A Quicker Blog Post

Today I will be trying to make this blog post as brief as possible because I am currently in my hometown and would like to spend as much time away from a computer as possible (naturally the iPad doesn't count!).

I only have one thing I would like to touch on for a minute and that would be how doctors and the media have influenced our everyday thinking. Now, this is one of my biggest topics, something I could talk about for a long time, but I am going to suffice to say this: people forget how things were before "The Change." The Change could be as simple as how fudge used to be made (with sugar and cocoa and no corn syrup) compared to how it's made today (evaporated milk and chocolate chips). While the result is somewhat similar, flavor and texture is somewhat compromised due to sheer laziness because of a shortcut method someone came up with. Or The Change could be something much larger, in my example people saying that pregnant women need folic acid. Before people knew about folic acid, what happened? Were people born with all sorts of defects? No, that doesn't make sense because those people would be our grandmothers and grandfathers and most of them are perfectly fine. Was childbirth more intense? No more than today I would think. So then what is it? Ahh, the doctors. Those doctors. Someone did a study somewhere along the line and discovered that folic acid was one of the nutrients babies developing in the womb used the most. Thus the connection was born, pun intended. So when someone asks me how I'm getting enough folic acid without taking a prenatal vitamin, I can simply say I'm doing it the old-fashioned way; not worrying about it and letting the natural/organic food I eat nourish my body and my baby, the way God intended.

Lastly, I am going to talk about recipes, as usual. I made everything I said I was going to make and even better than that I have good news! I have at least two more weeks of baking. I'm very happy about this. This week don't expect much by way of baking. I will be making four bundt cakes for my baby shower (on Saturday already, yikes!) and possibly a lemon curd. Anything else is a bonus!

French silk pie... that combination of words leave you feeling wrapped in velvet. The best part about this recipe is, no raw eggs. Normally, raw eggs don't bother me but I am pregnant. I only had 3/4 of a cup of whipped cream which ended up being just fine. I followed Brown Eyed Baker's recipe, plus Allrecipe's basic pie crust recipe and it turned out fantastically. Hint for the pie crust: use a bread or higher protein flour, it makes the dough WAY easier to work with!

Completed pie. Doesn't it look amazing? My whole fridge smelled like chocolate.

I had never made or tasted French silk pie before. It came out fabulously.

I did make the stuffed cheese buns, which were delicious but I think the next time what I'll do is up the oven temperature to 400 or 425 because they didn't brown enough. Thanks to Yammie's Noshery for the recipe! (P.S.: Any kind of cheese will do for the inside!)

Cheese buns. See? They didn't brown at all, except on the bottom. Next time I will up the oven temperature, or maybe spread some butter on them before baking.

The inside was wonderful though. So amazing.

So after weeks of talking about curd, I finally made a raspberry curd. I ended up tweaking the recipe a bit from About.com's, and then some more... and it really ended up being my recipe in the end. I hope you enjoy, it was quite yummy!

Raspberry Curd

Makes about 1 1/2 Cups

I know, only one picture. But hey, how many pictures can you make out of a smooth custard-y substance?

Ingredients:

Between 2 and 3 Cups of Raspberries, Fresh or Frozen (use a little more if frozen)

1 Tablespoon Lemon (or lime depending on your taste) Juice

1/4 Cup Sugar

2 Eggs

3 Tablespoons Butter

Directions:

1) If you're using frozen raspberries, thaw until room temperature.

2) Put the berries in a small pot over medium-low heat and cook, stirring constantly for about 5 minutes or until the juices run out of the berries and it begins to look like a thick, juicy sauce.

3) Put the now liquidy berries in a sieve, colander with a cheese cloth, or other extracting device. Use the back of a wooden spoon to extract as much of the juices out of the raspberries as possible into a heatproof bowl. Note: raspberry seeds are very small and some may still make their way through. If this doesn't bother you, no worries, otherwise re-strain as necessary. Discard leftover pulp.

4) Place a medium pot with about an inch and a half of water on the bottom over medium-low heat and bring to a simmer. Meanwhile, add the lemon juice, sugar, and eggs and whisk to combine. Once combined, add butter.

5) Place the heatproof bowl over the simmering water (creating a double boiler) and whisk or stir constantly until the butter has melted and until the mixture coats the back of a spoon, about 20-30 minutes. You will know when this happens because the transformation is surprisingly sudden and quite obvious. My batch even lightened in color.

