Nursery, almost done

I’ve been holding out on photographing the nursery because I was waiting for some prints to arrive from Holland. They finally arrived… and then I discovered that I’m too big and sore and awkward to face a trip to Target to buy frames for them, so I ordered the frames. So I am waiting for the frames to show up. So the nursery still isn’t picture-perfect… alas. Well, I can’t contain myself, so I photographed the parts that look good. Translation: I avoided the wall the prints are going to go on, and also the Pack-n-Play temporarily parked in the middle of the room.

Nursing station. Curtains by Amy Butler, boppy cover by Tula Pink, the cut chenille blankets, the summer quilts, the Farmer’s Market burp cloths, and more.

A closer look at that. Also the Little Folks play mat, and some books… mostly my own.

Toys and bath things

The crib. I’m too freaked out about the SIDS risk to have a regular bumper, so that’s a breathable one. Because the crib is odd–it has a changing table attached to one end–the bumper went on oddly. I made the skirt out of Parisville fabric.

Prints by Etsy seller yumi yumi

Prints by Etsy seller LauraAmiss

The big diaper bag, the little diaper bag, two diapers & wipes pods, and Sparks’ manly Dad Bag

Party dresses

The 0-3 month layette, washed and ready to go

The 3-6 month layette, minus many miscellaneous pieces received as gifts. Sorry, I didn’t have it in me to dive into the Baby Clothes Bin and pick them all out… not till they need to be worn and washed. All of this matchy-matchy stuff was right on top.

Just waiting

Kidney Bean is officially full-term now, so she is welcome to appear any time… sooner better than later, if you know what I mean. Being full term doesn’t mean much, unfortunately… there is a conceivable world in which I am pregnant for five more weeks. Conceivable to everyone else, anyway. I can’t imagine it and don’t want to. I am sore and stretched to my limits, and the stretch marks can only get worse.

She spends most of her time hanging out on the left, as this picture clearly shows. Is that freaky or is that freaky? That’s her little baby butt, creating the bulge. Yesterday afternoon when I took this picture, I felt farther around my left side and found one of her knees.

Pudding is getting downright clingy. She seems to spend most of the day trying to climb onto my (very sore) belly and crying for attention. When she isn’t doing that, she’s asleep in my hospital bag. I’m torn between washing all of those baby and mommy clothes again, or deciding that KB will get an early dose of kitty dander to give her immune system a workout.

All kinds of excitement

It is February 17 and the temperature here is WARM WARM WARM!

Well, it’s 52 now. And it may hit 62 by the end of the day. Yesterday morning when it was 42 I opened all the windows in the house to air it out… winter has seemed THAT LONG. This morning I’ve got them open again and it makes me feel like it’s time for a party. Fresh air indoors is one of the greatest mood-enhancers I know.

This week is Sparks’ birthday, too. I won’t tell you how old he is, and he will continue to not complain about how I get out of bed every hour, on the hour, all night. This deal isn’t fair (I’m getting the better end of it).

Dear Sparks in 2001

Dear Sparks sometime in college (hold. me. back.)

Dear Sparks in high school.

Dear Sparks earlier this month, putting together the crib. Bless him.

I am also 36 weeks pregnant, this week. Cue “Faraway, So Close” please. I had an ultrasound yesterday, and while there weren’t any really good pictures–because the baby is so big that not much of her fits on the screen, and also because she has dropped and her face is smooshed and DON’T I KNOW IT with every step I take–it looks like she is going to have chubby toes and chubby cheeks and a head full of hair, just like her mom. I’m so proud. A reminder of what we’re aiming for, hair-wise:

Keep working on that, kiddo.

Valentine’s Day III

Sparks and I take self-portraits with our heads together. It’s just the thing we do.

Happy Valentine’s Day III, my dearest, sweetest, hard-workingest, supportivest, lovingest, funniest, kindest, handsomest, and sexiest of Sparkses. Aren’t we going to have fun in the year to come?

Stewie project: lasagna, roast beef with mushroom gravy

On to the two Stewie Project dishes we’ve cooked up since last weekend’s first fillet.

First, lasagna. Which was really, really good. Just not very photogenic, because I couldn’t be bothered to wait till next morning for natural light to stage it.

