non dairy, gluten free version for dad using quinoa pasta. we served it with a delicious salad of iceberg and red leaf lettuce (from the csa), yellow/white and purple carrots (also from the the csa), radish (from the csa), tomatoes, and cucumber (both from our garden). the yellow/white carrots were SO sweet! the purple carrots were gorgeous. for dessert, i made individual blackberry clafoutis in my mini enameled cast iron dutch ovens. i had never made clafoutis before but had always wanted to. turns out they are a super simple dessert to make, and really hit the spot! seeing as how you can use any fruit in them, i can see myself whipping these up quite often. i had originally wanted to watch the movie while we chatted and ate, but mom had already seen it, so she got the connection with dinner. plus, blue's clues won out instead, yet again. (i dare you to try arguing with my [almost] 1 year old on that one!)

yesterday, it was back to the grind. bryan made meatloaf for dinner. YUM, i love meatloaf. he shredded a bunch of carrots into ours, which gave it a nice sweetness. we don't baste ours with ketchup (since we're opposed to ketchup for adults as a general rule) or bbq sauce, so the carrots took the place of that. bryan blanched the remaining yellow/white and orange carrots, sauteed the rest of the radishes in butter, and made a turnips and cabbage dish that grew out of confusion over whether we were having bubble and squeak or neeps and tatties. it worked, though.

this morning, bryan flew off to detriot for a work trip, so oliver and i are flying solo for a few days (and even scarier - nights). oliver slept through the night last night, so pray or do a rain dance or whatever it is you do in hopes he continues to. i plan on having early nights and lots of pasta this week.

due to the late spring and early cold (damn you, wisconsin), the majority of our tomatoes are still green. not wanting to waste any, we decided to try pickled green tomatoes. i'm hoping to get those canned tonight.

day care has friday off, so i'll be working from home to baby wrangle. i'm even flirting with the idea of taking the day, or half the day, off. we'll see how my work load is come friday.

my plan for this weekend is to hopefully pickle some escabeche, a mexican pepper and vegetable pickle. we have lots of peppers and carrots from our garden, a huge cauliflower from our csa, and lots of small green tomatoes we'd like to try including.

other than that, nothing else is on the schedule for the weekend. i need to get to the printer, and send off oliver's birthday party invites! i used my favorite website to create them, and boy are they cute!!!

speaking of, oliver got his first 1st birthday present yesterday! brent and jessica sent oliver some new books. he loooooves books. he was slightly confused by the whole gift wrap concept, but caught on pretty quickly. he definitely has a new favorite book, about a bunny's birthday! we must have read it 15 times already.


new october gallery is up!

11 months

last monday, bryan made that slow roasted moroccan chicken for dinner, with roasted tomatoes, chickpeas with raisins, and a salad of cucumber, tomato, and lemon balm. it all turned out very tasty. oliver *loved* the chickpeas, and those became a great dinner time item for him all week!

wednesday, our neighbor john brought over his heavy machinery, and he and bryan ripped out the tree in our front yard. i didn't mind the tree so much, but it was keeping sunlight from bryan's roses, so out it came. bryan and dad spent a good amount of time sawing it apart, and bryan made i don't know how many trips to the yard, as evidenced by the size of the darn thing:











for dinner, we had chicken fried steak with home fries. breaded and fried steak, with cream sauce? hello!! guess how much i love this dish. we had the cube steak on hand, and after reading about kristi's brother's chicken fried rib eye, we decided to have the original for dinner. not that we're not going to attempt that rib eye, mind you.

i spent that evening chasing oliver around the house. he likes to put a toy in his mouth, just like a dog. i kid you not - he will growl, shake his head from side to side, and crawl around the house as fast as can be. he must have learned it from the dogs, although they don't do it that much anymore (they spend a lot of their time looking at us woefully, as if to say, "remember when you loved me, too?"). that evening, we took a family walk to enjoy the GORGEOUS weather we'd been having, and the stuffed dog came along too - in his mouth of course. i swear he didn't chew on it the whole time.

thursday was csa day. we got, among other things, delicious radishes, brussel sprouts, green beans, and some kick ass carrots (in shades of purple, orange, and white). more tomatoes, too, of course, but i can't get enough of those sweet golden ones, so i was happy.

that night for dinner, i don't remember what we had planned (i blame mommy brain), but whatever it was didn't work out so we made what i will heretofore refer to as left over nachos. we used left over taco meat, and bryan made a pepper jack cheese sauce to mix that into. we also used the leftover home fries. put that on the remains of our tortilla chips from the previous week's nachos, along with lettuce, tomato, and sour cream and - ta da! left over nachos. :) they were delicious and i was too stuffed for ice cream.

