curiosity is good, but...

So far today, since waking at 845, Archer has climbed on top of an end table, under the coffee table that is "blocking" him from the entertainment center, into the baby swing that is set up for my friend chelsea's baby (he climbed in it and was holding on to the top bar and SWINGING while standing), pulled everything out of his toy chest and hit the "Reset" button on the power strip for the entertainment center two times. And it's not like i put him in the room and walk out. I'M CHASING HIM THE ENTIRE TIME.

Tell me the truth - is my kid going to be the evil genius kid who figures out how to take everything apart and does it just because he can? Because it feels like we're headed that way.

Either that, or juvenile hall.

Mongolian Beef

A friend asked me today for a "kick ass mongolian beef" recipe. My current favorite recipe is a copycat PF Chang's recipe that I happened upon on Epicurious a while back. I think I may end up making this for dinner some night soon...

Sauce
2 tsp veg oil
1/2 tsp. minced ginger
1 tbsp. chopped garlic
1/2 c. soy sauce
1/2 c. water
3/4 c. dark brown sugar

Meat
1 c. vegetable oil (I would use less oil)
1 pound flank steak
1/4 c. cornstarch
1 large green onion

preparation

1. Make the sauce by heating 2 tsp. veg oil in med saucepan over med/low heat. Don't get the oil too hot or yhou'll get a major splatter when adding liquids. Add ginger and garlic to the pan and quickly add the soy sauce and water before the garlic scorches. Dissolve the brown sugar in the saude, then raise the heat to med and boil the sauce for 2-3 min. or until the sauce thickens. Remove from heat.
2. Slice the flank steak against the grain into 1/4 inch thick slices. Tilt the blade of you knife at about a 45 deg angle to the top of the steak so that you get wider cuts.
3. Dip the steak pieces into the cornstarch to apply a very thin dusting to both sides of each piece. Let the beef sit for about 10 min. so that the cornstarch sticks.
4. As the beef sits, heat up one cup of oil in a wok or skillet. Add the beef to the oil and saute for just 2 min. or until the beef just begins to darken on the edges. Stir the meat around a little so that it cooks evenly. After a couple min., use a large slotted spoon to take the meat out onto paper towels, then pour the oil out of the wok. Put the pan back over the heat, dump the meat back into it and simmer for one minute. Add the sauce, cook for one min while stirring, then add all the green onions. Cook for 1 more min., then remove the beef and onions with slotted spon to serving plate. Leave excess sauce behind in the pan.

Serve over jasmine rice.

via epicurious

breast milk baby lotion

People have long been touting breast milk as a cure-all for babies. Everything from baby acne to clogged tear ducts can be fixed with as little as one application of breast milk. I admit, when I first heard about it, I was skeptical. I thought those women were crazy for putting breast milk on their babies! 

I quickly got over my skepticism when Archer had a very bad clogged tear duct that massage and warm cloths just were not curing. His eye would matte over within minutes of my clearing it off, and when he would wake up from a long sleep, he wasn't even able to open his eye. It was painful watching my baby experience that, so when I read on a few websites that women were recommending putting a drop or two of breast milk directly in baby's eye, I decided to give it a whirl. If nothing else was working, why not, right? Oh man! Am I glad I tried it! I did two small drops into Archer's eye and BAM! The eye never matted up again. After I switched to formula only, I saved about 60 ounces of breast milk just in case I came across any other ailments that it could fix.

Unfortunately, if you have a baby who is dealing with skin problems, like baby acne, eczema, or just plain ol' dry skin, it can get kind of messy to just spritz on some breast milk, can't it? Luckily, I have a recipe for breast milk lotion just for these occasions! 

You will need-
3 tablespoons of oats (organic if you prefer)
5oz water
5oz breast milk
2tsp Bees wax pellets
6tsp Emulsifying wax
2 tablespoons sweet almond oil OR vitamin e oil
12 drops of chamomile oil
2 tsp vitamin c powder (crushed vitamins are an OK substitute to use as a preservative)
Clean jar or tub with airtight lid


Put oats into a pan with water; boil up until water starts to turn milky and thick. Turn heat off, add milk then set oats to drain in a muslin or on a piece of cheesecloth. When cool enough to handle, give the muslin a really good squish and mush to get all of the sticky liquid out- I found that using the back of a spoon to scrape the gloop from the outside of the muslin helped.
Add vitamin c powder and set oaty milky fluid to one side.

