Lunch.

Am I the only mom who forgets to eat? Amidst all the time I spend feeding Foster and keeping him happy it's not uncommon for me to pass noon before I realize I haven't had breakfast or lunch. I am trying to fix this so today I accomplished a miracle: homemade soup while home alone! Foster has a new swing with a detachable rocking chair so I brought that into the kitchen and tackled some tasty lentil soup as blogged about by my lovely friend Lisa. I made it almost exactly the same with a few minor changes. First of all, I couldn't imagine this soup without garlic so of course I had to throw some of that in with the onions. Maybe it's the Ukrainian in me. Second, I had tomatoes sitting on my counter but the heat left them inedible so I ended up moving them to the compost and adding a tin of tomato paste instead. Also, as per usual I added spices to taste instead of following the instructions. It turned out really tasty and I was proud of myself for making a decent lunch for once. I have a hard time preparing food for just me but t will be nice to have leftovers for tomorrow and Davis can take some to work too. I find soup is one of the hardest foods to take good photos of but here is my version:

Would definitely make again! Now Foster has graciously decided to take a nap so I am going to try to get some dishes done before I make some more in my dinner prep. I'm planning on whipping up some potato salad and maybe some jerk tempeh to go with it. I'll let y'all know how it goes. Thanks to Lisa for the great soup idea!

Time to cook again!

Well Davis and I are settling nicely into parenthood and now we have time to make exciting food again. We set a grocery budget for ourselves of $100 a week and for the past two weeks have stayed under it and our meals have somehow managed to improve. It's amazing what a little planning can do for dinner time. Recently I've become obsessed with the food blog VeganYumYum. This is awesome but also depressing because the blog is no longer updated. However, there is an iPod/iPhone touch app with all of the recipes on it available for free on iTunes and it's amazing. Today I made Flaky Pizza Purses and they turned out remarkably well considering it was my first go with phyllo pastry and it's pretty finicky stuff. (Also considering I don't own a pastry brush for some reason and that made things extra interesting!) I was also thrilled at this prime opportunity to showcase our new basil plant. Here are the results!

The tomato sauce made with just grape tomatoes, olive oil and a couple dried herbs was scrumptious. Simplicity is underrated. The sauce would also be lovely on some whole wheat pasta. I added some veggie pepperoni and mushrooms to a few of the pockets and made the others according to the recipe. They were good both ways. My mind is now turning over some other options for fillings. Artichoke hearts, roasted garlic and caramelized onions anyone? Mmm...

Anyway, that was lunch at our house. What did you have?

Birth Day.

Ok, so it turns out that making a blog about cooking can get derailed after having major abdominal surgery to have a baby taken out of you. The only recipes I have to share with you at the moment go something like "Take something out of your freezer or fridge, put it in the microwave. Heat it up. Feed the baby. Change the baby's diaper. Reheat the food because it's already cold. Enjoy!"

In the meantime, this seems as good a place as any to post my birth story since I know there are a few people interested in reading it. Today is 2 weeks from Foster's birth day and I knew I had to finish writing it out before I forget any details. (Although I'm sure I left some out or got some wrong as it is.) Anyway, here goes...

Oh where to begin telling this story? I’ll warn you now that this will probably be long winded and rambly because that’s kind of how the experience was. I may try to edit down a version for those who don’t want to know every detail but for now I am writing it out for my sake (and Foster’s) so that I don’t forget a thing.

I started practicing HypnoBabies hypnosis for childbirth at about 20 weeks so I was well versed in it when we hit 40 weeks. The birthing affirmation “babies are born on their birth days and not when doctor say they should be and I will be patient.” became my mantra. So I was relaxed and calm knowing that most pregnancies, especially for first time moms, tend to go closer to 41 weeks than 40. At my 41 week appointment we chatted about what would happen if the birthing process didn’t start on its own. My midwife had a recipe for a labour cocktail that we could try and is usually effective and if we hit 42 weeks we would have to get a non-stress test and an ultrasound to check and make sure baby was doing ok. She checked my cervix and it was softening and I was one centimetre dilated but baby’s head wasn’t down low enough. The week dragged on and I was fine until a mini breakdown a couple days before baby came after getting too many “when are you going to have that baby?” messages from well-intentioned friends. I felt frustrated that I couldn’t do anything to make him come sooner and felt like my body wasn’t working for me. I hopped in the bath with candles, dim lighting, lavender essential oil and relaxed and focused on trusting my body and my baby and doing some deep breathing. Soon I was back to a place of knowing everything would be ok.

