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Today we managed to leave ourselves two meals to cook, as we didn’t want the bonus recipe, number 366, to be cooked in a different year from all the others. Obviously the best laid plans and all that meant that we didn’t cook one meal for lunch and one for dinner, but rather we cooked them one after another at dinner time. Speaking of plans which fall through, we also neglected to go grocery shopping before early closing time, so we had to improvise a little on a couple of aspects.

First up, we made Hamburger and Onion Stuffed Bread which seemed a bit of of a misnomer, given that we were cooking with beef not pork. Anyway, this was bread stuffed with a ground beef, onions and Worcestershire sauce concoction, seasoned with salt and pepper. Mustard was spread on the bread under the filling, with Swiss cheese melted on top. We had this as a starter rather than a main course, and it went down very easily. It was uncomplicated, simple, tasty food. But it wasn’t wildly exciting, just fine. Would we bother repeating this meal? Probably not, in all fairness; it was lacking a bit of punch.

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About twenty minutes after we ate the stuffed bread, we moved onto making the second recipe of the evening, And Last But Not Least… Christmas Pasta [very similar recipe]. Our final recipe was certainly consistent with much of the year, in that it featured a huge amount of meat. This dish has pancetta, sweet Italian sausage, hot Italian sausage, ground veal and ground beef. It is a lot of meat. Also included are some vegetables in the form of onions, garlic, carrots and crushed tomatoes. The other ingredients include allspice, beef broth, red wine, Romano cheese and parsley, And the pasta of course. The sauce is very rich and meaty; pretty satisfying. The allspice lends an interesting cinnamony clovey piquancy, which seemed seasonal-ish. I would imagine that this dish would improve with time, which is good as we have a mountain of leftovers. If you wanted to serve many people quite easily, this meal would do the trick. Although, in all honesty, I would be disappointed to eat this for Christmas dinner. It’s good but not extra specially special, as Christmas food should be, in my humble opinion.

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Well, well, well. 2007. That was the year that was. That was the year of morning sickness, of trying to sell a condo, of selling a condo and buying a house. Of remodelling a house then moving in. Of bathing our little girl in the sprinklers outside and calling it fun. Of cooking on a portable stove outside and trying to call it fun. Of being woken up every day by various contractors stomping around the house, and simply failing to call it fun. Of running to the basement bathroom every 30 seconds during the night when heavily pregnant, and failing to contain my swear words. Of trying to act oblivious to the mess, noise and stress of the move and be thankful for the progress. Only to realise that everything that could go wrong was pretty much going wrong. And finally when the house was almost finished, and mostly beautiful, Baby N was born and Baby A became Little A. And then we asked the contractors to come back again.

So here we are on the cusp of 2008. We started 2007 as a working couple with a baby living in a condo, driving relatively ok cars, and having a sporadic social life. We finish the year with two beautiful little girls, a house with a garden and a garage, and a minivan. And I’m now a stay at home mum. And of course throughout it all, every single night we cooked a Rachael Ray recipe from “365: No Repeats A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners“. When we started this cooking project we had no idea whether we would be successful or not, and although we had a vague idea that we might move house or have another kid at some point in the vaguely defined “future”, we had no idea that everything would happen so fast. And no idea that Rachael Ray would peculiarly become a constant in our increasingly hectic life.

At various points during the year, I have been desperate to end this project, to return to life where we dictate what we are going to eat, when we are going to eat it. But actually, as the end finally looms and we have a tattered, battered (autographed) copy of the recipe book complete with a section of pages which fall out every single time we pick it up as a souvenir, we have found that we are mysteriously reluctant to give up the process. Not having to discuss what to have for dinner every night has been immensely liberating. Not wasting time mindlessly wandering up the aisles of the supermarket desperately looking for culinary inspiration has been refreshing. Having a food action plan has actually proved to be a good thing. In a way, whilst this has been an intense process, it has also been a mindless activity- we have managed to follow recipes when we have been so stressed that we can barely remember our own names. I started the year writing down the title of each meal in my day planner diary thing, finding it immensely amusing that I could tell anyone who asked what we would be eating on any given day of the year. I gave up that process after a couple of months, but it is still incredibly strange that we have a visual and literal record of one meal a day eaten for a whole year.
People often ask us how we found the food, how we would rate Rachael Ray’s recipes. Overall, I would say that we ate very well this year. There were a few humdingers, but generally we ate better than we expected, and undoubtedly better than we normally would have done. The project forced us to do some things we would never do, such as eat macaroni cheese for five days in a row, but it also prompted us to eat a far greater variety of dishes than we ever do. We enjoyed things we never imagined that we would bother to cook. With the benefit of hindsight, this project was an extremely interesting pursuit, albeit a ridiculous one. We could have done without the pressure to cook on high-stress days, like moving to a construction-site-house or giving birth, for example, and also on the rare occasions when we went out and ate, then came home and cooked. But we have certainly learned that we really are as stubborn as we suspected. We hoped that we would finish the task we set ourselves, we anticipated that we might, but I don’t know that we envisaged that we actually would complete the project. I certainly thought that we would call on our back-up guest cook at some point, but remarkably we never did. On the one hand that’s a bizarre achievement, on the other hand it’s a testament to our lack of a crazy exciting holiday-filled existence.