6) Remove from heat and continue to stir for about five minute. Place curd in a glass jar or other sealed container and refrigerate. You now have a delicious spreadable substance you can use on desserts, fruit, chocolate, bread... anything you desire!

Lastly, I made homemade peppermint patties. They were outstanding and I give complete credit to Oh Nuts for a wonderfully accurate recipe. (Except mine made way more than what the recipe said... it could have been the way I rolled and cut them.) You can substitute the cream for half-and-half (I didn't have any cream) and I imagine you could substitute it for any non-dairy milk as well. This is pretty easily made dairy free.

My fiance and my friend Justin both asked me what the inside was made out of. Want to find out? Click the recipe link above!

Finished peppermint patties. I know, I'm supposed to use parchment, not plastic wrap. Well, it just so happens that plastic wrap works pretty well and I didn't have parchment paper.

That's it! Really! I have quite a lot to do this week. My stomach is now getting noticeably bigger every day... which is weird but also good. I like knowing my child is growing correctly! I hope everyone has a nice week!

Third Trimester Begins - Twenty-Eight Week Mark

The weather for many of us here in the northeast has been a little weird.

For example, before yesterday we had two or three days of straight sunshine and about 60 degrees. Then yesterday we were at like 40 degrees with a mix of rain and snow. And now, today, our high is 74 with sunshine (after this fog clears). What's in store for us tomorrow? Rain and high of 62, then on Wednesday the high is only around 39. April! What a crazy weather month.

Normally I write a blog post on Tuesday or Wednesday but because I'm leaving on Friday to go to New York and because Thursday is a crazy day for me, and because I have a bit of cooking/baking I want to get in before then, I have decided to post today.

Not much has been going on or changed much since last week, which is unusual for me because normally I find I have a lot more to talk about. I have the usual recipe list, but I do have a few pregnancy things worth mentioning.

I consider the beginning of my third trimester technically tomorrow, although my official due date would make it today. The reason I consider it tomorrow is because my initial due date was on a Wednesday and I averaged the two days. (For my timer above I put my official due date.) Just as when you have a birthday, you don't really feel any different than you did the day before when you go from one trimester to the next. As far as birthdays go, twenty-one is the big year for Americans because it's the year they can officially drink, of course fifteen is a big age for those who are Latin celebrating their Quinceañera, and there are plenty of people who consider eighteen to be the year of adulthood. Personally, eighteen was the year that was big for me even though when I turned eighteen I felt no differently than I had the day before. But people look at you differently. When someone says, "I'm seventeen," the thought is automatically, "well, they're still a teenager." When someone turns eighteen you start to think, "well, they're an adult now," even though we are all aware of them still being young. This is kind of how I feel about being in my third trimester.

The first trimester everyone is always worried about miscarriage. This is a large reason why most people don't tell anyone they are pregnant or expecting a child until the start of the second trimester. Also, no one really shows when they're just starting out their pregnancy. You feel awful, nauseous and all that comes with being in your first trimester. I didn't feel that awful during that time, I was really tired and I felt a little like I was coming down with a cold or something, not to mention my sense of smell and taste was a little weird, but by and large I was okay (other than a stressful job). But those first weeks of being pregnant doesn't normally come with a whole lot of excitement.

By your second trimester, you're feeling better, maybe a little nauseous still but pretty good. People often call this the "honeymoon" phase of the pregnancy. News is spread, you start to show a little... then a little more, you think of baby names, you find out (or leave it to be a surprise) the gender, you buy maternity clothes, think of all the things you are going to buy for your baby, plan baby showers, feel the baby's kicks for the first time... But for those of you who currently are or have been pregnant, the second trimester no one really "feels" pregnant. Yes, of course you know there's a creature inside of you wiggling around, eating your food, making you gain weight, but because most women generally feel so upbeat and good during the second trimester it's like pregnancy is more of a fantasy than a reality. You look in the mirror and think: "Wow! That's not what I looked like yesterday!" Even though you really did look that way the day before. This is also the time when strangers look at you and you know they're thinking: "Hmm... is she pregnant? Maybe she's not..." By the end of the second trimester, people just look at you because they know you are.

The third trimester. This is really the time you are "pregnant." There's no hiding it, those baby kicks can be seen from the outside, you feel tired and look huge. The baby is completely viable by this time so you know that if you did go into labor early, your baby would survive although with medical care. People are definitely staring at you now, there's no doubt about it. Standing up starts to become a chore, being useful is something you'd like to be but don't know if you can. I've been pretty fortunate to have not had to work since the end of January, but it can be lonely sitting around and not having anyone to talk to. (This will certainly change on Friday!) The point I'm making here is even though I don't feel any different physically than I did yesterday, I know that this is the real deal. The home stretch. If I'm to give birth on my due date I have 12, yes, 12 weeks left. It seems like so little time. Three months. Eighty-four days. Shudder.

