This past Friday was a rainy day. We had our regular playdate at Prospect Lefferts Gardens in the morning and Yves was home from work by the time we got back. He worked late the night before so left early on Friday. Since he was home, i decided to try this bagel recipe. I never did any sort of bread baking or kneading or anything like that. It’s not very hard but you just need some patience because you have to knead and then wait, form the bagels and then wait, blah blah blah. I have to tell you, they were just ok. Not bad for the first time but just ok. They were crisp on the outside but too doughy for my tastes on the inside. I prefer a more lighter inside. I’ll have to research some more recipes. Of course, Sienna ate it up!
Forming my funky looking bagels.
Boiling them
Taking them out of the water to dry.
Out of the oven.
Last Wednesday me and Sienna went over to Trader Joe’s to do some shopping. Instead of rushing home for lunch, I asked my friend Tammy for some good dining options for me and Sienna. She gave me an awesome brick oven pizza place and an awesome old fashioned ice cream parlor all on the same block as Joe’s! Who would have known? I was torn between which place to go but the ice cream parlor made that decision for me by not being open! They were so super nice at the pizza place! It was my first time eating out with Sienna in a hi-chair. We would usually stop off at more casual places for lunch and she would stay in her stroller. It wasn’t bad and she was so good when we went to the bathroom together! I forgot to take a picture of the pizza but here is Sienna enjoying a snack while we wait (which wasn’t much of a wait since it came out super fast!)
And since the ice cream parlor was just a few blocks away, we decided to check on it. It was open! Yay! I shared a banana ice cream cone with her. The ice cream was delicious and home made! YUM! This may have to be a regular stop after going to Joe’s! (please leave a comment or e-mail me for password)
Banana Ice Cream from Lisa on Vimeo.
Her very first taste of this ice cream yielded a face 5x as funny as the one in this video.
Look at that tongue! That’s my child alright! Showing tongue for the camera just like her mom. HAHA. Here she is drinking water from my glass for the first time. A bit messy but she did pretty well. Here is a video (leave a comment or e-mail me for the password)
For the past week or two, she has been crying in the middle of the night. Most of the time it won’t last but a few minutes but sometimes it will go on for a bit where she would cry, then stop, then cry again within the space of an hour. Last Saturday night we actually got up and tried to soothe her. We’ve only got up once before in the week she’s been doing this, most of the time we wait it out and hope she goes back to sleep. She would basically stop crying once you pick her up but start up again when you try to put her down. I tried the rubbing her back while she was in her bed with the lights out. That seemed to work for maybe half an hour. Then I gave her teething drops. Half an hour or an hour down. Then I fed her a bottle. An hour down. Then I gave her tylenol. Good for the rest of the night. Needless to say, I was so tired on Sunday. I really wish I was one of those people that can function on just a few hours sleep.
I’m not sure if this is the 55 week regression but we’ll just have to wait it out and hope it doesn’t continue too long. It would be so much more bearable if we just knew why she was doing this. Such a mystery!
Yay! Benny the Monkey has been finished! He’s from Amigurumi Super Happy Crochet Cute. There are definitely some flaws in him (one leg is bigger than the other, his feet are kinda screwed up) but that’s ok! He’s finished! There were some questions I had about his pattern that I e-mailed the author of the book about but I did not hear back from her so I had to wing it. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to stuff his muzzle since it didn’t say to but his muzzle does look a little flat. Oh well. Yves is going to take it to work so Benny can hang out with him. Maybe when Sienna is older, he will come back. I didn’t put his nostrils on very well (I can’t work that invisible thread too well).
A couple of weekends ago I made Ackee and Saltfish! My MIL left me a can of ackee for me to try and make. I was a little nervous about it because it’s such a delicious dish and I didn’t want to ruin it. I found this recipe online and confirmed with my MIL and she said it looked good except for the tomato paste (which I still put in since I had one open anyway). It came out delicious!! And so simple! I also made bammy’s and tried it in the oven instead of frying them. I think I cooked them a little too long the first night but the 2nd night they were perfect and the 3rd night it wasn’t cooked enough. Oh well! I also made rice and peas to go with it all. We were able to have it for 3 delicious nights! The 2nd and 3rd night we added the patty meat I had left over from Sienna’s birthday party. YUM!
