Asian Noodles

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I modified a recipe I found last week and the result was fan-freaking-tastic! I love this dish, the flavors are so dynamic and it makes delicious leftovers. Serve it hot or eat it cold, either way it’s a winner.

I’m giving amounts here more as a guide line. Add more of what you like and less of what you don’t!

12 oz whole grain linguini noodles

2 medium carrots sliced into 2inch long sticks (like really skinny little sticks)

1 cup of sugar snap peas

4 scallions, chopped

3 table spoons lite soy sauce

1 tablespoon honey

1 teaspoon rice vinegar

1/4 cup toasted sesame seeds

1 tablespoon olive or sesame oil

After the carrots are sliced, steam them gently with the snow peas. Combine liquid ingredients and scallions. Cook noodles and while still hot, add them to the liquid. Set aside.

For the shrimp:

1/4 cup lite soy sauce

2 table spoons rice vinegar

1 teaspoon honey

2 teaspoons peeled and minced fresh ginger (Safeway carries and orgainc minced ginger that is great and lasts for weeks!)

1 garlic clove, minced

1 small squirt (like 1/2 a teaspoon) of Siracha hot sauce. Go easy, this stuff is deadly. Also red pepper flakes will work.

30 ish shrimp. I buy cooked and thawed shrimp an then warm them in the dressing. This could be done with raw shrimp too, I just don’t have the patience to de-vein. I also think it’s gross.

Combine liquid ingredients and bring to a simmer. Toss in shrimp and let cook until warmed through. Combine with noodle mixture and include the liquid from the shrimp bowl. Make a lot because you’re going to want this for lunch the next day. Enjoy!

*On a side note – I was not a huge fan of the carrots and snap peas. The crunchy texture was not for me so I think steaming them will be good. But I had a FLASH of inspiration – cucumbers! Not sure if it’s going to work, but I think a couple of long skinny cucumbers on top of the completed dish are going to be fantastic!

A Little Thank You

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I just wanted to say thank you to all the comments on Friday’s blog (which, oddly wasn’t named). It makes me feel validated in knowing I, like many of the readers, were and are in the same boat when it comes to being a parent. I will be sure to do more posts like this and in the mean time, check out the Tales from the Crib archive. There are some posts about the early days with Ms.B and I have to say, they are quite amusing. Some of my favorites include The Sleep Terrorist and A Watched Phone Never Boils. Enjoy and hang in there!

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I have been talking and texting with a friend and former coworker over the past few weeks. She just had her first baby, a sweet little girl.

Our conversations brought me back to when Bay was born. I was a basket case. Between 24 hours of on and off labor, 8 hours of actual labor and an emergency c-section left me wanting for nothing but a glass of wine and a nap. A really really long nap. And yet there was little lady who needed me so completely. My hormones were bonkers. I was sleep deprived (which has never been a good look for me) and overwhelmed by the change and lack of predictability. fortunately I am married to the greatest husband and father ever and he not only talked me off the ledge, he helped me through the wide variety of emotions I was feeling and took a night shift.

All this made me think of why I want to write a book. I think there are so many books, blogs, etc out there full of moms who are glowing from the moment the cord is cut. Moms who are instantly in love with their babies, whose kids sleep “through the night” at a week old and those that breast feed with the greatest of ease. But what about the real side of being a new mom? Why is no one talking about being totally freaked out about the whole thing? About loving this little person, but loving the idea of sleeping for 14 hours juuusstt a little bit more? Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my daughter, but I will be honest  saying that I had a break down when we came home from the hospital because I didn’t love her enough. I felt like I should have been feeling something that I wasn’t feeling.  And how I was afraid to tell people that I was only breast-feeding a little because I was afraid of the judgement and or “tips” from the listener.

Six months after Baylor was born, on Christmas Eve, she slept for 12 hours straight. It is to this day, the best gift I’ve ever had. When I came out of the sleepless haze, I started talking to friends with kids and realized I wasn’t alone in my feelings. Again, I asked; “why isn’t anyone talking about this??”.

Maybe the answer is that even if warned, lectured, schooled, we can’t really know what it’s going to be like until we’re in it. But I still want to know why there aren’t at least warnings – at least beyond “yeah, you’re not going to sleep for awhile”. But maybe it’s the lie that we tell ourselves that makes us go through with it. Like why you even entertain the idea of having a second child – you lie to yourself. “The second will sleep amazing because they have to” or “We know what we’re doing now!!”.

