Year 15

It was at her four month pediatrician visit. We were wrapping up and just chatting when he caught me off guard.

"So what does your mom think of her?"

I felt time slow the way it does in movies and my thoughts felt dragged out for the mere seconds it actually was, my face giving off a deer-in-headlights look.

I stammered back, "My mom?"

And he's like, " Yea, your mom," with that tone of "of course I'm talking about your mom. Who else would I be referring to?"

And then I lied. Sort of. Or I answered as if I were talking about my mother-in-law. "Oh, she thinks the world of Sasha." When you've just been caught off guard and aren't prepared and your face has already given off a bewildered look, somehow in the spur of the moment, I just couldn't justify dropping an even larger bomb on him by saying, "My mom died when I was a kid."

He doesn't remember her, but he's met my mom, and somewhere in his head he probably knows it because he knows he was once my pediatrician.

When I get wrapped up in my thoughts, the emotions are different now. Most of the time, I feel a sense of relief and thankfulness that I can do my own thing and my mother isn't going to nit-pick at the way I mother my child. If my daughter eats a leaf or some dust off the floor, I just watch her and shrug it off if it's not dangerous. If a toy falls on the floor (in certain places), I just pick it up and give it back to her - and nobody tells me it's dirty and I shouldn't do that.

But there will always be that hole when I watch her interact with people, even family members, and I'll forever be reminded that my mother is not one of them.

We Tried Plated! - Not Sponsored

This weekend we tried Plated for the first time. We got a free box, so I thought, why not, let's test the recipes and give it a try.

The three dishes I selected for our box were: garlic basil shrimp and grits with cherry tomato sauce, garlic-soy pork chop with bok choy and water chestnuts, and Indian butter chicken with sautéed spinach and toasted naan.

Now as a preface to my opinions and summary of this food delivery kit, there's a few things to note.

1. I consider myself an experienced amateur chef. I have no formal training in cooking or preparing food, but I've had a good amount of experience in the last 6-8 years to know how to eyeball things and cook by feel.

2. I know how to buy groceries and plan a "menu" for the week. Most weeks we eat homemade food 13/14 meals. (Breakfast doesn't count because it either doesn't happen or we make a PBJ.)

So here are some thoughts on our experience with Plated, how we liked the recipes/food, and general thoughts and opinions of the service from an unbiased perspective.

I was super excited to get my box delivered on Thursday around 11:30 am.

The baby was sleeping at the time so I actually was able to unbox everything and put them away in peace.

Here's the spread of contents: they package and label everything for you in bundles according to recipe.
Their recipe cards are also printed with beautiful images of the completed recipe. My daughter loved
staring at it and wanted to get it from me when I was reading the recipes. 

We made our first recipe Friday night for dinner since I had to work Thursday night and was going to be out all day Friday. I had my box delivered on Thursday because they said delivery could be as late as 8 pm and I did want to make one Friday night. We decided to make the recipe for butter chicken because that was the recipe we were both very excited for.

The recipe is pretty easy to follow and the results were quite good.

Butter chicken, spinach, and half of the gigantic piece of naan.

For this recipe, we thought the serving size was excellent. Our box included 2 servings in each recipe and it portioned out very nicely to two bowls. The total prep and cooking time was about 30 minutes unless you marinated the chicken for longer (optional) so it makes for a fast dinner if you know what you're doing. My one qualm with this recipe was in the packaging - the tomato puree was really hard to squeeze out of a zip-top bag. I used my fingers to squeeze the sauce out from both sides, but then my fingers got dirty as I reached the bottom of the bag. Not the best way of packaging in my opinion, but I guess it works. Really delicious though. I'll probably make it again myself and swap out spinach for another leafy vegetable.

Shrimp and Grits

Our next recipe was shrimp and grits. We cooked this one Saturday for lunch while the baby took her morning nap. When I first opened the bag of ingredients for this recipe, I noticed my basil was already half wilted. Somehow there was moisture in the container. Not sure if this was my fault or faulty packaging. Plated recommends cooking seafood dishes within 1-2 days of receiving the box. I got the box on Thursday and cooked it Saturday for lunch - within the 2 day requirement. I had the ingredients in the refrigerator during this time because this bundle included mascarpone and butter. If I was supposed to unbundle it and not refrigerate everything in the bag....I was not aware of that. 

