Playing with Dad's glasses, always fun:
Bright & happy on Saturday morning (aka Wednesday)
Remember the early days of the lovely highchair...
The highchair comes with this convenient tray that you can take off and in stick in the dishwasher if you like. It is not so convenient anymore, Jack likes to play peek-a-boo with it and dump all of his dinner on the floor.
Where's Jack?
There he is! He squeals in delight during this game.
Here I go, blogging about our weekend:
I was lucky enough to go out to dinner with some girlfriends to celebrate Kelly's birthday, I left these two boys behind:
A major plus of Gabe working for a 24 hour news channel is that he has non-traditional days off. As a family we were all able to go to Jack's 1 year check up. The stats are in!
Weight: 26 lb. 4 oz. 90%
Height: 31 in. 85%
Head circumference: 19 in. 90 %
Weight: 9 lb. 13 oz.
Height: 21 in.
Weight: 16 lb. 7 oz.
Height: 10 in.
Learning to cook can be a slow process, at least for me. Gabe has to work late most nights therefore I am only preparing meals for us two nights a week. The rest of the week I'm on my own and Gabe is eating what he packed for dinner.
When I do cook, Gabe is usually surprised that I can cook a lot better then he thought.
I decided to blog about what I made because thinking back over the past year I know I have cooked a lot of "one hit wonders" aka yummy meals that I have never reproduced.
When I am only cooking meals for two or three, twice a week, I feel like I am constantly running low on groceries because if I buy too much it goes bad.
As I evaluate my refrigerator and pantry I discovered many mushrooms that were left over from the delicious rice pilaf my mom made for Jack's birthday party.
Mushrooms are not me and Gabe's favorite but I knew I couldn't let these mushrooms go to waste.
Gabe and I had a big lunch earlier in the day and I wasn't particularly hungry but I knew we would be eventually. So my next choice was brown rice because I actually for once had the 1 hour and 45 minutes to cook it in my rice cooker/veggie steamer!
Using my rice cooker also reminds me of my crockpot that I have also only used once this year on St. Patrick's Day to make corn beef and cabbage. Of course the challenge with these wonderful appliances is remembering to think about dinner in plenty of time to use them. The advantage is "set it & forget it".
I decided to make a little more rice then what we would consume for dinner. Because Gabe & I like leftovers. I know not everyone does.
3 uncooked cups of brown rice yields 6 cups, so I poured in 3 cups and the 4 1/4 cups of water that the directions of my rice cooker told me to and "set & forget" for 1:45.
Meanwhile we fed the baby boy his dinner, gave him a bath, read him books, put him to bed and did laundry.
This was a late dinner because we had a big lunch and the brown rice takes forever to cook.
Gabe started to snack on some carrots as an appetizer and so i got the idea to use the veggie steamer part of my rice cooker and steamed some carrots. The directions said 15 minutes. I knew I was going to put some of the carrots aside for Jack to eat tomorrow I let them steam for at least another 10 minutes making the carrots softer.
My multi-tasking skills have finally improved. Towards the end of the 1:45 of rice cooking, I cut up the mushrooms and an onion, added olive oil and sauteed over medium-high heat. I added the steamed carrots towards the end. Mushrooms cook a little faster then onions so if I did this recipe again I would start the onions first then add the mushrooms.
Then I just added everything together and I was done! Since we had a big lunch, this was light & simple dinner. Gabe doesn't eat vegetarian meals often but he really liked this one, and we both really liked the mushrooms to our surprise!
I could have used less rice, but this meal was perfect to serve to Jack the next day, Gabe packed it for his dinner at work and I ate it for lunch when I got home for work!
Now it's Friday, Monday for us, back to the grind and continuing the fun!
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