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Happy Easter every one! I can hardly believe that we are so far in to this year.

Just a few pictures today. I don’t have much to speak of.

My food contributions today were deviled eggs, a tossed salad with fruit, and a white cake with lemon curd and Italian meringue frosting. Pictures of the cake below!

pressing curd through sieve

cooking the lemon curd

ingredients for cake ready to go

cooling cake

cakes layered with lemon curd

finished cake, frosted with Italian meringue

mmmmm

I had plans this last weekend to maybe make a lemon meringue pie for the first time, but then I decided to go on a food strike. Really for the sake of my esophagus, which has been angry with my food choices. As a result, I’m eating a very strict diet which does not include anything that tastes good. Basically.

Despite that, I was able to make a pretty yummy pizza, 100% from scratch. The dough was a olive oil bread dough from a batch I made a week before. Earlier in the week I had made this SOOOO yummy olive bread:

There is nothing better than fresh baked bread.

My pizza was a bit labor intensive, with most of the trouble getting the pizza dough from my counter where it had been rolled out, on to the pizza peel covered in corn meal, then from the pizza peel to the hot stone in the oven. I made a bit of a mess, but the messy delight with grilled rosemary chicken, artichoke hearts and olives was not just super tasty but esophagus-friendly.

Some of you know all ready, thanks to Facebook, that Ella lost her first tooth last week. Her 2nd tooth will be out any day now.

Easter is nearly here and I’ve got some cooking to do. I’m going to do some sort of salad. I’m thinking with pears and cranberries, feta cheese maybe? I want to make some things I can eat without worry for my esophagus. I’m also making deviled eggs. I think I’m going to make 2 kinds. I need to bring the kind every one expects, but I’m going to make another kind that doesn’t have mustard, an acid reflux no-no. And finally, a cake. The cake is from my “Martha Stuart’s Cooking School” book and has a white cake with lemon filling and a meringue frosting. I bought industrial 8″ round cake pans awhile back at Williams-Sonoma (surprisingly not expensive) I’ve been wanting to try out and I’ll use my cake stand and it’ll be a lovely cake. Split 18-21 ways. Not sure how that’s going to work out, but I’m determined! Maybe I’ll buy a razzleberry pie as well and call it good. Mmmm.

Time for an update as my next appointment is just 2 days from now. We’re at the 9 month mark folks. Only 1.25-1.75 years to go!

Image 1 is at the start (6.18.09), the 2nd was my last appointment (1.09.10) and the 3rd was taken this morning (3.21.10)

I’m a bit bummed to see so little difference between the last 2 images. Largely what seems to have happened is the wire on my left side (the right side in this photo) has moved down, straightening out the wire as a whole, which means the teeth on that side have moved down. The bottom still looks to be a mess!

Life with braces has gotten a bit easier. I have a number of teeth that now touch, which means eating is much easier. I’ve got a bit of a gap between some molars which means food keeps getting stuck back there and it’s even a bit of a struggle to remove it with floss.

My Herbst appliance continues to be a sore point with me. I had to go in a couple of weeks ago because the arm on my left side kept getting stuck, especially when I ate. Stuck in the closed position. Chomp, chomp, stuck. Unstick. Chomp, chomp, stick. Unstick. Repeat. New arm in, alls good. Except another part gets stuck every now and then when I brush my teeth. I cannot wait to get it out. Maybe just 4 months from now. I’ll try and get my ortho to tell me what he thinks on Tuesday. I’ve noticed the orthos don’t like to put firm dates on things.

So, all in all, we’re moving along, at a snails pace. I think we are now in the slow and boring part of orthodontia.

I created a new category called “braces” so you can view all of my braces-related blog posts at once to read more about what’s been going on… if you want. It’s probably  more for me than for any one else.

As far as Saturdays go today was the best of Saturdays. The only improvement I could make would be that this minor cold of mine would be totally gone. I would have slept in except at 7 when every one else got up I noticed that my nose was uncomfortably stuffed and had to get up and deal with it. Hard to complain about my cold otherwise.

Ella and I started our day by hitting up Fred Meyer for some ingredients for the evening feast (more on that later) and then Target to pick up “New Moon”. Ella had earned $5 so she spent that as well and got a new small stuffed dog.