Shrimp and grits

We both thought the portions for this recipe were a little out of proportion. There were definitely more than 2 servings of grits, but since in my head the recipe was portioned for 2, I just split the grits into the bowl half and half until the pot was empty. It was probably a little more than we both wanted to eat. For this recipe, I also thought it needed some tweaking of the cooking times. The recipes are written very detailed with exact minutes of cooking each step. However, I thought the shrimp cooking times were a little long, especially since you had to return them to the sauce to finish cooking a second time in a later step. Also, different pots/pans and heating elements cook at different paces so even if you time it perfectly according to the recipe, it may still over/undercook slightly. Shrimp is one of those foods for me - overcooked shrimp gets tough and rubbery. I did not want to overcook my shrimp at all so I used my own judgement on cooking times for this one. 

Pork Chop with Bok Choy and Water Chestnuts

We made this last recipe today for lunch. Total cooking time was about 30 minutes again - their recipes are pretty good at staying consistent in the amount of cooking time required.

This was our least favorite recipe of the box. Nothing was "bad" but overall, it just didn't match up. I thought it was way too salty. The recipe used two boneless pork chops with a quarter cup of soy sauce plus other seasonings. I think that was way overkill with no sweet or sour to counterbalance the salt. Even my husband who has a higher salt tolerance than me needed some more rice to balance it out. The proportion of rice to meat in this recipe was also not nearly what it should have been (especially given how salty the sauce was.) We had extra rice to mix in, but if someone is just making this recipe straight from the box, they'd be gulping down cups of water or wishing they had more rice.

There was also no marinating of the meat so the flavor was limited to the exterior of the meat and sauce. I would have liked to marinate the meat in the sauce and then maybe cut out using some in the recipe later to drizzle. The flavor of this recipe really wasn't bad, but it was too overpowering. That says a lot, especially because I use soy sauce very frequently in my own cooking.

Conclusion

Did I enjoy my Plated experience? I actually did. It was really convenient to just unbox everything and have exactly what I needed for these recipes, and I now know how to make Butter Chicken which is a dish my husband enjoys when prepared well. Will I order and pay for a box myself? Probably not. Why? The cost. This box normally costs about $71.00. Considering it made 6 servings of food, that's $11.83 per serving. I could eat out for that cost, perhaps for less gourmet food, but with much less effort as well.

Our grocery budget for the two of us is about $50.00 per week. That being said, it makes 14 meals (lunch and dinner) for 2 people for 7 days, it comes out to less than $2.00 per serving. Yes, we are eating the same thing a few times as leftovers, but I don't mind leftovers for a meal or two. It means I cook even less!

I also enjoy going to the grocery store when my daughter is in a good mood because she gets to look around and be entertained and I get my shopping done.

So should you get a food kit delivery service? I think if your lifestyle and personality is a little different, one of these is a fantastic idea for the following:

1. This makes cooking fun. Many people find cooking very stressful. This sends you everything you need pre-portioned and packaged and provides you step-by-step instructions to cook. 

2. You don't have to buy groceries. If going to the grocery store stresses you out or you end up buying way too much and waste half of it, this is fantastic. You only get what you need and you use most if not all of it.

**Sidenote: If you're super eco-friendly, their packaging might frustrate you because of how much trash there is. As I was making these recipes, I constantly felt like I was throwing things away. The butter was individually packaged pads. Every ingredient had its own zip bag or container. Super wasteful if you simply unwrap and throw it away. I actually saved some of the bags to reuse whether it's to dump my daughter's poopy diapers when we're out and about and not near a trash can or to store my vegetable scraps in for stock in the freezer. I realize it's meant to be convenient and makes the packaging process easier on their end just to grab something that's pre-wrapped and place it in the box, but wow, there is a lot of trash from cooking three meals.

