The circle of life

They say that you need 500 extra calories a day while breastfeeding. My experience has been that I need *way* more than that. I was a bit overweight when I got pregnant, and ended up gaining only about 15 pounds. Two weeks post-partum, I was down to my biking-season weight: about 20 pounds lighter than I was pre-pregnancy. I am also hungry ALL THE TIME.

Here's what I've eaten today:
  *A bowl of cereal with raisins, dates, and walnuts
  *Half a bowl of udon noodles with beef and broccoli
  *Half a rice crispie bar
  *A BLT sub with mayo and cucumbers
  *A large chocolate chip cookie
  *An extravagant handful of cheezits
  *A full fat blackberry yogurt
  *Half a salad with walnuts, blue cheese, cranberries, and apples
  *Half a slice of cheesecake
  *Six perogies with cheese, bacon, and sour cream

Granted, I've also been hauling box after box out of the basement, so this is a bit more than I'd usually eat. But not much!

It's a little weird when you think about it. She eats stuff that I produce. Which means that my body basically is an elaborate mechanism for turning cheezits into baby thighs. Delicious delicious baby thighs.

I made those cheeks. And those hands. NOM!

Even the word "waddle" is inelegant.

I'm sitting on a whole mess of blog post ideas right now. But I'm dealing with some major job-market craziness right now (there's one of the blog posts!) so they will have to stew around in my brain for a few more days.

But I am definitely feeling more pregnant these days, so I thought that I would check in briefly with some modest revelations.

1) I'm getting bigger! I have a decided leading edge these days--my belly protrudes a good 2-3 inches further than it used to. I have decided to measure my belly's progress by the depth of my belly button, which is getting frighteningly shallow.

2) On a similar note, I've had a few belly-related incidents lately. I have bumped several restaurant patrons with it, and had at least one plate-tipping incident at a physics-department function.

3) That said, the extent to which my belly flies it's colors publicly depends heavily on what I'm wearing. I'm not nearly as big as the average 4-to-5-month-pregnant lady, and in an appropriate set of clothes, I barely look pregnant at all. I tried on my suit this afternoon (I have a preliminary interview tomorrow) and not only did it fit (barely), but with the jacket buttoned, I look remarkably like my pre-pregnancy self. At the same time, slap a t-shirt on me, and I'm definitely belly-tacular.

4) Despite being in the land of candy-pooping unicorns known as the second trimester, being pregnant still sucks. Among the many sucky elements are the following:

*I'm only allowed to sleep on my left side. I hate sleeping on only one side.

*A variety of pelvic pain from relaxin-related tendon stretching

*Severely limited diet coke consumption

*Leg cramps

*Hip cramps

*Foot cramps (detect a pattern?)

*Very little sleep, despite limited diet coke consumption

*An increasingly waddle-like gait

*Constant hunger

5) On the plus side, the constant hunger means that I have the green light to eat some things that would normally be off the menu--namely, red meat. I apparently let myself get a wee bit deficient in something, because I have been engaged in a week-long red meat binge. It started with an emergency late-night ground beef run. I knew that I was in trouble when I looked at that pile of emergency beef and had an overwhelming urge to eat the whole pound raw. Since then, Ross has made me steak twice and I've had at least one (usually two) meals a day containing red meat.

6) I feel much better now, thank you.

7) Waddling is a very inefficient method of locomotion. I have yet to determine who I complain to about this.

8) This would be much easier without narcolepsy. On the other hand, I've had some really epic freaky dreams, including one featuring zombie superman. It turns out that zombie superman is a real bastard.

9) Ross is wonderful. But you knew that already.

Maybe I'm gestating a truck driver...

I'm trying to eat good for the goober. I really am. But sometimes he/she makes it SO HARD. For example, take a look at the current good list/bad list.

Good Food (eat more! EAAAAT!)

*Cheez-its (what I am currently eating)

*Barbecue ribs (what I ate last night)

*Egg salad

*Frozen yogurt

*Boston baked beans

*Watermelon

*Pot pie (WANT)

Bad Food (booooooo!)

