Family Dinner

Dinner and everything that surrounds it, the planning, the shopping, the cooking, is within my realm of our marriage. I think Brian would agree me on this, although he's definitely stepped up in his role as sous chef in these early months of pregnancy when the fatigue hits around dinnertime. However, in general, I'm in charge of dinner. (Brian is in charge of: the dishes, paying bills, killing bugs in our house, moving heavy things and generally being sexy down in the woodworking shop.)

Here's how dinner works in our house
Planning:
I read a multitude of food blogs, favorites including The Kitchn, Smitten Kitchen, Dinner a Love Story and others. Also magazines like Southern Living, Garden and Gun and sometimes a stray Bon Appetite (Gourmet, you are still missed). Then we include the cookbook collection. That gives meal inspiration.
I cross that inspiration with our calendar - when can we eat together, who's got an evening meeting, bible study, ultimate frisbee game, etc. This gets plugged in, and notes when we need to eat leftovers or a quick meal, or when we can take a leisurely time grilling and enjoying the evening.
Chosen meals for week- balancing proteins (chicken, fish, pork, beef, a veggie meal) - get plugged into their designated spots and voila!  A grocery list is born.

Grocery list:
Get divided by store section. (Shut up, it's anal, I know). Usually we shop together (mostly to keep me from going off list and spending all our money for the week).

Next week's meal plan and grocery list

From here on out, it's just cooking the meals!

Grilled salmon from this month's Bon Appetite over Pesto Linguine inspired by the cover

Cheap Girl Pesto 

For when you've got a bounty of spinach and basil, but you're too cheap to pay up for pine nuts.

Two big handfuls of fresh basil

One handful of fresh spinach

Small package almonds (skins on or off, I like both)

Salt 

Lemon juice to taste

Olive oil 

Toss everything except the olive oil in a food processor and pulse a few times. Then, while the processor is running, drizzle in the olive oil until it's the consistency you like. I like mine more toothsome and nutty, less sauce-y. Taste for salt and brightness (lemon!).  

This made enough to toss with an entire box of linguine. 

A Plum-sized baby

Over the past week, Brian and I announced to the world at large (via our families and Facebook) that we're expecting our first child in early January. I'm 12 weeks pregnant today, the baby (according to the internets) is the size of a plum. We heard the heartbeat three weeks ago on the Doppler monitor, an unusually clear and strong heartbeat for only 9 weeks along. Doctor K said it was a good sign.

I've been blessed with an easy pregnancy so far- no nausea, no weird food things. I'm tired and hungry all the time. I seem to be less interested in meat and more interested in vegetarian food, so that's the weirdest food thing I've got going on.

We're beyond thrilled to become parents sooner rather than later!

Our beach-y baby announcement.

The newborn onesie my sweet Aunt and Uncle sent, upon hearing news of our baby. It's so cute!!

And while I'm not showing and there's no point in taking weekly pictures yet, my garden is up and running. Here's the garden at 12 weeks pregnant.

Beach Reading

I have to admit that I go totally antisocial on a vacation like the beach trip. I have a hard time turning off my brain and just sitting (for hours on end on the beach), so my deal is, if we aren't going to DO things, I'm going to READ things. LOTS of things. I read FAST. So here's my beach trip reading list, divided into two sections:

Brain Cell Promoting:
Into Thin Air, a personal account of the Mount Everest disaster, by John Krakauer
The cassoulet saved our marriage: true tales of food, family and how we learned to eat
Love, Water, Memory, by Jenny Shortridge
Calling Me Home, Julie Kibler
Escape from Camp 14, one man's remarkable odyssey from North Korea to freedom in the West, by Blaine Harden

Brain Cell Deleting: 
Silver Girl, The Beach Club, and Nantucket Nights, by Elin Hilderbrand (She's a perfect beach trip author)
The Perfect Hope, by Nora Roberts (Shut up, it's a BEACH TRIP)

And we've got a few books on cd for the 32 hour total trip:
The Hunger Games, book one
Ender's Game (a favorite from 7th grade and the movie is coming out this summer!)
Dad is Fat, by Jim Gaffigan. Stand-up on family life as a book, read by the author? Yes please.

Plus I've got a couple missional communities books from church that I haven't cracked yet, so I might dive into those. Between Brian and I, we're probably bringing fifteen books. I mean, we need a whole suitecase just for our reading materials.

This being a time of the Seven fasts right now, I'd also like to point out that this canon of materials is comprised entirely from the library. I love you library! You're my favorite!

Spring Round-up

A Memorial Day weekend project: Brian built us a planter! 

 This took a few more hours than he thought it would.

And after all that, we had to shovel out all this compost from the back of our car! 

The next weekend we flew to North Carolina for Joe and Maria's wedding. Here's where they got married: 

Insanely gorgeous, right? Duh. 

My handsome husband, standing up in his super-sexy tux. 

Finally, it's Media Week for Seven, again. We've turned off the tv. (Well, sort of. We watched Mad Men on Sunday night.) But otherwise we've been playing games, reading books, dropping in to see friends, hanging out with my parents and taking long after dinner walks to the library and bakery. This is the sun setting over Shorewood last night. We have to remember to turn off the tv more often. It's such a relief to just be together, instead of being together on the couch. 

Favorite recent recipes:

101cookbook's lemon risotto. I make it with brown rice, which takes forever, but it's worth it. 

Smitten Kitchen's yogurt panna cotta. A decadent breakfast. Make individual servings on Sunday and you've got breakfast all week! I used regular vanilla yogurt and skipped adding sugar. Instead of honey and walnuts, I made a rhubarb-strawberry compote.

I used to make this in my single-girl apartments in Chicago: Orangette's peanut-citrus noodles. A favorite standby. 

This chocolate-banana smoothie was a first breakfast one day last week. (I'm on two breakfasts right now. Morning = hungry time. Dinner = ehhh.) 

We head to Myrtle Beach starting on Friday afternoon, for a week of family time, ocean, beach, books, and NAPPING. I can't wait.