Merry Christmas!

December, although mostly undocumented thus far, has been a wonderful month for us. I finally finished up a class for which I was a TA. I have to say, as much time as this class took, I do love the process of seeing students transform from engineers to entrepreneurs in the course of a single quarter.

As classes wrapped up and the holiday break began, we had a moment to really enjoy Abby. In the week following Abby's birthday, Abby went from single unsteady steps to running. I used to hold onto this notion that Abby actually enjoyed our company but with this newfound independence, she is proving to us time and time again that we are the uncool parents we thought we would be in about 10 years. Sometimes, we test exactly how independent she is by taking her to a crowded mall during pre-Christmas sales and watch as she exits stores on her own and startle other oncoming (and perhaps more attentive and wary) parents. Using this extraordinarily scientific method, we have determined that although Abby is quite independent, she does return to us after some meandering - perhaps for some food, drink or because she has really tired legs.



We began our Christmas tradition of taking Abby to see Santa Claus. Obviously, Abby had some seriously misgivings about her behavior this year and begged for forgiveness as she was being held by Santa.



Aside from her brief melt down with Santa, Abby has been in generally very high spirits. We have to say we are very blessed to have a happy baby on our hands with a very good disposition. This doesn't mean that she is obedient, quiet, or sleeps well but she is happy as she is getting into lots of trouble. This is Abby enjoying time at the park on the swings:


We kept Christmas pretty low key this year because, as we like to say, everyday is Christmas for Abby. Honestly, we have way too much stuff - baby stuff - in our cramped apartment to take anymore. Besides, her idea of a good time is to take empty plastic bottles and bang them together to create noise. No need for electronic gadgets. On the other hand, every day is not Christmas for me or Albert so we rewarded each other with gifts which we will return tomorrow for something we like more.

We did, however, use Christmas eve as an excuse for an unbelievable feast. We didn't eat a lot of turkey for Thanksgiving so we used this as an excuse to eat a 15 pound bird between 5 of us (my parents and us). I am now a convert to dry brining. The bird came out juicy and wonderfully tasty. Our recipe for our turkey follows:


For a 15 pound bird I did the following:

Ingredients for Dry Brining:
1/3 cups of sea salt
6 tsps of poultry seasoning
4 leaves of bay leaves crushed

Instructions for Dry Brining:
I took the giblets, neck, etc. out of the turkey and dried the bird with some paper towels. I then rubbed down (inside and out) the entire bird with the dry brining concoction described above. I put the bird on a rack on top of the roasting pan for 15 hours (1 hour per pound). I then rinsed the bird off and carefully pat dry the bird with more paper towels.

Ingredients for stuffing:
3-4 tbsp poultry seasoning
3/4 stick of butter
1.5 loaves of Challah bread
salt and pepper to taste
1 lb of chestnuts (boiled for 20 minutes and peeled of skin and chopped)
2 onions diced
giblets

1 day in advance cut the bread into small squares (if not enough time, cut and put in oven at 250 degrees for 20-30 minutes until dry). Melt the butter in a pan and sautee the onions and giblets until the onions are tender. Add bread and poultry seasoning and mix. Add salt and pepper to taste. Keep mixing until the poultry seasoning has coated the stuffing evenly. Put into turkey and put remaining stuffing in a pan, cover with some chicken broth and put in oven to heat 20 minutes before dinner.

Preparation of turkey:
There is no need to salt the turkey because of the dry brining. I do, however, poke the turkey with a fork and separate out the top skin from the breast and stick in some butter. I covered the turkey with butter. I placed the turkey back on the rack and roasted at 375 degrees for 4-4.5 hours. I covered the turkey with an aluminum foil tent for the first 3.5-4 hours. I took off for the last half hour to brown the skin. I also put in some water and chicken broth into the roasting pan to keep moisture in the oven. I used this to baste the turkey every 30 minutes starting at hour 2.

Boo to you

My mom gave Abby a Halloween card today:

Your very first pumpkin,
your very first "Boo!"
Your very first autumn
and first costume too...

I didn't just carve one pumpkin this year. I carved three: a family so to speak.



Even Grandpa stopped by...


But in the end, all Abby wanted to do was to play with all of the candy. MINE! MINE! MINE! Our greedy little monkey.

Our week in review...

This past week was incredibly busy for me with a lecture I had the opportunity to design and teach! It was on how Handspring developed their operations. I really enjoyed the process of bringing together a lecture and thinking through how best to present it to the class.

