Summer Cuisine Challenge Continued

Lettuce, pears, blue cheese, and toasted walnuts with a basic vinaigrette.

Yum - this was even better than last week's recipe! I could not find watercress so I substituted Boston lettuce, although arugula would have been a slightly better choice. Overall the pear, blue cheese, and toasted walnuts were a perfect blend. One could make a dinner of it with a few steak strips!

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A Birthday Trilogy!

Richie started celebrating my birthday on Friday by giving me an extra $10 in "fun money" this month so that I could buy a Starbucks drink that morning (Isaac has been growing A LOT and I've been really tired)! Then, by some stroke of luck, I received a second "free birthday drink" post card in the mail from Starbucks. (Another reason to always swipe your gold card!)

On Saturday, I had a big work event. Mr. Rich put in four hours at his job and then joined me for eight at my event. (Yes, I do have the best husband in the world!) When we arrived home, my feet were killing me so he gave me a foot rub. And made me fresh-squeezed limeade - one of my favorites!

On Sunday, we went to dinner at Clyde's - the location of our first date. I love that place! It's clean and the service is good. Richie introduced me to the amazing chicken lettuce wraps and we enjoyed $7 appetizers and dinner. 

Of course, he had the $2 PBR in a can, and chanted "PBR me ASAP." And I had crème brûlée for dessert, which was brought with a flaming candle in it. It's the small things that really make me really happy.

We figured we might as well have our picture taken since we're now married and expecting - having experienced so many special moments at that place. The angle isn't flattering, but I'm starting to get used to the pregnancy look. I love this man!

On Monday, the roommates reunited with our dear Sr. E. I was surprised that we were able to schedule a visit with her. We were even given 4 hours, which flew by. It was wonderful to see her smiling face again and exchange stories of pregnancy, cloistered life, and personal growth in general. The last year has gone by at lightening speed for all of us. There is so much that could be said about that, but I am told that it only gets faster with children. Time will tell!!

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Finally, A Perfect Pie!

Once again, America's Test Kitchen does it! I tried several breads including dinner rolls twice and banana bread twice before I realized that our oven simply is 50 degrees hotter than it says it is. I tried lowering the temp by 25 and 75 degrees before I landed on 50. Thankfully, it coincided with this great recipe for a basic blueberry pie.

Blueberries were on sale this week, and, as one of Richie's favorite fruits, I was anxious to try out this recipe.

The brilliance is in the crust. The recipe blends both cold unsalted butter and cold vegetable shortening cut into a sugar, flour, and salt mixture. Then it is chilled. The result is an elastic and perfectly flaky crust - by far the best crust I've had.

It was just right with a dab of vanilla bean ice cream 15 minutes after it came out of the oven. Rich loved it so much that he went back for seconds.

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Summer Cuisine Challenge: Salads

Arugula, Grapefruit, & Feta Salad with Lemon-Shallot Vinaigrette.

This week's choice was a mix of arugula, grapefruit, and feta cheese tossed with a delicious handmade lemon-shallot vinaigrette dressing! The recipe calls for 2 Tbs of mint, which complimented the citrus quite nicely. We tried it both with and without chicken. When the pan-seared chicken breast strips were added, it made a substantive dinner! WCM even helped me to remove the grapefruit flesh from the skin tonight, a task which he "offered up" for me, and seared the chicken.

Next week's challenge: Watercress, blue cheese, pears, and toasted walnuts with basic vinaigrette.

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Father's Day Excursion

Photo Credit: Photo.net

We decided to get some exercise outside this Father's Day, and since Shenandoah National Park is a favorite of the husband's, that was our natural choice. He talked me into a 3.5 mile loop because the guide said that it was flat and "easy."

The weather was beautiful - about 75 and damp. It started to rain, but we were mostly covered because of all of the trees. And the fresh, rain air was just what we needed. (WCM worked all day on Saturday.) We had started with a good breakfast, power bars, water, and Mass at my old roommate's monastery, so we were in good shape to go. We even lapped a couple of people! I was feeling pretty good about myself when suddenly there was an unusually loud movement in the woods - from just a few dozen feet away. I looked over and saw a big black bear and froze. I grabbed the husband's arm and said, "let's get out of here." Then, up ahead, I saw another bear. Yikes!

