Thanks in no small part to my wonderful in-laws, we've had the opportunity to have quite a few nice dinners out recently.  And we've taken advantage of this to try a few new (at least to us) places in the area:

Pampas is a Brazilian steakhouse that just opened in Palo Alto.  And I mean, it just opened -- as in, it opened on Tuesday, 4/29, and we went that weekend.  Not because we're in tune with the buzz on hot new restaurants, of course.  We went because we happened to find it on Open Table; it was in the right location and had an opening at the right time, so we went.  Neither of us had ever been to a Brazilian steakhouse before, but we both enjoyed it quite a bit and thought it would be a really fun place to go for a special event.  We each ordered the rodizio and sidebar which gives you unlimited churrasco-grilled meats and trips to the sidebar.  Considering the amount of meat you can get and the huge number of offerings on the sidebar, the $44 price tag is very reasonable.  We tried a little of each of the meats since we'd never been there before, and our favorites were the picanha, maminha, sirloin filet with garlic and herbs, and the fraldinha; now that we've sampled everything, I think we'll get more of our money's worth the next time we go.  The sidebar was extensive, but I'll admit that with all that yummy meat to try, I didn't pay too much attention to it.  I couldn't tell you what I tried off it, but everything was very good (though obviously nothing was amazing enough for me to be able to remember 1.5 weeks later!).

On Friday, we had dinner with Eric's team and their spouses at Bix.  This was my first Michelin star restaurant experience (I'd have loved to have gone to one of Gordon Ramsay's while we were in London last time, but that wasn't very practical with 3-month-old Jake in tow).  I thought it was pretty amazing, though not the best meal I've ever had.  We shared the  Firecracker Shrimp with Chile Aioli and Tuna Tartare on Olive Toasts appetizers.  The shrimp were just OK, and the aioli was the only thing that saved them from complete mediocrity.  I was a bit apprehensive about the tuna tartare given that I absolutely hate olives, but it was absolutely delicious.  And, yes, I did eat raw fish (tuna, no less) while pregnant (gasp!).  Eric and I shared the arugula salad which hit the spot for me with the earthy arugula greens, tangy citrus, and roasted hazelnuts; Eric's not a huge fan of arugula or hazelnuts and really only got it because I wanted it, but he still seemed to enjoy it.  I chose the Fresh Maine Lobster Spaghetti with Lobster Cream as my entree, and I thought it was great. I was a bit wary of getting it because I usually find spaghetti to be a bit thick and heavy, but this spaghetti was actually very light and delicate and did not overpower the delicate flavor of the lobster.  And there was lots of lobster flavor in this, too, between the lobster cream sauce and the huge chunks of claw meat (which I find to be more delicate and flavorful than tail meat).  And best of all, since Eric doesn't like lobster, I didn't even have to share any with him :)  He had the Kobe "Bavette" Steak which was really good, too.  We also shared a side of the Truffle French Fries for the table.  They were amazing, and I ate so many of them that I was actually a little self-conscious about having so many when no one else was really partaking!  For dessert, Eric and I shared the sorbet of the day which was 2 scoops of strawberry and 2 scoops of mandarin orange which was a refreshing end to an otherwise very rich dinner.  The restaurant is a cool old brick building that you enter from an alley -- very old San Francisco -- and the live music was wonderful.

I think hosting Christmas dinner (which I realize I still haven't posted about) must've given me my cooking mojo back, and after a rather long cooking rut, I've recently tried some new recipes that I feel are post-worthy.  I'm not real good about taking photos before I devour the food, so only a few actually have pics, but I think all of them are good enough to recommend and share:

Fettuccini Carbonara

I had some heavy cream left over from Christmas as well as a shallot that wasn't getting any fresher and some bacon and "fresh" fettuccini in the freezer.  So I decided to give carbonara another try.  I've made it before, but it never really had the same smooth, yummy deliciousness found in the restaurant variety.  And I'm now convinced that it's because other recipes that I've tried didn't include egg yolks which appear to be the key to the sauce.  Be warned, though, this must be eaten immediately, so make sure it's the last thing you finish cooking; if you, say, forget to toss and plate the salad before finishing your sauce, you may miss out on your carbonara in its best state.  But it's still yummy.