Ackees in the pan Bammies in the oven Rice and peas
Deliciousness on a plate!
Yay! I finished the Flower Power Rug! I actually finished this last weekend. It took about a month of evening crocheting. I think it came out nice! Not exactly like the photo they show in their pattern but it’s got character! It is now in Sienna’s room by her crib.
I also started and finished another project! Can you believe that? I bought myself a set of ergonomical hooks since I’ve been crocheting a lot and I swear, I think I pulled a muscle in my right arm from doing the rug. So the set came in this case that is not my style, so I made a new one from this pattern!
It doesn’t fit all my hooks, like the fatter ones, only because I have my old hooks in there too. I might make another one and just make it wider with a few more pockets. I’m just so happy I did it! My next planned project is a shopping cart cover! I bought the pattern off of ebay and this was the only pattern I found that had a review of it and the reviewer said it was easy for a beginner to do. Still, I’m going to do a practice run first with some sheets. Wish me luck!
So here is the food post for Sienna’s birthday celebration on Saturday! First I prepared the patty dough Thursday night. This was my first time making dough of any kind and first time using shortening (which is kinda gross!). I realized the next day that I was short on shortening (*giggle) as the recipe called for 2/3 cup of Crisco and I only put in 1/3 cup. Oh well! I went ahead with it anyway and it still tasted fine!
Friday I rolled it out to fill and even though by that point I already read the recipe at least a half a dozen times, I was doing it wrong. I did not cut them into 16 pieces first but I realized my mistake pretty early on and did not waste too much time rolling out a big slab of dough! Rolling took some getting used to and since I didn’t have a stockinette I had to keep flouring my pin.
And here they are all filled up! Patties with ‘character!’
Saturday morning I worked on the pork dumplings, a recipe I got from Everyday Food and Yves teased me about not being a true Asian! I’ll have my dad teach me one day because his wonton recipe uses shrimp. I’m not a good shrimp handler so I would need help with that! Anyway, it’s really easy!!
Here are the patties cooked. Doesn’t really look much different than before!
Cupcakes pre-frosting. I also had an icing malfunction. I wanted to write out Happy 1st Sienna but the 2 frostings I had just sputtered out of the tube. So I just put sprinkles on them. Oh well!
Here are Brenda’s sinfully yummy bacon cheddar muffins and Theresa’s beautiful zucchinis (you know you are a real geek when you call produce beautiful!)
I haven’t updated my blog all week and it’s because I finally relented and joined Facebook from Richard’s invitation. It’s actually kind of fun and I got sucked in playing the music challenge and the never ending movie quiz. Sigh. Well, if you are on Facebook, let me know and we can be friends! 😉
So Saturday we had a little celebration for Sienna’s first birthday, which is officially on Wednesday. Can you believe it?? There are so many pictures to post, I’ll have to divide it into 2 posts. I made Jamaican beef patties from scratch (even the dough!), pork dumplings (my own filling!) and cupcakes. I also put out brie. Can you get the reason for this international food smorgasbord? Brenda made bacon and cheddar muffins (yum!!), Theresa brought asparagus salad (yum!!), Tammy and Mark provided the punch and since Joy was a late addition she just brought her big mouth. LOL. I’ll do the food post later.
As you can see, she really took to Mark pretty fast, just like she did with Peter last week. Hmmm, I guess we shouldn’t worry about her comfortness with males until she is older…HA!
I think Sienna was a little confused about what was going on and probably wondered why there were a bunch of people standing around staring at her! She didn’t really have much of a reaction to her birthday hat or her birthday cupcake or blowing out her candle. LOL. I gave her her cupcake and in true Sienna fashion, threw it on the floor but after she had some frosting. I picked it up and just gave her the insides and of course, it got messy!
She’s probably thinking ‘this is not my usual fare…but I’ll try it’
Here’s a video of the cupcake eating event. If you need the password, please leave me a comment!
We had to do a wardrobe change after the cupcake so she can open her presents and not have cupcake and frosting everywhere! I thought it was appropriate to put her in the cupcake shirt that Tammy and Mark got her for Christmas!