All year I have been planning to make a gallery of images of every meal documented in this blog, so that we can see at a glance what the year held for us. I might still go back and do that as time mysteriously seems to have run out. Blogging itself has been a bit of a revelation to me. There are a number of blogs I read and enjoy regularly, but I had never thought about starting one. We originally thought that we’d only write about food, but life has a strange way of insinuating itself into everything. Shear exhaustion has recently stopped me saying all the things that I intended to say when sitting down at the computer, but there’s only so much people would probably want to hear about how wonderful yet exasperating toddlers are, and how delicious yet tiring new babies are. And how children + life= exhaustion. (Incidentally, as I sit typing this feeding Baby N, I have been listening to the happy sounds of two toddlers bathing together and pretending to be lions. The button on the whirlpool tub got pressed accidentally, and suddenly as the jets roared into action, I listened to the delicate strains of two terrified toddlers and two shocked adults trying to do damage control. Would it be awful if I said it was quite funny from this side of the wall?).

And so, as the final hours of 2007 draw to a close, we find ourselves with decisions to make regarding next year. We have decided not to go back to free-form meal decisions; the structure has actually been really good for us. Having said that, we can’t make the same kind of commitment again- blogging every single night has played havoc with my TV and film watching, book reading self. And cooking a meal after cooking Christmas dinner was a little on the insane, not to mention gluttonous and wasteful, side. So, we are going to continue with the cooking from recipes, but maybe only 5 days a week. That gives us room for the occasional takeout, and to make good meals into leftovers, and maybe even to go out for dinner, should there be a pig flying over a blue moon.
Happy New Year! And thanks for reading.

Little A woke up wailing this morning as she wasn’t feeling well. Despite repeatedly telling her that Christmas is a happy time, she was thoroughly out of sorts all morning. She did seem happy with the play kitchen we got her, the one which took our man guest a couple of happy hours to assemble last night while L cooked. It seemed an appropriate gift, what with all the cooking around here. She told us she was making strawberry banana pasta, which is no stranger than some of the things that we have eaten this year, I’m thinking of you, Zippy Italian Popcorn. She was also given a kids laptop computer. Maybe she can blog about her creations.  Everyone else went for a pre-lunch walk, while I intended to catch up on some much-needed sleep after a very fractured night. Unfortunately by the time Baby N had worked through her feeding/ excreting cycle, twice, everyone returned. For about ten minutes the three children were all napping, and I could here the excitement downstairs as the adults decided which film to watch. Then, the earth rotated ever so slightly on its axis, and as if by magic, all three were awake. Little A couldn’t stop crying long enough to take a nap, which hasn’t happened since the ear infection days. But there was a return of Christmas spirit later in the day when we played in the snow after a coffee and cake break. We took the girls sledging, which was hilarious, and the snowy world couldn’t have been more picture perfect. The kids’ day ended with the toddlers in the bath pretending to be seals, feeding each other foam fish. Comedy gold.

This evening we ate a most tremendous British Christmas Dinner, followed by all American apple pie and ice cream. Some gin and tonics were orbiting in the room, then we finished with a cup of tea and some chocolate. Baby N was hanging out looking magnificent in her Christmas legwarmers, and gradually becoming much more fussy. Around the time that I remembered that we still had to cook Roast Crispy Mushrooms and Grilled Tenderloin Steaks with Green Onions, she very much needed to be attended to. So L and I sort of did touch-tag cooking, while chatting in the lounge with our guests. The dinner seemed to be low maintenance, so we set it up and left it to it’s own devices…

Bad idea. First we slightly burnt the steak, which had been simply pan fried and seasoned. Next we burnt the mushrooms which were being oven roasted at a high heat, coated in parsley, garlic and olive oil. In fairness the recipe said to resist the tempation to open the oven door whilst cooking, but still… The mushrooms were supposed to be dark and crispy; they were actually pretty much charred and crumbly. The steak was topped with grilled spring onions, and the wole lot was served with crusty bread.