Soupa Avgolemono

This is another restaurant favorite (La Mediterranee makes a great one) that I've never been able to replicate.  It's also one of Eric's favorite dishes from when his Greek uncle had a restaurant.  My one attempt at making it, which was also the first time I'd ever had it -- hey, I'm from upstate NY!, was so horrible that I nearly didn't try it at La  Med when I had the chance.  But Eric's insistence that it really is delicious ("when made properly" would be the unspoken phrase here) piqued my curiosity, and OMG is it good.  And it turns out, the recipe found at the above link makes a pretty damn good bowl of lemon egg soup!  I used long grain white rice instead of orzo only because that's how I've always had it, and I (untraditionally) added some shredded chicken meat because I thought this would make Eric a little more OK with having soup as a main dish for dinner.  The chicken adds NOTHING (it would've been better without it), and Eric actually commented that he didn't remember his uncle putting chicken in his avgolemono.  So my advice would be to stick with tradition on this one.

Mini Banana Apple Bran Muffins

Mojitomama's muffin wars post

got me thinking about healthier snacks I could make for Jake.  And wondering why I'd never thought of making mini muffins for him.  I must be very uncreative in the kids' food department.  Or very lazy.  Probably a combination of both.  So I went to the store with every intention of getting all the ingredients I was missing in order to make her carrot-zucchini muffins which look yummy enough for adults, too.  I must admit, I do not keep wheat bran or carrots in the house.  I hate carrots.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find wheat bran at the store.  I'm sure I just missed it, but I ended up coming home with oat bran instead figuring that they couldn't be too different.  And I was all set to make mojitomama's muffins with oat bran...that is, until I actually opened up The Petit Appetit Cookbook that I'd taken out of the library a few weeks ago (and have to return soon) and found the Banana Apple Bran Muffin recipe that used oat bran!  Figuring that I'd have mojitomama's recipe handy to try out later and that I should test run as many of the library cookbook recipes as possible before having to return it, Petit Appetit muffins it was.  Of course, after starting putting everything together, I realized I didn't have applesauce.  But we did have some Harry and David apple butter that was part of a gift basket we received a while back (probably longer ago than I really want to contemplate).  So I used that instead.  I omitted half the sugar (though probably could've gotten away with omitting all of it) since it's sweeter than applesauce and added a bit of apple juice (until the batter looked about the right consistency) because I thought there was probably less liquid in the butter than the sauce, though I probably could've gotten away with out that, as well.  I ended up with way more than the 2 dozen mini muffins indicated in the book (maybe my mini muffin tins are exceptionally mini?), but they were really yummy -- I think I actually like them more than Jake!  I only put banana slices on the number of muffins for which I could get enough out of slicing 1 banana up, and I think I actually like the sliceless ones better.  It kind of grosses me out how the slices get brown and weird looking after baking.  The picture is only of the ones remaining this morning.  I've eaten a lot of muffins in the past day or so. 

I'm excited now that I know fruit/vegetable butters can be substituted for the applesauce.  I bought some TJ's pumpkin butter even though Eric hates pumpkin.  Needless to say, we still have plenty of pumpkin butter.  Perhaps some Pumpkin and Mini-Chocolate Chip Dessert Muffins?  They'd be healthy because of the pumpkin, wheat flour and bran, right?  And I've got the carrots, so I'll be making mojitomama's muffins as soon as I find some wheat bran!

