goldilocks boy

T is very sensitive about the temperature of his food - not too hot, not too cold and maybe, just maybe, he'll eat or drink it. So he's our goldilocks boy. In monster truck pajamas.

One of his new favorite things is warm hot chocolate. Not hot, warm. Served in his tractor/truck mug.

And it is even better when served with chocolate chip cookies. That's my boy!

T's been learning about the Olympics this week at preschool. The children made flags,

- this is T's. The girls were wearing their handmade medals when I picked up T the other day. And the other night T was singing a song about Canada which I eventually discovered was the national anthem - well T's version of it which had backhoes and scrapers in it, of course. So they are all excited about the Olympics. D and I, not so much with all the announced traffic nightmares to come. And of course, it is hardly winter outside.

The cherry trees started blooming in the city last week and there are buds on our star magnolia, rhodo bush and the camelia. The north shore mountains are practically snowless except for the Olympic courses on Cypress for the free-style skiing and snowboarding. I guess it will be good for the spectators to be warmer than is usual during winter sports. Unless they get rained on. Which is extremely likely...just saying. If you are coming to the Olympics, you might want to bring an umbrella.

polenta casserole two ways

In one of my Australian Weekly Cookbooks, there are 2 recipes for polenta. The one I make most often (or version thereof) goes like this:

1 jar tomato sauce (any variation)

1 tube ready made polenta

sliced mozarella cheese

grated parmesan cheese

Into a greased casserole dish, pour ~ 1/2 cup of the tomato sauce and spread to cover the bottom of the casserole (9x13 or large, round dish). Slice the polenta and layer half over the sauce. Layer the mozarella over the polenta and top with the rest of the polenta slices. Pour the rest of the tomato sauce over the polenta and add the grated parmesan over the top. Bake at 350 deg F for 30-45 minutes. (I often saute onions, mushrooms and other veggies and mix into the tomato sauce to get more veggies into us.)

This week, with inspiration from Rachel Ray and Chatelaine magazine, I came up with another version - Sausage, Rosemary, Cheese Polenta.

1 tube prepared polenta

1 tube pork sausage meat, or ~ 1 lb of sausage meat removed from casings

1 medium onion, diced

sage, thyme, salt and pepper

1 1/2 oz butter

1 1/2 oz flour

500 ml (2 cups) of milk or stock or combination

fresh rosemary

grated mozarella cheese

2 tbsp sun dried tomato pesto

Cook the onion and the sausage meat until the meat is brown and the onion is transluscent. Add the sage, thyme, salt and pepper to taste. Pour off the fat. Combine the butter, flour and milk/stock into a saucepan over medium high heat and whisk until blended. Cook for 5 minutes until thick. Add finely ground, fresh rosemary and the sun dried tomato pesto. Slice the polenta into about 36 slices.

Into the bottom of a greased 9x13 dish, spread about 1/2 cup of the sauce. Layer with 12 slices of polenta to cover the sauce. Add 1/2 the sausage mix, and 1/3 of the mozarella. Add 12 slices of polenta over the cheese and sausage. Add the remaining sausage mix and 1/3 of the mozarella. Layer the last of the polenta over the casserole and cover that with the remaining sauce. Sprinkle with the remaining mozarella.

Bake or 30-45 minutes at 350 deg F.

more hats

Before Christmas I was reading a murder mystery by Maggie Sefton and it had a great knitted cloche hat pattern in it. (The book was pretty good too!)

So I knit one for myself and one for my sister-in-law. Here is the knitting in progress along with a distraction (a great read!).

Here is the finished hat I gave my sister-in-law.

And after I knit the "fashionista" mittens for T's friend C, I had wool left over, so she got a hat to go with her mittens.

soup day

I feel a bit of a cold coming on. So in addition to swallowing lots of capsules in the hopes of shifting it, I made soup. (Well, I've also been feeling guilty because I haven't made a Christmas gift I promised my sister-in-law). So I defrosted a huge bag of roasted pumpkin from the freezer and pureed it and made soup.

Harvest Soup (adapted from The Canadian Living Cookbook)

1 small onion, diced

2 apples, peeled, cored and diced

1 tbsp butter

3 cups roasted squash or pumpkin puree

3 cups vegetable or chicken stock

1 cup cream

Seasonings (salt, pepper, thai chili sauce)

Add the butter, onion and apple to a medium hot pan and saute until the onion and apple are soft but not browned.