It is hard to evaluate a meal when you are so stuffed that you can hardly move, before you even start cooking. Once you have burnt most of it, it is even harder. Although I tasted the least charred mushrooms, I have to guess a little at the result. This seemed to be solid, yet uninspiring food. The steak and scallions were ok, although the onions were very garnish-like. The mushrooms had promise. All in all, it would have been an above average meal, in other circumstances.

Tomorrows meal, Incredible French Endive Salad with Aged Herb Goat Cheese Toasts probably would be a good lunch if we get our act together; at least either way it won’t be an exercise in futility like dinner tonight. I am utterly unable to keep my eyes open for any longer, so I bid you a very merry Christmas, if you celebrate that sort of thing, and a fabulous end of year to all and sundry.

All the excitement of last night paled a little when Baby N decided to make up for her fantastically timed bout of evening sleep, by staying awake till 3am or so. Today has been a bit of a slow one, to say the least. As I remarked to L, today I managed to sort out half a box of Little A’s old clothes. Success. Really, having little ones at home is all about adjusting your expectations for the day. Aim lower than low and be pleasantly delighted if anything is accomplished.

We gave away one of our cats today, which was sad but good. When L and I first lived together we got two cats from the Humane Society. We liked them so much we got two more; the kitten sisters. Bad idea, all things considered. Four cats is quite a handful. When we moved to the States we actually brought two of our cats, and we would have brought all four if our new landlady had allowed us. We knew it was insane to fly cats half way round the world, after all it’s not as if there aren’t plenty of homeless cats here. But, we were moving to an unfurnished apartment in a new town with no friends, so we thought the cats might provide some comfort. Turns out we probably messed up our poor cats more than we ever thought possible by moving them here. It was quite pleasant to only have two cats again after the chaos of four. It was so nice in fact that we went to the Humane Society and got two more. After Little A was born, three of the four cats adjusted well to having a baby in the house, but one did really badly. He was our only boy-cat and he was special, very special, in a developmentally challenged sort of way. He was the sweetest cat you could ever meet; he was the tester animal at the shelter. They’d bring him out to see if the other animals were aggressive towards cats, and no matter how loud or menacing they were towards him, he’d just roll around on his back, purring. He was the loveliest cat although he couldn’t really jump, he’d bang into things, he didn’t notice anything. Looking into his eyes was like gazing into a vast pool of vacant. There really was very little going on inside. When we moved house he barely registered. continuing with his life as if we’d just moved his food bowl, so we thought that he wouldn’t even notice a baby in the house. We were wrong, he was scared of the baby and hid all day until she slept at night. Then he would come out and be so incredibly, relentlessly needy and we were so incredibly, relentlessly exhausted that we could barely be bothered. As Baby A got bigger and more mobile, Ziggy’s quality of life with us went downhill, until we eventually found a new home for him. He is apparently thriving in his new child-free environment, walking into chairs at leisure, falling off the sofa just because he can. Although saying goodbye was very sad, we don’t miss him. I remember him fondly from our pre-kids days, but it would be awful for him to still live with us. We sometimes joke that we have a one in- one out policy.

And so we now have a two month old, and it seems another cat had to go. We are keeping our Scottish kitten sisters who have all sorts of neurosis and chronic illnesses between them (and incidentally, terrible teeth. Our American cats had perfect teeth. Stereotypes: not just for people). But we decided that we need to downsize so that everyone gets a fair share of love and attention and no-one becomes neglected. Chutney has been picking on the others since the baby came home, obviously she is bored and a little attention-starved. She has been lunching daily with the carpenter who has been working on our house, and they seem to have a beautiful blossoming relationship. He is looking for a new cat as one of theirs just died, so we played cat matchmaker, and today she has gone to her new home. She will be missed. She was probably the only truly well-balanced, loving cat that we have ever had.

