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Food Challenge

So I just read Michael Pollan's new book, Food Rules and I have to tell you, I totally drink the Michael Pollan koolaid. I strive to be able to obey these rules. While smugly thinking recently how I really do mostly obey them already, I realized that all my meals in recent memory had broken one or more rules. This made me think: food challenge! Some of you may remember my last food challenge which was to go an entire month without eating high fructose corn syrup. (Final report here.) In summary I believe I learned that it's in tons of things, but mostly not in the foods I eat.

Anyway, it took me awhile but I'm going to try this food challenge: For the month of February, write down everything I eat. If it violates a food rule, note which one. If it violates more than one, just pick one (I want this to not be too tedious). If I feel especially proud of following a certain rule I'm allowed to post that too. At the end I expect I'll see a trend in which rules are hardest and easiest for me to follow. At the end of the month I'll post my list. Thank goodness it's a short month. That's it. I'm not going to try to change anything, though I expect that by knowing I'm going to have to write it down and note rule breaking, probably I'll make some different choices. Anyone with me? :-)

Cookie bandit

Up until two days ago Geneva didn't know how to get chased. You'd say you were going to chase her and then run after her and she'd just stand there. Two days ago though, we got extra special grandma cookies in the mail. We were giving her just the teeniest bits (since she may or may not have an egg allergy). When daddy was distracted at one point though she reached in and grabbed a whole cookie. Daddy says "hey! give that back!" and G takes off. She even crawled under the kitchen table so daddy couldn't get to her and steal back the cookie. Tee hee. Too hilarious. Well, we laughed a lot anyway.

We officially have to start watching what we're saying because even though she's not saying much she understands tons of words. We say "go get your shoes" and she runs and finds them. We say "where's your belly button" and she pulls up her shirt and points. We say "this is a video of you eating raisins with daddy" and she signs "more" and runs over to the pantry and starts jumping for the handles.

In other news my poor sister is in the hospital with a kidney stone (again!). She had one last time she was pregnant at 20 weeks and said it was more painful than giving birth. Now she's at 26 weeks and it's happening all over. Think of her for me... we hope it passes soon.

Some knitting

Let's start off with a picture of my bebe in a hat I made for Grant, but it was returned to me due to extreme girliness. (For the record, my sister picked the pattern for her son, not me.) Anyway, now I have it back and it's very cute.

Next up, the very time consuming project that I worked on most of last year. This is a scarf for my Aunt Teresa. And doesn't she look lovely in it?


I recently realized that I have very little time for knitting, which is part of why I'm not making much project progress. Now, there's a knitting technique known as Continental style which is used by all the speediest knitters. It just has a much more efficient movement. I decided to learn to do this so that I could make the most of the little knitting time I do have. I started off with a simple project: a washcloth. This is ideal because it just doesn't matter if your stitches are all spazzy. After the washcloth I picked another project where spazziness wouldn't mattern - anything that's not clothes is fine, but I picked this crazy stuffed toy.

Anyway, now I feel pretty comfortable with Continental and I'm making a hat. There was a lot of swearing involved with the first two projects though. Not to mention it's extremely annoying to go from being an expert at something to being all thumbs again. I think it probably is faster though. Chris says it's much more awesome looking too. Certainly more efficient movements.

Enchilada Recipe

I have had a request for my enchilada recipe, and since I don't want to forget it myself, here it is. (I haven't test run it or anything, so if anyone sees any errors, let me know.)

Ingredients

2 medium sized red potatoes
2 carrots
1 bunch of broccoli
olive oil
1 Tbsp cumin
1 tsp salt
2 cups shredded cheese
10 corn tortillas
vegetable oil
1/2-1 cp enchilada sauce (basically any salsa can pass for enchilada sauce - I like the fresh tomatillo salsas that you can find in the refrigerator section in the grocery store - if you can't find anything like that, a green verde type salsa in a jar will work fine too)

Step 1 - Roast some veggies

Preheat oven to 400. I named some veggies at the beginning of this but actually any veggies will work fine. Dice them all up and put them in a roasting pan. I use one of those 9x13ish pyrex pans and you know you've got the right amount of veggies because it's about two-thirds full of veggies. Pour a bunch of olive oil all over those veggies (maybe 1/4 cup or so?) then the cumin and salt and stir it all up. Put the pan in the over and roast the veggies until they're soft. Potatoes will take about 45 minutes, but I recommend pulling them out and tasting them now and then. Maybe throw a few extra veggies in to make sure you still have enough once you've done all that tasting...