Either way, I think society puts too much pressure on new moms (and on moms in general) to do it all and with clean and blown out hair too. I think it’s time we start standing up and saying “this part really sucks, literally and figuratively and it’s hard!” and cutting each other and ourselves some slack when we can’t do it all every day. I think if we can embrace the days where we don’t get a shower or brush our teeth before 3pm, it will make the days where we say “I did it!” feel so much better.

A few very funny and oh-so-true mom quotes:

If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands? ~ Milton Berle

Raising a kid is part joy and part guerilla warfare.~ Ed Asner

Any mother could perform the jobs of several air-traffic controllers with ease. – Lisa Alther

Iced Tea Parties

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In our ongoing quest to stay cool and have some fun outside the house, Baylor and I have tea parties. She gets to take a bottle of water and pour it into her tea pot. Then she gets to pour the “tea” into the tea cups and serve Tome, Bear, Barbie, Mommy and herself. The best part is that she spills the majority of the “tea” all over herself thus keeping cool while having some fun. And she gets some water without me having to add juice to make it enticing. Win. Win. And one more win.

Sadly our host was drenched and therefore stripped down to a diaper by the time I grabbed the camera.

Tome likes Silly Glasses when he imbibes

Bay has to help Bear – without thumbs, tea cups are impossible to hold

Fine Family Fun

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This past weekend was a “home project” weekend. I always have a list of things that need to be fixed, changed or cleaned. Some are big and some are small and this weekend we tackled them all. But that’s another post…

Saturday afternoon after a collective family nap (not all in the same room, but it was definitely the Napping House around here), we headed out to the Biltmore  for some shopping and dinner. We hit the Mac store to get a new charger (there is so a housekeeper from Sedona Rouge Resort making a killing selling “found” phone chargers) and an arm band for the Iphone for running. Then we went to True Food Kitchen for dinner. It’s one of our favorite places; very relaxed, good and healthy food and most importantly, kid friendly.

We have finally entered the phase where we can dine out with our munchkin and there is a high probability that it will be an enjoyable experience. One that is marked with both of us getting to finish our meal, Baylor actually eating something and no one has to take her for a walk at any point. Now, she’s still 2 so there are several seat changes, standing on said seat and lots of urging her to sit on the seat and eat her dinner. But the tantrums are few and far between and Peter and I are able to have a conversation that lasts longer than 30 seconds and the dinner lasts from appetizers to dessert. It has been a long time since we’ve had this kind of dinner out – and an even longer (if ever) time since Ms.B has graced us with her presence. It was a beautiful Saturday evening as a family topped off with some additional window shopping along the mister lined side walks – and Baylor and I showing Peter how we break it down in the car to our favorite song.

PS – if you ever see a white SUV with a lady driving doing some funky dance moves while either looking in the back seat or rear view mirror, just assume A. it’s me B. my kid thinks I’m hilarious and C. we’re having a great time.

Snuggled Under Memories

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I can’t remember if I ever wrote about my t-shirt quilt before. I feel like I have? But I can’t find one in my archives? And there’s a strong possibility that I just wrote it in my head but never on the computer? So if you’re reading this and it’s old news – then happy Friday! If you’re reading it for the first time, enjoy!

 

About four years ago, my sister Ali informed me that the boxes of t-shirts that I had been storing in one of her many closets (“No no, Ali, it’s fine! You have TONS of closet space so I see where 2 boxes are totally cramping your storage style!”) were no longer welcome. Forced to bring my boxes to my house and find a home, I decided it was time to find a solution that did not involve making more room in the closet.

I searched around on-line and came across Conforta Quilts. The front page had a picture of a blanket made entirely of St. Mary’s shirts – Peter and my alma mater – so I figured this had to be the right place. If another Knight trusted them, then we should too.

It turns out my gut was right. I met with Mike a few weeks later and brought my boxes o’ tees. As instructed, I pulled out my favorites and those with special meaning. I also had organized the ones that I cared the least about. We discussed layouts, style of stitch, etc over coffee and then I loaded my shirts into her trunk. On the drive home, I called Peter in a panic – what if she just keeps all my shirts and never actually makes a quilt!? His response “what the hell would some lady want with a bunch of Alpha Phi shirts??”. Ouch. And point taken.

