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!

Stuffed Shells

We visited my mother last weekend. She invited my youngest uncle, his wife and kids to dinner along with my grandmother and sister. She served stuffed shells, tossed salad, sausage and bread for dinner. My mother was never much of a cook when I was growing up. Her dinner menu consisted of a constant rotation of spaghetti with meat sauce, Chinese pudding (don't ask), American chop suey (again, don't ask), tuna noodle casserole, hot dogs and beans, macaroni "sudan" (this is in the don't ask category as well), grilled cheese and soup, green bean stew, pancakes, tuna and peas on toast, baked chicken coated in Seven Seas Italian dressing, and last and least - hamburg gravy. Therefore, by these standards, stuffed shells was rather upscale. It was a tasty dinner, my 2 year old son ate 2 entire shells. It was also a good visit.

Much of the talk for the weekend revolved around the yard sale my mother is planning for the summer. She has many things to get rid of, but for some reason she thinks these items are worth something. She wants to price her 30 year old tent that "sleeps 6" for $50. I think $15 would be a better price point. She's never going to use it again and if she doesn't sell it she'll throw it away so why not just get $15? I really hope her ego isn't destroyed the day of the yard sale.

The weekend was also good because I survived my mother without alcohol. I am less than a month from my due date and I really didn't know if I would have the stamina for her. Turns out I did alright.

Lindt Truffles

These are my most recent guilty pleasure. Pregnancy does not leave many choices for guilty pleasures so while the truffles are pretty tame they are pretty much my only option. I am partial to the white chocolate ones. I usually buy the variety bag and I wonder why there are fewer white chocolate truffles than milk or dark chocolate truffles. Maybe it just seems that way?