This week, Abby went back to Mary Jo's daycare. I think she really does like it there but she is so sad to see us leave her. I'm convinced things will be better especially because the other kids there seem so nice. On Thursday, Abby had to go in to get her flu shot. In the afternoon, she seemed incredibly sluggish and by the evening she could barely move. I handed her to my mom and not 2 minutes later, she had projectile vomited at least three times. We were incredibly lucky to have had a sheet on the couch so nothing was ruined and we just had to throw the sheet and all of my mom's clothes into the wash. Poor Abby looked like she felt a lot better.

Lucky for her, this meant she got to have popsicle. Abby hates Pedialyte but LOVES the Walgreen's generic pedialyte popsicles. She loves them so much that she cries when she finishes them:


Also this week, she made a habit of cruising the furniture with something in her mouth. Sometimes she also likes to crawl around the house with a sock in her mouth (behavior I believe she learned from Aki, my parents' dog). I've decided to take pictures of the former but not of the latter for fear of really embarrassing her in the future.

With a straw...


After she tore the pig's tail out of her pop up book...



The big lesson for me this week was: when I hear silence, there is most definitely something going on. I was sending out some emails on Monday when I noticed that Abby was not making her characteristic ruckus. Alarmed, I looked over to where I had spotted her last, only to find that she had extracted the entire box of Kleenex and put it on the floor:


Lastly, we have the all important Menlo Park Halloween Parade photos. Abby went in her full monkey costume. The #1 lesson I learned is that when you buy a costume from Old Navy, you will spend some significant portion of your time at the Menlo Park Halloween Parade avoiding other kids wearing the exact same costume. Still, she looked just like my little monchichi...

Red roses and such

Happy Valentine's Day!

Albert and I are on a gift-giving hiatus (what do you get for two people who already have too much stuff?) so we chose to stay in with Abby and make a nice dinner. Of course, Albert broke the rule and got some roses (purportedly after he haggled with some street vendors in Spanish). It made me feel like we were back in the days when he was actively courting me and Albert routinely broke those rules.

Al's Valentines

For Valentine's I decided to go with a beet salad in a balsamic glaze and an Afghani lamb dish called Qabili Pallau which we've had a couple of restaurants but never at home.

Our Valentine's Feast

Here are the recipes:

Beet Salad

2 medium sized red (and/or yellow) beets
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
3 tsp brown sugar
olive oil

Drizzle the cleaned beets in olive oil. Wrap completely in aluminum foil and place in oven for 1-1.5 hours (until it can be pierced easily all the way through). Take the balsamic vineger and brown sugar and heat. Stir to completely melt the brown sugar and bring to a rapid boil. Keep stirring for 5-10 minutes until the mixture is thick enough to coat a spoon. Slice up beets and mix into the balsamic glaze. Serve with some greens

Qabili Pallau

2 cups basmati rice
1 medium onion
olive oil
1.5 lbs lamb shank
2-3 large carrots
1 cup golden sultana raisins
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp cardamom
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp saffron
2 tsp sugar
salt and pepper

Brown the diced onion in oil until brown. Add the lamb shank and brown on all sides.

Add 2 cups of water, 1 tsp. salt and the cinamon, cumin and cardamom. Cover and simmer until the meat is tender (about an hour). Remembering to keep the meat juice, strain out the meat and onions and set aside in a casserole with a cover.

Cut the carrots into match stick size pieces. Saute carrots in oil with 1 tsp of sugar. Cook until the carrots are lightly browned. Remove the carrots from the oil and add the raisins. Cook them until they swell up.

Boil the meeat juice and about 2 cups of water. Add 2 cups of basmati rice, 1.5 tsp of salt and cook until the water is absorbed and the rice is tender.

Finally, preheat oven to 300 degrees. Mix the meat, carrots, raisins and rice together and place into the casserole. Cover and place in oven for 30 minutes.

Happy 2007

Happy 2007 to our friends and family! We haven't had much of a chance to update the blog in the last few weeks. You can imagine that things have been quite busy with baby Abby and with our family visiting! It's been so busy that Albert hasn't taken many photos. I was so surprised when I downloaded the photos on the camera and discovered there were less than 50 to download over the last two weeks - and most of those were taken by me!


Abby feeling festive

Christmas and New Years flew by in a blur. We managed to buy a 4 foot Christmas tree which was Abby's first outing ever. We got out our annual Christmas newsletter with our baby announcement. I even baked two batches of cookies! Somewhere along the line, Abby gained over 2 pounds and my mom-in-law and sister-in-law came for a visit.