Crockpot Brie with Pecans and Cranberries

My in-laws' friends' daughter started this crockpotting website, and after reading it I've come to the conclusion that I don't use my slow cooker nearly as much as I should be.  This recipe is supposed to be a snack, but it sounded like a pretty damn good and easy dinner to me.  Very French, so it's sophisticated, right?  Instead of candied pecans, I used up some leftover glazed pecans from the salad I'd made for Christmas dinner.  I think I should've just used plain pecans or candied some, because I think the cinnamon, cloves, and allspice flavors were a bit much, but that didn't stop us from eating it all.  IT ALL!  We ate an entire round of brie between the two of us!  That just can't be healthy.  But it was yummy.  I served it with various starches (sliced baguette, crostini, and crackers) that we had hanging around the house as well as some lunch ham slices that needed to be used up (if I'd planned ahead and wanted to be more gourmet, I would've gotten some prosciutto, I suppose) and a granny smith apple.  I think it'd actually be really good with a log of goat cheese instead, too, though I'm not sure you'd want to crockpot (or bake) it -- would it just turn into soup?  I'll have to look into it, because a hot goat cheese, pecan, and cranberry spread sounds mighty yummy right now.  

  

OK, I know I've been horrible about posting lately.  What can I say?  Things have just been so busy.  I know, like everyone else out there isn't busy...

My new job is going really well, though it's keeping me very busy.  Actually, that's a good thing -- it makes the days go by faster.  And its really nice to see that the work I'm doing is making an impact on the program in a very real way.  Definitely helps in the job satisfaction category.  It's also great to have an extra day off each week, though I don't know where the time goes!  After story time every Friday, I drop Jake off at day care so that I can get some work done around the house.  This makes for a much more relaxing and enjoyable weekend because we're now able to spend more time as a family instead of trying like maniacs to get everything done that we didn't get to during the week.  Not that we get everything done now, of course!

Besides the usual stuff keeping us busy these days, we've gotten ourselves into a few more big house projects.  Over the past few weeks we've had about half the house rewired in preparation for drywalling the living room.  My dad is flying out on Friday to spend the week replacing the ugly (fire hazard) panelling with nice new sheetrock, and since we were going to have all the walls in the living and dining rooms opened up, we figured it was the perfect time to upgrade the electrical service and wiring.  And it turns out that the exterior walls in our living and dining rooms were completely uninsulated (which explains a lot), so hopefully we'll be able to get insulation installed before my dad gets here so he can get right to work on the sheetrocking.  We've also been busy planning our other big fall project -- a complete gutting and remodel of the guest bath.  Yay, finally at least one decent bathroom!  Work on that is scheduled to begin after my dad leaves.  We decided to do the demo ourselves to save some money (b/c of course everything always costs at least twice as much as you expect it to), so we'll see how that goes...

We did manage to have a fun and relaxing weekend this past weekend.  We had a free weekend at Meritage Resort in Napa.  It's nice enough, but kind of out of the way for most of the wineries and downtown Napa.  We had some great meals while we there, which, of course, is why one goes to Napa (well, that and the wine).  With the second Bay Area Michelin Guide having just come out, and with so many stars awarded to restaurants in Yountville, we would've loved to have gone to one of them, but of course that doesn't work when you're procrastinators like us!  But we managed to have some fantastic meals, even if they weren't at "star-worthy" restaurants :)  The first night we went to Angele, a really cute, rustic, intimate restaurant on the Napa river in downtown Napa.  I had the magret de canard (my favorite dish to order out), which was excellent, and Eric really enjoyed their braised oxtail special.  Saturday night we went to Hurley's, a 2007 Michelin Guide recommendation in Yountville.  I ordered the Grilled Medallions of Cervena Venison (and took half home to enjoy for lunch), and Eric had the Center Cut Ribeye; both were delicious.  And it was also nice to have a Jake-free weekend to relax, though we missed him, of course!  

Jake has entered an exciting and messy new phase -- he has started wanting to feed himself.  Since he can't use utensils yet, this involves messy highchair tray, hands, face, and of course hair.  The independence is great, but the food throwing and mess leave a bit to be desired.  Still, it does make for some cute pictures.

