Gratitude

I have a friend, someone I went to high school with but haven't seen since my freshman year in college. She is very religious and spiritual. At the end/start of every year, she prays until the word for the year comes to her. This is the word, an inspiration or direction, for the entire year. Previous words of the year have included contentment, joy, determination. Every year, I've followed with interest what the word of the year will be, mostly because even though I am not a religious person, I find it an interesting way to deal with whatever God/the universe/life (you pick) brings to you. 

As of yet, I haven't had any revelations for a word to guide me at the start of a year (maybe because I don't pray?) BUT as I review the past year, one word does come to mind, a word I've been feeling in a very present and constant way all year long: gratitude.

While I was pregnant, I often thought about what I wanted out of life for Bundle. My wishes for her were: may she be healthy and loved aplenty. You see, while I was a healthy child overall, as I look back at my childhood what I mostly remember was being loved. Not by throngs of people but by a few select, wonderful people who I could count on no matter what. Did I have a perfect childhood? Far from it. But I knew that I had the unconditional love and support of those few and that allowed me to be independent, self-assured and to be where and who I am today. So, I didn't feel that love from some people that I was supposed to feel/get that from? It turns out, that's okay, it wasn't needed after all and I might be the better for it.

But as for the wishes of a new mother, you might be thinking: If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. And yet - this beggar is definitely riding a horse! Don't get me wrong. We've had a year with many ups and downs but that doesn't rid me of my gratitude. 

One of the most notable downs was the loss of our 12 year old canine soul mate Aggie in January, and yet, even at that time; gratitude. Gratitude that we have an awesome vet who loved our dog almost just as much as we have. A vet who showed deep compassion, understanding and was willing to go along with our madness (feel free to ask me about the madness later on if you wish to know more details). A staff at the vet clinic full of kindness and sensitivity. Sympathetic friends who at a moment's notice took care of Bundle and gave us the opportunity and time to give our dog undivided attention in his last moments with us. In the past year we cried, we lost, we got mad and/or hurt, we were disappointed.

The year brought many ups as well. We grew as people. We were a part of many of Bundle's milestones and most of her daily living. We added new and wonderful people to our lives. We had adventures, improved our living conditions (new carpet!), got healthier, and laughed often. We learned so much, were reminded of things forgotten and we reconnected. We were able to spend lots of time with family (and that includes friends that are considered family), including going to Costa Rica for Christmas for the first time in 14 years! And again, the take-away from all of our ups has been: gratitude. Gratitude that Bundle has a grandmother that will drive two and a half hours each way, in a single day, to spend a few hours with her at the Christmas Market. A Tita who will move earth and water for her and a Tito who although is not biologically related to her adores and loves her like no other. Cousins who I swear are going to wear out her name from saying it so much (to get her attention) but love playing with her, picking her up and sharing their stuff. Aunts who don't hesitate to change diapers, (even the poopy ones!), are always willing to give advice, and lend a helping hand to her parents. Uncles who without even meeting her or uncles who get to hang out with her often, spoil her and make her giggle. Oodles of love, hugs, and kisses from all of our friends and family. Bundle is loved aplenty, from near and far, by many - and by extension, so are her parents. Having my wishes come true for Bundle and being given this past year, find me filled with gratitude, feeling fortunate, and privileged for having gone through it all.

And, thank you - to all of you, for being a part of our lives, enriching and making them better. We love you all! May 2014 be filled with laughter, adventure, love, and peace for all - we can't wait! 

The best egg rolls e-vah! (Yeah I said it)

When I was back in college (it's impolite to ask how long ago that was so: don't), I bought a package of egg roll wraps at the store to try and figure out something to do with them. Coincidently, the package comes with a recipe suggestion which was the foundation for the recipe that I have used over and over again.

Now, first let me tell you that my egg rolls are NOT meant to be eaten as an appetizer, you can have two or even three of these and have it be your meal, period. Secondly, these are not an everyday meal although I will confess that shortly after graduating from college I ate these egg rolls for a whole week straight, breakfast, lunch and dinner... these are the "I'm starting my diet tomorrow and want to pig out" or "I had the bestest, most awesomest day ever and don't want to go drop a huge chunk of change on dinner out" kind of egg rolls, okay? 

So don't go thinking I'm suggesting you incorporate these into your monthly repertoire cause, I'm not.

These are also non-traditional egg rolls - no mushy cabbage/carrot combo here, these get filled with real yummy stuff. First, I cook whatever veggies sound good (or use leftover roasted or grilled veggies from the night before) - in this case I had a bunch of cauliflower, broccoli and snap peas. I roasted the first two and sauted the snap peas.

