Thanksgiving Photos

sweet potato pie with cinnamon roll crust

apple pie

apple+cranberry sauce

bacon cheddar mashed potatoes

stuffing

Kimchi's plate

the spread

action shot of the sweet potato pie

Kimchi trying to swipe Ramona's dinner

Baby's first

Ramona and Kimchi wish all of you the very happiest of Halloweens.

Baby Food Chronicles

I've been making lots of these lately:

Spinach + sweet potato

Ev.er.y.one. extols the virtues of making your own baby food and I totally agree.  We've been able to control what ingredients get put in Ramona's food and we get to do it for a lot less cost and waste than buying prepackaged baby food from the grocery store.

"Mama, solids are clearly more delicious when spread all over your face.  Duh!"

So far, she's eaten: sweet potatoes, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, blueberries, avocado, banana, chicken, beef, apples, pears, beets, and a lot of other things that I'm probably forgetting.  You'll notice that she's not eating rice cereal and that's with purpose.  There's really no good reason to start a baby on rice cereal and with recent concerns about arsenic, it's something that we're glad we chose to skip.  At this point, she's eating two solid meals a day, but we're going to start giving her three: one pureed, one easy to mash chunks (think banana or avocado), and one with some meat to give her iron and zinc.

We've been using a variety of utensils to make her food, but lately we've been using a dim sum steamer basket and our mini food processor.  Awhile back, we broke our immersion blender, so Colby decided that it would be brilliant to get a commercial kitchen grade appliance.  I'm pretty sure that has more power than our weed whacker (which, admittedly, is not very powerful) and I basically have to stand on a stool to use it comfortably at the stove.   We'll use it if we're blending a lot of stuff at once, but for general purposes it's just not practical.

At first I thought that starting her on foods was going to be a very sad event because I'd no longer be her sole source of nutrition, but it's actually be really fun.  I can't imagine how awesome it is to try something as delicious as sweet potatoes for the first time ever, but I know that she's really enjoying herself.

Our dog, Kimchi, is also very happy that we've started Ramona on solids. ;)

Firebowl Cafe

A couple weekends ago, we took Kimchi and Ramona to Firebowl Cafe for dinner.  Colby and I used to eat there all the time when we lived in north Austin, and now occasionally go back when we're in the area. Colby's brother, Dustin, moved into our old apartment complex right after Ramona was born, so we found ourselves in the area.  I've never really blogged about the food there because I categorize it as slightly-fancier-than-McDonalds food that we eat when we don't feel like cooking.  What was spectacular, however, was the combination of natural light and the food setting on my DSLR and the resulting photos.  At least, these may be the best food photos that I've ever taken.

Kimchi chilling with Uncle Dustin

beef bulgogi -  $8.25

crab rangoons (aka my excuse to eat a ton of mae ploy sweet chili sauce) - $5.25

Austin Terrier

At some point in December, we brought our Boston Terrier to Austin Terrier.  It turns out that they had mostly closed the outdoor seating because it was "winter" and it was about to start raining (seriously snow = winter, rain = not winter), but they were totally accommodating.  In all, the food was pretty good, though I was hampered by pregnancy (again!), so it definitely deserves another try when I can eat things like soft cheeses that aren't heated.  Plus the decor is totally cute.

trio of fries: sweet potato, truffle oil+parmesan, and paprika+mustard - $5.95

Buffy on wheat - $7.95

side of slaw

Travis Pie: pesto pizza with chicken, feta, red onions, and basil - $8.95

my personal Austin terrier

smelly

There's a birth story in the works, but I wanted to share this first. Kimchi was very much confused at the sound and then smell emanating from Ramona's diaper, so she thought she'd investigate.

Amusing things on the internet

Aside from Colby locking my keys in the car, I had a ridiculously nice birthday, complete with a zillion facebook messages, snuggles with Kimchi, and one of the best meals I've had in recent memory.  I took pictures, so I definitely plan to post about that soon.  In the meantime, posting around here has been sparse, so I figured I'd share some interesting things I've been reading on the internet, some of which are actually about food.  And in no particular order, here we go:

Jeremy Lin

 This McSweeny's piece on Jeremy Lin is fantastic, but it has nothing on the Disgrasian post about who should be his basketball wife.  Personally, my choice is Michelle Wie because she could finally wear heels without dwarfing a dude.  If you don't know who Jeremy Lin is, he's a point guard from Harvard who's the biggest sensation in the NBA right now.  Oh, and he's the first American NBA player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent.

Baby Shit (not literally)

Apparently, in France, the government provides services to women to get back "in shape" post-baby.  And by "in shape", they mean vaginally.  It sort of sounds like the best idea ever, especially considering the "cooter pac man".

There's a shit ton of sugar in baby formula and the FDA doesn't require companies to reveal how much.  I'm firmly in the camp of "breast is best", but for those people who aren't, or don't breast feed for whatever reason they choose, they deserve the right to know what the hell they're feeding their kids.