Chef Mommy

Mostly for tradition's sake, I still like writing and blogging for New Year's Eve and/or New Year's. Back in high school and even some of college, I liked to fill out those survey questionnaires and post them. They seemed so trivial at the time, but they're nice snapshots of a moment in time of your closest friends, favorite foods, hobbies, and a tiny glimpse of personality during a time when your life and you are constantly changing. Well, things don't change that much anymore.

I thought about what I could write about this year, but everything seemed to be occupied by baby. For good reason. I mean I've had lots of time to sample the best diaper brands (we've used about 7 different ones), the most necessary and unnecessary baby items, and must-have baby gadgets worth the splurge even as frugal parents. Being that my every day is filled with baby, I wanted to write about something different for a change.

After Sasha was born, I really missed cooking. Not cooking with the perspective of a chore of cooking food to eat because we were hungry, but cooking as an activity of being creative and combining ingredients to make something delicious and wonderful. Trust me, cooking because we are hungry is still a laborious chore.

So throughout the last 8 months of the year, I've been lucky enough to have moments to enjoy my kitchen again as a creative outlet. Here are some of the items we've cooked. This isn't meant to share recipes because there would be so many in one post, but if you see something interesting, please don't hesitate to ask me questions or ask me for the recipe! Also, in the same thinking as Ugly Delicious, these are not perfectly plated Instagram worthy pictures of food, but just what I've managed to document through the year. And honestly, I like it that way.

 1. Biscotti

One of the first recipes we attempted to make was biscotti. It was the frontrunner of our Friday night baking experiments after the baby learned to sleep longer stretches without waking up every hour to eat. It was also a way for us to spend time together as a couple while keeping the budget low and staying in without having to hire a sitter. Not as crispy and hard as store-bought biscotti, but I think my teeth appreciate that. :)

2. Radish Cake

I've made this recipe before many times before the baby was born, but it was nice to be able to make a big batch again and freeze them for later. Makes a great midnight snack or quick meal with a few hours of thawing time.

3. Cookie Cake

I already had a great recipe for chocolate chip cookies, but out of curiosity one day, I decided to make it into a cookie cake. It was wonderful. 

3. Bao Zi （包子）

I blogged about our first try at steamed bread （饅頭/馒头） a while back here. Since then, we have been able to try twice at making baozi. This time, our second try, we also had a 3-tier steamer which made the steaming process go much smoother and faster.

Another great food to spend an afternoon making large batches and freezing them for later snacks and meals.






4. Double chocolate chip banana bread

I use Pati Jinich's recipe for this. I really enjoy watching her cooking show on television and there are some other great recipes she's made before. I'm not the biggest fan of authentic Mexican food, but she's introduced me to some dishes that are truly delicious. I also just love listening to her say the word "mushy" in her accent. 

5. Fried chicken

I can't remember when I started making these fried chicken tenders, but it was amazing when I figured it out. It's almost restaurant quality. And I only say almost because these are not deep fried but pan fried.


6. Blueberry Crumble Cheesecake

I found the recipe for this cake when I was pregnant and saved it as a bookmark. Months later I went back and found it and we decided to make one as one of our Friday night date nights and went out and spontaneously bought a springform pan because I've never had one. It was very good.

So good.

7. Dutch Oven Bread

A friend of mine once made a dutch oven bread and I got really curious a few months ago and decided to try it myself. I found an easy recipe and gave it a shot. I always have beginner's luck and my first try turned out wonderfully. My second one...had some errors. Yes, you absolutely need to flour the bottom of the dutch oven.

PS - see those browned bits at the bottom that get burned onto pots and pans from the oven? Baking soda removes them without damaging your pot! I could write a whole post on the wonders of baking soda.

8. Pork Sung/Meat Floss （肉鬆/肉松）

I've loved this as a child. I never actually knew it was made with real meat (it is!) until recently. Who knew meat could dry to become a fluffy texture? I'm too frugal to buy this from the Chinese supermarket myself, but it really is one of my favorite foods from my childhood. The store sells it for about $10 a pound, sometimes more. Keep in mind that is the dry weight, so you'd probably need 2 pounds of meat to make 1 pound of meat floss. But even at 2 pounds of meat, it would cost you about half to make it yourself if you knew how.