Melt in a clean pan 2 tsp of bees wax and 6tsp of emulsifying wax. When melted add the vitamin E oil and chamomile oil. This must be done on a really low heat.

While this is melting re-heat the milky oaty gloop do not simmer or boil just warm through nicely.

Keep both pans on a warm heat and pour a very small amount of the liquid into the oil. Give the mixture a very hard whisk. Keep doing this until you have no liquid left, then add the honey.
The honey makes the lumpy gooey mixture go really runny. KEEP whisking. When most of the lumps have gone and the mix is shiny and thick pour mix into your clean tub and allow to cool..

Throughout this process, the mixture went from smelling sweet to sickly to sweet, but the end product is a sweet scent of honey, oats and almost newborn baby breath smell. 

This cream will go a very long way if it is properly stored with an airtight container and in the refrigerator. 

notes on a death day celebration

osama bin laden is dead. if you weren't already aware of that, you clearly haven't been near a tv, radio, newspaper, magazine, facebook page, or, you know, human in the past 24 hours. he's dead and people are relieved. they are rejoicing. a man was assassinated and people are rejoicing.

assassinating a man and then rejoicing. that is terrorism. if people would stop their angry posturing and swearing and just…breathe, they might remember that we are all people, we are all entitled to own opinions, and we are not all bad people who disagree with the majority. Regardless of who you are, what you think, assassination is terrorism, just from a different angle. We think we are in the right. We are in the right. But those men who followed bin laden, they thought they were too. Too often, we forget that the people we are fighting are still people.

i am relieved as well to see that a bad man is no longer. i'm relieved, but i'm conflicted. i'm anti-death penalty but i was happy last night when i heard that osama bin laden died. i was happy but then i realized that there isn't anything to be happy about. US soldiers assassinated a man who was very evil, yes, but did they take out every other person on the planet who believes the way he did? the thing about retaliation is, it just keeps going back and forth until there is nothing left.

i have nothing profound to say, nor will i pretend to. i could write at length, beautifully, about what i'm thinking and feeling but i won't because i just want to get this out of my head as quickly as possible, without thinking too much about it. he's dead and gone and that truly is a win for the good guys, i just worry that, over the past 10 years, the lines between good and evil have started to blur a little too much.

Happy Easter!

What's the use in having a blog if I can't brag about my adorable child on it? Here are some goodies from Archer's Easter pictures.

Biter Biscuits!

My 4 month old is going through an oral stage - everything must be gnawed on, sometimes with great ferocity. It's his way of saying, "Hey". He's not really teething yet, but I'm sure it will be happening soon. In order to gear up for the Great Teething Event of 2011, I've been trying out recipes for homemade biter biscuits (or teething biscuits) for him to try. Here are two recipes to try - one has shortening and salt in it, and the other is more straightforward. Please note that no biter biscuit is guaranteed NOT to crumble. The bottom recipe is quite sticky, so instead of rolling it out, try loading the goo into a pastry bag and piping the dough onto a baking sheet. The first recipe is somewhat sticky, but not nearly as bad.

Teething Biscuits

Ingredients:
2 T shortening
1/2 c sugar (I used TruVia)
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon water
1-1/2 cup baby cereal (I used HappyBaby rice cereal with DHA)

Directions:
Heat oven to 300 degrees. Cream shortening and sugar. Add eggs, baking soda, salt, vanilla, and water. Mix until well blended. Gradually stir in cereal. Knead until smooth. Pat into rectangle. Cut into 12 1-inch bars, smooth edges so they will not be sharp. Place on ungreased sheet. Bake 20-30 min or until dry. Store in uncovered container overnight.

