The Foster Four: My daughter makes it okay for me to be a working mom

I guess I need to blog more. It just seems like life gets in the way. So much has happened since my last post. Lottie start walking. She says more than just "bah". She has new favorites. She notices when I leave, and though the communication is not verbal, I feel like she does "talk" to us. We have also cooked some amazing meals and started a grocery budget which is going to throw a huge curve ball on our creativity in the kitchen. We are up for the challenge.

Let me start with the walking part. She doesn't choose to walk over crawling yet, but she can walk across a room and is a champ if we hold her hand. I think in the next month, she will be running. :) It is so cute to see her walk because I think "diaper booty" is the cutest thing ever.

As for her communication, it used to be that no matter what Lottie looked at, point at, played with or ate, it was a "bah". Sometimes it was a loud "bah" and other times it was a question "bah?" No matter how she said it, it was adorable. Now she is beginning to relate words with objects. For example, she will look at Blake, point and say "Dada". She requires more redirection with "mama", but the relation of word to person is there.

The coolest thing (for me at least) that Lottie has done recently was in the morning. Each morning, Blake and I get up and make breakfast and pack my lunch together. Some mornings Lottie wakes up and other mornings she doesn't. This particular morning she was up, and I was holding her as I was getting my stuff ready to go. When the time came, I handed Lottie over to Blake as I do every morning. This morning was different. She went to him but immediately pulled away and reach for me. As I was walking out, she said "mamamamammama". It melted and broke my heart at the same time. Blake said after I walked out, she crawled over to the door, stood up against it and started crying.

Though this seems sad, it was a relief to me. It showed me that even though I am a working mom, my daughter loves me, wants to be with me and knows who I am. This was a big fear for me when the time came for me to go back to work. It was the most gratifying feeling in the world. Now each day when I come home, she smiles ear-to-ear and can't get to me fast enough. It makes the work day worth every minute.

ON TO FOOD:

Blake and I have been really experiementing with some new stuff thanks to Chef Bernard and Chef Ron's new cookbook. I worked for these men when I live in San Diego. They were the chefs at The Marine Room (http://www.marineroom.com/) which is one of the top restaurants in the nation, maybe the world. I knew I was working for some amazing chefs, but now that I am not there, I see just how good they actually are. Blake and I have our first baby-free vacation to visit there in April. We are so excited!

Anyway, the book that they created is a traveling cookbook. Both Ron and Bernard have experience and learned most of what they do in the kitchen from their world travels. I am so jealous. The recipes in their book are pretty detailed, and we definitely stray from exacts when we are working from it, but we are so impressed with what we can create from their direction.

We also started a budget this year which means we only have $450 to spend on groceries each month. That may seem like a lot to most people, but we only spend $50 in out to eat money. We cook almost every meal at home. It boils down to about $120 a week. We are so thankful for Super H, Costco and the Dekalb Farmer's Market for allowing us to explore our interests in cooking and stay within our budget.

Over the past few months, we have had the opportunity to cook a lot of the meals in this book. Allow me to share. (feel free to email me for any recipes or ideas. We love to share.)

The first one was a Monkfish dish. It is a French dish which are normally quite tasty but very detailed. Sadly, I had to email Chef Ron for information about Monkfish because I was unfamiliar with it. I found Monkfish for $6.99 a pound at Dekalb Farmer's Market and it was worth every penny. It was served on a bed of witled veggies that included fingerling potatoes, asparagus, carrots and leek. The sauce was probably the most labor-intensive part of the process. It was an apple cider reduction sauce, and it was a great compliment to the fish. The dish utilized a lot thyme which I LOVE. Also, it was garnished with bacon (my favorite ingredient in the world).

The next dish we did was Australian. It was not my favorite at all, but my mom and dad really loved it. For me, the problem was the size of my oysters. I like small oysters, and these were quite large. These were "Coffin Bay Deep Fried Oysters with Olive Oil Hollandaise and a Shiraz Reduction". I know that I didn't nail the reduction. It was runny and still tasted too much like wine. Honestly, my favorite part was the zucchini on which it was served.

Just the other night, Blake and I wanted something fun to do with our pork loin. We referred to the book. We decided to do a dish that was inspired by Japan (our favorite). It is a Kurobuta Barbeque Pork Tenderloin (we used a diff cut) with Baby Bok Choy, Diakon Radish and Mirin Sauce. We loved the sauce, but it was pretty potent. We didn't need as much as we made. The dish overall, was a success. It is not as pretty as Ron and Bernard's, but I wasn't going to spend the extra money on the flower that would have made the presentation. Other than that, we were pretty proud.

The final dish that we did was something that we did around Christmas time. We always cook Prime Rib roast. When I saw this dish, derived from England, I was excited to try it. It was a pork rib roast with Cheddar grits, butter steamed asparagus and a mustard peach glaze. Again, the glaze/sauce was the hardest part, but it is what tied the entire dish together. This dish was definitely a hit!

A few things that we feel are worth mentioning, but are not from the cookbook are:

Blake's Japanese Seafood Stew (probably the best soup I have ever had).
Again we went to the Dekalb Farmer's Market and stocked up on a variety of seafood. He threw that in with some yummy Thai flavors (lemongrass, ginger, coconut milk, shallots, garlic, etc) and whipped up the best soup ever!

By far my favorite new healthy cooking addiction is my Butternut Squash Soup. It is so simple. One onion, carrot, celery stalk, medium butternut squash, sweet potato. Chop, add to a pot, cover with chicken stock, boil until fork tender, blend, season. So easy, so healthy, so yummy. We add shrimp to ours when we serve it, but it is delightful on it's own!

Stone ground mustard, prosciutto-wrapped shrimp toast. I feel the the name says it all on this one.

Recipe Free Apple Pie

Fried risotto poppers with ricotta cheese. Blake made these a few times and every time they were a hit. I even brought them to the girls at school. We definitely gobbled them up!

Traditional Chicken Parmesan. Sometimes you just have to go back to the basics.

The Foster Pizza War All On One Pie. I went with proscuitto, spinach and gourmet mushrooms. Blake played it safe with ham, bacon, jalapenos and pineapple. Wake me up when he is done eating his boring side.