News to us

Hello there faithful blog readers!  I figure if you care enough to read this you deserve advance notice that there will be another Thurmond joining our family around December 1.  Finding out we are pregnant came as a complete surprise, but we're excited.  When I went in a month ago they did some sort of measurement with the ultrasound and told me I was 7 weeks along.  The end of this week marks 12 (or 13?) weeks, plus it's the end of school, so I'll be announcing it to the public at large on Thursday or Friday.

So far things are going well - at least as far as I can tell.  I am considered a high risk pregnancy but have been doing pretty well at keeping my blood sugar where it's supposed to be, so here's hoping I can do the same for six more months!  Our estimated due date is actually December 16, but they won't let me go full term because the baby will be big, so...we'll find out more as we go on.  

That's it for now, but advice, product suggestions, etc., are very welcome.  I don't have many friends who've done this before, so I'll take what I can get.  :-)

Hope you all are well, 

Vanessa and Robb...and Scrapper! <-- Result of a random conversation between Robb and I.  Yes, we agree it would make a great dog name.  ;-)

10 Things I Love About Robb

This post is dedicated to my husband, so if you don't feel like finding out various ways in which he is AWESOME, my feelings won't be hurt.

10.  He's a very talented cook.
 
9.  Robb is willing to change to be a better person and helps me see things I need to work on, too.

8.  He puts up with my weirdness (and there's a lot of it!) with equanimity.

7.  Robb comes to sing with the ward choir every time we perform and he helps me figure out how to be a better conductor.

6.  He hates to see me sad or upset and consequently has made it a continuous quest to cheer me out of the doldrums.  He's very good at making me laugh and helps me remember to be silly.

5.  Even when he has lots of work to do for school and has to stay up really late (and/or all night) Robb will come lie down with me when I go to bed and stays until I fall asleep.

4.  He noticed that my blood sugar was getting really low while we were out running errands and immediately found a place we could eat, took me straight there, figured out what would make me feel better and ordered (all of which made me happy because my brain doesn't work well when I'm low.)

3.  When I wake up in the middle of the night with low blood sugar and have to stay awake until it comes up to a reasonable level Robb stays awake with me AND keeps me from eating too much (which is really easy for me to do when I'm half asleep and low-sugar loopy.)

2.  He's in the middle of finals and hasn't slept in the last two days, but made time to come outside to our yard sale and talk to a lady who was interested in buying his old desk.  (A giant, antique, HEAVY, solid wood monster that we really wanted to get out of our garage.)  And she bought it - HOORAY!

1.  Our gas was shut off by accident on Monday.  Whenever this happens PG&E comes out and relights everything BUT our downstairs furnace because there's some issue with the valve only being accessible from below.  Guess they don't like doing crawl spaces.  Anyway, after listening to my teeth chattering for six days Robb decided he didn't feel like waiting for our landlord to take care of things and that he would do it himself.  So he put on his coverall and a headlamp, crawled under our house, and lit the pilot light.  I am warm, I am happy, and I am married to an amazing man!

Easter Surprise

On Saturday I made a cake for our Easter dinner.  I had planned to frost it Sunday morning.  Before I crashed in bed I went around the house turning off lights and noticed a crinkled paper towel on top of the cake.  Apparently somebody couldn't wait and thought a paper towel would either: a) hide the evidence, or b) seem silly enough to make me laugh.  (Which worked.  But still...)  :-)

Too Much of a Good Thing?

I was recently blessed (cursed?) with a blinding flash of inspiration regarding cookie dough.  Now, if you're not a cookie dough lover, you may as well skip this post, but for the rest of us...prepare to be enlightened.

A few months ago Robb and I bought a quart of cookie dough ice cream and discovered it didn't have NEARLY enough doughy goodness.  So I whipped up a half batch of cookie dough to balance the all-important ice cream: dough chunks ratio.  Ever since then I've been trying to figure out how to make very small amounts of cookie dough for snacking (as opposed to actually baking.)  After several months of messing around with sixteenths of a teaspoon and flaxmeal + water as an egg substitute suddenly the light went on.

It's all about proportions.

Meaning, use a tablespoon (or a teaspoon, if you're really aiming small) as your cup, and go from there.  Here's an example using my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe (from Cuisine magazine, in case anyone cares), to illustrate:

2/3 c. butter
2/3 c. shortening
1 c. sugar
1 c. brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
3 1/4 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. kosher salt
2 c. semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 c. milk chocolate chips

Using my magic idea of proportions, for small-serving snacking purposes this would be translated to:
1 heaping teaspoon softened butter and/or shortening
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon brown sugar
skip the egg
a dash of vanilla
3 teaspoons flour
skip the baking soda
a pinch of salt (if you really want - I usually leave it out)
and a small handful of chocolate chips

(If you want a bit more, use a tablespoon as your base unit instead of a teaspoon.)

This works with PB and oatmeal recipes as well, and makes the dough equivalent of one big or two small cookies.  Shaine can testify - it tastes great!  Now, let the sane (?) snacking begin!  ;-)

Ya think???

"For many people, an activated carbon filter bearing NSF Standard 53 certification will filter out most pollutants of concern. But if you've got perchlorate, a rocket fuel ingredient, in your water, for example, a simple countertop filter won't do the job."


www.nrdc.org

In a Black mood

Despite the ominous title, all I meant to imply was that I watched "Groundhog Day" this week in honor and in memory of the Black sisters' tradition.  Good times.  :-)


"This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather."

Hey Baby, What's Your Sign?

A link on Cakewrecks led me to a CNN article about the whole zodiac uproar.  The following comment - and responses - made my day, mostly because I haven't yet succeeded at becoming a 100% nice person.  :-)

razorrozar7

Zodiac is bull anyway. The day I was born controls who I am? Pssh... yeah, right

Katie

Well it's not the day you're born, but the month, for one. Secondly, think of how much things on Earth are affected by astronomical events, such as the tides from the moon. We're 80% water, so to say the rest of the universe has no hold on us is pretty stupid. Sure we can control how we behave, but only to an extent.

Sidvicious03

Katie, what you just said is completely ignorant and is based on no evidence at all. We are in no way affected by the moon phases, mostly because we arent werewolves or a tide. Read a book.