*Non-frozen yogurt

*Juice

*Most cheese

*Tomatoes (weren't these just on the good list last week?!)

*Carrots

*Basil

*Vitamins

Detecting a pattern here? Watch, next week it'll be corn dogs and oatmeal cream pies. Seriously.

Goober angry! Goober SMASH!

Foods the goober likes this week:

*SALTINES (eat more saltines! eat them NOW!)

*Plain buttered noodles with lots of salt

*Dry Cheerios

*Plain cheese quesadillas

*Frozen blueberries

*Strawberry yogurt smoothie

*Beef, barley, mushroom soup

*Fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce

*Mac and Cheese (only at night)

Foods the goober hates this week:

*Cooked tomatoes

*Garlic

*Onions

*Cumin

*Chili Peppers

*Curry

*Anything fried

*Mac and Cheese (I know...don't argue with it)

*Vitamins

*Pretty much everything else

Words Kate Hates, Part 2

Oddly, most of the words I hate start with the letter "p" (for example, the last installment of Words Kate Hates, which I can't even read because it makes my skin crawl). Maybe it's the fact that so many p-words stand for gross things (putrid, puss, puke) that even non-gross p-words sound like they refer to bodily fluids (plastic, pumice, pal).

However, today I have a treat for you--a word that is both gross and starts with a letter other than p.

mouth-watering


...shudder...


This word in particular has been haunting me for weeks--it's on the menu next to the register at the bread shop that I frequent (yes, the one that is definitely *not* run by the mafia), and my eye is inevitably drawn to it, no matter how determined I am. It's like the incredibly drunk undergraduate girl, stumbling across campus at 10 am. You just can't look away.

It makes me wonder--is it actually supposed to be appetizing? I picture a slobbering dog, right after he's taken a big fat drink of water. In what universe is that mental image appealing?

Silver Bells and Cockle Shells...

Community Garden, originally uploaded by rcoconnell02.

This is me, standing in front of our newly-planted community garden plot. Before the wedding, we erected a fence to keep the critters out. Last weekend, I spent an afternoon digging the beds. Later that evening, we filled 3 of our 4 beds with heirloom tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, artichokes (really!),melons, carrots, lettuce, and radishes.

To come: beans, corn, squash, potatoes, parsnips and onions.

Note that I'm 1) dirty and 2) smiling. The two often go together in gardening.

PS: yes, my t-shirt does detail the life cycle of a frog. Try not to be too jealous.

Adventures in Cooking Part 1: Smoked Pork

I've wanted to try building a do-it-yourself smoker since I saw it on the barbecue episode of Good Eats (I told you I liked that show). So last week, I went out to get the parts for the smoker, and I spent most of Saturday outside, drinking beer and watching the smoker do it's thing. Verdict: I could definitely think of worse ways to spend a lovely spring day.

In case it isn't clear from the following am *very* proud of myself with this one--the smoker worked swimmingly and the pork was outstanding. So here's the run down in case you feel the desire to make one yourself. (NOTE: try this at your own risk. I am NOT responsible if you shock yourself/burn your house down/ruin a perfectly good piece of meat. I'm just not.)

But first, since this is a long post, I'll provide a kind of summery.

By the numbers:
$42.25 = total investment in materials for the smoker
7 pounds = weight of the pork shoulder used
8 hours = total time the pork spent in the brine
3 am = time I got up on Saturday morning
1-1/2 = bags of wood chips burned
2 = number of flareups (otherwise known as "grease fires") we had that day
12 hours = total time the pork spent in the smoke
15 = number of happy people fed

The smoker elements
1 large terra cotta pot (17.00)
1 terra cotta saucer with the same diameter (11.00)
1 replacement grate for a kettle grill (8.00)
1 hotplate with a dial thermostat (3.50 at the AA recycle center)
1 metal pie or cake pan (.25 at the recycle center)
1 metal stick-type thermometer (2.50)
1 extension cord ("free" in that I already owned one)
2 cinderblocks (ditto)

The smoking supplies
2 bags of wood chips
1 piece of heavy-duty aluminum foil (I didn't use this, and later wished I had)
1 watering can
1 fire extinguisher
1 lawn chair
1 tasty beverage