Cereal Cookies

1 cup flour (I made these with both cake flour & wheat flour)

1 cup dry infant rice cereal (I used HappyBaby organic Rice with DHA - you can add bananas or apples if you like)

3 tablespoons cooking oil

ice water

Directions:

Preheat oven 425F

Mix flour and cereal. Gradually stir in oil. Mix a little ice water at a time (start with 1/4 cup) until dough begins to form a ball and pull away from the bowl. Roll out to the thickness of a cracker on a floured surface and cut into desired shapes. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet 10-12 min. or until lightly brown. Cool completely. Store in an airtight container.

**as with any self-feeding baby foods, do not leave baby unsupervised while eating

**recipes adapted from those found at www.wholesomebabyfood.com**

earl grey tea cookies, or the cookie jar's already empty?

Tomorrow, I will be baking up a storm in my little kitchen. Not only will I be making my soon to be famous chocolate chip cookies, but Earl Grey Tea cookies will also feature on the baking menu. They are one of my favorite cookies and I cannot wait to get some in my belly. They are crumbly and soft with just a hint of bergamot. Try these with a strong cup of black coffee (if EG tea is overload, try PG Tips with no milk) on a quiet afternoon by yourself, or make up a few batches and share with your book club!

I wonder what Picard would say if he encountered these cookies? "Cookies. Earl Grey. Cold." That doesn't quite have the same ring as his normal replicator request...

In case you weren't already aware, today is Friday. That is, the day after Thursday and the day before Saturday. You know, the one day of the week that the majority of the American workforce is living for? 

I don't live for that day anymore.

I work two days a week. Two. Two long, exhausting, ridiculously coffee-filled 10 hour days. On those days, I am a patient services rep at a specialty pharmacy. Whoopie. But the other five days of the week, those are the days that I look forward to. It's not because I get to sleep in or because I get to lunch with my friends and be lazy indulgent. It's because those are the days that I get to spend at home with my son, talking about world events and important things, like whether giraffes are better than lions. We read a lot - Archer and I are currently reading our way through Roald Dahl's books, while he and daddy are reading their way through Harry Potter. Soon, we'll read Tolkein. I make silly faces and sing songs and inevitably end up with some amount of spit up, drool, or Similac formula on my shirt or pants or some combination of the two. When Archer naps, I pick up the house, plan the week's dinner menu, chat online with my mom friends, and make baby food.

My life now is such a departure from where I thought I would be at 25. I was going to conquer the world. I was going to bake my way through the baking section at Borders. I was going to become Somebody. Now? I'm going to be lucky if I can conquer the weight gain from my pregnancy. I'll more than likely just cook my way through a few baby food cookbooks. And I already am Somebody...I'm Archer's Somebody and that? That's better than anything I could have ever asked for.

I get to go play with that little boy today, but expect to see a few recipes posted over the weekend.

The time has come...

...the Lestlie said, to...start...blogging...again?

The first blog post is always the hardest. It's the worst post ever on every blog! Why? There's all this pressure to be awesome from the get-go, isn't there?

I guess I can settle for mediocre.

Here I sit, a completely different person than I was when I started my first blog at 17, a blog that netted 150 page views a day. I know that's not much in this world of blog craziness, but back then, for someone who was mostly blogging about nothing, 150 page views was a big deal. I met quite a few people, people that I still talk to, and no blogging venture since then has been as successful or as rewarding.

Well. This time, ladies and gents, I've got something to talk about. I have my 4 month old son, Archer (aka McStinky), who is my current favorite topic of conversation. I have food, particularly baby food, which is sort of my new passion. And I have other things, surely. I can't talk about work because of the social networking policy (even though that would provide fodder for many anger and frustration fueled posts, I'm sure), but that's probably for the best. I work two days a week and try to keep all work-related talk to those two days only. Why let my job get in the way of my 5 day weekends?

I've got big things in the works. Big things...and maybe some small things, too. Read on if you want, pass on by if you don't.

Until then...

This is only a test

The baby is napping, so I'm using this time to setup a blog for the families and baby food mama's.