Pineapple Upside Down Cake

My mom made this cake for us today to help commemorate our upcoming year anniversary. It was a very tasty cake, especially considering I eat cucumbers for dinner during the week. This week should be much different. J and I are going out to a great dinner on Wednesday so my diet will be shot this week. I am looking forward to the awesome meal bit I do like the hungry feeling - it makes me feel thinner.

Grass-Fed Beef Burgers

It seems we have have burgers on the grill every weekend. We typically order 4lbs of grass-fed beef in hamburg form from our CSA co-op each month along with some steaks and other meats. Tonight my mom joined us for burgers. I may be in the minority, but I prepare my burger with mustard, ketchup, lettuce, tomato and onion and then eat it. I rarely look at the beef. I think having a 3 month old that just went to sleep for the night and who could wake up at any moment makes me eat fast. I still enjoy the food, but can't take the time to pleasure in it. I realized when I cleaned the plates that my mom had left small pieces of slightly reddish beef on her plate. Maybe I don't care if my burger is on the rare side - actually I know I don't care if it is on the rare side. I just don't get how/why she needs to inspect every bite. And you may be thinking my mom is a size 2, but no she's a size 14 - at least.

I often wonder why while I love and salivate over good food, I am not all that picky about what I eat. I will try just about anything and any disappointment I have usually has more to do with lack of flavor or spice than with texture or degree of "doneness". I find that most of family is stuck in a food rut. I am very grateful that I am not in that same rut. I really hope my kids avoid the rut as well.

Tomorrow night...another helping of Chinese Cabbage Salad.

Chinese Cabbage Salad

I picked up some Chinese Cabbage as a part of our CSA share last week. As I really don't eat dinner during the week, we need to eat our CSA share over the weekend. I did a quick google for chinese cabbage recipes and found a recipe on Cook's for a pretty simple salad - the cabbage and scallion, a dressing and ramen noodles and almonds that have been browned with butter as a crunchy topping. The salad was delicious and this was the first time I ever ate ramen noodles. They were pretty good as a crunchy salad topping, not sure I want them in my soup. We also had bone-in ribeye steaks that J cooked on the grill and a simple rice and bean side dish. The whole meal was awesome, including the Freemark Abbey Zinfandel we opened.

We spent most of the meal talking about our vacation in November, or should I say salivating over our vacation in November. We will spend the week in a beach house on Jost van Dyke in the Caribbean. I am so glad I turned J into a beach bum for vacations! He will enjoy his cubans and I will enjoy the sun. J's cousin is coming along to help with kidcare which really excites me about this vacation. Anyway, our meal fare will be nothing close to last night's dinner, but the sun and sand will make that OK.

Did I mention I had 3 helpings of the salad?

Cucumbers and Salt

Lately we have been getting 3-4 cukes per week from our CSA. Seeing as I am on a diet, I eat a cuke for dinner - dipping it in kosher salt. I also have a few glasses of wine to kill the "no eating" pain. Anyway, that is my dinner Monday-Thursday. I am living, eating and drinking larger on the weekends.

Beef and Bok Choy Hot Pot

I found this recipe and J cooked it last Saturday night while I tended to the boys. It was delicious! Now that we have our CSA pickups every Tuesday we need to be creative with our veggies and this recipe was definitely a keeper. Speaking of Saturday night, the weekend was nice. We are starting to get into a regular pattern with the kids, but I think we need to respect Rex's nap a bit more even if that keeps us in on gorgeous weekend afternoons. I guess we should utilize the deck a bit more. Rex is just such a better companion when he isn't tired and cranky. Dash is pretty much awesome all of the time at this point - sometimes I wonder how I have such a chill baby.

On Sunday we attended church - it was a bad start to the day. The church was not our speed. We followed that experience up with lunch at Starbucks and then attended an open house for an apartment in Harlem. If we didn't have kids I would probably drool over the apartment, but with 2 boys it is too small. The agent wants to interest us in a 2 bed, 1 bath apartment that is 1600 sf - very sizable by Manhattan standards. I really want 2 baths, but this apartment has 2 beds, living room with a dining area, open kitchen, library and family room with plenty of built-ins. Did I mention it is a fifth floor walk-up? Family of 4, strollers and 5 floors to haul our hit up - NO!

Tuscan Bean with Wild Rice Soup (from a can)

This is what I am eating as I write my first blog post since our newest son was born 6 weeks and 5 days ago. His name is Dashiell Brooks and we call him Dash. He is wonderful, a very good baby and very cute! I am looking forward to the end of the newborn days though - is he hungry, tired, gassy? And why does everyone assume that a crying baby is a hungry baby? That assumption, like just about all other assumptions, simply isn't true. Anyway, life with 2 little ones is an assload of work. I swear the laundry never ends.

J and I got out for a night last Friday and boy was Saturday U.G.L.Y. I overdid it a bit. Hopefully I can keep that from happening again any time soon. We went to the Spring Benefit at the school Rex will attend in the Fall. The silent auction was fun and we ended up winning a framed print, 4 nice cookbooks and a photography session that we will use in the Fall for family photos.

Rex is a great big brother most of the time. He is getting really big and active. I am going to enroll him in soccer classes for the Summer. He definitely as a lot of energy to expend.

Porterhouse Steak for Two

J and I recently enjoyed our last date night before our second son, named "Niner" for the time-being, arrives and probably for a long while afterward. We met at The Palm on the Upper West Side and planned to eat at the bar. When we lived in Boston J and I were regulars at the Boston Palm. We grew to really enjoy Jules and Phil, the bartenders. It was very nice to often have 1 or 2 glasses of wine on the house. We never thought the food was fantastic, but it was good enough. I guess we mostly enjoyed the ambiance. We always had a great night out when we went there.

We have lived in NYC for 3 years now and I think we have been to The Palm in Midtown West 3 times. It doesn't have the same feel as the one in Boston and generally we have always left slightly disappointed, yet we keep wanting to give it another try in the hopes that we can have a Palm night reminiscent of the ones we enjoyed in Boston.

I arrived first and grabbed a seat while I waited over an hour for J to meet me. His fantasy baseball draft was taking longer than he anticipated so he was quite late. I started my evening with a club soda and lime. As I sat and waited I started having very consistent Braxton-Hicks contractions. After waiting an hour, I decided to order a glass of wine and half of a wedge salad. The salad goes by another name at The Palm, but I can't think of it now. The blue cheese dressing on it is so tasty. The wine put my contractions at ease and as I was nearing the end of my salad, J arrived. He ordered his martini, how I can't wait to have my first post-partum martini. Then we decided to share a 28 oz porterhouse steak and a couple of sides: creamed spinach and half and half - yum. We had never had that steak at The Palm before and it was absolutely fantastic. Our night turned out to be a success. We both had a great time and the coup de grace was that we also caught a cab very easily to get home!