The next night we got up in the middle of the night and took the labour “cocktail”. It was a rather unappetizing concoction of castor oil, almond butter, apricot juice and lemon verbena. The grossest part was the lemon verbena oil which reminded me of drinking lemon pledge. Pressure waves (code for contraction in hypnobabies) started coming but they were mostly light and not rhythmic at all. This was 41 weeks 4 days so we had an NST and ultrasound scheduled. Both showed baby was doing well, lots of fluid left and still very relaxed although the ultrasound tech did predict that baby would weigh ten pounds. Pressure waves never really turned into much and I told my midwife I didn’t think I could take the cocktail again that day. Since her birthday was Saturday she was more than happy for me to wait for Sunday to try to get things started again so that became the plan.

Sunday morning Davis and I got up at about 1:30 since I wasn’t doing much sleeping anyway, took the cocktail and went back to sleep. I woke up at 7:30, vomited up the cocktail and went back to sleep for an hour. When I woke up at 8:30 pressure waves started. Again, fairly dull but definitely falling into more of a rhythm. I could actually time them and knew things were starting. Mom stopped in for support and was surprised to find that the support I needed wasn’t to do with frustration because of things not starting but actually supporting me through my relaxation and helping out around the house. After getting a load of laundry through Davis started filling up the pool and I tried to do squats and bounce on the birthing ball. I was still chatty and relaxed. Around 2:00 in the afternoon I got in the pool and put on my “Easy First Stage” hypnosis script and went into deep relaxation. At this point the pressure waves were picking up and I knew this was definitely for real even though I was a bit afraid of them dying out because I had been having a bit on and off for a few days beforehand. Our midwife was by at 6:00 and checked my cervix. I was dilated to 3 cm and cervix continued to thin. She was able to do a bit of a membrane sweep to try to keep things going. We were encouraged that things were moving along. She recommended I take the cocktail again and a gravol and try to get some sleep. I got a couple hours of sleep and woke up to things picking up and the pressure waves getting a bit stronger. We called Heidi (my friend who was going to serve as a support person) to come over and noticed a text from my mom saying she couldn’t sleep and to call her when we were back up so Heidi and my mom came over. My birthing time continued through the night with me alternating listening to hypnosis and my birthing playlist. Heidi and Davis hauled buckets in and out to keep the pool warm. I was surrounded by candles and had lavender and peppermint oil in the diffuser. Everything was calm and beautiful. In the morning we called Uta to update her. She was at the hospital but said she would stop by afterwards. She got here at about 9:00 and checked my cervix. I was at 4 cm dilated and she was able to sweep the membranes a bit more although the baby’s head still hadn’t moved down to where we needed it to be to move things along faster. I was a little frustrated that I had only made one cm progress since 6 pm the next day but stayed calm and focused on the fact that things were moving forward. Mom went home to take her foster daughter to school and at Uta’s suggestion I took the labour cocktail again (Ew!) and a gravol and we all went to sleep for a bit. She said she would come back in a couple hours to check. I woke up about an hour and a half later and wanted to get right back in the pool. Heidi gave me hand massages while I relaxed into the contractions and listened to my birth playlist some more as well as some of my HypnoBabies tracks.