Today we arranged to take Baby A out of daycare. It probably came at a very good time in that we just learned that her very favourite, most beloved teacher is leaving on Friday. Every time we drive down there she tells us that she doesn’t like the two other members of staff in her classroom, but that she likes S. I don’t know how she would have reacted if S was no longer there, probably not too well. We mentioned that the classroom staff had been acting oddly around us. It turns out that they are being blamed by the Administration for the incident- that it was their responsibility that one of the children in their care fell against a project under construction. No wonder everyone has been walking on eggshells around us. L had a lengthy conversation with the Director of the place yesterday after we filed our grievance. In all honesty he may as well have just sat down and banged his head off a brick wall for twenty minutes. Suffice to say that the institution which prides itself on its lofty ideals with regards to child learning and development could do with displaying some compassion towards the staff and parents. I’m really sorry that we have to take Little A out of daycare, out of an environment in which she is obviously thriving, but we have ended up being very disappointed and a little bitter towards the Administration.

Anyway, this evening we made Asian Pinwheel Steaks with Noodle and Cabbage Sauté. My supertiredness is suddenly catching up on me so I will be brief (for if I were a Superhero I would be the fabulous, invincible SuperTired). Flattenened New York strip steaks are spread with a sort of Asian pesto, rolled up, skewered and baked in a hot oven. The pesto-type mixture is made from peanuts, scallions, garlic, ginger, spinach, lemon zest and juice, parsley, cilantro, cayenne pepper and tamari blasted in the food processor then mixed with vegetable oil. Drained, cooked angel hair pasta is added to a pan in which garlic, ginger, cabbage slaw mix, tamari, rice wine vinegar and chicken stock have been cooking, then everything is tossed together with some scallions.

This was a pleasant meal, the elements of which I would consider using again. I enjoyed the noodle dish in an understated quiet sort of way. The pinwheel steaks were perhaps a little too dense and heavy. This is one instance in which we thought that chicken breasts might actually be more successful. The pesto mixture is very substantial in flavour, it is a hearty accompaniment, so maybe the meat itself could be a little less rich.

Tomorrow we have to make a list of everything that needs doing in the next couple of days and actually start working through it. We are too tired to get much of anything achieved otherwise (see non-appearance of thank-you notes for baby gifts and holiday cards etc). We will be dining on Crispy Rosemary-Orange Chicken with Parmigiano String Beans. We have friends flying in from Scotland on Friday for ten days with their 1 1/2 year old daughter. It should be interesting, and hopefully fun. Last time they visited we were all child-free and we had an absolutely fantastic time. We just hope this time will be as fun, and that at least two out if three kids will nap at the same time.

After a pretty uneventful and extremely snowy day, this evening we made Thai-Style Steak Salad, which was a fantastic success. Our neighbour who was going to bring round dinner postponed because she was stuck in the snow somewhere. That meant that we didn’t have to explain why we were cooking anyway, which was no bad thing.

Anyway, to try and condense this post, the dinner consisted of flank steak marinated in garlic, ginger, tamari, hot sauce and oil, then grilled, rested and sliced. The salad included cucumber, radishes, red pepper, spinach, shredded carrots, cilantro and basil. It was dressed in rice vinegar, sugar, ginger and oil, and tossed with toasted sweetened shredded coconut and chopped roasted peanuts. We were supposed to use red onion but we had run out so we substituted scallions for a bit of mild onion flavour.

The salad looked fantastic and was extremely tasty, light, crisp and fresh. To our minds, this did seem to be very Thai-like food. The steak was beautifully cooked, with a great marinade. Each mouthful of the dinner yielded a good crunch with plenty of variety. The true test of these meals is whether or not you pick out the bits you don’t normally like- in my case the radishes and the coconut. Both were absorbed well into the general scheme of the meal; everything was very coherent. All in all, this was a very successful dinner, one which we’ll certainly make again. Winner. Tomorrow we add rice noodles and substitute pork for the beef to make Thai-Style Pork and Noodle Salad. I am looking forward to that, I just wish I’d realised we need double the amounts of all ingredients when we went shopping so that we wouldn’t have to do a grocery run yet again tomorrow. Och well, what can you do?

This evening’s meal, Bacon-Wrapped Meatloaf Patties with Pan Gravy and Sour Cream-Tomato Smashed Potatoes, was a little on the labour-intensive side, at least to my tired, befuddled head. We spent half the day waiting for the heating repair man to come and rescue us from our ice-block of a house. Then Baby N, my mother and I went to the Über-mall (gross area of 4.2 million sq ft. (390,000 m²), with 2.5 million sq ft. (230,000 m²) available as retail space, if you were wondering) and managed to walk up and down one stretch for the afternoon. I am having to rebuild my internal navigation system for getting round the mall to accommodate the new stroller. Where once we could go up the escalators, we now need to take elevators. Uninteresting as it is, they are located in different places, so everything changes.