I have pretty much gotten over the childbirth fear at this point, which is remarkable considering it was always one of my top four or five fears. (I'll never get over my fear of leeches!) For those of you who are still anxious about it and hope to move past it, this is what has worked for me: First of all, it will hurt. Even if you decide to get every drug available to you, it will hurt at the beginning. But, something I have constantly read is that going into labor really feels almost like stomach cramps. Women, we all know cramp feelings. I'm not one who's afraid of pain, but for those of you who are, if you can handle cramps you're already halfway there. Another thing that's helped me, believe it or not, is the fact that there have been millions of women who have done this before and many of them have had more than one child. Our body is designed to do this, whether we like it or not. It's the ultimate natural process. We know what to do because it's almost primal. Third, there comes a point in the pregnancy where you start to not care so much about it. You start to think: "well, the end result is me holding the child I created." You get to see what your hard work produced. What color is that hair? How about those eyes? When you start to think of it as something you have to go through to get something you really want your perception changes. It's like getting up on a payday to go to work. You must go, whether you want to or not, because at the end, there's the money you worked so hard for. Lastly, the thing that has helped me is being through with the pregnancy. Like I said last week, my pregnancy has been pretty good, but I still don't like being uncomfortable. Once you give birth, yes there is recovery (bleck) and then there's the new journey of having a baby to raise, but those nine months of hard work are over. It's done. While these thoughts may not help everyone, this is what has worked for me.

I don't buy that you forget about the pain of childbirth after the baby is born. I think the proof of that is if you ask any mother about the birth of their child. What I do believe is you're so happy to get your baby is that the pain stops. Euphoria will do that kind of thing. I can't say for sure because I still have yet to give birth, but I'm pretty sure it's worth the pain. It's like surgery, if you don't get that tumor/growth/problem resolved you're going to suffer but after the surgery is done, yes of course you need to recover, but you feel so much better after it's over.

The only pregnancy discomfort worth noting this week is my restless leg syndrome (RLS). I hate this. I was so hoping this was one pregnancy symptom I would not have. You just have this compulsive feeling to move your legs. Granted, I've been fairly sedentary the last few months, so part of it is probably do to lack of movement. One other reason for RLS could be anemia. Sigh, that's all I need is a doctor to tell me I'm anemic, again. When I had my blood drawn at the beginning of my pregnancy, I was so slightly anemic it really wasn't even worth mentioning. But that dietitian made sure I knew. Argh. There's no winning here. They want to take a blood sample from me on Thursday. Ha. I might just say no. I'm pretty sure my baby needs as much blood as possible.

On a happy note, it seems like my fiance and I have agreed on a baby name. On the off 1% chance that it does happen to be a girl, I'm still in the process of locating a good name. More on that later.

So, we're on to the final segment of my blog post, my recipes. I worked with six recipes this past week, down from eight last week. Before I get started on this, I did not take pictures of my dark chocolate truffles... and for the life of me I can't think why. I must have had a pregnancy brain moment. Last week I mentioned I would have a recipe for it, well, it was 1/2 cup of heavy cream and eight ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips. They were rolled in cocoa powder. They looked like a darker form of my white chocolate truffles, but they were harder to roll, I'm assuming because of the less amount of cocoa butter. Anyway, now that that's out of the way, let's start!

Baked beans. So much can be said about the history of this fine meal. First of all, the fact that it wreaks havoc on your poor digestive system and I think I have found the reason why: mustard powder. I think this because my fiance used mustard powder in his tuna steak dish from last night and I was hurting today. That was the only similarity besides Worcester sauce and I don't think I have an issue with that. Nevertheless, the beans were delicious and I have picture below. The recipe I used is from Allrecipes and I didn't change anything. I did use Canadian bacon, more flavor, less fat. I made it in an 8x8 pan covered with aluminum foil. Worked out pretty well!

Baked beans never look good, but they are tasty!

If you think about the one "breakfast dessert" that is brought to every church function and small get together, what is it you think of? It's not cinnamon rolls, very few people take the time to make that. The answer? Coffee cake. My friend Justin and I talked about coffee cake, it's not really a cake at all, more of a sweet bread covered in crumblies known as streusel. I found this recipe also at Allrecipes, but I did alter it slightly. It was really fantastic! Recipe and pictures below.