We get home and have some lunch. Nothing too exciting there. I started my 2nd batch of bread dough. Olive oil bread, which will aid me in making olive bread (as in bread with kalamata olives throughout - yum!). The weather was just beautiful today so once the dough was setting to rise we headed outside to play.

Ella’s been feeling particularly down about us not being able to have a dog because Isaac is allergic. I thought a dog fix was in order so we spontaneously headed to mom and dad’s house to play with their dogs. The dogs sure enjoyed it and I got to sit in the sun while petting a dog. I miss having a dog. *sigh*

Yesterday evening I had started the groundwork for my first batch ever of fried chicken by brining the chicken. This morning I took the chicken out of the water and got it soaking in buttermilk. At 4:30 this afternoon I started dinner by making the dough for some buttermilk biscuits. Next I got some potatoes peeled, cubed and on the stove to boil. Then came the frying of the chicken. I went old school and used lard (another first). It was 6pm before dinner was ready. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and biscuits with honey. Am stuffed, and the best part is Ella ate really well.

I have to say that with all of my “fancy” cooking lately that I always feel lame doing anything frozen or out of a box. Still, it’s nice to have a pizza or lasagna in the freezer.

Isaac drove past a Dairy Queen today on his way home from work and grabbed a box full of dilly bars, so after dinner we ate those. Am more stuffed.

To end the day we are watching Gumby. We started watching last night. Several days ago Netflix sent us Gumby and we hadn’t had a chance to watch. Ella loves Gumby. It’s been fun to share with her the things we loved as kids, like Gumby and the Muppets.

The clouds are rolling and it sounds like Sunday will be gloomy. It’s good we got this really great Saturday. The bright side to a gloomy day is you don’t feel bad about staying inside and doing chores instead of enjoying the outdoors. Right?

Oh boy. What a weekend when I stop, on this lazy Sunday evening (with a Lifetime movie on the tv), to think about it. Friday Ella was home because of a school day off. We set-up her first sleepover as hostess for that Friday evening but Thursday evening we got a call from a classmate of hers looking for a place to go on Friday (parent needed childcare we guess - we’re not complaining, though a heads-up would have been nice). All this means Friday we had 3 little girls over at our place. Good thing Isaac was around to entertain them as I worked. He even took them to the zoo, brave man.

Saturday after returning our sleepover guest to her parents we headed to SoDo to visit a restaurant supply store. I’m like a kid in a candy store at a place like that. I had ordered this book on Amazon called “Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day” and it had some suggested tools that I wanted to get (also in my Amazon box was a mortal & pestle - nothing better than fresh ground pepper!).

I am now the proud owner of a pizza peel.

When we returned I worked on my first batch of 5-minute bread. It’s a bit misleading but generally the whole process is easy and painless. You start by making a giant batch of dough and then using a pound at a time for fresh baked bread.

I made 2 loafs today. I made one and then just decided to do another, and because all of the “hard” work had been done it wasn’t a big deal.

I’ll be a baking queen before you know it. And I used to be so afraid of it!

I decided today, Sunday, that it was time to do some painting. I wanted to just start by touching up spots here and there. It got me thinking that it might be time for a bigger change in the living room and kitchen. I don’t want to think about the work involved though. I will say that getting at the spots around the house has made such a difference. Especially my kitchen cabinets, as they were looking so beat up. We Louies live hard I guess. Well, I’m blaming Isaac mostly.

So don’t be surprised if you see before/after photos one of these times.

Is this not the most ironic photo???

Pitty party at 2 o’clock.

I’ve been worn out by my kid lately. Emotionally. You know how 2-year-olds are suppose to be little terrors? Ella wasn’t so much a little terror. She’s been a pretty good little kid (and after the rough first few months of her life we deserved a reprieve) and we’ve often had people tell us she is one of the best behaved and polite little kids they’ve ever met.

I hope for those of you that encounter her and care for her on occasion continue to see that side of her, because this almost-6-year-old has grown an attitude the size of Texas lately when it comes to dear old mom and dad. You hear that only children tend to be spoiled and self-centered and we’ve been working hard to ensure that doesn’t happen but I’m starting to wonder if we haven’t tried hard enough. She’s opinionated, which isn’t bad in and of itself, but when she says to you on a regular basis “I don’t want to do that” or “I don’t like that” it starts to wear on you personally.