I tried, and then I realized why people pay $10 a pound for this stuff. Unless you are very experienced and know exactly what you're looking for by texture and feel, this is not a recipe for amateurs or something you want to try "just for fun." Mine was a little too dry and turned hard and crispy more than dry and fluffy. What went wrong? I think the heat was too high...that's ok. It still makes great sandwiches with peanut butter (My friend told me about this recently. So. Good.) and an add-in for rice porridge. Will I make it again? Probably not....unless I can get my hands on a bread maker which can automatically stir and heat for you. Otherwise it's a high-maintenance recipe that involves lots of babysitting.


9. Biscuits

I haven't bought frozen biscuit dough in so long because it is so easy to make and only requires 6 ingredients: flour, butter, milk, sugar, salt, baking powder. They're also way more delicious (and healthy) and cost a fraction of the price. It's also a great recipe to know so you don't have to make a trip out to the grocery store just to buy biscuits last minute if you ever realize you want them and don't have any. 

I make mine rustic (aka not round) so you don't waste any of the dough or have to roll it out twice. The recipe has said they can be frozen and baked later, but I haven't tried that yet. The fresh ones are amazing though!

10. Char Siu （叉烧/叉燒）

I've always loved this Asian pork. My dad used to buy it once a week or so and we'd add it to our dishes for a meal or two. The ones from the store have the iconic red color which actually doesn't give it any flavor (who knew?). A few years ago I bought a flavor seasoning marinade and tried making some. It wasn't bad, but it didn't have that Asian flavor I was looking for. I found a homemade recipe and tried it sometime later, and it was good, but it still wasn't anything like at the restaurant.

Then, I came across a second recipe and tried it, and we loved it. It had the most authentic flavor of the three versions I've tried, and was the closest I've ever had to the ones from restaurants. It's also not as sweet as some of the ones at restaurants which I appreciate. I have frozen some of the raw marinaded meat and baked it later in the oven and the results are still fantastic. This one's a keeper.

11. Baby Food!

My daughter eats her colors. I've included this on the list, not so much because this is for us (although I have tasted every single thing I've ever given her, pouches, homemade, and all!) I actually find making baby food very therapeutic. I don't make giant quantities at once, only about 4-6 jars at a time, and each jar lasts about 2-3 servings. It takes me roughly an hour start to finish and I usually make a batch once a week. But this is way more efficient to me than spending 2-3 hours at once to make 2-3 times the amount. Because chances are my daughter naps for an hour no problem. Anything over an hour is a bonus to me and hard to come by.

I choose to use vacuumed jars and not freeze in ice cubes because that eliminates the thawing step. And let's face it, the thawing is what takes forethought and we don't have time for forethought when it comes to babies. We also just conveniently have a Foodsaver and the jar attachment already, so why not? I bought two dozen jars for $1.00 each including the cost of shipping and they have been well worth their value to me.

It's been quite the year and we have been super blessed with our baby as well as the good food we still manage to eat. Cheers to 2019 and many more recipes to try.

Messy eating only looks cute when you're this small.

Who Wore it Better?

I was at my dad's one time during my pregnancy and I found an old baby shirt I'd kept for years and years in my closet. I showed my husband and I said, "If we're having a girl she can wear this!!! It'll be so special."

He thought it was the ugliest shirt ever with a creepy bear on it. Later, after I looked a little closer, the bear really was kind of creepy.

Well, we were having a girl, and I was prepared to let the shirt go and just throw it out until we found pictures of me wearing it as a baby at my dad's house.

I win at baby hair hands down.

Why of everything "baby," this is the only thing I had to save...I have no idea. But there was no way we could simply throw the shirt out now without getting some pictures of Sasha wearing it.

I didn't try especially hard, but I had bought her some pink fleece pants, and she had a few long sleeve onesies in the blue spectrum I could put underneath the shirt to recreate this photo as close as possible without driving myself insane over details.

The shirt is size 6-9 months. I'm assuming we're about the same age in both photos if not close enough.

As a mother, it often crosses my mind that I won't be one of those women who gets to take maternal family line photos with grandmothers/mothers/daughters/granddaughters/great-granddaughters. I won't be one of those women who gets to watch my mother play with my daughter. I won't be one of those women who gets to share the experience of being a mother with my own mother. But I do get to show my daughter these pictures years later when she's older and can understand.