Anyway, for some reason today I seem to have hit a wall of fugginess in the brain, as if the months of toilet-trips through the night when pregnant plus the night time feedings of the last 6 weeks have just caught up on me. I feel like I am swimming underwater in a vat of custard. The custard of sleep deprivation. I can’t remember what I’ve written about or when, sometimes I can’t remember my new daughter’s name. Quite frankly I can barely remember my own name, which is not much of a problem since I seem to be unable to communicate it to anyone. But, a woman in a department store today told us that Baby N had a peaceful soul though, so that’s one less thing to worry about.

Anyway, we made meatloaf patties with ground beef, Worcestershire sauce, an egg, breadcrumbs, milk, grill seasoning, tomato paste, onions and allspice. They were wrapped in a little bacon shawl and fried. Once they were out of the pan, we were supposed to add butter to the pan to scrape up the drippings and begin the pan gravy. There was no much bacon fat that we skipped the butter and went straight to onions, then flour, chicken stock, mustard and Worcestershire sauce. I have to admit I forgot the parsley until just now, oops. The potatoes were little red ones, mashed with sour cream, milk and butter and mixed with de-seeded, skinned, chopped tomatoes (My mum did the preparation, I’m not so sure we’d have gone to so much trouble). We served asparagus on the side and had a veritable mountain of food.

Dinner looked a little Old Country Buffet, but the meal was pretty tasty. Wrapping anything in bacon is a win-win situation, so the patties were good. I’m not sure that they were what I was expecting- they seemed a little more burger-esque than meatloaf. Maybe we ate burgloaf. Or meaters. They could have done with a little more spice or seasoning, but essentially they were pretty substantial and tasty. Mashed potatoes are another perennial favourite. I’m not sure how essential the tomatoes were, but they did offer a splash of colour I guess. All in all, this was certainly a solid meal, very hefty on a winter’s night.

Tomorrow we will be eating Sweet and Spicy Pineapple Pork, which sounds tasty. I’d hoped for a stir fry but I think we have to buy 1 1/2″ thick pork chops which seems very meat-centric. Yesterday, amongst the pile of presents for the granddaughters, I received the new Nigella Lawson book, Nigella Express. It’s a beautiful looking book with delicious photographs. Maybe next year we should cook our way through that. Instead of five chicken dishes in a row, we’d have so very many cakes. Yummo.

This evening we made French Onion Sliced Steak Croissant Sandwich, which was a fantastically good sandwich. The flank steak was marinated for ten minutes in olive oil, red wine vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, thyme, salt and pepper, then cooked over a high heat. Once cooked, it was left to stand for five minutes then sliced thinly. The onions were sliced and cooked in olive oil until golden. Chicken stock was poured over the top and left to bubble away until the onions were just slightly damp. Croissants were split and placed on a cookie sheet. A dollop of onions were placed on the croissant base, followed by the sliced steak. More onions and a slice of Emmental cheese topped the sandwich, which was grilled until the cheese melted and the croissant lids browned. The sandwich was served with a green salad.

I wondered whether this would be the sort of meal that would be more trouble than it was worth, but actually the two pans, two bowls and a cookie sheet which need to be washed up are a small price to pay for the meal itself. The steak was like butter; so very moist, tender and succulent. The croissants were oozing butter, which is always nice. The onions and cheese were just good; tangy and chewy and delicious- and I don’t even particularly like Swiss cheese. Very excellent all round.

