Pregnesia

I seem to have entered a certain realm of pregnancy that leaves me horribly…uncertain…about pretty much…everything I do. Because I have this sneaking suspicion that I’m supposed to be doing something else. But I cannot for the life of me remember what.

Mercifully, I haven’t screwed anything up too badly, though I did miss a doctor’s appointment last week – which made me feel rotten enough to, ahem, cry a little bit – but at least I haven’t left the stove on or mortally offended anyone dear to me by standing them up at a crucial moment (though my dad did have a dream last week that I ditched him for some friend named Joanne. Because I was thoroughly unrepentant in the dream, he announced, in the dream, “That’s it! It’s over between us!” When he told me about the dream, in real life, I gasped, “You broke up with me? You can do that?”).

Still, I have this awful feeling that I was supposed to be doing something tonight besides reading and composing beautiful butcheries of Christmas carols on my guitar.

I suppose I’ll find out soon enough if I’m right, won’t I?

In other news, this weekend we hit Four Months, which puts us awfully close to Four-and-a-Half Months, which is quite alarmingly close to the Halfway Point. There seems to be no appropriate response to this except to throw one’s hands in the air and yell, “Ah!” a lot, in a delighted, terrified and slightly manic way.

Few things say “fall” like a ripe, flawless butternut squash

…though I will allow the possible exception of windstorms, wet socks, and downed power lines.

Both this autumn and last, Mitch and I have purchased a fall share from a local farm and now we are greeted, every Wednesday evening, by a box of veggies boasting not only squash but also onions, garlic, leeks, shallots, brussel sprouts, potatoes, celeriac, chard, bok choy and more.

Every week, the variety changes, and every week I’m presented with the delightful challenge of figuring out how to convert a quantity of vegetables intended for a family of four into a series of dishes to be eaten, stored or frozen by just the two of us lowly veggie-philes.

Weekends that have seen me curled up on the couch with a book, a cat and a hand-knit afghan now find me padding around (well, in and out of) our wee kitchen, chopping, braising, baking, sautéeing, seasoning and, yes, “testing” dish after dish, some of which are eaten immediately, while others are portioned out into containers and frozen for quick eats throughout the week.

This week’s box offered, in a shining, seasonal abundance:

• carrots
• red onion
• garlic
• brussels sprouts
• sauté mix
• russet potatoes
• butternut squash
• celery stalks

We also had acorn squash, Swiss chard, green cabbage and leeks left over from last week’s share. Here is what happened to all of it:

• An autumn harvest minestrone did away with the carrots, onion, garlic, potatoes, celery stalks, chard and leeks in one deft swipe.

• A large pot of spaghetti sauce took care of some garlic and onion and provided us with enough sauce for four separate meals.

• A butternut squash puree (courtesy of the fabulous Orangette) reduced the butternut to a vibrant, orange, silken dish and served as a sweet potato replacement at Mitch’s family Thanksgiving, while

• the steamed brussels sprouts were quite tasty with butter, lemon and fleur de sal.

• My favorite vegetarian lasagne (served with aforementioned spaghetti sauce, rather than the suggested mushroom sauce) took care of still more garlic and onion, as did the

• Stuffed acorn squash – which also took care of the acorn squash, as you might imagine.

Tonight, I have braised green cabbage with carrots and onion in mind (also courtesy of Orangette). Oh, and chocolate cupcakes, featuring that fabulous vegan chocolate cake recipe. But those don’t use any veggies, so I’m not sure they count.

Our freezer, my friends, is stocked. And our house smells delicious.

The winner of the week was definitely the stuffed squash, which Mitch deemed worthy of “Finger food,” and if you’ve ever eaten at the Finger household, you know that this is the highest honor a dish could possibly hope to receive by our standards. I’m still blushing.

Stuffed Squash

• 3 tbsp. butter
• 1 stalk chopped celery
• 1/2 c. grated cheddar cheese
• 1 large crushed garlic clove
• juice from 1/2 lemon
• 1/2 c. chopped onion
• pepper to taste
• 1/4 c. raisins (I used cranberries)
• 1/2 tsp. rubbed sage
• salt to taste
• 2 acorn or butternut squashes
• 1/4 c. sunflower seeds
• 1/2 tsp. thyme
• 1/4 c. chopped walnuts
• 1 c. coarsely crumbled wheat bread

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Split the squashes lengthwise down the middle. Remove squash seeds and fibers and bake, facedown, on an oiled baking sheet for 30 minutes, or until the squash is tender enough to eat.

