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Welcome to the nursery-to-be, a la aerial view from a ladder. This used to be our little office, but fortunately I've since talked The Fella out of trying to make this space dual purpose. (Who wants to wake a sleeping baby with the sounds of typing???) Miraculously, we managed to relocate all our office furniture, decor, and stuff to new homes around the rest of the condo. This wasn't as horrible as I had imagined.
But you know what was horrible?
Taping and prepping the room for painting.
All because I had the grand idea to copy the striped walls of this designer nursery. Poor Fella was such a saint to indulge this mommy-to-be in her Let's Play Interior Designer for a Few Months mode. It seemed like such a fabulous idea at the time, but what the blogger neglects to inform you of are very important details like: How long did it take to do wall-to-wall stripes for a normal size room? What poor sucker had to paint this?? More importantly, how the EFF did said sucker do LEVEL stripes. Without tearing his hair out???
We got into some yelling matches during the leveling-taping-painting process. But we also shared some very nice moments daydreaming together about our future baby boy.
Finished, painted room pix coming soon! (It's not really as lopsided as the picture above makes it look! Promise.)
In anticipation of the baby, well, we decided it was time to trade in my sporty, little Acura RSX for a bigger car. You know, because of all the baby shit and stuff that we're going to have. So, after three weekends back to back, much diligent research on The Fella's part, test-driving, and suburb-hopping from one dealer to another, we left Dealer No. 4 today with a new (to us), pre-owned 2011 Hyundai Sonata!
On a whim, we both played hooky from work today to focus on baby stuff, i.e. negotiating cars and painting nursery. It was a very productive way to spend a Tuesday playing hooky. That's a sign of maturity, right?? We drove all the eff out to Monee, Illinois, which apparently is referred to as a Village and where gas is an unheard of $3.55 (compared to $4.50 everywhere else in my zip code). It's 33 miles outside of the city, people. I was not about to do this again. I'd like to say that we "won" because the dealer ended up backing down a lot from his price and meeting very close to our optimal price. It took a lot of "good cop, bad cop" role playing (or "nice husband, mean wife"––but, is it really role playing? Hahahah). I'm like the Tiger Mama of car buying. I learned it from my own :)
Bye-bye, beloved Acura. How I loved you so! You've been good to me for six years, and before then my sweet Acura Integra. We've been through a lot in Miami, then taking The Fella and I onto our new life in the Midwest, and several good years in the 312. One day, we shall meet again...
And hello, new Hyundai Sonata! You're beautiful, blue-silver prismatic, and I really hope you don't get beat up on the mean streets of Wicker Park.
The baby better appreciate all your space.
Last night I stared forlornly at the boneless/skinless chicken breasts that were defrosted and waiting in my fridge. I kinda despise chicken breast because I never know how to make it interesting and more often than not, I overcook it so it becomes a hot dry mess. So what do you do when you don't know what to make? (Besides order take-out, I mean.) Consult your best girl friends.
Miss Maya gets major kudos for alerting me to this uh-MAZ-ing Thai Chicken Saute recipe, which I adapted slightly based on availability. I cut chicken breasts into strips and substituted cilantro for fresh sweet basil from my concrete garden. I didn't have ginger but added pineapple chunks. It was fantastic! And best of all, it took 15 minutes prep time, and about 9 minutes to cook!
Ingredients
1 (3 1/2-ounce) white rice
1 1/2 pounds chicken breast tenders
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoons canola oil, divided
1 cup sliced onion
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon bottled ground fresh ginger
1/2 cup light coconut milk
1 teaspoon Sriracha (hot chile sauce, such as Huy Fong)
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1 can pineapple chunks, drained
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro (or basil)
4 lime wedges
:: Cook rice according to package directions or in a rice cooker. Keep warm.
:: Toss chicken with cornstarch and fish sauce. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken to pan; sauté 5 minutes. Remove chicken from pan.