This morning I felt like I had lived a hundred lives before 9am. Juggling the very different demands of a newborn and a toddler, whilst trying to maintain a basic level of personal hygiene and a barely acceptable level of appearance, is something that I need to work on. Fortunately, I’m sure I have plenty of opportunity for practice and improvement. Once we managed to leave the house, the day was actually pretty good. For the most part I enjoyed myself and the company of the girls, although it does feel a little like tightrope walking, blindfolded, with one leg tied behind your back. If Baby N had woken up hungry at different times- like bath time- the day could have been an unmitigated disaster. As it was, we all survived with only minor injuries. We went out to a friends house for play and lunch, where I had a most unfortunate incident. I fed Baby N then lifted her to face over my shoulder for a much-needed burp. I had completely failed to register the breakfast bar counter behind me, the very counter upon which I managed to bang her poor little noggin against. The baby screamed, the toddler wailed, I may have shed a stressful little guilt-ridden hormonal tear, but we all recovered and lived to tell the tale. Baby N barely has a mark on her forehead, although she’ll probably develop an enormous bruise just as I go to pick up my mum from the airport tomorrow. On the way home from our playdate, I had to take Little A to the clinic for a flu shot. She was very excited to go, obviously not having the faintest idea what she was in for when she asked for her “flu shot, pease”. The sight of the needle prompted a swift downward turn in her mood, but she was consoled slightly by a sparkly plaster and not one but two piggy stickers. The stickers which she is now sleeping with, after refusing to part with them.

Tomorrow we have to tidy and clean as much as possible before heading out to the airport. It seems a little self-defeating to clean when we have workmen in the house and cardboard taped to the floors to protect the wood. L is still painting the never-ending woodwork so we have dust sheets and paint pots around. It just seems so hard to get on top of house stuff at the moment, what with the 84 loads of washing a day and the endless nappy changes. We’ll get there eventually, maybe. Or we won’t. Either way you won’t get your money back. It’ll be interesting to see how this house accommodates visitors. The bedrooms are very much on top of each other and the walls are paper thin. There’s no room for privacy. But hopefully there will be much grannie/ grandchildren bonding and an opportunity for the little things in life like getting a haircut. My roots are so bad that I have taken to wearing a hat. All the time. I am so grateful that it’s cold enough that I don’t look like a complete idiot. Or maybe I do but at least no one can see my terrible grey hair stripe. Tomorrow we kick off Mother Visit ‘07 with Rosemary Lemon-Pepper Pork Tenderloin with Creamy Lemon-Parmigiano Dressed Greens and Garlic Croutons. I think everyone is pleased that the upcoming run of five (FIVE) versions of polenta lasagne is post-visit. Our families already think we’re crazy doing this project- in as much as every now and then we’ll be asked “are you still doing that food thing?” with a touch of disbelief/ disdain. There’s no reason to vividly illustrate the crazy with five versions of the same meal. Otherwise we’d be hard pressed to answer the inevitable “why are you doing this?” question.

Our 2 year old daughter, Little A, seems to have 3 phobias/ obsessions- gloves, lions and vacuum cleaners. We have a big red silicone oven glove which prompts her to say “I don’t like the glove” all the time. She is filled with panic if the glove is left on the countertop, so we have to keep it in the drawer. But then she wants to go and look at it all the time; “I see the glove. I don’t like it” (and repeat). She has a love/ hate relationship with lions too- she loves to see them at the zoo, she has a family of plastic lion figures that she takes to bed most nights (with accompanying “owwies” when she gets a hard leg or tail in her eye, or she lies on Daddy Lion), and she is obsessed by the “lion book“. On the last page of the book is a pop-up lion with big teeth, and throughout the book Little A says “I don’t like the lion, I don’t like the lion, I don’t like the lion” but as soon as you offer to skip the lion page or read a different book she says “I see the lion, I see the lion..” at which point she sees it and says “I don’t like the lion. I see the lion.” The vacuum cleaner is a different kind of fear. At daycare she visibly tenses when the vacuum cleaner comes out, and she clings to whoever is carrying her like there is no tomorrow. At home it doesn’t come out so often (oh robot, how we need you, come home to mama) but she is terrified when it does make an appearance. She often tells us how she doesn’t like it, but she rarely asks to see it. We do, however, have proof that her bilingual upbringing is paying off; at daycare she says “I don’t like the vacuum cleaner” and at home she says “I don’t like the hoover”. She does have a sense of humour about her fears; L asks her if she’d like to see the “hoover lion glove” and she laughs and laughs. Today however, things went a little pearshaped. I was nursing the baby and A still gets very upset at feeding times, so I said she could watch some TV while her sister ate. We put on Teletubbies and all was well. Lala got a present; a box full of Christmas decorations. The Teletubbies were all very enamored of the sparkly tinsel and stuff, until Noo Noo the vacuum cleaner came along and sucked up the decorations with his/ her vacuuming hose nose. Little A let out the loudest scream that I have ever heard, louder even than when she dislocated her elbow. I thought something terrible had happened to her as she sat next me on the sofa, but the agony was all hoover trauma. Eventually she calmed down (Noo Noo ran away. Noo Noo sneezed. The Christmas decorations were sneezed up onto the walls of the Teletubbies house. Everyone was happy. The end) but just before bed tonight she still said “Noo Noo got the Christmas decorations. I cry.” Great. She hardly ever watches TV but evidently I have to start censoring. Who knew that the Teletubbies episode entitled “cards” would feature a rampant hoover? Maybe the one called “flowers” showcases Tinky Winky’s new friend, the friendly yet terrifying Lion Hoover Glove.