Step 2 - Fry tortillas

Heat a about a quarter inch of vegi oil in a small frying pan on the stove until a drop of water boils in it (be careful with this test because you can spatter oil everywhere). Once the oil is hot, fry the corn tortillas 4 seconds on each side.

Step 3 - Assemble

Take each of the tortillas and put a little of the veggies in them and a little of the cheese too. Roll the tortilla up and stick it in the pan with the edge side down (as best you can). Dump any leftover veggies in the pan, pour the enchilada sauce and cheese over the top. Put the pan in the oven until the cheese is melty and the sauce is bubbly. Maybe about 10-15 minutes?

Enjoy!!! Chris demonstrates will demonstrate:

Playground before the rain

Couch dance party

G and her buddy Sinjin in that video.

Buggy ride

G climbed into the buggy at daycare and insisted on a ride so they
took her for a stroll in the hallway.

Dinner Win

Chris told me that the dinner I made for him tonight was the "best dinner ever!" I think he must have just been really hungry or something though because he was telling me how delicious it sounded as he was scooping it out. Anyway, I did think it was really tasty. I made enchiladas for the first time from a made up recipe - it seems like that usually never works! I'd been inspired by the fact that our local mexican place makes potato enchiladas for $4 a pop and they're only like 6 ingredients. How hard could it be? Well, it does take awhile, but it's not that hard and the result was quite tasty if I do say so myself. Oh, and we had apple crisp for dessert. Yum.

Some of you have already noticed that I've posted a new photo album. These are photos from my birthday, a ski trip, and our trip to Santa Cruz last Friday. Enjoy!

Video party time

Here's some fun videos for your viewing enjoyment:

Craig and Chris skiing some moguls last weekend. Yes I know they're basically tiny black dots on a white hill, but they're stylish black dots.


Craig and Chris skiing the chute. Not to be confused with wrestling the shute.


Enough manly ski footage. Back to our usual diet of.... cute babies!


Geneva's favorite food these days is raisins. She'll eat pretty much as many raisins as you're willing to feed her. Here she is flaked out on daddy while he fed her endless raisins.


Newest baby tricks: Will hold my hand and walk with me (instead of sitting down or not following or whatever... basically understands the concept of being led...). Signs "more." No idea where she learned that one since we basically don't do signs with her. Wants to only eat things she's able to feed to herself. Has moved on from cheese/yogurt/cheerio/goldfish addiction and is now addicted to raisins and animal crackers. (Raisins aren't digested by babies. Ask me how I know. I dare you. ) Mimicks all kinds of things I say and do. Sleeps through the night 11-12 hours, thanks to about 2 days of not-all-that-bad cry-it-out sleep training.

I think that's all I got. Oh, except G was sick last week with a stomach bug. Chris had it over the weekend. Now my mom has got it. I don't understand why I haven't had it yet since I eat after G all the time so it seems like I would have had it before C or Ma. Maybe it's the same thing I had in December? If not, I'm going to be miserable pretty soon here...

Rest stop

Taking a break from the carseat on the way back from tahoe. Good
skiing yesterday but then it rained yesterday evening. So we skipped
skiing today.

Ski nap

December

I haven't posted many words for this past December, just pictures, because that's so much quicker. It was a fun month though. I hosted a baby shower and all my family came into town for Christmas. Then Chris, Geneva, and I took off and spent some time in Idaho where they have actual winter. On the down side, Geneva and I were both pretty sick in the middle of the month and then we both have colds again now. Blegh.

Yeah, so back to the photos. Click below to see the December album!

December 2009