The assembly and use of the smoker
Here is an image of the smoker assembled (in my front yard--my sleeping hosta garden is in the background)


The large terra cotta pot on the bottom acts as a vessel for the rest of the elements. The earth walls of the pot aid in heat flow and retention--it is the same reason that fancy, expensive smokers have ceramic walls, and people still roast pigs in pits in the ground. In this case, I basically picked the cheapest pot I could find that was large enough to fit a grate. The cinderblocks not only give the whole thing a kind of junkyard chic, they also let a small amount of oxygen flow into the smoker through the hole in the bottom of the pot. The lid of the smoker was selected via a very scientific method--basically, I tried terra cotta items one at a time until I found something with the same diameter as the pot (believe it or not, it was the only item that had that characteristic). I was trying to find something with a hole in it (to put the thermometer in) but the saucer turned out to be useful--I rested the meat on it while changing the wood chips. The thermometer is a replacement for a turkey fryer. It worked great and cost us 2.50 at Meijer.

In the bottom of pot is the heat source for the smoker--a basic hot plate, which I picked up at the local recycle center for 3.50. The original plans had the hotplate in the bottom of the smoker, with the cord coming out of the hole in the bottom of the pot (clever, eh?). We modified this plan somewhat by taking the hotplate apart and rewiring the guts to go through the hole in the pot.

This achieved three things:
1)It left only the metal parts of the hotplate inside the pot---the plastic housing remained outside, underneath the pot. Thus, we avoided the fumes that would presumably result from leaving plastic in a 210 degree oven for 12 hours.
2)My hotplate had a dial to control the heat. This turned out to be key, because the line between partial combustion/smoke and full combustion/fire is a finer one than you might think. Dissecting the hotplate meant that I could adjust the heat from outside the pot--a real plus, as you will soon see.
3)We got to feel like real badasses. We will feel even more badass once we figure out a mounting mechanism for the bottom of the pot, so that it doesn't produce alarming blue sparks when fiddled with.

On top of the hotplate goes the metal pie tin full of wood chips. The pie plate I got at the recycle center (I don't think I would want to use it for anything else). The chips are hickory and mesquite--I got them at the local garden center/cooking supply store (be sure to use hardwood that is not treated chemically, because whatever funky tastes and chemicals are in the wood will be in the smoke, and thus in your pork). The chips should smoke, BUT NOT CATCH FIRE. We had two flareups worthy of the name--the first was at about 4am. I had just put the thing together and had no idea how high the heat should be. I turned it up too high, and the chips caught fire. Fortunately, the dial was outside the pot (see?) and I could turn off the plate, take out the thermometer, and suffocate the fire (the hole in the bottom doesn't let in enough air for fire to continue). The second fire was the result of grease dripping on the wood chips--the next time, I'm going to cover the chip pan with foil and poke some holes in it. That should both prevent it from catching fire (less oxygen) and prevent grease from getting on the wood itself. Just in case, I had a fire extinguisher on hand. I changed the chips whenever the smoking stopped--I used about 1-1/2 small bags of wood over 12 hours of smoking.


Above the chips rests the grill grate, and on top of it, the pork shoulder. The sides of the pot are slanted, so the grate should just rest in the pot without falling down. This suspends the meat about 6 inches above the heat/smoke source, letting hot air and smoke flow around it.

The whole thing is topped by the cover and the thermometer.








The Pork
I bought a 7 lb pork shoulder (bone-in, untrimmed). Fortunately, barbecue is designed to make cheap cuts of meat delicious, so the meat itself was (relatively) inexpensive. We brined the pork overnight in a mixture of molasses, pickling salt, and water. In the morning (3am--*yawn*) I extracted the pork and sprinkled it with a mixture of chili powder, onion flakes, cumin, fennel, corriander, and paprika. I smoked the meat with both hickory and mesquite chips for around 12 hours (4am-4pm), trying to keep the smoker at 210-220 degrees (in reality, it sometimes got as high as 250). We ate it with some truly outstanding Carolina-style (vinegar and hot-pepper based) sauce that a friend brought. As I mentioned earlier Ross also made a lovely omelet out of the leftovers.