                 

 Then, I dice up the chicken and coat it in a mixture of cornstarch and soy sauce, trust me on this! If you use 1 TBSP of cornstarch, you need 2 of soy sauce to dissolve it in, I just eyeball it depending on the amount of chicken I'm cooking (for this recipe I had 4 chicken breasts), in this case I had about 3 TBSPs of cornstarch and 6 of the soy sauce.

Chicken - Before, aka Raw

 I decided to add some julienned carrots to the cooked veggie mixture for an extra crunch and flavor.

Let the chicken caramelize in the pan - the cornstarch/soy sauce combo will give it this fantastic end result coating that I have never achieved when using anything else. 

Chicken After, aka Mmmm, Delicious

Heating up the oil

Once you have all of the ingredients ready, you can start to roll the egg rolls. If you don't know how, you can follow the directions that come on the back of the package OR since we live in a much more modern era now, I'm sure you can find a youtube video showing you how to do it. Mine are never the perfect specimen of an egg roll, but I don't care cause they still taste freaking awesome!

Getting the egg rolls filled

Filled and awaiting an oil bath

Cook the egg rolls until they are golden brown - whichever level of golden brown you prefer. Serve two per person with some soy sauce for dipping. I recommend that you cut them in half to let some of the heat out (cause you don't want to burn your mouth) first.

Batch numbers one and two

Batch number three

The cutest sous chef!

This particular recipe yielded 16 egg rolls, meaning I had enough filling for that number. If you happen to have leftovers: for reheating I recommend that you nuke them for a minute and then stick them in your toaster oven or regular oven and bake them for a little bit to get them to crisp up again before you devour them. However, these are best eaten fresh, enjoy!!

Action expresses priorities

Clearly my inactivity on my blog (nothing since December) explains my priorities... I have to be honest, I can't really rate them in order of importance because I think there is a big mosh pit of priorities all at the top vying for the number one spot and I find that I just have to cycle through them as best as I can - talk about learning to juggle! But this blog has not been a part of the mosh pit, it has stood quietly swaying to the music, in the back row, watching everyone else go at it.

Now, here's my dilema: I have a ton of ideas about what I want to write about but no freaking clue where to start. Things like mommy brain, traveling internationally with a 5 month old, baby adventures/personality/frame-of-mind, yummy recipes, celebrations, my opinion of things like Mother's and Father's days and what happens on Facebook during these and any other "holidays", and much more. If I could just straighten out the jumble in my brain I could get started....

Last year, shortly after I became pregnant I read an article in Newsweek that talked about how a woman's brain goes under "maternal programming" which basically involves memory loss in order to make room for new capacities to be a good mommy. Let me just say that this is an ongoing issue for me, this nagging feeling that I have to take care of something but can't remember what that something is (which often happens at the office). I find myself interrupting people often and my interruption normally begins with "I'm sorry I'm interrupting you but if I don't get this out now it will be gone from my brain for who knows how long and I need you to know this before I forget it AGAIN". Yes, like Sisyphus, my memory issues have become my boulder -although it is yet to be determined if I will have to deal with this for an eternity.

Having read this article and the study linked to it has at least made me feel better about the memory problems. I don't feel as if I'm losing it completely. Every time I have this issue I remind myself that it allowed me to acquire other much needed abilities to better care for my child. But here's the thing... dementia and Alzheimer's Disease run in my family. Since around 10 years of age I have worked constantly on my memory abilities and my memory was a source of pride for me (not so much now). Additionally, since 2004 I've worked at keeping up my language skills, making sure my diet has plenty of omega 3 fatty acids, doing crossword puzzles, reading and any other mental exercise I find to be fun in order to maintain to the most important of muscles in good shape. My brain has for a long time, held more importance to me than my body - I watched my maternal grandmother "live" with Alzheimer's Disease for 10 years, let's just say that the last few years I use the verb living in a very liberal manner.

My brain was also affected by pregnancy in another way. Things I used to "care" about like assigning blame to the correct person most of the time this would have been DH, no longer hold any importance to me. I don't care if you were the last person to use the snow scraper and now I can't find it (so you're going to get yelled at for this infraction) and the windshield needs to be cleaned so that we can make it wherever we are going. What matters is that it's cold, the baby is in the car and I don't want her to be cold so we need to get going to warm up the car faster and in order to get going we need to clean the windshield so we NEED to find the scraper and get the windshield cleaned ASAP. I must admit I'm glad to be rid of this part of my personality, I had tried for many years to not care about petty stuff like that but having Bundle "fixed" my brain and this issue.

I have decided that the blog needs to move closer to the mosh pit and further away from the back row, so hopefully, I'll start posting regularly - no promises though. Now that you have a better glimpse of my "mommy" brain, I hope you understand. And if you just need to know what's going on, email or call - I'd love to hear from you!

XO ~ Jenny