 

1.  Capresso Coffee Team Therm Coffeemaker

We previously owned a Cuisinart Grind and Brew which gave us about 3 years of decent service.  The major problem with it was that it was such a hassle to clean; there were a ton of parts that had to be cleaned after each use, and the biggest mess was caused by the fact that the steam from the brewing process would get into the grinding apparatus and create a horrible coffee sludge that had to be cleaned after every use.  This also caused the body of the coffee maker to "sweat" and leak coffee sludge onto the hotplate that the carafe was placed on. So every morning you'd end up with sludge in the grinder and baked-on sludge all over the hotplate.  Not pleasant.  Towards the end, it became very unreliable as to whether it would actually brew the coffee; the grinder always worked, but often the coffee would never actually brew or only part of the water would be used.  So we finally decided it was time for a new coffeemaker.  I did a lot of research to find one that would combine all the feature we loved about our Grind and Brew (grinder incorporated and a timer) that didn't have all of its shortcomings.  And the Capresso has it all and more.  The grinder is separate from the brewing chamber, so no more coffee sludge.  And it's a conical burr grinder instead of a mechanical blade, so the beans are more evenly ground AND it's quieter!  The carafe is insulated, so we no longer have to worry about a gunky hotplate, "burnt" tasting coffee, and we can even bring the carafe to the breakfast table with us and it stays HOT!  The only drawback is that the coffee bean "reservoir" in the grinder is too small, so we have to refill it every morning before making coffee.  Maybe we just like our coffee too strong; I'm sure if we played around with the settings a bit more we could get the same strength coffee with fewer beans (a finer grind setting should do it) and solve that problem while also saving some money, but it's a bit low on the priority list right now.

2.  Hoover Windtunnel 2 Bagless Vacuum

After only about 2 years, our old Bissell essentially stopped working.  Sure, it turned on, but the rugs were not clean no matter how many times I went over and over them with this useless vacuum.  Eric would clean out all of the filters and hoses, and it would sort of work again for a few uses, but then it'd be back to its old ways.  Not good when you have cats and a baby.  So after about a year of that we finally caved and bought a new vacuum.  And our rugs are actually clean now!  No more halo of cat hair remnants covering the rugs!  And the best part is that the upholstery attachment actually works, too!  This, of course, makes all the little tools and gadgets we bought for the purpose of removing cat hair from the sofas and chairs useless, but our furniture is actually free of cat hair!  And it only takes one pass with the vacuum to accomplish this.  It's quite liberating.  The other wonderful thing about the attachments and tools is that the handle of the vacuum actually releases when using the attachments; so instead of holding a hose, you're holding what seems like a hand-held vacuum.  And now, looking through the pics on different websites, I'm realizing I've only hit the tip of the attachment iceburg -- I had no idea that it also detached in this manner!

3.  Quaker Soy Crisps

I actually bought these because I was looking for new snacks for Jake and these were on sale; I thought they'd be more like little rice cakes that I could break up for him to snack on (I guess I should've just gotten their Quakes rice cake snacks).  So I was a little disappointed when I opened the bag to see things that looked more like potato chips than mini rice cakes.  I decided to try them since they didn't look suitable for Jake and they were delicious!  So delicious, in fact, that I stopped at the store the next afternoon to pick up more of the white cheddar flavor and 1 bag of the BBQ flavor to try it out while they were on sale.  The best thing about these is that I feel satisfied after eating less than half the bag (they're small bags -- about 3 servings per bag), and each serving is only 4.5g of fat (only 0.5g of which is saturated) and 120 calories!  No, actually the best thing about them is that they're soooo yummy!

4.  Wine Away

Not only has this amazing product saved a number of tablecloths, but recently it's saved a number of nice pieces of baby clothing!  Jake's gotten significantly messier in his eating habits lately, and we've ended up with lots more stains than we used to.  I first used it as a last ditche effort to try to save a nice Janie & Jack cardigan of his that had blueberry stains all over it, and I was thrilled to see the stains melt away with Wine Away after every other method I could find had failed.  I've since used it to remove raspberry and cherry stains, as well.