Add the squash

and the broth, bring to a boil and then simmer for 20 minutes. Puree the soup using an immersion blender until smooth. Add the cream and season to taste.

Soup's up!

rabbit for supper - welsh ones

Ree over on www.thepioneerwoman.com posted about welsh rarebit (rabbit) the other day and reminded me how much I used to love that yummy, baked cheese on toast goodness when I was a kid. So I rifled through my mum's recipe box and found her recipe. Well, not so much a recipe as instructions. And vague ones at that! Printed on the back of a piece of a job posting from the Public Service Commission.

Welsh Rarebit

Make a thick white sauce, using equal margarine and flour. Add salt, pepper, cayenne, dry mustard and enough milk to make a thick mixture. Add grated cheese and cook until the cheese is melted and the flour is cooked. Put on toast and broil until brown. (In the interests of this even making any sense, I have added a few words...)

I made Welsh Rarebit (pronounced Rabbit) for supper tonight and was a bit more precise about the measurements.

2 tbsp butter

4 tsp flour

2 tsp dry mustard

2 tsp worchestershire sauce

8 tbsp milk or beer

salt and pepper

1 1/2 c. sharp cheddar

Mix together and cook on medium heat until thick and bubbly. Pour over toast (8 slices) and broil until the cheese is toasty brown and bubbly. For an extra special treat, put cooked rashers of bacon over the top, or grilled tomato slices. Eat. (Note this is very rich so two pieces will serve an adult, one for a child).

I asked D if he ever had this as a child and he said no. He always turned it down because he thought there was real rabbit in it.

missing ms bean

This week marks the 6th anniversary of when our ms bean was due to be born. My first pregnancy which ended sadly (and painfully) in July 2003, when I was almost 10 weeks along.

We'd been trying for a while, and were not too optimistic about our chances of not needing medical intervention, given my advanced age (early 40's at the time) but against all odds, we had found each other, D and I and were anxious to complete our family. After 8 months of trying not to hope and then being disappointed, I was all set again to go through the roller coaster in early May. But despite the grouchiness, bloating, cramps that usually announced failure this time there was nothing. So I waited and waited and tried really hard not to hope. For a whole day and another day and because I didn't want to bring D down as well, I didn't say anything to him. Monday morning I woke up at 5am and couldn't go back to sleep. Finally I crept out of bed, found a testing kit and tried it. I couldn't believe my bleary eyes. I ran into our bedroom screaming excitedly "We've done it! I'm pregnant!" to soundly sleeping D. Poor man. Woken from a deep sleep by his crazy girlfriend (ssh - not even engaged at that point!). And once it sank in both of us looked at each other and went "now what?". We'd been so focused on getting pregnant we forgot what came next.

We figured it out. I went to the doctor and had a blood test to confirm. Yes, pregnant. Due date calculated - Jan 31st, 2004. And then I waited. I was bursting with wanting to tell someone. And then a friend phoned. She was pregnant unexpectedly and due on Jan 29th. Then another friend emailed with broad hints - she was also due in early January. Otherwise, I kept quiet. I started to get a little bump. A little hard bump. And I was nauseous all the time. And sooooo tired. At 9 weeks, we had a baby shower for a co-worker. I began to believe and dream about our little one - we started calling her "ms bean". I started to picture her as a baby and a little girl and designed a quilt for her in my head. And then I started to bleed. Just a bit, enough to panic me. I phoned my doctor. Just take it easy and see if it stops. I lay on the couch for a day and watched Pride and Prejudice (the Colin Firth one). And hoped. And talked to ms bean. And prayed. And kept on bleeding. The bleeding got worse, so D took me to the ER. We were taken in quickly and put in a room. I was sent for an ultrasound. The technician was chatty, she'd had her son in her 40's so she knew how worried I was. Suddenly she stopped talking and pressed the wand on my belly a bit harder. Then a different wand. Then she stopped and said the doctor would be coming to see me. I was wheeled back to my room and we waited. I knit, working on a sweater I had brought with me and D scrounged up a paper to read. The nurses came in occasionally to see if the doctor had been in (no), did I need anything (some one to tell me what was going on) and they would hustle out again. An ER intern stopped in to say, "sorry, you are going to miscarry this pregnancy. The OB will be down as soon as she is out of surgery to explain." A social worker came in to ask how we were doing. She told us that the baby had never implanted so it was never a viable pregnancy but that the OB would be by to explain things. So we waited, not knowing why we were waiting because our dream was over. Our ms bean wasn't "viable".