Meanwhile, melt the butter in a skillet and add the onion, garlic, celery, walnuts and seeds. Cook over low heat until onions are translucent, nuts are browned and celery is tender. Add sage, thyme, bread, lemon juice, raisins (optional), and salt and pepper to taste. Cook, stirring often, over low heat for 5 to 8 minutes. Remove mixture from heat and stir in cheese.

Eat and enjoy!

For your navigational pleasure…

I finally compiled an index for my book review site. It lists every book I’ve reviewed and provides links directly to the review, while also illustrating, in list form, the full extent of my complete and utter nerdiness.

Hopefully this makes browsing the site easier and more enjoyable – if it does (or even if it doesn’t), please comment and let me know! Moving the posts around cost me most of the comments you kind folks have left over the years, so the reviews are looking a bit sparse and unloved. And nobody wants an unloved post.

Head straight to the index!

Ah, tradition!

A recent post at Navel Gazing at its Finest got me thinking about Christmas traditions, and the tradition that came to mind most readily isn’t much of a tradition at all, I realize, because it only happened once. The fact that we re-tell the story every year? Therein lies the tradition. It always begins, “Remember that time we got giant diapers for Christmas?…”

To set this up properly, you have to understand that my dad and step-mom tend to be a little, well, off-color. It’s a well-known fact that any conversation at our dinner table veers around, somehow, to poop, and that each year, when we open our Christmas ornaments for the tree*, they’re liable to be things like a giant cigar (circa Monica Lewinsky**) or a figurine of Lara Croft in low-cut Santa gear or a snowman straddling a motorcycle. (Those ornaments usually go to my dad and brother – I tend to get cute, pretty things like disco balls and butterflies and cupcakes.)

So, the year I was in 5th grade and my brother in 2nd, it was a common pre-Christmas pep tactic to tell us that we would be so excited about our Christmas presents that we’d poop our pants. To bring this fact home, we were allowed to open a single gift a few days before Christmas – which turned out to be adult diapers, one for each of us. My parents assured us that we would need them when the time came for opening presents.

I don’t actually remember what we got that year for gifts besides diapers, but I do remember that when my brother went back to school and wrote up his “What I Did For Christmas Break” essay for class, the diaper incident figured rather largely in his narrative, which caused his teacher to invite my parents in for a parent-teacher conference.

“She had no sense of humor,” my dad protests to this day.

And so it is, that during every Christmas season, be it over dinner or while decorating or in the midst of unwrapping gifts, this story comes out – the pinnacle of our Christmas hilarity, the apex of our celebration. “Remember that year you guys bought us diapers for Christmas?…”

*Okay, okay: here’s the real tradition. Every year at both my mom and my dad’s house, my parents buy us each an ornament for us to open just before we put the very last ornament on the tree. They’re really beautiful, fun ornaments that tend to encapsulate the last year somehow: a saxophone for my brother when he started marching band, a choir of carolers for me, and so on.

Sometimes my parents buy them months in advance while on vacation, so the giving of the gift might be accompanied by a story about where the ornament was purchased and why. It’s a great tradition that’s amounted to a spectacular collection of unique ornaments and that I hope, next year, to pass on to my kids.

**The unveiling of this particular ornament each year precedes a lively debate about where on the Christmas tree the foot-long cigar must go. My dad campaigns for the front; my step-mom has the last word and relegates it to the back.

Bouncy seats, strollers and car seats, oh my!

We never wanted to plan when we became parents. From the very beginning of our marriage, we wanted the timing and circumstance to be out of our control so that, when it came, it would come as a surprise: as God reaching down, touching us on the nose and saying, “Go.”

Would we be ready? Probably not. Almost certainly not. We aren’t now, but we are closer than we would have been a few years ago – just as, in a few more years, we might be more ready than we are now.

But you have to jump in some time, right?

We’ve never lived in large places, my husband and I. From studios to borrowed rooms to attics above houses shared with strangers, we’ve never had much space and it’s suited us just fine. Even now, in the biggest apartment we’ve ever rented, our kitchen is still the size of a large closet and the bathroom the size of a small closet (and the closet? Well, it’s just small).