We didn’t hear from Uta till the afternoon. She had been at the hospital all night and meant to take a nap but had fallen asleep. She came by late afternoon and I was at 5 cm but baby’s head still hadn’t moved down and Uta said he was positioned posterior. She decided that for things to move forward we needed to break my water but didn’t want to do it at home in case there was a reason baby wasn’t moving down. She said we would need to go to the hospital. I had been very calm and relaxed up until this point but really hadn’t wanted to go to the hospital so at this point I was heartbroken and started crying. I asked Uta if there was anything else we could do or try. At first she said there wasn’t. She said I was doing everything right and we had tried everything we could but after seeing how upset I was she racked her brain and suggested that she could try calling my chiropractor to see if she could do a last minute adjustment to try and turn the baby. Dr. Jenny said she could come over if we wanted but Uta, wanting to further torture me, decided that a walk would be good for me so off I waddled to the chiropractor’s office. Dr. Jenny did an adjustment on me, had me walk up and down the stairs a few times and did another adjustment. I waddled back home to see if it had made any difference and got into the bath tub with my “birthing day affirmations” playing and really focused on relaxing and deep breathing. Uta came back and checked me and I was still at 5 cm but the baby’s head had moved down enough that she felt comfortable doing the membrane rupture at home. So she broke my water and had me lay on my side for a while to monitor the baby and make sure he wasn’t in any distress. Baby was doing ok so after a bit of side lying I moved back to the pool. Uta had me hold deep squats through my pressure waves and eventually told me she would check my cervix again in an hour and see if there had been any progress and if not that we would have to “move in a different direction.” So as hard as it was for me to hold the squats I toughed it out because I knew it was a last ditch effort to avoid the hospital. After an hour I got out and Uta did another internal and I was still at 5 with no change in baby’s head position. She very calmly told me that she knew I was doing ok and the baby was doing ok but that we were basically stalled here and she thought we needed to go to the hospital to try using some pitocin to get things moving. At this point we were over 36 hours in and I was exhausted and also frustrated because I had done everything right but things weren’t moving forward so I agreed to make the move to the hospital.

Once we arrived at the hospital the on-call OB had to check in on me and after doing an internal he said that the baby wasn’t going to come out without a c-section. Uta said she was thinking of trying pitocin first and he asked her if the baby was in any distress. She said he wasn’t and the doctor basically said that we could try that if we wanted but he was pretty sure I would end up with a c-section after that anyway because of the baby’s size and position. Having focused and relaxed for 40 plus hours at this point I followed by instincts combined with the advice I was being given by the doctor and Uta and agreed to the section since the other option wasn’t exactly natural anyway. So, we arrived at the hospital at 11:30 and the “emergency” section was scheduled for midnight. Foster Merritt Dowe emerged at 12:34 am on April 20 weighing a whopping ten pounds, four ounces. As soon as he was cleared by the paediatrician Foster was brought over to me and we had a bit of cheek to cheek time before Davis took him into the recovery room to have some bonding time while I was getting stitched up. In no time at all I was in recover and able to nurse Foster within the first hour. Mom, Jim and Vivi (Davis’s parents) and Heidi all came in for short visits to meet the new family member.

So, in the end...we made the decisions we had to make. I wouldn’t change a thing about my birth experience unless there had been a way to make him fit through my pelvis naturally. By the time we got to the c-section I knew we had exhausted all of our natural options so I know that we did what was in the best interest of myself and Foster. I was still so thrilled with how the birthing pool and HypnoBabies worked for me. They enabled me to “labour” for 40 hours in comfort and relaxation. And that’s our birth story. Thanks for reading it!

Shushi.

So, I learned how to make sushi about 2 weeks ago and have made it already four or five times. This was the first time I've been able to make inside-out rolls with the rice on the outside. So that was pretty exciting. (small victories these days.) I would say sushi is probably my favourite food and for a vegan it's easy to whip up interesting alternatives to traditional rolls at a fraction of the cost. I'm not going to tell you how to make these because the recipe is posted many places. Here's one such posting if you want to make them yourself. Other than that I'm just here to brag about how good my lunch was. (But if you have questions I'll be happy to attempt to answer them, just let me know!)


The making of...

If you don't believe how good they were take as evidence this photo of Davis clearing his plate as we watch tv on our computer. Just a little glimpse into our life. You're welcome.

Fried Lice.

Ok, so now you know how to make awesome soy balls and you're wondering what you can pair it with. Now, the soy balls were a tricky "recipe" that needed specific ingredients so to make up for it and had to be done "right" or it won't work. Just to be fair I'm now going to teach you how to make a dish that you can just throw together. I really intend this blog to be more "here's how we do it, let me know how you do it." than exact recipes that you have to follow to a t. So I had a couple people ask me about how we make fried rice and I totally get that because it was very recently that we figured out a couple small tricks that make it so much better instead of a second-rate version of take-out. It's pretty hard to screw it up and you don't have to use the exact ingredients I use. In fact, we rarely use the same ingredients anyway. It pretty much depends on what veggies are in the fridge/freezer. So, the list of ingredients is really just a potential list of ingredients but don't worry too much if you're missing one of the ingredients. (Unless it's rice. You pretty much need rice in order to make fried rice. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.)