4-year-old Ella at Disney World was game for anything. Almost-6-year-old Ella wanted only to do rides all day long. Never mind that once you got her in front of a world class Disney production she loved it (well, duh! It’s Disney). Riding rides all day long at Hollywood Studios is a bit hard, considering most of that park is a production of one sort or another. Forget the World Showcase at Epcot. It was like pulling teeth to have a good time.

I had planned some time ago to take her to  UW gymnastics meet. I knew she’d put up a fuss. She’d rather stay home and watch cartoons or play video games. So I told her we’re going out and didn’t tell her until we were almost there what we were doing because I knew she’d complain. Prior to that I got to hear her complain about the long car ride. We get off at the 45th exit from I-5 and I tell her we’re going to go watch something. She says ” I don’t want to watch a show”. I tell her we’re not going to watch a show and leave it at that until we are on Montlake Blvd and practically there. She thoroughly enjoyed herself until she finished her tub of popcorn. I had placed a stuffed animal of hers in my purse (so she wouldn’t get  popcorn grime on it) and she wanted it back just as the meet was coming to a close. I told her to wait until we got back to the car (it was raining and we had quite a walk back to the car). The rest of our afternoon together wasn’t too pleasant and she told me she didn’t like the meet (even though she clearly did).

That, and complaining about the foods I make, hurts my feelings. You try and do something nice and it goes unappreciated. Welcome to parenthood, right?Is this more of a girl thing? To my friends with boys, do they do this too?

The worst part was I was going to try and take her to see “Annie” at the Paramount tomorrow but now I’m not going to. I know she’d enjoy it but up until she’s seated and the music starts playing I’d just have to listen to her complain and then maybe later she’d tell me she’d have rather stayed at home.

It’s time to put this day in the can. Maybe “the sun’ll come out, tomorrow”?

I think the fact that  our trip is so close isn’t very real. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that in a week we’re off and that our bags need to be packed appropriately. I’m always a bit overwhelmed with packing for a longer trip and with it being January (and thus less predictable, weather-wise) it’s hard to get motivated to even start.

I’ve written a packing list within the last 10 minutes and made a list of sorts for Walmart to assist in the getting of stuff. This is the part of a vacation that is not fun.

scraggly 14-year-old Tiger

This weekend I’ll also give my scraggly elder (and older) cat a bath. He hates baths but he’s forgotten how or no longer cares to groom himself so that leaves us to do it for him. Can’t send him over to  my parents’ house looking homeless. Tiger spent the first year of his life in their house and I’m curious if any part of his cat brain will register a familiarity with it.

Gonna be a busy week between gymnastics two nights, a condo board meeting another and then my mom’s birthday another. Should help the week go by faster, which will be a good thing.

I’ve got an evening with friends today, which I’m really looking forward to. Pizza is on the menu and I”ve been dreaming about it all week.

Speaking of food, after several days (couple of weeks even) of freedom from reflux symptoms I’ve gone on a bit of a junk food binge and paid dearly for it. 3 days in a row of my lovely apple-cider vinegar concoction. Blech. Today, aside from the pizza, I need to eat with my poor esophagus in mind. I’ve been off meds for a long time now (used to take Prilosec every day for several months) but with the the vaca looming and no easy access to apple-cider vinegar I’m going to need all the help I can get. Going to be hard to eat 100% healthy on vacation.

Despite my junk food binge the scale has revealed low (for me) numbers. How does that work? Could be the vinegar actually. Studies show it aids in weight -loss, though I suspect only if used the right way, which is taken 30 minutes prior to a meal. When taken that way it acts as an appetite suppressant. Thus far I’ve only managed to take it as a defensive maneuver. So, I don’t know why I don’t weigh 5 pounds more than I actually do.

The dutch oven arrived a few days ago. I’ve used it twice now with moderate success. The first recipe called for 1/2-3/4 pound of steak and instead I used at least 1lb of  pork tenderloin, so the cooking time was much higher than the recipe called for. Despite the massive amounts of vegetables (which, if you know me, are not my favorite things) it tasted all right. Last night I made pasta with meatballs. The meatballs were made with lean ground turkey, and thus were dry and rather bland. I should have added more spices or something to make it tastier. The whole dish would have been better with ground beef but since I can’t resist the occasional cheese burger I try to cook healthy recipes with healthy ingredients.

