I told you so ...

I swear, David has been waiting the last seven years to be able to say those words.

I have had a 'cold' for the last week or so that moved down to my chest over the weekend. Since I am pretty much unable to take anything for it, I figured it was lingering due to lack of drugs. After having to listen to him for the last couple of days, I finally made an appointment for this morning.

Well, I have 'walking pneumonia' and am out of work for the next 3 days (gee, is that why I was getting winded walking). I have a nice little supply of antibiotics and an inhaler, which I cannot figure out how to use. I don't think I have gotten a dose in yet.

So, I sit here up in bed and am listening to the 2 of them talk while they are eating supper. Pretty cute ... she is telling him he needs to be careful when touching a cactus or he'll hurt himself. We don't have a cactus in the house.

Hmmm ... now she is coming up the stairs babbling about taking a shower in the basement bathroom. Should I investigate why she has gotten a swim diaper and her bathing suit for what is supposed to be her nightly bath?

Nah, I think I'll just stay up here, oblivious to the whole thing. Obviously daddy has the whole situation under control.

My belly hurts

"Mommy, I think I need to go to the doctor."

"Why?"

"My belly hurts. My baby keeps kicking me in the belly."

A Chef in the Making

I've pretty much given up on being allowed to put together a meal on my own .... even including toasting a bagel. Madeleine seems to have this sixth sense about when it is time to start cooking supper. I've tried sneaking upstairs (or downstairs) as the case may be to cook, but I turn around and there she is, dragging the chair after me and grabbing whatever utensils she deems appropriate. I suppose I should embrace the help before she decides it is work she doesn't want to do or that mom is uncool to hang around with.

I've decided that my love of cooking come from both grandmother's as my mom made it pretty clear while we were growing up that cooking was not on her list of favorite things to do. My Italian grandmother always seemed to have a cake in the pantry for guests to snack on. Every weekend there was homemade sauce and meatballs on some sort of pasta.

My Polish grandmother was the same way. She was always cooking something. This Tuesday is Paczki ("Poonch-key") Day, which means this weekend would have been a VERY busy weekend in the kitchen. My aunt has carried on the tradition as I know several of my first cousins are getting together this weekend to make them. I have seen them for sale here at the grocery store and was lured into trying them. Once. It was nothing more than a jelly donut. So disappointing. But I digress.

Last weekend my holper and I decided we were going to make a heart-shaped cake for Valentine's Day. One of my favorite (and quickest) cakes to put together is this Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake from Cooking Light. I make a few modifications to the original recipe as I am not a huge fat of the fat free products (OK, I don't like all the chemicals added when fat is removed ... seriously, HFCS is needed in sour cream ... but again, I digress). Here is our finished product:

Chocolate-Chip Bundt Cake

1 cup sour cream (I discovered yogurt works well when your sour cream is fuzzy)
3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon warm water
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 teaspoons instant espresso or 4 teaspoons instant coffee granules
4 whole eggs
1 (18.25-ounce) package devil's food cake mix (without pudding in the mix)
1 (3.9-ounce) package chocolate instant pudding mix

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips (um, more like a cup)

1 tablespoon powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350°.

Coat a 12-cup Bundt pan with cooking spray, and dust with flour; set aside.
Combine the sour cream and next 6 ingredients (sour cream through chocolate pudding mix) in a large bowl, and beat mixture at medium speed of a mixer for 3 minutes. Add the chocolate chips, and beat the mixture for 30 seconds.

Spoon the cake batter into the prepared Bundt pan. Bake cake at 350° for 1 hour or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool cake in pan 10 minutes on a wire rack. Invert cake onto a wire rack, and cool completely. Sprinkle cake with powdered sugar.

We used a basic white frosting recipe off of recipezaar.com but as I look at it I realize that I didn't really follow the recipe at all. Huh, imagine that. Must have been busy trying to prevent someone from adding pumpkin pie spice (the one she always grabs) to the bowl. :)

That not nice baby!

Lil Stinker has started moving more and more and now you can feel the kicks on the outside.

"Madeleine, come here and put your hand on mommy's belly. You can feel the baby kick."

She comes running over and starts pointing her finger at my stomach.

"That NOT NICE baby. Don't kick mommy!"

I now ask if she wants to feel the baby move.

Out of my control!!

I haven't posted in a while because the motherboard in my laptop decided to stop working .... again. Booted it up one night and I got an error message that the adaptor was not compatible with my laptop and it wasn't going to charge. Guess what - it didn't!

On the plus side, I am 2 years into my 3 year warranty. On the flip side, this is the second time this has happened to me. Last year about this time the same thing happened. When I was talking with Dell's customer service, they told me they have issues with the XPS laptops and their motherboards. Ya think?

Even though the morning sickness has passed, I am still not all that enthused with cooking. It isn't that I'm not hungry, but I seriously could eat bagels and cream cheese with bacon OR fruit topped with yogurt all day. Honestly. Haven't gotten tired of either but I have a feeling others in the house would rebel if they kept seeing one of the two on the table every night.

So, I dug arund in the freezer out in the garage and came up with a package of bone-in chicken breasts and after some searching, decided to try Spicy Chicken Cacciatore. Upon unwrapping the chicken, I discovered that when I asked for 2 chicken breasts, they gave me 2. Whole breasts. Each still in one huge piece. Note to self the next time I get checken at Fareway, ask for ONE and ask them to cut it for me. Since I wasn't up for losing any fingers, I opted to not try and cut them in half myself. So, rather than follow the directions and simmer for a short time, I let the ginormous chicken breasts simmer for and hour and a half - until they fell off the bone. Came out pretty good, if not a tad bland. I think it needed some fresh basil.

Madeleine and I also amused ourselves (OK, we amused David) with making some Banana Bread this morning. Recipe claims it is the best ever, but I can't attest to that. Bananas are the one food that I absolutely cannot stand to eat, even when disguised in bread. Both Madeleine and David seemed to enjoy the piece they shared for snack this afternoon, so I'll consider it a success.