So, when those moments of uncertainty have come up, when we’ve glanced at each other nervously and recognized a very real possibility of pregnancy, we’ve always looked around at whatever small space we were in at the time and said, “Well, we’ll make it work.”

As this particular moment of uncertainty grew certain – and more and more certain, with the help of a handful of pregnancy tests – we said the exact same thing: “We’ll make it work.”

And now we find ourselves trying to figure out how exactly we’ll make it work.

I mentioned a bigger apartment. While it is much bigger and better-appointed than ours now (the bathroom is not through the bedroom, thereby keeping both the cats and ourselves, if necessary, out of the bedroom when we’re not wanted), it is still a one-bedroom. The kitchen is quite small, by possibly any other standards than mine – it is roughly twice the size of the one I have now, with more cabinets and counters and shelving – and the word “cozy” would absolutely still apply to the size of the rooms, though there is a closet roughly the size of the kitchen we have now that should definitely come in handy.

Still, it wasn’t until I started actually researching baby things that it occurred to me that more space might be, well, nice, because all those check lists of things you must have before the baby is born? They’re enormous. And ridiculous, I’m pretty sure. But shopping and registering for baby stuff is a lot different than registering for a wedding, because, by the time you get married, one can pretty safely assume that you’ve spent some time in a kitchen before – you’re familiar with the purpose of, say, a spatula. You’ve got a pretty good idea what dishes are for, and what sort would be good for you.

With baby stuff, it’s a little different: you’ve never met the little person you’re shopping for, so you have no idea if they’d rather be in a front carrier or a sling. You don’t know if they’ll actually enjoy wearing socks, or if they’ll work them right off their tiny feet in no time. Bouncy chairs? Cribs? Car seats? These are words that I was only vaguely familiar with a few months ago, but that I’m now surrounded by as I research and shoot emails back and forth with people who might know a thing or two more than I do, and I seem to find most of these people in one of two camps:

a) You don’t need most of that stuff, just a bassinet and some blankets, or
b) You need to move! You need to have a whole separate wing to contain all the baby’s things!

Surely, there’s a middle ground. Any thoughts?

Close call?

Throughout our chilly winters, when the sun sets early and rises late each day, it becomes necessary for me to catch the bus in the dark at least once or twice a week.

This is not as creepy as it could be: either I wait for the bus at a time when automatic coffee pots begin to percolate and bathroom lights blink on and off, or else I wait in the evening with a cluster of cold students who shift under the weight of their bags and read the bus schedule by the light of a shared cell phone until the bus arrives in all its blue-lit, heated glory.

This morning, however, I walked through wisps of my own frozen breath to the bus shelter, which rests in the dim spot between two street lamps, to find someone else standing in the center of the sidewalk, waiting. As I approached, the figure stretched its arms, rearranging its layers of clothing, to reveal that the outermost layer was, in fact, an ankle-length, hooded black cloak.

This gave me pause.

Nevertheless I, in my pink pom-pommed beanie, soldiered bravely on through the cold, wondering if it was Dracula awaiting me or possibly Death himself, and by the time I passed the figure (to stand at the far side of the shelter) and wished it a falsely chipper “Good Morning!” I had no more idea if the cloak’s wearer was animal, mineral or vampire – not until it turned its head, grimly (any hooded head at six-thirty on a November morning turns grimly), and asked, “Cold out, isn’t it?” did I realize that it was not the Grim Reaper after all, but a girl, roughly my age, wearing pointed shoes beneath the hem of her cloak that shone in passing headlights.

We made small talk. I was immensely relieved to find myself chatting with someone (anyone!) who hadn’t recently ascended from Hades, though a relief to that extreme does set a certain eerie precedent for the day…

(Perhaps I can blame my brush with Death for unsettling me to the point that I completely, and uncharacteristically, forgot my doctor’s appointment scheduled for this morning? I might try it. )

It’s a good time to be pregnant

Remember those loose-fitting, empire-waisted shirts that were all the rage this summer, and that you (if you’re anything like me) ridiculed shamelessly for looking exactly like maternity shirts?

They’re all on clearance now, and suddenly, I find them quite helpful.

Cats aren’t much help when you’re trying to pack – this is a fact of life

Since our lives are full of all sorts of fun upheaval at the moment, we thought we might as well go the full nine yards and – on top of Mitch finishing school and me being pregnant (and all the fun preparation that comes with that) – well, we thought we might as well move.