Random things I find amusing


Rick Santorum is winning in Michigan.

a) it's called the Daily Santorum.  When I see the word "Santorum" I think of this (LSWF)

b) they used a picture of the Sufjan Stevens album, Michigan.

c) the only county in which Mitt Romney is winning is where all the "new money" in south-eastern Michigan lives.  This goes to show that Mitt Romney is a rich-people republican's rich person republican.

Stop motion animation of a Michael Pollan talk.

I honestly didn't even read this article, but, um, like... look at the title and then laugh your face off.

Kimchi thought these articles were interesting too!

I am busy and my dog is cute.

Whenever I take home a bland meal from a restaurant, I always feel so crafty when I add things to it to make it tasty from my own kitchen at first.  And then I remember that I paid $13 for shitty shepherd's pie and I start to feel way less clever.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  Between school, doctors appointments, and getting the house ready for our permanent guest, I've been swamped.  I'll try to post some things this weekend.  Perhaps it's time for another AFBA blog-together, eh?  In the meantime, here's a picture of my dog because she's cute and it's almost like writing about food since her name is Kimchi.

I'm pretty sure that Colby (feet+arms) had food that she wanted

Late Night Musings

My calendar has never been so jam-packed before in my life.  Partly, it's due to the fact that I'm actually writing out what I'm up to, but there's also so much baby-prep going on that it makes my head spin.  Who knew that finding a pediatrician would prove to be so difficult?

I was going to post a menu for this week, but it was rather uninspired and most of the week we haven't cooked anything because we've been out of the house so much.  Kimchi is not amused.

I've never seen a dog whine so much that she wasn't in bed.  Not that she couldn't go by herself, she's just needy like that.

Happy (belated) birthday, Kimchi!

January 7 was Kimchi's second/fourteenth birthday, so we decided to get her some gifts and make birthday bison tacos.  Okay, so that last part is a lie.  Tacos = lazy dinner.  Since the taco dinner happened on Kimchi's birthday, they also became birthday tacos.  We set her up with her own little bowl and then she went to town on it.

taco bowl

om nom

licking the bowl clean!

satisfied birthday girl

Later on, we gave her a few presents. I think she likes unwrapping the gifts almost as much as she likes playing with the toys.

Present number one: bully stick

She really does enjoy unwrapping gifts

She couldn't wait to play with her new toy

In all, it was a very happy birthday for my favorite little girl. :)

Twelve Days with a Grateful Heart: Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone!  Today I'm grateful for Christmas and the wonderful excuse it offers to dress up my favorite puppy.

Twelve Days with a Grateful Heart: Michigan State University and The State Room

On Monday, Colby and I celebrated our third anniversary.  We decided to spend the day in East Lansing, home of our alma mater, Michigan State University.  Mostly, we went around the city and did some mundane errands, but we had lunch at The State Room in the Kellogg Center on campus and then dinner at Dusty's Cellar.   I managed to forget the camera for Dusty's and Colby didn't want me to go get it.  Something about food blogging being weird.  Pshh... what does he know?  It ended up being okay, though.  The meal at Dusty's was, unfortunately, forgettable, but we fared much better at lunch.

Today I'm grateful for Michigan State University.  Aside from the education, networking, and friendships I acquired, I would never have the cutest little baby in the world in my life without it:

Turns out my Kimchi fits into 6mo onesies. :)

Prior to this lunch, I'd only been to the State Room once before, despite living in East Lansing for four years.  This was right after our induction into Sigma Pi Sigma, the physics honor society and courtesy of a lifelong learning student who was also being inducted.  She was old, her husband made lots of money, and she bought about 15 of us a fancy dinner.  I don't really remember much of it, except that Colby wouldn't let us get dessert because one of our fellow undergraduates (who was given the not-so-affectionate nickname of douche bag) was getting dessert, so he wanted no part of it.  This time, the food was much more memorable and delicious.

cheesy bagel chips

Pistachio-encrusted walleye covered in a dijon cream sauce with roasted potatoes and green beans

Asian Lettuce Wrap with spiced pulled-pork and Thai curried mayo and fries

I'm still waiting on that dessert, though.

Twelve Days with a Grateful Heart: Kimchi

Ahhhhh, that was a nice break from posting, but I'm back.  While November was National Blog Posting Month for many of the members of the Austin Food Bloggers Alliance, December has become 30 Days with a Grateful Heart, as led by Austin blogger Jote of Bless Her Heart.  I know of a few people participating, but decided that 30 more days of blogging would be too much, especially with the holidays, my impending committee meeting, and a cross-country road trip to Michigan and back.  It seemed, though, that this was something that could help me foster personal growth, especially since I've had a hard time feeling gratitude for much of anything lately.  I've decided to post 12 things for which I am grateful instead of 30.

Blame it on the hormones, but to say that I haven't exactly enjoyed pregnancy is a massive understatement.  This was a huge surprise and I'm still coming to terms with the reality that between now and March, I need to grow up a lot.  That's not to say that I didn't want to expand my family, it's just that in my immediate future I saw a baby dog, not a baby human.  And why is it that I want another dog?  It's because of this face:

So today, I'm grateful for Kimchi.  She always seems to know when I need attention and love and she loves food nearly as much as I do.

Silent Sundays: Kimchi's Thanksgiving