Seven Quick Takes #... something

One

So I'm 34 weeks pregnant today, and I have reached the point at which 34 weeks is indistinguishable from about a million.  This might be because my belly is at the perfect level right now for small boys to head-butt and bounce off.  But honestly, I have no idea how I once gestated twins.  I know I was ginormous -- I think by this point I was measuring at least 40 weeks (or more) -- but good grief.  Of course I only had one small boy to head-butt me at that point; the other two were too old for head-butting.   

Two

On the other hand, I am nowhere near ready to actually have a baby.  The house is still suffering from three weeks of everyone being sick, and I'm pretty sure the baby will need clothes after he's born.  That means I'll have to switch out the toddler's clothes from my dresser drawers and add the baby's.  Where the toddler will keep his clothes is anybody's guess.  Also where the toddler is going to sleep is anybody's guess.  Right now he's still in bed with us.  

Waiting impatiently for that nesting urge to kick in... maybe when the last of the bronchitis cough goes away?


Three
  
Conversations with my two year old...

Me: It won't be too long until the baby will be born, and you'll have another brother!
Leo: And maybe the pizza guy will come!

Four

Leo has also switched from spending his days as a "doggie" to spending his days as a cow.  I don't know what the connection is between my toddlers and cows.  One of the twins used to pretend to be a cow all the time, too.  While his older siblings played soccer, he would walk up to the prettiest girl he could find on the sidelines... and moo at her.  He no longer moos at pretty girls, but at the time we weren't sure what this boded for his teenage years.

Five

My living room has seen a lot of this lately, actually:

And this is what everything looks like later:

 After the trains have been attacked and derailed by Playmobil guys with no hair.  Or five year olds who are testing the strength of their Duplos.

Six

The chicks came! We ordered 35, but 4 of them died en route.  So now we have 31.

(The angle on this photo is kind of odd, but the actual angle was even odder.  I was standing over the brooder looking down.  Of course, since we can't find the battery charger for the real camera, I'm taking all my photos with an iPhone... could you tell?  I must say that I have begun longing for a dSLR.)

 Katydid took this picture of a chick she was holding (an Ameracauna, I think). It kind of looks like the brooder is on fire below her, doesn't it? Oh, the iPhone and that lovely red brooder light.
 

Seven

After reading about the Whole Food Kitchen Online Workshop on Elizabeth's blog  for a couple of weeks, I decided to check it out.  After being told that I needed to be strictly gluten-free several months ago, I have spent much more of my time cooking for my family, making almost every meal at home and almost always from scratch.  In the process, I've run up against some rough edges in my cooking that could stand to be improved.  (This of course wouldn't have anything to do with my family's addiction to Food Network.)  So I've been checking out various tutorials and workshops.  One that I've dropped into and out of over the years are Wardeh's classes at GNOWFGLINS.  I like it because I can sign up on a monthly basis and get access to all the different classes without being locked in for a long time.  So if I want to learn a little about fermented foods, say, or how to make cheese, I can do that on my own schedule whenever I want.  But her classes are more about basic traditional cooking skills (like fermenting foods, soaking grains, making sourdough breads, etc.) than about cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner for your family every day.
Another resource that I've checked out is Nourished Kitchen's meal plans.  I like her food, but she only includes three dinners a week in her meal plans (which are, admittedly, rather thorough and very nicely laid out).  

Anyway, I decided to sign up for the Whole Food Kitchen Workshop because I wanted to do more with vegetables, especially as my garden grows and we (hopefully) fill in the gaps in our own produce with a CSA.  My mom never did much with vegetables, and although my dad tried for a couple of years to replicate his father's (amazing) garden, he was just more interested in airplanes.  So mostly we ate Green Giant corn and peas in sauce, the occasional carrot stick, iceberg lettuce salads with radishes, tomatoes and cucumbers, green beans, stuffed green peppers, and corn on the cob in season.  (Andy's family was the same, minus the radishes, tomatoes, and cucumbers.)  So I'm missing some of the extras in our food.  We eat a lot more meat and dairy than are included in the "plant-based" food Heather shares in her workshop, but I'm picking up some valuable tips on kitchen and pantry organization and all the little extras that make food more special -- like vegetable and fruit based sauces.  We've been out of maple syrup for a while now, but I made a raising sauce from the workshop to eat on our oatcakes the other morning and nobody noticed.  The other thing nobody noticed was that neither the oat cakes or the sauce contained any sweetener at all.  So I think the workshop is worth it, even if I do have to work out some substitutions at times, having to remain gluten and soy free but not dairy free, and not wanting to eat quite that plant-based... although I have to say that I think the workshop is great for Lenten recipes.

Speaking of which, have you seen the list of ten weird foods for Lent? Mmmm, muskrat...


Lots more Quick Takes at Conversion Diary!