Carving with Charlie

I was thrilled when I got to my local Winco and discovered pumpkins were only 9 cents per pound! Charlie and I (mostly me I admit) picked out a huge one and brought it home. For the last couple weeks, Charlie has taken great pleasure, despite my protests, in climbing all over our big pumpkin.

But the day finally came when we got around to carving it. I think Charlie was pretty surprised when we took the big knife to the pumpkin, and I really hope he doesn't get it in his head that he can start carving into things--we'll see.

Since carving does involve large, sharp knives, the most that Charlie could really do was watch, but we gave him the big bowl of pumpkin guts to take care of. He was enthralled with stirring the slimy goo and seeds (which he kept calling coins) for a surprisingly long time. When the fun was gone, we gave him a cookie. He was happy til we were done carving.

Charlie did pick the triangle eyes and the diamond nose. And when we were finished, I asked him what we should name our jack-o-lantern. Quickly and decisively he said, "Mark!" I don't know where he got that name. I don't think he knows anyone named Mark. (PS: When asked what we should name his baby brother, Charlie said, "Lewis!" Again, Charlie doesn't know anyone named Lewis. Weird.)

Mark now sits outside our front door and receives many a "Hello" and "Goodbye" with our comings and goings.

 

My Best Pasta Salad

Salad:

1 lb. uncooked pasta, ditalini or macaroni
1 1/4 cup frozen green peas, thawed
12 oz. cherry tomatoes, halved and lightly salted
1 1/4 cup cheddar, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2.25 oz can sliced olives, drained

Dressing:

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup milk
3 T. dill pickle juice
1 tsp. mustard
1 1/2 T. mint
1 1/2 T. parsley
seasonings to taste (onion powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper)

1. Cook the pasta in 1 gallon of water with 2 T salt. Drain. Do not rinse. Cool and dry in cookie sheet. 2. After all salad ingredients are prepared, cooled, or thawed, combine and refrigerate. 3. Make dressing and whisk until smooth. Refrigerate. 4. Toss salad and dressing 15 minutes before serving.

I created this recipe after talking to my friend Natasha, who always makes delicious pasta salads, and reading a very informative article online. The article does not give a recipe for a salad (it links to two dressing recipes), but it gives guidelines for ingredient ratios (how much pasta to how much fruits/veggies/nuts/meat/cheese to how much spice to how much dressing) and suggestions on how to prepare ingredients prior to adding them to the salad. This article was exactly what I was looking for. I don’t mind following recipes, but I like the freedom of being able to throw whatever I like, or have, together and creating my own meals. If you like to do that, too, then read this article.

I’ve dabbled with making my own pasta salads before, and they were ok. Really, just ok. But I took this one to a pot luck gathering, and I got so many compliments and so few leftovers. Honestly, I feel quite proud of myself.

One step the article recommended that I did not follow the first time is to cool and dry the noodles in a cookie sheet. (I didn’t have a clean one and took the lazy route.) I just left my pasta in the colander to cool and dry. When I went to combine the salad ingredients, my noodles had cooled and dried into one big mass. It was a bit of a pain. I tried breaking it apart, but the noodles started falling apart. I left the noodle mass alone until I was ready to mix in the dressing, because the article informed me that if your noodles stick together a bit, the dressing will help them separate. So after about 5 minutes of very gentle stirring, my noodles were separated and the salad was lightly covered in dressing.

I was also very reluctant to add the mint. The article suggests using a combination of dill and mint. I knew I wanted the dill pickle juice in the dressing because Natasha had recommended it, and I figured I ought to give the article’s suggestions a decent try. So I slowly, reluctantly added a bit of mint. I smelled and tasted. I added more mint. I smelled and tasted. I added more mint. Honestly, I feel like the mint took the dressing from mediocre to fantastic. That said, when writing down this recipe, I had to guestimate on how much mint (and parsley) I actually used. So, if you try this out, proceed with caution. And check out the article I used, so you can make your best pasta salad.

Charlie's First Haircut

We finally did it: we cut Charlie’s hair! Despite his having a mullet for the past few months—eww, mullet, gross—I’ve put this task off. Why? Because I loved his beautiful baby hair, and for a long time I couldn’t think about cutting his hair without getting close to crying. Yeah, I don’t want to talk about it.

So here Charlie is before the haircut:

Immediately before I cut Charlie’s hair, I cut Chad’s and let Charlie watch. I had hoped that watching his dad get a haircut would help Charlie see it was ok. Not so much.

I started Charlie’s haircut using scissors to remove the mullet—which is the majority of the hair I saved—and the hair at the top of his head. He did not like it. I think I may have tried to cut too much at once causing the scissors to pull his hair a bit. I’m not sure (I am not a trained beautician), but he did fine for the first snip and freaked out more with each subsequent snip.

We had a brief interlude while Chad introduced the electric clipper to Charlie. Charlie was interested but ill at ease.

Then came the tears. Oh so many tears. Charlie did not like the electric clipper. When he spoke, between sobs, he’d try to point to the clipper and say, “vacuum,” or “big noise.” But for the majority of the haircut, Charlie pressed his face into Chad’s chest while he wept and screamed—which is not a position I’d recommend for giving a kid a haircut, but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. I was not going to leave Charlie’s hair half cut; I’d prefer the mullet and that’s saying something.

Anywho, Charlie’s new haircut didn’t turn out awesome, but it’ll do. We’ll end with some side-by-side comparisons:

Unfortunately, you can also see that he was happy before and not so much after.