And maybe, if I'm lucky, she won't think the yellow shirt is so ugly.

Mamalogues: Horror Stories: Mommy Edition

I woke up feeling good about this Friday. I didn't have to teach, I didn't have any timely engagements to be at, and it was cold and gray outside. The baby woke up not too early which gave me some time to get my act together before getting her. She did a great job eating her first bottle in the morning and was happily playing with her toys. I was getting my breakfast ready and poured the hot water into my instant oatmeal and was waiting for it to absorb.

And then I smelled the poo.

I picked her up and migrated to her room with the changing table. I unbottoned her jumpsuit and onesie and opened the diaper to assess the damage. There was definitely poo. I lifted up her bottom to see how far up it went. It kept going....up the diaper...and up....and up....so much poo.

I wiped her butt off and removed the dirty diaper from underneath her and began planning the removal of her soiled clothes in my head. During this planning process, she wanted to flip over and sit up and crawl away and grab at everything around her on the changing table. The attempt at keeping her jumpsuit clean failed. The attempt at cleanly removing her soiled onesie failed. I took a wipe and wiped her down and then spontaneously decided it was time for a bath. (We don't usually do baths after blowouts because if she stays still, I wipe her back and then redress her and we're all good.) Well, not this time.

We took a quick bath and I redressed her and plopped her back into her crib while I rinsed out the onesie. At this point in my head, I was thankful the first batch of laundry I started was ours so there was still time for me to wash this onesie in her laundry. I rinsed it and left it in the sink to soak a bit.

Now, after what felt like an hour detour in my day, (it was actually about 30 minutes), I returned to eat my cold oatmeal that had well-absorbed all the liquid. Not appetizing anymore for someone who dislikes oatmeal to begin with, but hey, any time a mom gets to eat is a good thing. After wolfing down my oatmeal, I realize she's being quite fussy still and won't play by herself - which she is usually very good at - a cue that she's hungry. Well, obviously,  after clearing the pipes, who wouldn't be hungry again?

So I fed her solids, the ones she likes, so I wouldn't have to play tricks on her to eat. Once I heard our load of laundry finish in the washing machine, I transferred it to the dryer and started her load of laundry in the wash. I was so excited to have two batches of laundry going, a fed baby, and everything ready to go out to buy groceries.

And then it started raining. Not pouring sheets of rain, but enough to make myself wonder why in the world I thought it was a good morning to go grocery shopping in the cold and now rain. We made it to the grocery store, and of course all the shopping carts were wet having been towed in from the previous day and this morning. Hooray for shopping cart covers to double as towels. I grocery shopped and realized that the baby had again leveled up. Every time I stopped the cart to grab something, I'd see her lean out as far as she could and grab whatever she was next to. Note to self - park the cart obnoxiously in the middle of every aisle so the baby can't reach anything. People will understand that you're actually thinking one step ahead instead of one step behind and preventing any grocery avalanches from occurring, right? Totally.

We made it home from the grocery store and she fell asleep about 5 minutes from home. I pulled into the garage and saw her open her eyes! I watched her through the mirror and saw that she was just dozing and was closing them again. We both sat in the car for 5 minutes, mostly for me just to make sure she was going back to sleep and wouldn't wake up as I unloaded the car first before unloading her. Once I got her in and settled on the floor, I again, saw her open her eyes! This usually doesn't happen, not to mention twice! I walked away and hid in the next room to wait and see if she'd resettle herself back to sleep. When I saw that she wasn't moving her little hands or making noises, I reappeared and continued finishing up things around the house. She fell back asleep again, thank goodness.

As I quietly unloaded our laundry from the dryer and transferred her laundry from the washing machine to dry, I thought in my head if there was anything that needed to be hung dry. I checked the jumpsuit for poop stains and didn't see any so deemed it dryable. We air dry anything that was stained before washing so the stains don't set if they didn't come out 100% and we can either keep the clothes for keepsakes or maintain as pristine condition as possible for resale.

Then it hit me. I didn't wash the onesie that she pooped all over.