I do what I can.

I’m off to try and read more of the never-ending “The Hour I First Believed” by Wally Lamb. Enjoyable, but not a page-turner. I’ve got some good recommendations for books to get before the trip so I’ll try and remember to mention what I’ve read and if it was any good or not.

Happy weekend people!

Had a big orthodontic appointment last week. Not only was it the 6-month benchmark but my broken and worn down front teeth got “built up”. Essentially the lengthened the teeth (to the length they should be) with a temporary material. I was excited about it but now I’m super self-conscious because the material is not exactly tooth-colored… at least not my teeth. It’s quite obvious on the broken tooth. Guess I just have to live with it! Take a look for yourself. The first image is just after getting braced 6 months ago, the 2nd is just a day before my appointment last week, and the 3rd was taken yesterday (a week after the appointment).

June / before build-up / after build-up

I switched TMJ/TMD doctors as of last week. I’m seeing a doc at UW medical center who is my mom’s TMJ/TMD doctor. Hoping to really get a hold of my discomfort while I work through orthodontics. He’s got me testing my meds to see if they’re doing me any good at all. So far I’m a few days off of my muscle relaxer and I can’t tell a difference. I am not surprised though because a couple of months ago the muscle relaxer stopped doing any good and that’s when I started on a 2nd med.

If it’s not one thing it’s another.

Nearly time for vacation. Final documents arrived in the mail today. I was concerned our luggage tags weren’t going to show in time. These luggage tags make it so our luggage once checked in at Sea-Tac disappear from our site and don’t appear again until at our resort room. It’s magical.

I’ve printed out our touring plans and now I need to work on packing check lists.

Ooh! I’ve cooked some interesting things. I made these chicken pot pies, which was easy, but I needed more dough. This one came out perfect though:

And I roasted cornish game hens not too long ago. They are too cute! But not too cute to eat. They were also quite tasty.

I’ve got a couple of things coming in the mail tomorrow that I’m excited about (UPS, actually). We’re redoing Ella’s room just a bit. More like a refresh. New bedding, room rug and table lamp. Very ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s’.

My first dutch oven is also on it’s way. I’m excited to cook with it. Photos to come!

Goodness me. Only 2 weeks left of fall and Christmas is nearly here. This is by far my favoritest time of year. Normally I dislike extra clutter in my house but after 5 weeks of Christmas decorations the sparceness left behind from the clean-up on New Years day is downright depressing.

I guess that’s one reason to make sure you’ve got something to look forward to not long after the holidays. Our next family vacation is coming up. Where to you ask? Don’t you know us well enough by now? Where else would we go but to a Disney park? Back to sunny Florida we head where we’ll spend a handful of days at Disney World followed by 3 nights on a Disney cruise. Super excited as always.

Ella’s doing well in school. I think. Her student-led parent/teacher conference went well. I think. I was informed well enough on the things the class had been working on and I did get a report card but otherwise the teacher didn’t speak on Ella’s performance in class. I guess no news is good news?

I’m well past time for a braces update. I took pictures at the time of my last adjustment, which was October 30th. I’m a deadbeat braces updater. I know. I guess I’m feeling past the initial excitement of it all (are we therrrrre yet?). The next set of before/after will be something to behold though (January 5th). The orthodontist will be building up my front teeth. Which is to say he’s going to fix (if only temporarily) my broken and worn down teeth.

Now, when looking at the following photos I think the easiest thing to look at are the wires and the placement of the brackets. Initially the wire was up and down and all around crazy. Brackets were high and low and squished together. You can see things have sorted themselves out pretty well. I’ve probably still got 2 years to go so don’t be surprised at the state of my teeth still.

Week 19

Of course the other miraculous thing at this point is the full appearance of the tooth that had been hidden behind my right front tooth (top).

chicken stock

I felt compelled to blog this evening because I undertook a large cooking project. I’m going to start doing this cooking club and the next meeting is Jan. 10th at my brother-in-law’s girlfriend’s place. Each meeting has a theme and the next one is soup & salad. A bit bummed this is the theme for my first cooking club meeting as neither soup nor salad are my faves. I’m set on doing a soup (you try eating lettuce when most of your teeth don’t touch), and so today I tried out a chicken and noodle recipe. I did everything from scratch, from making my own chicken stock, to making my own noodles. It took 3.5 hours overall, but most of that was simmer/cook times.

