Starting in the Basement

When I am feeling particularly whiny this is what Frenchie says to me, “complains complains.”  Well today is one of those days.

We are moving on Saturday.  We are flying to Oregon on Sunday.  With a 3 month old.  For the first time.  I have heard that flying with infants is not that bad so I am trying not to be anxious…but I am.  While I am really really excited about moving into the new apartment I am anxious about moving day.  We have a few friends to help but I feel guilty because we are too old to have friends help us move.  So I am trying to make it is easy and have things ready to go but it is hard because our apartment is so cramped there is nowhere to put the boxes.  Also, Frenchie brought boxes home but only like 12.  Maybe he doesn’t realize how much crap we have?  AND, that baby likes attention and is not happy when I spend my time filling boxes instead of making her hippo talk, or feeding her ALL THE TIME!

Also, allergies, moving, and not being able to take allergy medicine do not go together.

Oh, and did I mention we have a lot of crap.  I have 3 tall kitchen bags full of shoes and I only ever wear flip flops.

Complains Complains

ps.  In case you think I am too negative I will say that I am very happy that it is not hot this week!

I can’t believe it has been three months already!  Camille is more fun every day.  She is playing with toys and especially loves this weird hippo toy.

This guy cracks her up!  She is starting to sit in her Bumbo seat and people are still saying that she has an incredibly strong neck.  I have no idea how or why she is so strong but it works for her.  She has also managed to turn some pages of her books and she rolls over from her stomach to back!  She still hates tummy time though…

For 3 months we had chocolate cake with my cream cheese whipped cream frosting.  I got the cake recipe from the Flour cookbook’s chocolate cupcakes.  It was good, but I still like Smitten Kitchen’s double chocolate cake recipe better.  But nothing was as good as making her smile in her Bumbo seat.

Do you have some old bananas waiting to be used?  Well, I have two ideas for you.  One, is a recipe for delicious muffins (with frosting, because who doesn’t love frosting?) and the other is for banana soft serve.  It turns out if you freeze a banana and then blend it with a little milk you get a texture resembling soft serve ice cream.  I was skeptical at first but I blended the frozen banana with a scoop of Nutella and a splash of milk and voila, ice cream!  It was delicious.  Next time I am going to try a scoop of peanut butter.  Or maybe a scoop of both…

Okay, now for the more complex recipe.  I have had a can of dulce de leche sauce in my pantry for a long time now and I kept waiting for inspiration.  I finally found it when I imagined my brown bananas with caramel sauce.

I wanted to make something for Frenchie’s sister’s visit so I thought these would be great because muffins are not a common French food.  She one-upped me by bringing these.

Well I can’t compete with that!  We had a great visit and I think Camille officially loves her French aunt.

Luckily she still politely ate my muffins while I drooled over the macarons.   Here they are.

Banana – Walnut Muffins

adapted slightly from Simply Recipes

• 3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
• 1/3 cup melted butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups of flour
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (toasted or raw

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 F.  Mix bananas and sugar in a large mixing bowl or mixer bowl.
• Mix in the sugar, egg and vanilla
• Sprinkle baking soda and salt over the mixture
• Add the flour, mix until it is just incorporated.  Mix in the walnuts
• Pour mixture into a prepared muffin tin.  Bake for 25-30 minutes.  Check for doneness with a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin.  It if comes out clean, they are done.  Cool completely before frosting.

Dulce de leche Frosting

• 4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
• 1/2 cup dulce de leche sauce*
• 1 teaspoon vanilla (or to taste)
• pinch of salt

Using a mixer combine all ingredients until smooth.  Adjust vanilla and salt as desired.  The frosting is not overly sweet which I think works well with muffins.  If I was making a frosting for a cupcake I would add some powdered sugar.

*You can find dulce de leche sauce in the mexican food section of your grocery store.  You can also make it yourself with many recipes found on the internet.

The weather is heating up here.  By tomorrow it is going to be approximately 100 million degrees and I might die. I DO NOT handle the heat well and I am even more nervous with the baby because it turns out babies like to be close to you and when I am hot I DO NOT LIKE TO BE TOUCHED.  We only have air conditioning in our bedroom, and even there it does not work very well, so for the next couple of days Camille and I will be camped out in the bedroom drinking iced drinks.  With the hot weather I am trying to think of recipes that do not require a lot of cooking but are still more substantial than a sandwich or plain salad.  Yesterday I was on a mission to make a salade nicoise so Camille and I went on a hot search for anchovies and nicoise olives.  Unfortunately we only found the anchovies because I was not willing to walk all the way to Whole Foods for olives and Trader Joe’s has a lame olive selection. Any ideas on what to do with leftover anchovies?

