... the end of a long day

 Phew, what a day.  Thomas had his 6 month vaccines today - as usual, Ryan was the support-daddy and I was the weeny looking away ... I could hardly handle thinking of him getting his vaccines all week - it caused such tightness in my chest for some reason!  One day I'll tough it out and be there for him ... I sort of feel like a cop-out because I have such a hard time dealing with it ... it's about time I put his feelings about getting the shots ahead of my anxiety ... eh?

Once we got back to the comfort of our little home T took his first nap of the day ... and I baked up some of those delicious Chocolate Crinkle cookies from the other day.

Here's the recipe:
Combine:  3 eggs, beaten, 1 1/2 c. sugar, 4 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted, (I used 1/4 c. dark chocolate powder, 1/4 c. oil substitution - darn that dark chocolate), 1/2 c. oil, 2 t. baking powder, 2 t. baking soda ... gradually add 2 c. flour ... add an extra 1/4 c. if you want your cookies to be a bit taller & fluffier ... Cool the dough in the fridge til easy to handle (1-2 hours) then toss lumps of dough into powdered sugar before baking 8-10 minutes at 375* F.

simmering pork <3

Dad n Thomas 

Eventually Thomas perked up from his nap ... but he was still fussy and exhausted ... no doubt from his vaccines ... so we had a very brief happy-play-time before he conked out again.  I sent Ryan off to the store  - JCPenny's for pictures, Martin's for groceries.  Once he returned home I started to prep for our Tamale Birthday Party tomorrow ..!  We had talked about making tamales months ago and bam all of a sudden it's Dec. 16 and Christmas is almost here and our dear friend Annette is almost off destined to new things ... so it was time ... and since Saturday is so near and dear to my birthday, I decided to throw myself a little Tamale Birthday Party ..!

I prepped some pork butt courtesy of Smitten Kitchen ... ps. this is the best way to prep pork for tacos, bbq pork sandwiches, you name it ... I thought it made sense for our tamales, too.  I did ease up on the lime/orange flavoring since those tastes didn't really "go" with my next adventure - Rick Bayless's Simple Mole Sauce!!  This recipe stems from a cookbook I received as a birth-ma-Christmas gift from an ECDC teacher friend of mine - Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen.  Having made his Brick Red mole in the past, I thought simple = excellent.  While it wound up being very simple (not much easier than the brick red ...), it was still time consuming, as all good moles are.  I was spoiled by Ryan's adventure through town, because he stumbled across the Mexican grocery next to Puerta Vallarta restaurant in town ... while there he picked up some dried ancho chili peppers for our sauce. Go Ryan!!

spice collection - courtesy of
the Farmers' Market

I set about to put this sauce together ... it begins with the ancho chili pepper paste - garlic, chilies, spices (pepper, cumin, Mexican oregano...) ... I probably didn't blacken my chilies enough ... but I blame that on my last experience blackening dried chilies ... it ended in a much needed walk because the house was full of spicy-chili-pepper-air and the in-laws, Ryan and I couldn't stop coughing!! lol ... so I went easy this time ... before re-hydrating the peppers in a bowl of boiling water ... This pureed and strained sauce gets added to a pot of hot oil and thickened dramatically ... before adding another pureed concoction to the pot - sauteed almonds, carmelized onion, roasted tomato, Mexican chocolate, a pinch of cinnamon a bit of broth ... and bread ..!! "Hearty white bread" - which I didn't have .. so I used this day-old bagel. As you can tell in the picture, I munched a couple of chunks while cooking =) yumm - then the sauce is set back to simmer with 4 c. of broth for about an hour while it thickens up.  We yielded almost 2 quarts of sauce - omg it's going to make amazing enchiladas ... and it freezes well!

Eventually I left the kitchen ... and tag teamed little T with Ryan who jumped in to make dinner - heaping greens, perfectly cooked steak, sauteed mushrooms ... and finally, after dinner, T was ready for his bath and bedtime routine.  It's barely 9 p.m. and I am ready for bed ...

Tomorrow we clean house and get ready for company! I hope T is in better spirits =)  We'll be making tamales and visiting with friends ... I'm excited to try a spicy mushroom filling for our tamales, too! Mm.  If you're interested in Bayless's mole recipe, post and I'll add it to this entry - It's a long one, and I am far too exhausted to type it in now ... =)

So I started this project today ...

Today is the day of started-but-not-finished projects!

During Thomas' a.m. nap I started to mix the dough for those chocolate crinkle cookies that are tossed in powdered sugar before baking? Yeah .. yumm .. but the only chocolate I had in the house was "hershey's special dark" .. oh darn .. you mean they are going to have to be EXTRA chocolatey?  Drat ... I got the dough all mixed together and put in the fridge to set up before moving on to project number 2 ..!  A very special Christmas gift for a little Elf of a nephew who happens to looooove Spider Man ;-)

All you get regarding that project are pictures! hahah  Some time after Christmas I'll be sure to post about the gifts I've been working on ...