Ingredients:

Tofu (firm or extra firm is ideal)

Turmeric

Leftover rice

Soy Sauce

Salt

Sugar

Garlic

Onion

Veggies such as:

Celery

Carrot

Mushroom

Bell Pepper

Cauliflower

Broccoli

Frozen Peas

Canned Corn

Green onion

Whatever else you like.

Other options could be tomatoes, water chestnuts, frozen mixed veggies, cashews or whatever else you feel like experimenting with.

Alright...so you may have already noticed that I said leftover rice. I'm embarassed to say how recently I learned that this is the secret to good fried rice so I thought I would tell you guys because you might not know either. This is the one thing that's close to non-negotiable. If you use fresh hot rice your fried rice will be mushy and kind of greasy. If you don't have any rice pre-made the second best option is to make your rice and then fold it and fan it till it cools a bit and put it in the fridge for a couple hours. Ideally though your rice should have sat in the fridge at least overnight. A couple days is even better. I didn't put amounts because it will totally depend on how many people you're cooking for and what you're cooking it in. We make our rice in a little ricemaker so we just use the amount our rice make makes which is about 4'ish cups I think. Your best rice for this is a white long grain but brown works too and is better for you.

Step one: prep your onions, garlic and other veggies. This whole process will be a lot easier if you did this ahead of time instead of trying to chop and add things at the right time while continuing to stir. The vegetables can be chinese cut which means fairly thick and on an angle. They can also be smaller if you're feeling like you want to spend most of your life chopping things. Try to keep things separate in their own bowls because they all have different cooking times. If you're adding a lot of veggies a little of each will do. I've mostly tried to add these to the list in the order that I would add them to the wok.

Next: heat your pan! I bet I know what you usually do. You put your pan (preferably a wok with lots of room) on the stove and throw some oil in it right away. Am I right? Not anymore. Here's the new protocol: wok goes on the stove just above medium heat and no oil goes in until it's hot. Otherwise the oil cools the pan down and your food ends up soaking in oil instead of frying. This gets you that gross greasy food you do not want. If you don't heat your pan up enough your food will also stick and your texture won't be right. If you do heat the wok up then enough adding oil will create a thin film that goes into the pores of the metal, creating a non-stick effect. This way you use less oil to stir-fry and we all win! So now you're like "But Kristy, how do I know if it's hot enough? If I put my hand in the wok I will burn it." Don't be silly! Until you get those new silicone robot hands you asked for for your birthday here's how you do it-- stick your hand under the cold water tap, then walk over to the wok (tee hee.) and sprinkle a couple drops in. Your wok is hot enough when the water sizzles and evaporates pretty quickly. If it just sits there we're not there yet temperature wise. If it evaporates immediately you're ok to start but I would drop your temperature a little bit since we're not working with meat here and don't need it quite that hot.

Alright, yes...you've read a lot and so far you only have a hot wok to show for it but bear with me here. Once you know the outline of how to make this it'll be really easy and another delicious dish to add to your cooking repertoire. Now that your wok is up to the right temperature add enough oil to coat the wok and move the pan around a bit to get a nice coating of the oil. Once it's hot you can cook up your tofu. I use about a quarter of a regular size block and you just crumble it into the walk. Throw a couple shakes of turmeric on it (mostly for colour) and a bit of salt and fry it up till it looks like scrambled eggs. Once this is done remove your tofu from the wok and set it aside.

Ok, a bit more oil in the wok and give it a few seconds to heat up. Then take your wok off the burner while you add onion and garlic. (this is just to prevent it from burning) Then you can throw it back on the burner and get things moving. Now, just keep adding in your veggies and stir frying. If you're using any frozen veggies or canned veggies don't add them quite yet. Likewise, the green onion will go in pretty much last. Alright, once your fresh veggies are nicely sauteed move them to the outside of your wok making a well in the middle to dump in your rice. As you add it it's best if you can kind of crumble it a bit to separate the grains. Now you can add a couple tablespoons of soy sauce and a couple pinches of sugar and some random amount of salt. Now's a good time to give it a taste it and decide whether you want more of any seasonings. Finally, stir in some frozen peas till they're warmed, then I like to add your tofu back in and the green onion last and just stir that through and then eat it and say "Mmm...that's delicious!"

I know that sounds like a lot but this is really a dish that can be made including prep in probably 15 minutes or so once you know what you're doing. The key is to get all your prep out of the way before starting and it will make the actual cooking of the dish quick and easy. Now you know!