I knit, D read and went out looking for tea. He tried to cheer me up, telling me I looked fetching in the light blue coloured gown. After hours, the OB came in to discuss our options. I could let the miscarriage happen naturally, I could speed up the process using medication, or she could schedule a D&C to "vaccum" me out. Ouch. I chose the medication, in the hopes of avoiding a long drawn out loss, as she explained that waiting for my body to do it on it's own might take a couple of weeks. She scheduled a follow-up appointment for me and we were free to go. When we stopped to pick up the medication, I ran into a co-worker. It was so jarring, here I was living a nightmare and his reality was it was a lovely sunny afternoon and we were both off work early - wasn't it great. I can't remember what I said or did, I only remember wanting to go home.

So we went home and waited for our baby to leave my body. The medication kicked in about 30 minutes after I took it, giving me the worst cramps I have ever had in my life (and now that includes back labour pains 15 seconds apart on oxytocin). I was in so much pain, emotional and physical and there was very little D could do to help. After 24 hours, we discovered that ibuprofen was the best for the pain but for the greater part of a day, I was in agony. And then it still took almost 2 weeks to miscarry my ms bean. And I started to think that I had never been pregnant, that it was all in my head but I was referred to another OB, (my lovely OB who watched over my T), who explained that the embryo not implanting is the most common cause of miscarriage and it happens in 20% or more of pregnancies.

I didn't know how to heal. D was hurting too. I went back to work and tried to carry on as usual but it hurt too much. So I took a few days off. I sat on the beach and stared at the waves. D and I talked about a memorial for our ms bean. D came up with the idea that I should make the baby quilt that I had designed for her. And make 2 more, one for another baby due in January and one for Children's Hospital. So I made a quilt for baby A - plaid background with planes and trains, a unisex one for the Hospital and finally a pink and white one with moons on it for ms bean. And that one is tucked away in her memory box in my cupboard.

We also wanted a more tangible reminder of our ms bean. We talked about a plant - maybe a rose bush I said. But D didn't want something outside that might die in the elements. So we got an umbrella plant that thrives in our family room. Our ms bean plant.

I often think of our lost baby. What our life would have been like with her in it. But it wasn't to be. I sometimes think I took the collateral hit - I knew 4 other women due at the same time as me and tho' I've lost touch with one of them, I can't imagine a world without the 3 children I know - all quirky, lovely, cheeky, funny individuals. So I was the 1 in 5. And then I think that our ms bean is with her grandma in heaven, so they can take care of us, here. Because they do.

trucks and cats

This is our kitty cat, Gretel. She is 16 now - originally she was D's cat. Yes, there was a Hansel but he was killed when only a year old. Then came Daisy, but she disappeared after a couple of years so Gretel's been an only cat for a while and she likes that just fine. She is a big chicken of a cat - pretty much any form of wildlife in our back yard will have her scrambling for the door yowling (her let me in noise) - squirrels, bees, birds, neighbourhood cats, etc. I think she's finally starting to forgive us for bringing T into the house after 4 years.

She's still not sure about me though. Initially she liked me because I added kitty treats to her diet and the occasional tidbit of tuna or chicken but I also stopped her from sleeping in our bedroom as I got annoyed with Gretel's 5 am wake up calls - face patting and then standing on and licking my hair - yuck! But she has her own room aka the laundry room, complete with ensuite, food bowl and luxurious bed with her own handmade blanket (thanks Mona!)- what more could a cat ask for? Quite a lot it would seem!

She and T have little cuddle fests once in a while and T tells her "I can't pet you for very long, Gretel. I have to go play construction." T this week was all about writing love letters. The other night he wanted to write a letter to Gretel to tell her he loves her. Aw.

This morning has been a busy morning of construction, which means Mummy has had to connect the low-bed 6,531 times. So maybe that's an exaggeration - maybe it's only been 531 times. You see, T likes to load the trucks onto the bed trailer using the feet and to do that he has to disconnect the trailer.

D keeps telling him he can load the trucks using a ramp but there are 2 issues with that - 1 is that T likes using the feet (I like feet, Mummy) and 2 there is no ramp made at present. So the trailer gets disconnected, the trucks are loaded and then it is "Mummy, can you connect my low bed?"

Or occasionally something else, "Mummy can you fix my tractor" and so I have to put the engine cover back on the tractor.