Abby with the in-laws

Christmas came and went without much hoopla. We had dinner at my parents' house with Julie and Bob. I made a roast beef and my mom made a stuffed salmon. Abby slept through most of the meal. We weren't so lucky with New Years. Abby decided this would be the opportune moment to ring in the new year with lungs ablazing. I suppose she also wanted to share with Julie and Bob exactly what is in store for them in a couple of months. She did a very good job.

Abby and Al

Albert has his own strategy for dealing with an Abby meltdown. It involves the Bose noise cancelling headphones. I guess we shouldn't be calling our daughter's cries "noise" but if you heard her, you would agree that she has not exactly inherited her parents' quiet voices... ok ok we both have loud voices so we both take the blame equally.

Thanksgiving redux 2006

I love this time of year because it's really all about food. In particular, Thanksgiving is an amazing time to load-up on the carbs. That's why it's so much fun when you get to spend it with people who really love to eat. Last year, we had Cindy (Albert's sister), our friends Julie and Bob along with Bob's parents and my dad over for Thanksgiving. We made way too much food and had a fantastic time. This year, even though it was a year in which we were supposed to be in LA (we switch off each year between Albert and my family), we decided to spend Thanksgiving close to home since my due date was only a week away. I didn't want to overload my mom with Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's duty so we took up Julie's kind offer to have all of us over to her house for a mega-Thanksgiving feast. This year, Julie really outdid herself because we had 14 people over at her house!

The people: Julie, Bob, Bob's parents, me, Albert, my parents, Aileen, Chris, Jeffrey, Nancy, Linda and Joseph (Linda's husband).

Thanksgiving Turkey
Originally uploaded by amiura.

It was a packed house with a packed menu: turkey, way to much stuffing, curried peas, corn, grilled vegetables, orange glazed yams, broccoli quiche, beans in mushroom sauce, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce.

Dessert, which was a entirely separate meal, consisted of: flan, sweet potato pie, pumpkin bread, fruit tart (an Aileen specialty), cupcakes and apple crumble.

I was anticipating a depressing Thanksgiving for myself in which my diet was entirely restricted (due to gestational diabetes) but I figured, "how much damage can I really do in one meal anyway?" and ate with gusto. I had stuffing to my heart's content as well as a sampling of every dessert. I later confessed this to my doctor but only after I checked my blood sugar with Julie an hour after my meal... I was at 98 - meaning I could have another carb serving! Julie who is not diabetic had a higher reading than me!

Al and Ann
Originally uploaded by amiura.

All in all, Thanksgiving was a great success. This year in particular I have so many things to be thankful for. I have fantastic friends who give great advice and unconditional support and love. I have wonderful parents who continue to serve as role models to me. Last but not least, I have a husband whose companionship is all I can ask for - who understands me and loves me with a completeness I never expected to find. I look forward to sharing all of this with my baby who is due any day now!

Halloween Fun

Albert discovered a long time ago my love for the holidays. The holiday extravaganza starts in mid-October when I get my ghost lights out along with a little wooden ghost and pumpkin that says "Boo!" I, then, agonize over a costume and usually become too busy at some point to really think it through and then panic the day of some party we're supposed to go to. This is how Albert and I ended up as hula dancers a few years ago when we were in Boston.

Halloween 2001
Originally uploaded by amiura.

This year was a bit different since the pregnancy makes me too tired to party and the costume options become a bit limited - I could be a Mrs. Federline and Albert a big mooch. I guess I could also dress up as a cow since that's generally how I feel these days... and Albert a farmer?!? Instead, Albert got too busy with work and I poured my holiday enthusiasm into my pumpkin.

This pumpkin was no simple pumpkin purchased from Safeway weeks in advance. I naively went to 3 stores on Monday October 30th asking if anyone had anymore pumpkins. Apparently, people are not just competitive about getting their kids into daycares and pre-schools here in the Bay Area. Pumpkin purchasing is also something that must be done well in advance. Whole Foods, my last resort, informed me that they had been sold out since Saturday!

Ann and Pumpkin
Originally uploaded by amiura.

You see, people are just not as resourceful as a desperate pregnant woman in search of a pumpkin to carve. I scanned the entire store of Whole Foods after being informed that there were no pumpkins available. I found not just 1 pumpkin but 4 pumpkins on display on the top shelf of the bread section. We found some people to get a ladder and bring it down and I ended up with my perfect pumpkin from Whole Foods for $5.


I went home and carved it and the results can be seen here: I call it pumpkin perfection...

Pumpkin 2006
Originally uploaded by amiura.