This was possibly the best lasagna I’ve ever had. I used this recipe, but with two full jars of sauce and two pounds of ground beef just to make the measuring simpler… also all mozzarella instead of a mixture of mozzarella and provolone. Because we’re all about the simple here.

Why was this lasagna so good? I don’t quite know. Three possibilities:

1. A very high ratio of melting mozzarella to crumbly ricotta in the cheese mixture, which made eating this almost like eating a good piece of gooey pizza

2. IGA brand shredded mozzarella and lasagna noodles. Sparks has always praised IGA mozzarella as the best melting cheese on the planet. The noodles, too, had a special velvety texture. I soaked them in hot water before baking them in the casserole, if that makes any difference.

3. The ground Stewie that went into the meat sauce. A co-worker had told Shparks that the hamburger from our steer “wouldn’t be like regular hamburger”, and we were pleased to discover she was right. First, it was a plummy purple color instead of bright pinkish-red. I assume that this is the color of properly hung and promptly frozen beef, rather than vac-packed, nitrogen-treated grocery store meat. Second, it actually smelled and tasted beefy as it cooked, which was a revelation.

Roast Stewie

The second dish, which I sadly don’t have a picture of, was rump roast of Stewie a la Jane. Jane is my mother-in-law and a formidable force in the kitchen, having taken a degree in home economics and with decades of church-function-cooking and family-holiday-cooking experience under her belt. Sparks specifically requested that I get her recipe for roast beef with mushroom gravy (and that I make mashed potatoes to go with it… reader, that was the first time I’ve EVER made mashed potatoes).

The jist of the recipe is that you roast the beef slowly at 250F, for ten hours, with a lot of garlic salt and a half a cup of water, in a container with its lid well-sealed with aluminum foil so the moisture doesn’t get out. You let it get cold before slicing, because by this point the meat is so tender that you can eat it with a spoon, and you certainly couldn’t slice it while hot. Then you make gravy with the pan juices, extra water and beef bouillon cubes, a can of sliced mushrooms, and as much water/cornstarch slurry as it takes. You reheat the meat in the gravy, and serve over mashed potatoes.

The method was certainly a revelation to me… roast beef doesn’t have to be dry and stringy! It can be moist and tender! And oh, oh, the beef and noodles it made later on. PERFECT. Try it!

Best fudge brownies

We’re in the middle of two food projects here at Low House. First, the Stewie project. Second, the pre-baby project.

The pre-baby project is mostly about making lots of freezer-friendly meals in these last weeks before the baby gets here, and freezing some portion of each of them. Unofficially, it also involves keeping me fed, in these last crazy hungry squished-stomach growing-baby weeks of pregnancy. I stumbled upon a GREAT recipe for the late-pregnancy sweet tooth this week: these brownies. I have modified them from one of the many, dissimilar recipes for “Fudge Brownies” from various editions of the Good Housekeeping cookbook. Since I’ve modified them, I’ll provide the recipe. Sparks says they’re the best brownies he’s ever had.

Preheat oven to 350F.

Melt 2oz baking chocolate into
1/2 cup butter
Stir in 2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 t vanilla and
3/4 c AP flour

Decant into a greased 9″x9″ pan. Top with a handful of semisweet chocolate chips. Bake for 30 minutes. Enjoy.

The Stewie project is, of course, about eating our half-of-a-half of Stewie from snout to tail. I have two winners from that, which I’ll share tomorrow and Monday. Mustn’t flood a single blog post with too many recipes…

Newborn hat and mitts

It seems like a foregone conclusion that I would knit something for this baby, but as I thought about it, a baby sweater just wasn’t an appealing option. It would be grown out of so fast, it’s a not-insignificant chunk of knitting, Kidney Bean will be born at the beginning of spring and the end of wool sweater season, and I hear tell that babies are messy. I know for sure that any yarn which will tolerate a lot of washing, isn’t one I’ll enjoy knitting with. So I was stymied.

These little accessories were just the right amount of knitting, though. One precious little baby hat and baby mitts to stop her scratching herself… with very long ribbed cuffs that will, I hope, keep them on her hands. All of these knit up very fast–I did a pair of mitts during the Superbowl last night and still had time to make Chex mix and boo at the halftime show.

FREE PATTERN!!!
Yep, I made this up all by m’self. I hope they fit.