Salade Nicoise

You can use a variety of vegetables for this salad.  I have listed what I used and the amounts depend on how many salads you are making.  Be generous with the vinaigrette.

Small potatoes, red, yukons or fingerlings work well, boiled and cooled

Green beans, boiled for 2 minutes and cooled

Orange pepper, sliced thin

Tomato, sliced into chunks

Canned tuna in olive oil

Anchovies

Hard-boiled eggs, cut in half

Lettuce

Fresh herbs for finishing

Directions:  After cooking potatoes toss in a bit of the vinaigrette and let cool.  Wash and dry lettuce and toss with vinaigrette.  Assemble your salad on a platter or on individual plates and sprinkle herbs and more vinaigrette over the vegetables.  Serve with bread.

Basic Vinaigarette

This recipe makes a cup of dressing but you can scale down if you are only using it for one salad

1/4 cup wine vinegar (red or white)

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

3/4 cup olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions: Mix all the ingredients in a jar and shake before using.

Family nap the morning after the salad…the cat lasted about 2.5 minutes on me before I got too hot and she had to be evicted from the bed.

We have almost 12 weeks of baby experience here in the basement and have narrowed down a few of our favorite baby items.  If you know somebody having a baby you may want to consider some of these as gifts.  Of course, everybody will have a different experience, but this is what has worked for us.

There is a big push for swaddling babies because they sleep an average of 45 minutes longer when swaddled.  That is HUGE for a new parent.  Camille has been swaddled since day 1 and I am still not ready to give it up.  There are many products to help with swaddling and we ended up with a lot of them.  For the first few weeks she was too small for any of these products so we just used blankets similar to these that my aunt got us from Pottery Barn.

We use the swaddling technique from the video, The Happiest Baby on the Block – The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Baby Sleep Longer (DVD), which also has some great tips for soothing babies.

When she gained a little weight we started using swaddle products and the easiest so far has been the Summer Swaddleme.

She rarely busts out of these although we have used them so much the velcro is starting to get a bit weaker.

Another unexpected gift was the Wubbanub.  These are soothie pacifiers with little stuffed toys attached.  The toy keeps it in place and eventually gives them something to hang onto.  Genius!!  We have the puppy but there are a ton of cute animals available.

Although there are lots of great, and adorable, pajama options for babies the last thing you want to do at 11, 1, 3, 5, and 7 in the morning is deal with snapping up pj legs after changing a diaper.  The gowns are awesome for sleeping and sometimes to hang out in all day if you have nowhere to go.  My favorite gown has snaps all the way down so you don’t even have to deal with the over-the-head dressing issue.  I don’t have the one below specifically but it looks nice and would make a great gift!  In fact, I think I am going to get this one because we only have one with snaps and it is dirty now.  Need more!

Snapibasic Side Snap Opening Gown

Once summer starts (which it has here in Boston) I am always on the hunt to make the perfect burger.  Last night I think I found the best burger so far, and it was super easy.  Unfortunately I was too hungry to take a picture but it doesn’t really look like anything special.  Just picture a homemade hamburger with onions and pickles.  I used a lower fat beef but compensated by adding in some other fat, because that is how I roll.  ; )

Burger

(makes 3 burgers)

1 pound 90-93% beef

1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon dijon mustard

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

1 tablespoon cold butter

3 slices cheddar cheese

Directions:  Add all ingredients to beef and mix just to combine.  Do not overmix.  Form 3 patties.  Cut the tablespoon of butter into 3 pieces and insert one into the middle of each patty.  Right before cooking, salt and pepper both sides of they patty (if you do this too early you will lose some of the moisture in the burger).  Grill burgers to desired doneness, melting the cheese on the patty at the end.

Onion Marmalade

1 medium red onion

1 cup water

1 teaspoon ground coriander

2 tablespoons butter

Directions:  Add onion and water to a saucepan and bring to a boil.  Add the coriander and butter and season with salt and pepper.  Let simmer, stirring often, for about 20 minutes or until most of the liquid is gone.

Burger Assembly

Grill or toast hamburger buns.  If grilled, you can add a little melted butter to the bun before grilling.  Spread a generous amount of onion marmalade on the bun with the burger.  Top with sliced pickles.  Enjoy!

Frenchie’s mom sent some pictures of him as a child as well as some other family pictures.  She also sent white linen overalls for Camille.  LOVE the French clothes!

Here is Frenchie when he was 1 day old.  He looks like a generic baby.

Here he is at his baptism.  His mother’s hair is so fabulous!

I think he is around 2 years old here.  What a cutie!

Another one, around 2 I think.  The hair just gets better and better.

And my favorite.  Is that a boy or a girl?  Can you tell it was the 70′s??  Something about this reminds me of the kid from The Shining.  REDRUM!!

We can only hope that Camille turns out this cute and with just as much hair!