We’ve been full of “woe is us, everything keeps breaking” vibes lately, but we had some really good karma today. I got a phone call this evening from someone at our local coffee shop saying that she’d found my wallet in a pile of newspapers. I had not realised that I didn’t have it, and I still have no idea how it ended up in the papers, which I wasn’t reading. Amazingly, all my cards and everything were still inside, which is an enormous relief. I don’t ever carry cash, and when L is around I sometimes don’t even take my wallet out of the house with me. So it could conceivably have been days before I realised that the wallet was missing. I am so pleased it all turned out so nicely.

L’s paternity leave is drawing to a close which is scary in many ways. Us three girls may well drown under the mountains of laundry, and I am yet to figure out how to get out the house when outnumbered by kids. But people do it all the time, I’m sure we’ll manage. We can always camp out in the minivan all day. Monday will certainly be interesting. Baby N has started to track things with her eyes, and she is quite smiley (admittedly probably not intentionally at this point, the smiles I mean) and is hopefully becoming increasingly more interactive in the eyes of her big sister. It’s amazing how quickly the last month has gone. Any day now the kids will be in teenagers, and maybe L and I will be camping in the minivan to get away from them. We went to A’s daycare yesterday and postponed entry into the infant room for Baby N. Little A is going down to part time care until Christmas, and then unless they bend the rules and allow her to attend 2 days a week, we will have to find a new solution. As it is much harder to find care for babies, N has a part time daycare place reserved for the spring, so we have some time to figure out what we are going to do. Who knows where we’ll end up, but all roads lead to me staying at home with the kids and trying to work from home around the chaos. Particularly as we forgot to play the lottery tonight. $95 million, people.

In food news, tonight’s meal was a welcome return to form. The Bacon-Wrapped Beef Supper Salad was easy and pretty delicious, and it was good to make a nice salad after so much hefty solid food. The beef steaks were wrapped in bacon “like a stripe on a barber pole” (which I read as “like a stripper on a pole” which I thought was an interesting, and somewhat apt, description. I am sleep deprived, I should mention), seasoned and cooked on the skillet. The salad of greens, artichoke hearts and plum tomatoes was dressed in an olive oil, Dijon mustard, balsamic vinegar, shallot concoction. Olives, caper berries and crusty bread were served on the side. This meal is simple and effective. The bacon gave the steak enough flavour that it was not lacking by reason of being marinade-free. The salad was tangy, fresh, crisp and satisfying. The artichoke hearts were definitely an addition that I would consider keeping on hand to throw into a green salad in future. All in all, very pleasant. Tomorrow we are having Pancetta-Wrapped Shrimp Supper Salad, which sounds all kinds of good. Yummo, genuinely yummo.

This evening we made London Broil with Buttered Potatoes and Caramelized Zucchini and Mushrooms which was a good, satisfying, solid meal. Our enormous slab of meat was marinated briefly in hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce and red wine vinegar, seasoned with pepper and cooked, left to stand, and sliced thinly on an angle. Baby potatoes were boiled, drained, tossed in butter, seasoned with salt and pepper and sprinkled with parsley. Mushrooms sliced in half were browned in olive oil, then joined by garlic, red pepper flakes and zucchini. The contents of the pan were sautéed until browned, or caramelized as the recipe states.

The meal was almost restaurant quality- potatoes should always be tossed in butter, in an ideal world, the beef was succulent and tasty, and the vegetable mix was pleasantly unexpected. We both enjoyed it, although admittedly we cooked far too much meat. Tomorrow we will be making Zucchini and Bow Ties; it’ll be interesting to see whether A will eat it or not. Some days she’ll eat anything pasta, and other days she resolutely refuses pasta unless it has pesto on it. It must be really hard to be two. While she’s doing a great job of being a big sister, she is obviously having a tough time at the moment, as judged by the ongoing tears and tantrums. It breaks my heart a little.