 

5.  WEQX
This was the radio station I listened to in high school.  Shortly after I moved to California, I discovered that they were streaming over the internet, and I started listening to it at work; unfortunately they stopped streaming shortly thereafter.  I then moved onto listening to one of my favorite local Bay Area radio stations at work until the Big Brother Internet Police at my current place of employment blocked access to their stream feed.  I then turned to what was, at the time, a relatively new local station that I came to absolutely love, MAX-FM.  Until they were unceremoniously (and without warning) replaced by (of all things) a country station a few weeks ago (The Wolf:  The bay area's fresh country - Ick!!!!).  The only good that has come of this is that, as I was forced to find another radio station's steaming audio to listen to at work, I found that WEQX started streaming again sometime in the past 3 years!  I'd forgotten how great that station is -- I hear R.E.M. at least 5 times a day now, though I could handle not hearing #9 Dream again for a while :)

We're back in our house (more on that later) and can get to our computer, so now I can finally post some of the footage we got of Jake while we were in exile.  While camping out at Grandma and Grandpa's house, Jake was introduced to a whole new world of food -- finger foods!  He especially came to love Cheerios, and he and Grandma enjoyed their Cheerios together nearly every morning last week.  Over the 2 weeks since he's been eating them, Jake's gotten quite proficient at popping them in his mouth, though we do still end up with quite a few on the floor...Here's a video of him taking a few from me, eating them, and then clapping for himself that I took last week:

 

Jake is also officially no longer a vegetarian.  He's tried both chicken and turkey and seems to have really liked them.  He still has a strong preference for veggies over fruit, though he seems to really enjoy prunes -- what's wrong with this kid?!?  But he also loves cheese just like his parents, so there have to be a few working taste buds in there!  Grandma had a great time feeding Jake while we were still at their house.  The two of them would crack each other up at every meal as you can see in the following video:

On the sleeping front, we seem to have gotten it down for the most part.  Even in a Pack 'N Play and being shuffled into a different room halfway through our stay at Grandma and Grandpa's, Jake slept like a pro.  We just had to make sure his teddy bear and blankie were in there for him.  Unfortunately, he's not as easily entertained as he used to be, particularly when we're out.  For a while there, Jake was always really good whenever we took him out; I think it was because there was always so much for him to see.  But our latest grocery shopping trip was a nightmare reminiscent of trips to the mall when he was a newborn...until a big red balloon caught his eye.  Yes, I bought a stupid balloon to shut my kid up for the rest of our outing.  Yes, I am already bribing him, and he's not even 10 months old.  Yes, I am disappointed in myself.  But he loves that balloon!  He carried it around with him all evening, even while he played with other toys!  No, I do not regret bribing buying him with that balloon.

Now that he's 9 months old and I'm trying to prepare for weaning at 12 months, Jake's been trying a lot of new foods.  He seems to really enjoy bits of mozzarella cheese, yogurt, and especially Cheerios!  He's gotten quite good at popping them in his mouth himself, too, though it's always one at a time.  I was able to get a great video of him doing just that and clapping afterwards, quite proud of himself.  Unfortunately, we're still not back in our house, so I am still unable to post it...

Yes, that's right, we're still not able to return to our house.  Yes, we originally thought we'd be able to move back in on Sunday.  But it turned out that things went a bit beyond the original timeline, and the third and final coat of polyurethane only went on yesterday afternoon.  Which means we can't move back into the house until Wednesday night at the earliest.  Since that's a week night and there's no way we'll get felt pads on the bedroom furniture and our bed and Jake's crib put back together in time to sleep in them that night, we're just going to wait until the weekend to move back in.  In the meantime, Eric's parents have graciously allowed us to stay with them even though they've returned from vacation.  Even more graciously, they've allowed the kitties to remain there even though they are not exactly animal lovers.  That just shows you what lengths Grandma will go to in order to have Jake closeby :)

Once we're settled back in, pics of the beautiful new floors and all of Jake's new tricks will eventually be posted here.  In the meantime, here are a few pics my aunt sent from Christmas.