About six weeks later, Mike called and we met at the same coffee bar. She pulled the most beautiful quilt out of a bag and handed it over for my inspection. Now, I was planning on it being beautiful, but I wasn’t planning on it being totally functional and amazingly comfortable too! Mike’s creation is machine washable and also backed with flannel so it’s warm and snuggly. In a word? AMAZING.

So many great memories, all said in t-shirt.

Not one shirt went to waste – even the logos were used and used on the reverse side too!

The square in the center of the picture is actually 3 shirts sewn together

This one has a special meaning – Peter gave it to me after I had decided I was going to UofA. He said it was one of his favorites from when he was a kid and that it didn’t fit him any more. I wore it to the UofA v ASU game where I met his parents for the first time. His mom, not knowing that her son had lied about the origin of the shirt, explained that Peter had bought it at SAVERS (for those not in the know, it’s like Good Will’s poor, bastard cousin – i.e. used clothes and not in a fun consignment store kind of way). I thought I had bed bugs crawling on me the rest of the game. What I really want to know is why they don’t make shirts with Wilbur the Wildcat trying to eat Sparky the Sun Devil any more?

So if you’ve got a similar issue with your college, high school or athletic shirts, I could not more highly recommend Mike at Conforta. I thought about doing this for Baylor and her baby clothes to some day. There are a million ideas!

Bird Watching

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Technically, I think these two are fish watching. They are sitting on my mom and step dad’s porch in Montana, staring out at the lake. Sometimes they would shout “bird!!” and sometimes “fish!!”. I’m not sure if Baylor was confused as to what she was supposed to be looking at or if she really did see fish jumping. Either way, it’s adorable.

Looking back to get instructions from Noni

Fish? Birds? Or just fun to hold the binoculars?

Girls (mini) Weekend

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This past weekend, I joined my friend Kristin and two of her friend (who I would now like to think of as our friends!) for a little mini weekend in Sedona.

Kristin found a great deal on TravelZoo.com back in January. It was for two people, two massages and breakfast for a ridiculously good rate. Kristin, Jen , Cheryl and myself headed out first thing Saturday morning. We arrived at the beautiful Sedona Rouge resort with plenty of time before our spa appointments to sneak in our Skinny Girl Margaritas and lay by the pool. We enjoyed the 90 degrees, sun, chilly pool and ice-cold drinks while catching up and chit chatting. It was lovely to just have the time to relax.

We gathered up our cocktails and gear and headed over to the spa for massages. An hour later, we all met up in the whirl pool to discuss everyone’s treatment and laugh about the conversations we had. My masseuse was a total hippie and very nice so we chatted the entire time. Cheryl fell asleep to the point where the masseuse had to wake her up and Kristin was rubbed down by every part of the masseuse’s arm and part of her hair as well. The consensus? Great massages and that we had to find out where they get their oils from – which when we finally found the store that supplies the oils to the spa, they couldn’t give us a straight answer on which brand they sold and which scents were most popular. But we did find the fudge store and got milkshakes for the drive home so our excursion goes down in the win column.

We capped off the day with Blood Orange Margaritas at a new restaurant called Elote. It’s kind of modern mexican food and was quite enjoyable. The remainder of the evening was spent answering salacious questions from a bachelorette party game left over from Kristin’s wedding. Despite the content, it felt very much like a teenage sleep over, complete with animal crackers and M&M’s – but with wine!

The thing that struck me more than once was that this group of ladies was the ideal group to travel with. First off, everyone brought snacks, wine AND an opener. All the ladies were easy-going, up for whatever and had  no qualms about when and what we ate. The easy going-ness of the group made it so relaxing and fun.

The icing on the cake of the trip was the drive home. We were having a deep discussion about the chicks from Teen Mom and drew a blank on the name of Jayce’s mom. When Kristin looked it up we all heaved a collective “JANELLE!!”. This was followed by “Samsonite! I was way off” which opened up a stream of Dumb and Dumber quotes despite the fact that no one had mentioned the movie. Pure genius.

Thanks to Kristin for being our cruise director and to Jen and Cheryl for making the weekend so fun!