Todays (admittedly modest) plans were thwarted when L had to make an emergency visit to the dentist for acute toothache as a result of losing a filling somewhere along the way. We began calling the dental office at 8am (after a glorious 2 hours and 50 minutes sleep on my part) and when no one had answered and no voicemail message played an hour and a half later, we called our insurance company. We were told that we could go to any dentist as an emergency visit, but that the maximum payout for treatment would be $50. In dental terms we figured that might buy some Ibuprofen, or a sample of toothpaste, but it probably wouldn’t cover the cost of a new filling. So we decided to drive out to the dentist, on the off chance that their phone was just being temperamental. When we got there we discovered that the office had relocated so we set about tracking down the new location. Our old dentist was already 20 minutes drive from us, but the new office seemed to be somewhere out in the woods of Wisconsin. When we got there we discovered that our old dentist had just moved his practice, but now he had actually retired. The good news was that L could be seen immediately by one of the other dentists in the practice, and he had his cavity filled. The bad news was that despite not being informed of any of the changes, and despite the fact that the insurance company also had no idea about the changes, it seemed to be apparent that we no longer had dental insurance because we hadn’t filed for a change in provider. Obviously we didn’t file to change dentist because we didn’t know that in the last month, ours had stopped working. And then we found out that the only dentist that we can go to who is covered by our insurance is our old dentist back in the town where L works. 65 miles from where we live. That man was locally known as “the laughing dentist” because of his unnerving high pitched laugh which punctuated every word he uttered. The man was kind of terrifying in the same way that clowns are scary. We won’t be going back there. Anyway, so it seemed that L would have to pay out of pocket for the treatment but then a truly nice thing happened. The people at the dentist felt so bad about the situation that they absorbed almost $250 worth of charges, leaving us to pay $23. That was so nice, and so very unexpected.

I am now wading through health plan information to figure out what we need to change to find a dentist that we can actually visit. Getting motivated to go to the dentist is hard enough, but a 130 mile round trip with two wee ones is just never going to happen. It would almost make sense if we lived somewhere ridiculously rural, but we live in one of the two cities in the “Twin Cities”. That’s two cities side by side. That’s a lot of dentists.

Anyway, moving on as I’m boring even myself writing about that, this evening we made Grilled Steak Sandwich… I Mean Salad- No! Sandwich! Awful name aside, this is an excellent meal. It’s quick, easy, tasty, rich and requires minimal preparation or clean up. The steak is briefly marinated in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, rosemary, salt and pepper, then grilled. The salad is simply tomatoes, basil, mozzarella and red onions with cubes of bread. The bread was supposed to be day-old bread, soaked in water then squeezed dry. In fairness we still haven’t tried the wet-then-dry-the-bread methodology, as we can’t work out why you would do that. Our bread was well-moistened simply by the salad dressing of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper.

The salad was excellent; it was very fresh and substantial without being stodgy. Unlike many salads, this didn’t feel like a side-dish or a space-filler; it was the highlight of the meal with the steak as a bonus topping. This meal we would definitely make again, or certainly the salad element. The steak was tasty, the marinade was pleasant, but the steak overall was pretty standard. Good but not exceptional. Altogether though, this was a very good meal, and a most welcome break from chicken.

Tomorrow we start a run of 4 versions of various “rolls” which I believe are made in Phyllo/ Filo pastry. They sound interesting, or at least the versions seem very different, which is never a bad thing. First off will be Chipotle Chicken Rolls with Avocado Dipping Sauce. My main ambition between now and then is to get like 6 hours sleep at least. It’s the little things.

This evening we made Grilled Skirt Steak and Orzo with the Works, which was actually a pretty good dinner. The steak was briefly marinated in balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper, then grilled, rested and sliced. The “works” consisted of red onion, garlic, fennel, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, chicken stock, baby tomatoes, basil, parsley and parmigiano cheese mixed with the cooked orzo.

I went a little overboard on the red pepper flakes, so this was certainly not a bland dish, although we both agreed that it could easily lose the fennel and only be improved. The steak was actually excellent, flavoursome, moist and very easy. All in all, this was a good one.

So, let’s see, I’ve had some spicy food and did plenty of walking today. Old wives tales dictate that with some pineapple, raspberry tea, and a bottle of castor oil, I can get this baby out by tomorrow. Or let’s just wait and see, after all, who’d want to miss Lime-and-Honey Glazed Salmon with Warm Black Bean and Corn Salad?