My sister now makes what my great-grandmother was famous for (well, famous amongst the family at least), and that is homemade chicken and noodles. It’s the best thing on the planet. Even though my head knew the recipe I made today would in no way taste like my sister’s noodles, I think my heart still hoped and so I ended up a bit disappointed. Which is unfortunate since there is now a large tupperware bowl full of it in my fridge.

I’ll have to look for another soup recipe. Maybe some sort of cheddar/bacon thing. How can you go wrong with that???

home-made noodles

Parmesan bread

finished bowl of home-made chicken noodle soup

I also found a recipe for the Starbucks Cranberry Bliss bar that I’m going to do for Christmas, and I’m going to try and make the cookies my sister (there she is again… when did she turn in to one of the best cooks I know???) made 2 Christmases ago. She could seriously make me a large batch and present them as my present and I’d be as happy as a clam. Best cookies ever (yes, even better than the ones I made for my friend’s baby shower). I’ve tried them once but they just weren’t the same. Worth a second shot!

It’s December 6th and I’m done shopping for Christmas presents. Yea! Waiting on 3 packages to come in the mail before I start wrapping things up.

Happy Holidays!

If you don’t feel up to reading a blog post that’s written for the purpose of gushing about my child you might want to skip this one.

Fair warning.

When Ella was 2.5 I started taking her to gymnastics, one of my favorite sports (I was always jealous of my sister’s gymnasty ways but being an athlete was never in my cards). So saying I’m living vicariously through Ella is just stating the obvious.

When they’re 2.5 gymnastics consists of nothing more than bouncing around on a trampoline and doing log rolls down a wedge. Fun, but nothing more than an organized obstacle course. We had to cut it out when times got a bit lean.

2 summers ago we tried an acrobatics class that the city of Des Moines put on for part of it’s summer parks program. She was 4 at the time and maybe it was the teacher and how the class was organized but Ella seemed to lack serious focus (didn’t help there were giant mirrors in the room  - Ella spent pretty much the whole hour preening in front of them).  Here, see for yourself: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4350285428851399119&hl=en#

It wasn’t pretty so I waited a bit before putting her back in to something. Isaac and I have called Ella our monkey since she was a baby and if you could see some of things she does you’d see what a monkey she really is. I could just tell we needed to give gymnastics another try.

We’ve gone twice now to Metropolitan Gymnastics in Kent. Well, 2 classes and an open gym just for fun. The coach has all ready decided to move her from a purely recreational class for 4-5 year-olds to a level 1 class. Gymnastics has 10 levels. Ella is just loving it and her coach is very happy with her.

I’ll have to take my camera next week. She’s so cute in her little leotards and pony tails.

On a different note, Ella has completed a full week of kindergarten. She only missed the morning bus once. Okay, so that’s partially our fault but also the  bus consistently comes 5 minutes earlier than it should. Ella seems to be loving school and I can tell what she learned in pre-school is really getting cemented in as she’s asking how to spell things and NOT asking us what a certain letter looks like, which is a change. She’ll be reading soon! I’m so excited for her. Isaac and I are big-time readers and we hope she loves reading as much as we do.

Ok, I think I’m done gushing for now.

I’m personally excited about some shows I get to see this fall. Tomorrow evening I’ll be seeing “Wicked” with my friend Jaime. Yea! Jaime is my music buddy. We’ve seen several shows together (Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Count Basie Orchestra, and Neil Diamond. I feel like there’s something else I’m forgetting). In October Isaac and I will go see Mika. Mika is more for me than Isaac but he finally admitted that he likes him too. Mika sings happy music and even Ella likes him. In fact, her “favorite” song is a Mika song. She requests it nearly every time we’re in the car. I have had my Mika cd in my car constantly for over a year now. I never get tired of it.

Then in November Isaac and I will be seeing comedian/ventriloquist Jeff Dunham. That’ll be hilarious.

Good times ahead. I love fall!