Blueberry Muffins

Blueberries, which we don’t eat very often, were on sale, so I bought some to vary our nutrient intake. I got enough to have some fresh—yum—and to use some to make blueberry muffins--yum yum! I had never made muffins with real blueberries before (the box mixes are all I had done), so I got a recipe from a fellow butter-lover, Paula Deen:

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 cup sugar
1 stick unsalted butter, melted

1 egg, slightly beaten

3/4 cup whole milk

1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries

1/2 cup granulated brown sugar or white sugar

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 12-cup muffin tin.
2. In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and sugar. In another bowl, combine butter, egg, and milk and mix well. Pour the wet ingredients into the flour mixture and with a spatula, stir until just combined. Do not beat or over mix; it's okay if there are lumps in the batter.
3. Gently fold the blueberries into the batter.
4. Spoon the batter into the muffin tray, filling each cup about 2/3 full. Bake for 10 minutes and remove from the oven.
5. Sprinkle the tops of the muffins with the granulated brown or white sugar and return the muffins to the oven to bake for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, until the tops are golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.
6. Cool for about 10 minutes in the pan before turning the muffins out.

The only thing I did differently was use a 6-cup jumbo muffin tin (because I had it and who doesn’t love jumbo muffins), and as a result, I had to bake my muffins a bit longer. I measured my ingredients carefully and instead of producing a “batter,” I ended up with more of a cookie dough consistency. It still worked out, and my muffins tasted pretty good.

Yeah, just pretty good. Not amazing. Sorry Paula. The muffins just weren’t as sweet as I would have liked. So if anyone has a better recipe, please send it my way.

All in all, however, I consider my first batch of homemade blueberry muffins a success. Hurray me!

The Hunger Games

I had heard from a lot of people that The Hunger Games trilogy was a good read, so I finally got around to reading the first book. I started reading Friday night. I was done, in tears, Sunday night.

To say The Hunger Games was good would be absolutely true, yet slightly misleading. I found it horrifying and was slightly traumatized by the end. But I LOVED the book.

Here is one brief synopsis from the official website: Set in a dark vision of the near future, a terrifying reality TV show is taking place. Twelve boys and twelve girls are forced to appear in a live event called The Hunger Games. There is only one rule: kill or be killed. When sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen steps forward to take her younger sister's place in the games, she sees it as a death sentence. But Katniss has been close to death before. For her, survival is second nature.

The book takes a dramatic look at the effects of violence on adolescents, and while it is in the extreme (I had to keep reminding myself throughout the book that the society I was reading about was not my society), it raises some interesting questions. The book also begins an examination of politics (again not our politics, but the principles there are true). While the book looks at some pretty serious issues, it is not didactic. The author, Suzanne Collins, perfectly blends an intense narrative with these serious issues.

And while I say I found The Hunger Games horrifying, amid the horror is a delightful mix of humor and wit that balances out the tragedy. All-in-all I’d say this book is practically perfect in every way. If you can only read one book this year, read The Hunger Games.

Charlie's First Birthday

So, I’m a couple weeks behind on posting this, but it’s only ‘cause we didn’t have the internet at our new house until yesterday. (Yes, we bought a home! I’ll blog about that later.)

I had been looking forward to Charlie’s birthday for MONTHS! I was so excited, and the experience lived up to all my expectations. We kept things pretty simple and just had family and friends over for some cake and ice cream. I am actually really proud of the cake I made. It’s a banana cake with chocolate frosting. I chose to do it as a monkey because Charlie’s been our little monkey from the beginning. When he was just a month or so old, if his blanket got pushed down, he would grab it with his toes, pull it up to his hands, and cover himself. It was cute. So a monkey cake for our little monkey.

Charlie got lots of excellent toys and books. And he did a good job opening his presents without eating too much paper. I’m also proud of the fact that Charlie blew out his candle by himself even though I can’t take the credit—my mom coached him on that one.

Now for an overview of Charlie. As is pretty typical of one-year-olds, Charlie is interested in EVERYTHING. Every day is an exploration which unfortunately tends to turn into a lot of no’s. Often when we tell Charlie no, he’ll turn around, shake his finger, and say, “no” as if to instruct some unseen entity. If his uncle Shawn is around, he’s the one that gets instructed. Charlie also has a pretty good vocabulary—there are a lot of words he can say. Whether or not he will is the issue. More and more I see a strong personality trait manifesting itself in Charlie: if he doesn’t want to do something, he will not do it. No amount of coaxing or bribing works. (He’s so much like his father.) The words he says most often are no, oh no, shoes, book, juice, mom, dad, and Shawn. The animal sounds he makes most often are woof and roar. What I think is especially cute about his roar is that it’s quiet—not a lion making his presence known, a lion chuckling mischievously to himself in the tall grass before he attacks. Charlie loves to eat, and he’ll eat just about everything, which explains why he’s over 25 pounds. It was funny to watch him eat his birthday cake, because he wasn’t playing in it and occasionally eating or just mashing it against his face. He strategically maneuvered large pieces of cake into his mouth maximizing the cake devoured; he actually left very little mess.

In general Charlie is a very happy kid. He loves to be around and play with other kids but will also play by himself happily for 30-45 minutes at a time. He’s a mover and doesn’t stay in one spot long. He only cuddles when he is very tired or very sad.

Charlie is a huge blessing in our lives, and I am excited to see what his next year brings!