After making very little progress there, I ran upstairs to grab little T for some play time ... he always manages to wake up at the perfect point in time ;-) Of course the mail carrier had come already to deliver the mail .. and we LOVE getting the mail - including our first Christmas Cards of the season courtesy of our friends the Eggers & the Hundts ..! Thomas loves to get the mail, too ... mostly those adds that come every week that drive Mum & Dad bonkers! hahah

We had a delightful 40 minutes together before he started to turn into a pumpkin ... so we nursed, did some walking, singing and talking around the house ... and went upstairs for nap time.  This whole "prepare for nap time"  routine lasted about 2 hours.  I've started to nurse him to sleep .. and if he wakes after I put him down, I let him fuss for 5-10 minutes before I go back up stairs ... and I don't nurse him again .. I try to get him to settle back into sleep with the help of the nuk, walking, bouncing, swaying .. but the hard part is the fact that I can't just sit down and rock him in the glider with out him having a fit .. so eventually my arms get tired, the nerve in my back is all agitated and sore .. either way .. Somewhere in that window Project #3, which happened to be DINNER was started ... and never finished ... hahah ... and 2 hours later, I decided I had had enough, and obviously so did Thomas .. so we came down stairs and played for a bit before he started to turn back into a pumpkin ... to which we began to walk and talk, feel the cold glass door and windows, sing songs ... it just wasn't right, and he wasn't himself =( so I e-mailed Ryan and asked him to bring home a baby thermometer (we had lost ours) on his way home.

Little T didn't have a fever ... just the fussies ... and some odd stuff going on in his diaper area that isn't blog-worthy ... and he had been spitting up A LOT but hours after eating (here you can see him in the cutest Notre Dame onesie EVER ... that also happens to be cursed ... he either spits up all over it, like today, or happens to have a leaky diaper while wearing it ...) ... also uncommon for him ... and so I called the pediatrician who wanted to see him tonight.  Thinking it was something serious like a UTI or bladder infection we went in ... and low and behold ... he's FINE. Hahah - not even signs of a TOOTH coming in to his loud, fussy little mouth!  The pediatrician corrected some things in his diaper area and sent us on our way home, and my little pumpkin passed out, fast asleep after a record breaking bath time, by about 8:45 p.m.

So all of the little projects I started today wound up on hold - cookies, Christmas presents and dinner - and as I said to little t in the car ... tomorrow is a new day!

Crabby Day Contest

Oh what a few nights we've had this week ... Thomas' fussiness has prompted all sorts of jokes ... "somebody woke up on the wrong side of the crib this morning ..." being my favorite ... and of course the theme dressing that occurred today ... featuring a big old crab on his little booty.  Aunty Marge got a kick out of our photo today =)

I was a crab, he was a grump ... most likely from our sleepless nights ... I'm not sure if he's teething or just waking and fussing.  He doesn't have any mountain ranges in his mouth, just some sensitive spots near his eye teeth.  Counter pressure on his gums really does the trick for him, though ... and his blue UFO (soothie teething nuk .. looks like a UFO landed on his lips).  In the end, our pick me ups came from a shared nap time this afternoon and Mommy Baking Time (with a nice glass of wine...) during his evening nap.  There is nothing quite like making Christmas cookies to get in the spirit, and this year I lucked out because our church is collecting cookies on Friday for a cookie walk.  When asked if I could donate 3 dozen cookies, the only questions I had were, "when?" "where" and "can I please donate more??"

The easiest cookie to mass produce just happens to be my favorite ... I try to make them every year, and pressing them out here in Indiana fills me with memories of watching Dad carefully turning his old Swedish hand press! Lucky me, I have a more modern version of a cookie press, although it does make it a little more difficult to get those perfect poinsettias and darling wreathes.

Here's the recipe for Spritz Cookies:

1c. sugar and 1 1/2 c. butter - cream together til smooth
1 egg, 2 T milk, 1/2 t. almond extract, 1 t. vanilla extract - just combine in a bowl while your butter and sugar are creaming ... dump in and blend very well.
3 1/2 c. flour mixed with 1 t. baking powder - mix together then slowly combine with wet ingredients

Do not chill your dough ... mix in food coloring as you choose.  The packaging that my cookie press came in has all "nude" colored cookies decorated beautifully with different colored sugars ... but in my family we colored the dough and embellished with silver candy balls, red hots and sprinkles =)

I recommend mixing your dough in small amounts in a separate bowl using a spatula until the color is well combined with the dough, and then fine tuning your mixing with your hands ... this saves you from multi-colored rainbow hands later.

Then there is the old family secret that I was able to share with the woman I spoke with at church ... the secret to convincing your cookies to stick perfectly to the cookie sheet rather than stay stuck to your press ... keep your cookie sheets cold by storing them outside until you're ready to use them!  Another problem I ran in to was the heat in my galley of a kitchen ... with the oven on and 3 burners running on the stove top it got hot in there, and fast!  I think as my dough began to warm it was resisting separating from the press resulting in spritz cookies on steroids ... but that's O.k.  We are indiscriminate cookie eaters in our house.

 Here are the shapes I made today - clockwise from the Christmas tree - heart - wreathe - heart - ornament - poinsettia!  The hearts were made with a mixture of the remaining red, blue and green dough .. giving them a rawkin' tie-dyed look.  They're pretty fun ... and very tasty!

We are ending our day early today ... we start our morning with "Family Pictures" at JCPenny's tomorrow, thanks to a rawkin' offer through Groupon.  We've never been ... so it'll be interesting to see how it goes.  I'm not sure what to expect, and since everyone is heading to bed early tonight, I hope we all awake bright eyed and bushy tailed!  Even Ryan is in bed already.  Both he and Thomas had a very cozy evening of playtime, ending in both 'boys' relaxing together on the couch.  It was so sweet to look over at them, so peaceful.