Thursday, May 5, 2011

Cinco de Mayo

We usually go out for Cinco de Mayo and snag some tasty eats and margaritas, but in attempts to stick to our budget, I decided to do a little cooking at home.

And I'm going to CHEAT. I've been craving chicken mole, but do I have the patience, ingredients, time, or desire to make it by hand? No, no I do not.

The plan is to doctor some store-brought mole and serve chicken mole tacos with fresh queso fresco, guacamole with poblanos, and caldo verde. I'll cheat some more and use a frozen margarita mix so I can make a virgin one for myself. And it will be a delicious, cheater's meal.

I do plan on making my own coconut flan, that will redeem me a little, right?

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

To-Cook Recipes

For some reason I can't save into my recipe-box in epicurious.com right now, and I'm lusting after... well, all food.

So, as part save-for-later and part blog entry, here are some desserts I'm dying to try:
And some main courses that sound like heaven right now:
 What have we learned? Apparently I'm craving really fatty and delicious things - lots of CREAM in these recipes, which wasn't intentional, I swear. Also, meat. Yummy, yummy meat.

Okay, enough. I'm a hungry, pregnant woman and I'm going to go cook some dinner before I start nomming on my hand.

Monday, May 2, 2011

A Sunday Night

It's shortly after midnight on a Sunday evening. Ian and I got back from Honduras very late last night (we visited my sister, Sarah, and her husband Jason, and their wee babe, Josiah). Our trip was really great - it was wonderful to see where Sarah and Jason have been living for over two years, and just to hang out. There was much reading, lots of cooking together (and good food!) - a very restorative and baby-full trip.

Josiah was the first baby Ian ever held. Despite initial nerves, Ian is a natural and great with babies, at least this one.

Today was spent trying to catch up and get moving.

Overall, I'm really feeling very much better. Apparently my body is adjusting to the pregnancy hormones swimmingly. I'm sleeping much better, am done feeling green (for the most part), and while I still have much less energy than normal and some headaches, I'm not feeling low overall or terribly ill. Which is fabulous. I think, all and all, I really only had about 2-3 weeks of the greens. Compared to some women, I think I'm rather fortunate.

I also am told I have "the glow"... and have a cute little Buddha belly! This is my favorite part so far. It just 'popped' this last week. According to my endless ravaging of pregnancy blogs, most women don't start showing until they are well into their second trimester, but I guess since I'm so darned short, there isn't room for everything! I'm a strong believer in the full belly maternity pants (and don't regret getting them so early either). My only hope is that... if I look like I'm 4-5 months just starting into my third month (10 weeks today), I don't turn into a monster/whale/elephant later on. Sarah assures me this won't happen, but I've got to be worried about something, so I'll choose that.

But the forgetting! Ian and I now have a song called "pregnancy brain," because I seriously can't keep track of anything. Today I lost (and then found) not only my ken ken book, but two cookbooks, my keys, my purse, and my wedding ring (had to take it off to make some pizza dough). Although, I am happy to report that all burners are off, and I even remembered to turn the oven off immediately after using it, AND remembered to close the freezer. True progress.

We visited Babies 'R Us today on a pregnancy pillow hunt and ended up doing a little pre-registry navigation for prices and ideas. It's exciting to see Ian getting excited about the baby and what kind of crib we'll want. And the fact we both made it over 5 minutes in BRU? Amazing. Truly amazing.

This evening I made a late dinner of Asparagus and Ricotta Pizza, as found in the Real Simple magazine I found in the airport yesterday. So tasty! We used a frozen pizza dough which ended up being quite a bit thicker/fluffier than the crust pictured on the website, but it was delicious all the same.

I also made some cream scones from my very favorite cookbook, The New Best Recipe by the Cooks Illustrated team (quick plug - most delicious everything, and apparently now only $24.50? If you don't have this essential cookbook, even if you are a vegetarian, you should get it). I found a nearly similar recipe here as I didn't want to type out my own adaptation. I'll just say that I used white whole wheat flour to give them a little body (10 oz), and made an 8 inch round, which I cut into 8 slices to make the scones. Also, a word to the wise, if you are too lazy to make your own lemon curd, for heaven's sake, buy the $8 jar instead of the $4 jar. I had to resort to strawberry jam... and now my project is to find a recipe to cook up the cheap lemon curd. Any ideas?