:: Heat remaining 1 tablespoon oil in pan. Add onion, garlic, and ginger to pan; sauté 1 minute. Return chicken to pan; cook 1 minute or until done.
:: Stir in coconut milk, Sriracha, sugar, juice and pineapple; cook 1 minute or until thoroughly heated. Sprinkle with herbs. Serve chicken mixture over rice with lime wedges.
I slightly modified this Food & Wine recipe a few weekends ago to bring over to grill for dinner at our friends' home. Final consensus: You have to love onions (I do!), and the secret ingredient is the Asian fish sauce (don't worry, it's not distinctly identifiable, but it lends a nice depth of flavor to the steak marinade which you wouldn't get otherwise with just salt). It's delicious and ultimately worth the prep work, but not sure if I would have the patience to do it again for just The Fella and me...
Ingredients
2 tablespoons cracked black pepper
2 dry bay leaves, crumbled
1 tablespoon Asian fish sauce
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Four 8-ounce rib eye steaks, about 3/4 inch thick
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 pound red onions, thinly sliced
2 pickled jalapeños, seeded
1 tablespoon dry red wine
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup drained cocktail onions, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup oil-cured Moroccan olives, pitted and chopped
1/4 cup torn mint leaves
:: In a large, shallow dish, combine the cracked pepper with the bay leaves, fish sauce and 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Add the steaks to the dish and rub all over with the mixture. Let stand at room temperature for 2 hours or refrigerate for 4 hours.
:: Meanwhile, in a saucepan, melt the butter. Add the onions and jalapeños and cook over moderate heat until the onions are just softened, 5 minutes. Add the wine and 1 tablespoon of the vinegar and season with salt and ground pepper. Add 2 cups of water and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook over low heat until the onions are very tender, 90 minutes.
:: Uncover the onions and cook over moderate heat, stirring frequently, until the liquid is evaporated, about 10 minutes. Transfer the onions to a blender. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon of vinegar and puree until very smooth. Season with salt and ground pepper.
:: In a medium bowl, toss the cocktail onions, olives and mint leaves with the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil.
:: Preheat a grill pan or light a grill. Grill the steaks over moderate heat, turning once or twice, until lightly charred, about 7 minutes for medium-rare meat. Let the steaks rest for 5 minutes, then serve with the onion sauce and pickled onion relish.
This weekend The Fella unearthed a bag of nopalitos, or cactus, from our freezer. The bag says "Fresh! Nopalitos!" but god knows when these were from! I vaguely recall requesting my sister in South Texas to bring me this ingredient to experiment with when either she or I last visited, and I'm pretty sure that must have been at least two years ago!
There was also an (old) bag of baby red potatoes in the fridge––hey, I've got other things on my mind lately!––which I sauteed with diced red onions and garlic. Then, I added the thawed nopalitos and fresh chunks of tomato, seasoned with Adobo spice, cracked black peppercorn, lime juice and parsley. Well, anyhow, I haven't died yet from eating old food, so all's good! Served with a side of grilled Polish sausage stuffed with cheddar, dinner turned out quick and delicious. Definitely going to try to find nopalitos at my local Mexican market!
This weekend was all about the baby (yay!) and feeling a bit too suburban for my liking (boo!). We spent way too many hours at Target and Babies R Us fighting our way through the narrow aisles with screaming kids (and their screaming parents). Had a slight breakdown in shock-and-awe of the amount of stuff available for babies as we made our registries and checked them twice.
Sigh, I have a feeling weekly trips to big-box stores is what the next few years of my life will be like.
We did product comparisons online for gliders (you know, amped-up rocking chairs) and four-door sedans (to trade in my sporty, 2-door Acura).
Even bigger sigh.
We mixed paint colors at Home Depot and did more purging of stuff in our office-cum-nursery. Well, The Fella did purging of his stuff, and mine remains to be sorted through, at present, in an overly large plastic bin from the dreaded Target trip. We returned library materials and stocked up on fresh veggies and fruits at the local produce market. And we somehow made time to plant our summer herbs and flowers into new and vintage pots and buckets on our front steps. In between it all, we enjoyed a taste of summer with slices of organic, sun-ripened tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, Greek olives, and of course, fresh sweet basil straight from our concrete garden.