Sienna really made out good! There was a gift that came for her during the week from Fed Ex from a company in Brooklyn. There wasn’t a card or message that told us who it was from so we were calling it the mystery gift and joking that Sienna went online and ordered it for herself. We found out it was from Yves’ parents! They ordered it from amazon and I guess from a third party so they didn’t have the option to include a gift card. It’s the little push thing that she can also sit on. She also got a cool ball blowing toy that also plays music from Joy, musical maracas and 2 super cute dresses from Brenda, a cute outfit and book from Theresa and a crocodile xylophone from Tammy and Mark. Hours of entertainment, that is for sure!
It really turned out to be a great time for everyone. And I’m really happy Sienna got to enjoy her first birthday party with some very cool friends of mine. I did not want to have a big blow out party so I did not invite a ton of people so I’m glad people showed up despite the rainy weather. My patties and dumplings were well received too!
As I mentioned in the previous post, Pete came over on Saturday. Originally it was to cook a meal but we couldn’t figure out what to cook so instead just made ricotta cheesecake (the one I was going to make for the bumblebees). It was fun! The recipe is from Martha Stewart’s baking handbook.
Pete purees the ricotta.
I mix the egg whites which I screwed up and got a little bit of egg yolk in there and so would not stiffen.
Pete whisks the ricotta, egg yolks, flour and salt after I grate in some orange peel which I used with the microplane my MIL got me (thanks Mummy! I love it!) It’s ready to go in! Without Pete tho!
While we are waiting for it to cook, Pete has fun with Sienna!
Pete was making fun of the waffle marks I made while flipping it over. I’m just listening to Martha, she said to use another rack to flip it over!
Pete is deciding if he likes it or not. And he does! We figured out it tasted more like a custardy orange cake. It was good tho! And it worked out perfectly as he took 3 slices for himself and Nate and Mari for later. I had a slice, Yves had a slice and I took the remaining 2 over to Tammy and Mark on Sunday!
Pete and Sienna give each other a kiss goodbye. AWWW!!!!
We had a pretty filled weekend! I started and finished 2 projects and am almost done with another one! Peter came over and made ricotta cheesecake with me and I helped Tammy with her baby registry at Buy buy Baby (which is soooo much better than BRU! I wish we knew last year!) So much stuff going on that I will have to make 2 posts about it! Today I’ll show my crafts because I am so proud of myself!
I’m almost done!! I still have to sew them all together and make the edging. It should be interesting to see it once it’s sewn because not all the squares are completely square! I guess I crochet unevenly. Must be from the muscle I pulled in my right arm from doing all this crocheting! And do you notice the little hand reaching for it? She took all of them (minus the 3 she couldn’t reach) and threw them all on the floor one by one!
And remember the onesie from my MIL that I said I would make into a t-shirt? I did it!!
It looks great on her!
The third project is a wristlet I made for Tammy. I was trying to think of something to get for her that is useful and thoughtful. I’ve used this pattern a few times and use the bag I made for myself everyday. I’ve gone through at least 3 different types of diaper bags, all of which I’m not completely satisfied with and the wristlet is very useful in this aspect. I can keep my wallet, keys, tissues, chapstick, etc. all within super easy reach. The diaper bags usually end up getting too stuffed once I put a few of my things in there and who wants to carry an extra purse? So the wristlet is perfect and I thought Tammy would like one. She likes Day of the Dead so I got this fabric online and started it Friday night and finished it Saturday morning. I probably would have finished it Friday night if I didn’t run into a couple of problems!
The pattern calls for one long piece for the outer layer, which essentially gets folded in half. Because of the nature of the fabric, if I did that, the skulls would be upside down on one side. I thought I was being so smart that I realized this before the fact! So I just cut it into 2 pieces and ironed it on the interfacing (which I kept as one long piece) opposite sides. I continued with the bag, did the corners pretty well and then turned it right side out.
Oops! Forgot about the rough edges! I totally spaced on this because I made another bag with similiar type of fabric and I did not leave any rough edges. I was kinda bummed about having to undo the corners that I tried to be clever and just sewed the bottom without undoing the corners. Did not work out. In the process of this, the needle broke on my machine! A first!
So it was getting late and Sienna and Yves were waiting for me for dinner so I had to continue this Saturday morning. Plus I had to rip out the seams of the bottom and did that Friday night in front of the tv.
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