Ideal yarns: are the heavier fingering weights and lighter DKs. I used Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca Silk. I think Blue Moon Fiber Arts lightweight and Shelridge Farms Soft Touch Ultra would also be excellent candidates… most sock yarns are too thin to look good when knit on 3mm needles, unfortunately.

Needles: these are knit in the round on two circular needles or a Magic Loop, size small US3/3mm.

Hat
Using Turkish cast-on, cast on 16 wraps (32 sts total). Knit one round.
On each needle, (K1, Kfb, K to last two sts, Kfb, K1) until each needle has 24 sts on it.
(K one round plain, then (K1, Kfb, K to last two sts, Kfb, K1)) until each needle has 32 sts on it, 64 sts total.
K plain for 2.5″ more
K in K4, P4 ribbing for 2.5″ more
Bind off, weave in ends

Mitt
Using Turkish cast-on, cast on 8 wraps (16 sts total).
(K one round plain, then (K1, Kfb, K to last two sts, Kfb, K1)) until each needle has 16 sts on it, 32 sts total.
K plain for 1.5″ more
K in K2, P2 ribbing for 2″ more
Bind off, weave in ends

And it’s still winter

Punxsatawny Phil didn’t see his shadow this year, which means spring should be “right around the corner”, where “right around the corner” should be “time increments of less than six weeks”, based on the alternative outcome of February 2′s activities. Judging by the state of things outside and the weather forecast, that value is going to be five weeks and six days.

It’s been the snowiest winter of my life, with no more than two or three days of snow-free ground since December 1. I dreamed of this stuff when I was a kid; now as an adult I mostly wish for dry, clear roads upon which I can drive to Target every time the mood strikes me. Oh, and also for hips and a back that feel good enough to support wandering aimlessly around Target. But all that will come soon. Almost exactly at the same time, in fact. Sparks and I cannot wait for spring to come, for all possible reasons.

Even poor Pudding gets out of sorts with the windows closed for so long. She slips into a long winter slumber, sometimes in front of the fire, other times on top of a heating register, and less and less often on my less and less usable lap. Poor kitty, is her life ever going to change!

We had filet of Stewie for dinner last night, and I think it was the best steak I’ve ever had in my life. Whether that was because it came from a happy, free-range steer, because I’m eight months pregnant and craving beef, or because it was, well, filet, I’m not sure. But darn, it was buttery and tasty and yum. Later this week: meat lasagna made with Stewie-burger, and a roast of Stewie according to Sparks’ mother’s recipe.

The Stewie project

Yesterday was a big day because we finally sold my old house, making today the first day that Sparks and I officially own only one house. That calls for a celebration.

Forrrrrtunately… yesterday was also a big day because our half of a half of Stewie was delivered.

This is what a half of a half of a Brown Swiss steer looks like in your upright freezer. We still had the uppermost shelf for what remains of last year’s fruit harvest (and, very soon, for my nesting-induced pre-baby freezer casserole blitz). The dressed weight of our portion was 220 pounds; now I don’t know a whole lot about butchery but Sparks says that the actual weight of beef delivered is around 70% of the dressed weight, which brings us to around 150 pounds of beef. We have hamburger, steaks, roasts, and stewing cuts, as well as more exotic things like soup bones, heart, tongue, liver, sweetbreads, and oxtail here.

It’s going to be a big adventure in the coming year, cooking our way from snout to tail. Tonight’s starter, though, will be grilled filet. I mean, seriously. Wouldn’t you?

Oh, one more awesome thing from yesterday. All of those pretty postpartum tops I bought from Old Navy in a size larger than usual? Yesterday morning I decided to try one on, just to see how the shoulders fit and how much I’d have to take them in. I expected the shirts to get stuck at the top of my belly. But they didn’t. All of those pretty tops… they fit me now. At 34 weeks pregnant. PRAISE BE, I HAVE PRETTY CLOTHES TO WEAR!

Little gray house, no longer mine

That house that I bought at the same time I started writing this blog? The one I blogged the move into? That I painted and unpacked in all by myself? Where I started my first garden, gave countless parties, adopted Pudding, fought, cried, sang, laughed, had the flu, and eventually fell in love, got engaged, and got married?

We just sold it.

Thank goodness.

Nobody here but us kittens

We’ve been hunkering down waiting out Snowmageddon 2011.

No crafty progress to share… my sewing room is very, very far away from both our warm bed and our warm fireside nook.