 

 

Today Jake saw Santa for the first time!  He did very well, though he wouldn't smile for the pictures.  But we got a really cute one of him looking at Santa which is very similar to one of his Daddy with Santa when he was little.  Of course, we had to prompt the teenager manning the camera to actually take it!  But she caught it, which is all that matters.

 

After seeing Santa, we went to the tree lot to pick out Jake's first Christmas tree.  Mommy put his Christmas hat on him at the lot even though it was pretty nice out today.  We found the perfect tree and spent the rest of the afternoon putting it up and decorating it and the rest of the house.  Jake was pretty bored with this and decided to take a nap after putting his Christmas Doll on the tree...

 

Which brings us to Day 3's advent gift.  My family has this tradition that I've never heard of anyone else doing, and I don't know where it comes from (though I'm guessing it comes from somewhere in northern Europe since it's my Mom's side of the family from which the tradition comes).  Each member

of the family has a doll that goes on the Christmas tree.  The dolls go on first thing after the lights, before any other ornaments go on.  The oldest person puts his or hers on first, and then it goes chronologically down the family with each younger person putting their doll lower on the tree than the previous person.  My parents just found a doll for Jake, and since they're back in NY and there was no way the doll could get here in time for us to decorate our tree when we wanted to, we used the Royal Soldier ornament that Daddy brought Jake back from England as a surrogate.  This surrogate Christmas doll was his Day 3 advent gift.

Tonight Jake tried cauliflower for the first time.  Now we know when Jake definitely does NOT like a food.  These faces were the best yet, and after a few bites he started spitting it out.  So I guess he doesn't hate apples after all, because at least he doesn't spit them out!

We've attempted to add another food to Jake's ever-growing repertoire -- we tried bananas Sunday morning.  I thought he'd love them -- they're sweet, but not too strongly flavored.  But, like nearly everything else he's tried, he's not too sure about them.  He doesn't make the horrible faces that he does with apples, but he refused to eat anymore after about a dozen bites -- the first time he's done that!  Even apples he'll keep eating, funny faces and all.  He loves his rice cereal now and enjoys sweet potatoes and pears.  And we've found that he'll happily eat his apples mixed in with the rice cereal (good news since we've got pounds of applesauce cubes frozen away).  But Mommy's special "Jacob Milk" still seems to be his favorite (hence my nickname for him, "Milk Monster"), which makes me feel good, especially considering how hard it's been to get enough of it for him since going back to work (even now that we've started on real foods!). 

Jacob's other nicknames:

1. Jake (obviously)
2. Little Man
3. The Boy
4. Mr. Chunkers
5. Mr. Cranky Pants
6. Mr. Poopy Pants (especially in the "blowout" phase)
7. Gorgeous (only I call him that)
8. Voldemort, aka "He Who Shall Not Be Named" (my best friend's nickname for him while I was pregnant since we kept his name a secret)
9. Jose (before he was born, referring to my consumption of copious numbers of chile rellenos from our local taqueria during my pregnancy)

 
Jasmine's (oldest cat) nicknames:

1. The Bitch (guess we should stop calling her that now that there are little ears around)
2. Jazz
3. Jessamine
4. Jessamina

Owen's (youngest cat) nicknames:

1. Owens
2. Mr. O
3. Mr. Owens
4. Double O

 Reading these lists, some may ask if we ever call our child or our pets by their real names...the answer is:  very rarely.  But I bet when Jake gets into trouble when he's older he'll hear "Jacob Thomas" a lot!

Unfortunately, it seems that Jake just does not like apples.  I thought it may have been because of the texture since they're coarser than the other two foods he'd previously tried (rice cereal and sweet potatoes), but last night we tried pears for the first time and LOVED them.  Since they have a texture so similar to apples, I'm guessing he just doesn't like apples much.  This is exceedingly unfortunate since I finally tried out my Fruit and Vegetable Strainer and Grinder attachment for my Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer (that we got 2.5 years ago for our wedding and haven't used yet) this weekend and made a HUGE batch of pureed apples.  Looks like Mommy and Daddy might have a lot of applesauce to eat!