friday, bryan made moussaka. normally, we make moussaka with ground beef, but as i have been liking lamb lately, we decided to try with half ground beef / half ground lamb. turns out i don't like ground lamb. i ate around the meat as best i could (and i did try to eat it - but just couldn't!), and filled up on ice cream afterwards. i was sad - i love moussaka, and bryan did a great job!!

saturday, i tried a new experiment: homemade sauerkraut. now, the old fashioned method of making sauerkraut involves a bucket, a basement, and a lot of salt (and perhaps 25 pounds of cabbage, depending on where you look). we decided that it wasn't worth it to do this with one head of cabbage (but just wait until next year). so instead, i packed sterilized jars full of raw, shredded cabbage and filled them with a simple brine of water, white vinegar, and mustard seeds, including a sprig of dried dill (from our garden) which had gone to seed, at the bottom of each jar. i processed the jars in the canner, and they're now hanging out in our basement. we'll see in a few weeks how that worked out. i made 8 jars, so hopefully it turned out well. :)

bryan picked me some gorgeous roses from my favorite rose bush in the back yard. this bush has the biggest, most beautiful, most fragrant flowers i've ever seen. and it keeps blooming! that bush won't quit. which is fine by me, because it keeps my house smelling like roses.

after oliver's afternoon nap, we headed to the zoo to kill some time. we went through the aviary. oliver had never been in that building before. he *LOVED* the penguins. he was so excited by them swimming and playing - he was jumping around in his stroller, flapping his arms, and talking excitedly to them. too cute!!

a few random pics from that day (hey, he's really cute, i take a lot of pictures, k?):

my boys, working hard:




his, "ooooooooooooooohhh, that's silly" face:


throwing a fake fit when i wouldn't let him do something (like chew on a laptop power cord, or climb the heating vent into the bay window):


hanging out at the zoo:





that night for dinner, bryan used the leftover cabbage to make a slaw, and served that with burgers and homemade potato chips. his burgers were outstanding, as usual, with cheese and that yellow tomato i love. the chips were thin, crispy, and the best ever. who knew i could be wooed with hamburgers?

sunday, the day started out great, but took a turn for the worse when oliver decided he didn't need an afternoon nap. it wasn't that he was cranky, but since we had dinner plans, i needed him to nap so as to not have a meltdown at 5 p.m. no such luck for momma. i thought about selling him back, but wasn't sure if i could get good money for a sweaty baby who wouldn't nap and was probably teething.

sunday night for dinner, we headed over to gram & gramp's house. gram made pot roast, mashed potatoes, and a cauliflower and broccoli bake with cheese and bread crumbs. i love gram's pot roasts!! for dessert, she served ice cream, which included a homemade lemon ice cream. i had that *with* a scoop of chocolate, because i know how to get down. oliver had a blast exploring a new house and charming gram and gramps. gram brought out a box of little toy cars and trucks, which oliver marveled at - they rolled! i know what he's getting for his birthday! for skipping his afternoon nap, he was in a great mood. i was duly impressed, and decided to love him again.

yesterday, day care had the day off, so i worked from home. bryan and i split caring for oliver so we could both get some work done. oliver was incredibly well behaved; played nicely and napped well. after we shut down work for the day, i shoved some food in oliver's mouth, and then we ran off to target to get that errand out of the way before the weekend. dad dropped by so he and bryan would work on the tree stump some more (and determined that due to random pieces of metal being embedded mysteriously throughout the stump, bry will have to pay the city $25 to pick it up rather than ruin 18 chain saw blades trying to cut it down). oliver took his sweet time going to bed, so dinner wasn't until after 8 p.m., but it was so delicious that it made up for it being so late. bryan seared steaks on the cast iron, for which i made a quick mustard horseradish sauce. he also braised swiss chard from the csa along with garlic, yellow tomato, and a pepper from our garden. so flavorful with just a little bite. we also had the green beans from our csa. dessert was butter pecan ice cream. we watched heroes, then i crashed in bed.

oliver is 11 months old today! i can hardly believe it. he'll be 1 next month - totally crazy. where did all the time go? oh, yeah - sucked into a vacuum of sleep deprivation, that's right. i'm pretty excited for his birthday!

bunch of random new pictures in the september gallery.

WFD: if bryan gets a chance to finish the prep, it'll be pastitsio. pastitsio is a greek pasta dish, traditionally made with ground lamb (ours will be beef), tomato sauce, cheeses, and a bechemel sauce. in short, most of the things i like, all in one place. if that doesn't work out, it'll be organic frozen ravioli, with ground beef and a sauce of some sort. either meal calls for wine, me thinks.