This is no fancy move, mind you – we’ll just be moving to a larger and better-appointed apartment in our already fabulous building – but we will nevertheless be packing and carting box after box down the hallway to our spacious new abode and the first boxes, of course, to leave our old apartment and set up residence in the new are always our many boxes of books.

With a cup of tea in hand and Radiohead on the iPod, I began packing this evening.

Each time we move, it’s interesting to sort through the books and see what we’ve picked up, and when: the rhyming dictionaries, thesauruses and writing handbooks, acquired during my college years; our many, many versions of the Bible – several different translations, a Spanish interlinear, the Couple’s Devotional Bible we received as a gift and have never yet opened, my Grandma’s concordance, an old hymnal from each of my parents; Mitch’s chess strategy books, school textbooks and books on Jewish history and practices, and now, the baby name books and pregnancy and parenting books.

There’s a good part of a shelf reserved for my books on saints, from the six months or so when I was on a big saint kick, plus my old, water-damaged copies of Russian novels, and stacks and stacks of novels, from Harry Potter to Vanity Fair and pretty much everything in between.

There is also an entire box dedicated to books that I’ve borrowed from my dad and must, to my step-mom’s dismay, return.

I have, for the first time since we’ve been married, finally agreed to store some of the books, and so packing is a little bittersweet, as some of the books go into boxes from which they will not return for months, leaving me to handpick which ones stay on the shelves and which go into hiding.

Something tells me, though, that we’ll appreciate the extra wall space in the coming months, so I suppose the small sacrifice is worth it. Right?

Compilation update

I mentioned earlier that What’s Up! Magazine, Clickpop Records and Murder Mountain Records were all putting their pretty heads together to release a compilation of local music, which would, graciously, include a track of mine as well as songs from a bunch of fabulous local talent (think Bug Jerome, Gallus Brothers, David Stray Ney, The Braille Tapes and many more).

Originally, this was going to be finished in September, but the new word is: January.

I’m detecting an autumn theme

This weekend was a busy one in my teeny kitchen. Here are a few things to make their way out of the oven:

• Butternut squash soup
• Balsamic caramel reduction (to serve on the soup)
• Cranberry-walnut salad with maple vinaigrette
• Roasted yams with brown butter
• Root vegetable soup
• Bittersweet chocolate and caramel truffles
• Roasted butternut squash

Whew! The veggie soup turned out particularly delicious, while the yams gave me some trouble – over-blending caused the puree to turn out a bit stiff, sadly – but all that cooking was enough to infuse our apartment with several delicious fall aromas, the reduction being the only exception: both the apartment and I smelled strongly of vinegar for a few hours after the syrup was finished, and Gunner had a nice little sneezing fit that caused him to rub his nose vigorously with one paw until the smell wore off a bit.

To keep things lively, here’s the recipe for the soup:

Root Vegetable Soup

Adapted from The Improvisational Cook, by Sally Schneider (I fiddled with this recipe quite a lot, so if it’s horrible, blame me, not Sally – the original is much more specific and calls for different ingredients and amounts – but this is the recipe for what I did today and it turned out lovely.)

• 4-6 Yukon Gold potatoes, cubed
• 1 medium celery root, peeled and cubed
• 1 large onion, peeled and diced
• 1 lb. butternut squash, peeled and cubed
• 3-4 medium carrots, sliced
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 2 tablespoons butter or extra virgin olive oil (I used butter)
• 2 cups water
• 3 tablespoons Madiera wine (optional: I had some leftover from the balsamic caramel, so in it went. I’ve been creatively using up the rest of the bottle all weekend, since Mitch doesn’t care for it and I can’t drink any. The wine also found its way into the roasted squash.)
• 3 cups low-sodium chicken broth, vegetable broth or water (I used chicken broth)
• A pinch of white pepper
• 1/4 cup coarsely chopped flat-leaf parsley (I didn’t have any on hand so I skipped this step, but I’d bet the parsley is really good.)

Braise the vegetables. In a large saucepan, combine the vegetables, garlic, salt, sugar, butter, wine (if desired) and water. Bring to a simmer, cover and cook 15-20 minutes, or until the water has almost evaporated.

Add more liquid and simmer until tender. Add the chicken broth, return to a simmer, cover and cook an additional 15 minutes, or until the vegetables are soft.

Season and garnish. Adjust the seasoning and stir in white pepper to taste. Just before serving, stir in the parsley.