Doesn't this make you want to try it?

An Ode to Owning your Food (or why mayonnaise and frosting are more similar than you think)

As is true of many geek-cooks, I am a serious devotee of Alton Brown--the creator and host of the Food Network Program "Good Eats". This show is a great resource for people (like me), who don't feel truly comfortable with a process unless they completely understand it. Good Eats is nice for that, because in addition to telling you what to do, Alton Brown tells you why you're doing it.

Here's an example--suppose you want to make mayonnaise. Whereas the usual cooking show (or cookbook) would simply tell you to "add the milk to the eggs very slowly," Alton Brown will tell you 1)When you make mayonnaise, you are making an emulsion, 2)An emulsion is a fine mixture of fat molecules and water molecules 3)Because fat and water don't mix, emulsions are very sensitive, and thus require an *extremely* slow introduction of the fats to water 4)If you screw this up, the fats will start to glob together, and the emulsion will "break".

What's so great about the latter method of learning to cook? A couple of things--first of all, learning the science behind a particular recipe can often give you insight recipes that may initially seem unrelated. For instance, once you know that mayonnaise is an emulsion, you can apply your knowledge about making mayonnaise to other emulsions--like buttercream frosting (which is an emulsion of eggs and butter). If you learned to make mayonnaise from an ordinary recipe, then you wouldn't necessarily know about emulsions, and the relationship between mayonnaise and buttercream would remain obscure. Without knowing their relationship, getting from mayonnaise to buttercream would be no easier than getting from mayonnaise to meringues. Placing those two foods in the same category, makes buttercream a variation on mayonnaise (strange, I know) and makes getting from one to the other much easier.

Secondly, knowing the science behind food lets you know why you are doing what the recipe tells you, and more importantly, when you don't have to. This makes altering an existing recipe much much easier. It is much easier to make substitutions when you know the purpose of each ingredient, and what other ingredients serve that same purpose. For example, in some recipes, a liquid serves only to keep something wet (in which case, feel free to substitute buttermilk for vinegar if you think that would somehow be tasty) whereas in others it serves another purpose as well, such as making a food more acidic (in which case, you would have to confine your substitutions to other acidic liquids).

On a more philosophical level, knowing how your food works is important because without that knowledge, I don't think that you can really call yourself a cook. As with many things, I feel that knowing how things work gives you an ownership over them, in a way that merely following directions does not. I didn't feel like I really owned my bike until I learned how all of it's component parts worked, and I don't feel like I own a food until I know how it's component parts work. That level of ownership is really liberating, because it leaves you free to wander as you please, with a reasonable chance of getting where you're going in the end.

Next post--Adventures in Cooking!

Happy Birthday to me

Today's my birthday, and what with the wedding coming up in 10 days or so, I gave Ross permission to skip it this year.

But this morning, I woke up to Ross handing me a smoked pork, spinach and tomato gruyère omelet in bed. Imagine my confusion--I had been wanting an omelet the day before, and there it was! In my bed with me!

It was absolutely beautiful and it was literally the best omelet I have ever had in my life. I just wish I had taken a picture before devouring it. But...well...it was so tasty!

Thanks babe...you're the best.

I've always wondered what to call those packets of saltines...

I'm sick today. I started to feel sick last night, but chalked it up to insomnia-related stomach upset. Nope. I have a bona-fide stomach bug.

This morning was awful, but this afternoon, I'm not actually feeling that bad--mostly because I've been keeping my stomach half full of food since lunch (so far today, I've consumed a bowl of cereal, yogurt, a bagel with cream cheese, half a salad (with Ross) a packet of cheese crackers, an entire package of sugar wafers, and one of those rectangular prisms of saltine crackers.) This method has effectively taken care of the stomach problems--leaving me to deal with the flu-like headache, aches, and associated nastiness.

But it does raise a question. Why is it that some stomachaches are solved by eating, and others are made worse? Does anyone else feel like this is some kind of a cruel trick?