I walked over to the bathroom, and sure enough, the onesie was still there soaking away. I had failed to add it to the wash before loading us all up for the grocery store.

It'll get washed next week.

On the bright side, the baby is still asleep, I've put all the groceries away, and it's time for me to wolf down some lunch before she wakes up.

Yes, I still love her. :)

Mamalogues: Pillowcases, Pillows, and Laundry

I used to have time to iron my pillowcases.

We set up the ironing board in our bedroom for the longest time because my husband would iron his shirts. (This has since been replaced with her pack and play.) One night, I just decided I wanted to iron the pillowcases.

There was a set of pillowcases I'd had since I was a teenager. I bought them before I'd met my husband. They were multicolor polka dots with a teal stripe on the side as a more "sophisticated" edge. I'm pretty sure they sat new in the package for over five years. I bought them in order to meet a $25 minimum for free shipping because what I actually wanted was the duvet cover. They weren't folded perfectly in the package so years later when I opened them to actually use them, they were wrinkled.

So that night, I said I was going to iron out the wrinkles and make them beautifully pressed and arranged in the little basket of pillowcases I have in our linen closet. I went over each side of the pillowcase and ironed and smoothed and pressed until the wrinkles came out. They were beautifully ironed and flat and looked so perfect when I returned them to the linen closet in the basket.

And then I had to wash them. Of course, the wrinkles came back.

After that, I gave up ironing pillowcases. After all, we layer two or three pillowcases on each pillow, because, you know, we don't want the nasty yellow stains on our pillows because those are gross. But when you buy $10 pillows, I guess it doesn't matter anyway because they're easily replaced for cheap. But then I decided to go out and get "fancy" pillows because we stayed at the Omni Hotel once and man, I fell for their pillows. They had the nicest pillows I'd ever slept on, and usually I'm not terribly picky. But those pillows....perfectly soft and perfectly firm. Man. Should have just bought some at the hotel after we stayed, but instead I tried to Google the supplier for the pillows the Omni has. I bought those instead (for 1/5 the price of one pillow at the Omni website).

They are definitely 1/5 as good as the Omni pillows.

This afternoon I did three complete loads of laundry. And I mean three large loads of laundry filling the machine each time. I'm not even trying to show off my eco-friendly-ness. There was that much laundry. One for the baby. One for us. And one for our sheets.

The baby decided to take a two hour nap this afternoon which was amazing because I could start and finish each load with about 40-45 minutes between to do other tasks around the house. Hubby helped me to feed her before her nap and get her to sleep, and then, he was able to get some things done on the computer.

Y'all. There is no time to iron pillowcases anymore.

The Glass Slippers

We had a Cinderella weekend.

As Cinderella got ready for her ball and the birds tied her bows, we packed everything up - diapers, wipes, food, milk, toys - and went out to be social and live life again. An early Christmas party here. A birthday party there. And a dinner date. And while Cinderella was at her ball dancing with the prince, so were we, eating plates of food, having conversations, happily letting someone else hold our baby.

Cinderella heard the clock strike every hour as did we as we watched our clocks and calculated how much time we had left before her energy would drain and unleash the screaming. When the clock struck 12, Cinderella suddenly realized it was time to rush out before her beautiful facade faded away back to brown rags and torn cloth. As Sasha became more antsy and wouldn't sit still anymore, we rushed to pack everything up and get her loaded in the car before she made a commotion of noise.

And of course, Cinderella's carriage and driver reverted back to their pumpkin, vines, and animal selves. And she walked the rest of the way home (as the cartoon showed). And the baby still screamed all the way home on the car rides, unleashing herself and her needs for everyone to hear.

Cinderella's story is not all sad and depressing. Her glass slippers stayed and did not disappear as everything else did. And she had her happily ever after when the prince found his princess with tiny delicate feet which fit into those exquisite glass slippers.

I always did want Cinderella's glass slippers...

As for us? Well, despite all the screaming and crying and fussy feeds and throw up and poop explosions (all of which happened this weekend at one point or another), those are gone. And chances are, we won't remember every single second of every party and social outing this weekend. Like the carriage, the gown, the horses. Those disappeared. But the glass slippers? Yup, still here 😉