WCM assured me that we needed to stay there and scare them. In fact, he seemed kind of happy about there being a challenge on the trail. He started yelling at them (all 400 pounds each). They looked up from their plant-eating, stunned. Then they began running down the hill. At this point, we realized that there were at least three of them! And they were definitely afraid of Rich. Then we continued on our merry way while WCM gave me a lesson in the basics of bear safety. I'm so glad I married someone who can handle himself in the great outdoors!

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Third Trimester

Yesterday afternoon one of my colleagues said, "you look small," after I told her that I was 27.5 weeks with 3 months left to go. That really made my day.

So far, I've gained 15-20 pounds, depending upon whether you count the weight I lost in the first trimester or not. The doctor counts it as 20. I've never weighed this much in my life or had back pain or heartburn.

But I've also never felt this excited about anything either (except marrying WCM).

The doctor says that we have a very healthy baby. He kicks whenever I eat. He kicks when he hears his dad talking. And he sleeps a lot too. His heartrate has been normal: 140 - 150. We feel so blessed!

Here's an update from Baby Center for our 28 weeks (tomorrow):
   By this week, your baby weighs two and a quarter pounds (like a Chinese cabbage) and measures 14.8 inches from the top of [his] head to [his] heels. [He] can blink [his] eyes, which now sport lashes. With [his] eyesight developing, [he] may be able to see the light that filters in through your womb. [He's] also developing billions of neurons in [his] brain and adding more body fat in preparation for life in the outside world.

We can't wait to meet him and see what his personality is like. I *really* hope he looks like his dad, who was an adorable bleach blond kid:

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Someone Likes His Uncle

After spending the day helping my crutches-bound sister, and taking the three oldest children to the mountains to spend some energy outside, Mr. John Man decided that he really liked his uncle.

When we returned, the girls opened a package of oreos. John grabbed a stash and ran into the other room. He waited for Uncle Rich to get off the phone. Then he announced that he saved some cookies for them "before the girls eat them all!"

He handed Uncle Rich a somewhat smashed cookie and plopped down on the couch next to him, taking an oreo for himself.

"You don't ever have to leave," he said. "I have a bunk bed in my room and you can have the TOP BUNK and Aunt Kateri can sleep in the girls' room and you can stay here forever and ever."
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Ah, the beauty of being an aunt and an uncle! All the fun. None of the trouble. :)

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Isaac's Day:

6:00 - 12:00 noon:  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

12:00 - 3:30 PM:  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[3:30 PM I drink orange fizz glucose drink for my GD test.]

3:35 PM: Kick! Kick! Kick! Kick! Punch! Punch! Punch!
  Kick! Kick! Roll! Punch! Punch! Punch! Roll! Kick!

4:30 - 9:30 PM: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz


Nothing like an induced sugar high in utero!

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GDM

Today is my gestational diabetes test. It's been quite a few weeks since I've had my blood drawn, so I'm trying to mentally prepare myself again. We'll see if the doctor gives me a talking to about the 2.5 pounds I gained in the last week. (Baby had a big growth spurt.)

Meanwhile, I employed the husband to help with the important things:

And, as with most things, he was much more helpful than I anticipated. I was hoping for a friendly morning reminder before I put bran flakes in my mouth, but the fridge is full of turkey sausage and this was left out for me:

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Photography

My office recently purchased the Canon Rebel EOS XS. Hopefully, I can talk my dear husband into it within the next several months (read: when baby comes). This weekend, I am setting it up and trying it out. :) I've never had an dslr before and am amazed by the speed, photo quality, and lens range (18-55mm). Here are a few of the shots I tried:

I like how the camera knows where to focus and blurs out the background here.

Another close up - autoset.

Here is the view from our patio - a much greater range than I could ever reach with our point and shoot! :)

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