And here is a fancy photo I took of one of the last batches we made. Next time we make it I will try to take a better photo and maybe some of the prep along the way to add in.

All about balls.

Ok, so I had to make a new blog just to post about this which will make this my forty-seventh new blog that I will update consistently for three and a half weeks before abandoning like a bag of moldy tangerines. However, it will be worth it if one other person makes these soy balls and enjoys them half as much as we did. For those of you who have never been to Lotus Pond in Victoria it is a killer amazing Buddhist vegan restaurant and they make the most amazing soy balls. I think most omnivores could be easily tricked into thinking they were chicken balls. So after a friend told me her attempt to duplicate them at home had flopped I took this as a challenge and did a little experimenting of my own. To make these you will need:

1 cup all-purpose flour (plus some more for the 'play it by ear' part of making batter)

1 cup cornstarch (plus some more for pre-dipping the balls)

2.5 teaspoons baking powder

2.5 teaspoons baking soda

2.5 teaspoons sugar

1 1/3 cups ice cold water

a ton of vegetable oil

Dehydrated soy ball stuff from Lotus Pond (seitan or tofu would probably also work)

I'm not going to bother posting about the sauce because the one I made the first time wasn't the best and the one I made the second time involved me adding a little of this and a little of that to the point where I wouldn't be able to tell you how to make it. You can also just buy sweet and sour sauce if you're feeling lazy. However, I'll warn you now it's a lot of work and a big mess by the time you're done with the balls so if you're feeling lazy, maybe order in and make these another day.

We ended up making half one day and half the next because I made the mistake of soaking all of the dehydrated inside stuff (yes, that is the technical term.) However this worked out pretty well in our case because we were able to fix our mistakes the next day. I would recommend that you use at most half of the package you buy from Lotus Pond per batch of batter you make up. The bag costs $7.50 and I think probably made about 80 balls but they can be frozen and that's a great way to make it worth the time investment to make these.

Ok, here we go. So...step one: soak your balls. (I am trying not to make too many ball jokes here but c'mon, that one was begging for it.)

The balls should be soaked for at least half an hour in warm'ish water. Once that's done you can get your batter going. So this is the part where I admit that there is more art than science in making these things. If you've ever made pancake batter before it's a similar process of adding more flour until they're working the way you want them to. Typically you'll need more flour than what's listed but just add a bit in at a time until they batter coats the inside filling well and they fluff up nicely in the oil. If you have a deep fryer this will be a lot safer but we used a wok with vegetable oil in it and it worked fine. If you have a thermometer you want the oil somewhere around 140 celcius but the way that worked best for us in figuring out whether the oil was hot enough is just to drop a little batter in it. You'll know it's the right temperature if it floats down to the bottom for just a brief moment and then comes back up. If it sinks and stays down it isn't hot enough yet, if it immediately stays on top and browns your oil is too hot. This is the part where I have to remind you too that water does not put out grease fires and to please have a lid handy in case of emergency. Your soy balls just won't taste as good if you are eating them in the ashes of what used to be your kitchen. (Actually they probably would, they're delicious but I still want you to have a house at the end of this. I'm good like that.)

Alright, so your oils heated, your batter ingredients are mixed. You're ready to make some balls! So here's the trick to get them nice and fluffy. This isn't a dip the ball and let the batter run off of it scenario. We found that the best way to get a nice coating of batter was to scoop the ball up with a lot of batter on a spoon and drop it into the oil with some extra batter. This takes some playing around to get the technique right. The second time we made them we coated them in cornstarch first and that helped but I can't stress enough that if you use a chopstick or something like that you're not going to get that nice fluffy coating of batter. You need to scoop up extra batter each time and make sure a lot of it stays in the oil. This is ideally a two-person job. I was in charge of getting them into the oil, Davis was in charge of getting them out. Other tips? Make sure you don't put too many in at once. This will lower the temperature of your oil and they won't cook right. You'll have to use your best judgement depending on the size of container you're deep frying in but probably 6 at a time is a good starting off point.

Ok, well that's basically it. There's a lot of this recipe that you kind of have to make up as you go along but I did that and it was just fine. Hopefully this will be a good starting off point for you and you'll have balls in your mouth in no time at all! Enjoy.

Bon appetite!

PS At the request of a dear cousin I will be following this post up with an instructional post on how to make delicious fried rice. If I don't have my baby before I get it written. Stay tuned.