Basic, Delicious Coffee Cake

About 16 small slices

My cooked, delicious coffee cake!

A slice. I love the crumblies!

 Ingredients:

2 Cups Flour

1/2 Cup Sugar

2 Teaspoons Baking powder

1/2 Teaspoon Salt

1/2 Cup Butter

1 Egg

Milk as Needed (about 3/4 cup or so)

1 1/2 Teaspoons Vanilla Extract

Streusel Topping:

1/4 Cup Flour

1/3 Cup White Sugar

1/3 Cup Brown Sugar

1 Teaspoon Cinnamon

1/4 Cup Butter (1/2 stick or 4 tablespoons)

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour an 8x8 inch pan.

2) To make the streusel, combine ¼ cup flour, ½ cup white sugar, ½ cup brown sugar, and 1 teaspoon in a medium bowl and mix. Cut in ¼ cup of butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Place in refrigerator for later use.

3) In a large bowl, combine 2 cups flour, ½ cup sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and ½ teaspoon salt. Stir. Cut in ½ cup butter into dry ingredients until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. In a 1 cup measuring device, crack the egg and add enough milk to make one full cup. Mix briefly, then pour into batter with 1 ½ teaspoons of vanilla extract. Stir until just combined, be careful not to over-mix. Spread into prepared ban, mixture will be thick. Bake in oven for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle streusel evenly over the top of the cake. Place back in the oven for another 20-30 minutes, being sure to check for doneness. Cool for 20 minutes before eating.

As you all know, I've been on a baking kick lately however I do love to cook. I made braised chicken thighs the other night for dinner with a new sauce I found, "gastrique." This simple, deceptive glaze is so good, you'll pour it over vegetables, fruits, meats, desserts... I'm exaggerating a bit but you really will pour it over just about everything you can think of. I thank a new site/person for this recipe, David Lebovitz. He originally adapted this from Bobby Flay but David's site is where I found this. The recipe is 1/4 cup honey to 1/2 cup of apple cider vinegar with salt and pepper to taste. I didn't caramelize the honey first, which probably would have added even more to the depth of the flavor, but it was still amazing. Click on the link and make it yourself. Gluten/dairy free and just amazing. Yum.

You can't really see it, but it's the liquid that's surrounding the chicken. Very good.

¡Carmelitas! I've been saying this word for the last few days. I've been dying to make these dessert bars and I finally got the chance the other day. I even made my very own caramel sauce, although by strict definition it is probably more of a butterscotch sauce. I can't take any credit for these recipes, I followed yet another Allrecipes recipe for the bars themselves omitting the walnuts (I made them in an 8x8 pan and cooked them an extra 5 minutes longer at the end) and for the caramel sauce I followed The Pioneer Woman's recipe, but halved it. It made plenty. They were delicious, I ate only a half of one while my fiance ate all of the rest. A winner!

Completed carmelitas.

Look at those layers. Oats, chocolate, caramel/butterscotch, and more oats. Mmm!

I'm a big bread fan. This definitely comes from my mother's side of the family even though my mother, my grandmother, and now my sister eat gluten free. I love a nice crusty loaf of bread, which is ideal for me because of the nice dense crust and the soft, chewy interior. Soft crusts just don't do it for me. Nothing to bite on. Anyway, I found this really great French bread recipe from Mel's Kitchen Cafe which I love because it worked out so well for me the first time out. It's a bit of a process, and I halved the recipe because I only needed/wanted one loaf but it's really great. So great that my fiance made half of it into cheesy garlic bread and I'll probably make another loaf today.

I know it looks a little bloated, but it's just the way it was shaped when I rolled it. Still turned out amazing.

The garlic bread was so good. My fiance's a really good cook.

I really only get to bake until Thursday so I've had to narrow down what I'm making for my final week. First and foremost is the raspberry curd. I hadn't gotten around to that though I will now. I will also be making a French silk chocolate pie. I haven't done a pie yet so this will hopefully be a good one (I don't do pies because normally they're fruit based; I don't like cooked fruit). I also plan on making peppermint patties, which should be delicious, and lastly cheese buns, which are just little rolls stuffed with cheese. I feel like I have a good variety for my last week and I'm excited about it. Today I'll probably make both the silk pie and another bread. This is probably my last week doing new baking for a while! I can't believe it.

Next time I post I will be in New York but I will provide information on baking, travels, and my next prenatal visit. So much excitement is coming up!