It's just a shame we didn't get time to check out the slightly creepy neighborhood carnival which set up camp this weekend on a small patch of land between the old church and the Catholic school. After this weekend, coulda really used a funnel cake, or two, from the local carnie.
Since they say nothing is official until you've broken the news in cyberspace via Blogger, Facebook or Twitter, let me share with you....
Whew. Now that that's out, please allow me to ponder a bit about the marvels of pregnancy that is my new life. Absolutely nothing can prepare you for the changes you will go through in your mind, body, and soul. It starts off with having a really good, really juicy secret that only you and your partner know and can't share with anyone for much too long of a time.
At other times (like when you're nauseated bending over a sink), it feels like you're on that roller coaster that you love to hate. There was extreme fatigue during Weeks 7-11. Every. Single. Day. All. Day. I couldn't walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded. Lucky for me, I have three flights of stairs at home, and two at the office. And then I read these pregnancy books that advise you to "have someone else cook your meals for you to ease nausea and take a nap every day." File that under "Really? Really??" Were these books written by an out-of-touch-with-reality rich person with a butler or decades ago when women were generally housewives?
I also developed what I like to call SPB, or Secret Pregnancy Behavior. You remember that Sex & the City episode when Carrie laments about how living with her boyfriend restricts her SSB (a.k.a. Secret Single Behavior)––like eating Saltines with peanut butter while standing over the kitchen sink, etc. Well, SPB is like that, only way worse because you have to hide your behavior not from just one person, but from the rest of the world! Some examples of my personal SPB:
1. passing out on the mock-up table at work
2. running to the bathroom every hour
3. sneaking lint-covered almonds from your pocket during client meetings
4. sneaking upstairs to the office kitchen to microwave only the deli meat–which could contain listeria–from your catered office sandwiches (I had to do this at least 3x when my office was conducting Secret Shopper lunches for research on a catering client's competitors!)
And SPB gets worse through the middle to the end of the first trimester, for example:
:: Taking lunchtime naps at the dimly-lit Middle Eastern restaurant down the street. They have plush floor cushions instead of tables! Would inevitably get kicked out at 2pm closing time. They probably thought I was homeless. Hey, it was either there or The Boss's blue velvet couch in her office!
:: Asked a random dude waiting at my bus stop if I could have his bag of chips, if I gave him my spare change. (In my defense, the bag was unopened and I was REALLY hungry!!)
:: Inadvertently gained a "wubby." Yep, as in how babies have blanket wubbies, or kids have stuffed animal wubbies. Mine is a fun-size Snickers bar. One night, many weeks ago, I brought it upstairs with me to have as a bedtime snack, but I didn't end up eating it. Over the next few days The Fella noticed that I would carry it up to bed at night, and then back downstairs to the kitchen in the morning. I still have it!
:: For most of the first trimester, I could only eat foods that I normally hate: eggs, peanut butter, frozen waffles, sandwiches, cereal, yogurt. Oh yea, and alcohol, which I never even drink! (No, I didn't give in to this one!) On the other hand, I couldn't stomach the thought of eating vegetables, fish, or poultry––all things I used to love––and I didn't have any of these for the entire first trimester, even into the second!
:: I would remain fixated on a food product the instant I saw it on tv until I could realistically get my hands on it, even if it was days or weeks later: Garrett's Popcorn (saw Jay on a Modern Family episode eating caramel popcorn), Red Lobster's Cheddar Bay Biscuits (saw a tv commercial), a rump roast (fell asleep reading a silly Nora Roberts' novel where the leading lady makes a romantic meat-and-potatoes dinner for her manly-man)...
Twenty weeks later, countless lower back and abdomen pains, and we're having a boy!! Save the date for late October!
