It may sound utterly strange to you, but to me… it is oh so good!

In a blender put:

– almost 1/2 of an avocado

– 1 cup of fat free milk (that avocado is already loaded up on fat)

– 1/4 water

– 4-5 ice cubes

– 2 tbsp sugar (or to taste, cause you might like it sweeter than I do)

Mix on high until completely blended. Add a few tiny chunks inside, if you like. Serve and drink.

It is so delicious and creamy. This isn’t some strange combo that came about from my pregnancy, my mom has been making me this drink since I was a little girl. Maybe it is some filipino thing, but I am not really sure. Ben thinks it is so strange. Avocado and sugar just sounds very odd to him, but not to me!

When lunch time rolls around, I am usually at a loss at what to eat. Everything sounds bad and I am stuck with a growling stomach. This has resulted in the making of one these milkshakes. It gets me through that lunch slump! Actually, when I was pregnant with Soulie I think I had one of these almost every night towards the end of my pregnancy. The avocado milkshake never fails me!

What’s your favorite milkshake? I really love avocado ones, but my ultimate favorite are the oreo milkshakes! Now, those are super yum!

I went to bed thinking of white fish salted and peppered on corn tortilla, with pan fried serrano peppers and some avocado. Yeah, my cravings can get very specific.

The next day, during Ben’s lunch break he went grocery shopping to get the items that would satisfy this baby’s longing. Then being the darling he is, he came home and cooked it for me for dinner. It really was the easiest thing (easy for me to say, I didn’t do a thing!) and was so good.

We used cod and added a bit of salt and a nice amount of pepper. Our outdoor grill isn’t working, so Ben cooked it on a stove top grill. For the serrano peppers, we like to lightly fry it with some oil and salt and get them real crispy. Usually, we do it with onions, but onions are one of the things that doesn’t sound too good to me right now so we didn’t put it in. Lastly, warm up some tortillas, slice some avocados, add a squeeze of lemon and you are good to go! For vegetables, Ben quickly cooked up some salted and peppered asparagus and our meal was complete.

I love days when I know exactly what I want to eat, especially when they are home cooked meals. As soon as this morning sickness is over, I am praying there is an end, we are definitely going to be doing weekly meal planning, but until then, Ben pretty much indulges this pregnant lady with whatever she wants. Today’s craving is some thai fried rice from a specific Thai restaurant. Oh the joys of cooking a baby!

Pregnant or not, any one else have any cravings?

The days I know exactly what I want to eat are such good days. On top of that, if it is something we could make at home, those are really happy days! Yesterday morning, I had a sudden craving for one of our favorite salmon dishes to make. I happily emailed Ben right away telling him what I wanted for dinner.

He then came home with some groceries that included two bulbs of fennel. He showed me this recipe he was going to make for our vegetable dish that would accompany our fish. If you have never tried fennel, you must, cause it is just so yummy! Or maybe it is Ben’s knack for finding recipes that make vegetables taste wonderful. Oh last night we had such a good dinner (except maybe the gas that ensued after eating so many vegetables, sorry if that was tmi)!

It is so, so good! Ben even put some feta cheese, parsley and squeezed lemon on top of his brown rice and he said that added an extra oomph, but this pregnant lady wanted her brown rice plain.

We have one salmon steak left and I can’t wait to warm that up for my dinner. This time I will be careful with the amount of vegetables I consume (being gassy wasn’t fun)! Anyone else feeling a bit hungry now?

Oh man, oh man… being pregnant and watching food network is a very dangerous thing! They should have some sort of warning along that bottom for us hormonal food avoiding and craving people. Sometimes there will be a particular dish showing and just seeing it makes me sick, so I run upstairs to avoid the nauseating feeling. Other times, I see something and instantly want it and those are the things that get me especially in trouble!

Last week, there were two things that got me instantly while watching “The Best Thing I Ever Ate“. The first was the cannoli and now I so desperately want one! I seriously dreamt about it that night and it has made me want it even more. Since I didn’t know where to get one, the next day I made Ben go to cheesecake factory and get me a slice of plain cheesecake. Yummity yum! I ate is very slowly of course, extending out over the next few nights because if I eat too much of something I get an adverse reaction and all the food ends up in the toilet. Not fun.

The second thing that got me were the ebelskivers! I had never heard of those before, but they looked bomb diggity (um, Lin I am sounding like you)!!! I wanted some right there and while we were watching Ben tells me he saw an ebelskiver pan at the thrift store the other day and almost bought it, but didn’t know what to do with it! Darn. Darn. Darn. The one that they were showing had banana inside a pancake type batter with a cinnamon and sugar coating. Thus, a few days later the craving was still there and I was still lacking an ebelskiver pan, so I made my own!

Now, it probably wasn’t really the same, but I guessed it did the job (at least for now). My version wasn’t bad and still did taste good, but now I am determined to get me one of these little pans (can I put this on a baby registry?!). I have grand plans of making some filled with nutella, custard, and basically anything that makes my baby belly sing!

Anyone have experience making ebelskivers? Any good recipes? Or maybe have a pan you want to get rid of. Please do share!!!

Hope your weekend was filled with a bit of dessert too!!!

p.s. my BFF made a really cool video (with her little sister) for their older sister’s wedding and it is posted here. this is the video that inspired our little video announcement. you seriously must watch their video, it is so crazily cute! my BFF finally has a blog, so please head over and bid her hello!

I love using focaccia bread for pizza crust and recently I have been loving Tyler Florence’s Fabulous Focaccia recipe. The recipe below is pretty much Tyler Florence’s except my slight change of using whole wheat and unbleached flour together (the directions are pretty much from his recipe, so following the directions directly from Tyler Florence works too, maybe even better).

ingredients:

2 tsp active dry yeast

1 cup warm water

2 tbsp sugar

3 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup unbleached flour

1 tbsp coarse salt

1/4 cup olive oil

In a mixer, proof the yeast by adding together the warm water and sugar. Stir gently until it dissolves. Let stand until foams appears. Turn mixer on low and slowly add the flour to the bowl. Dissolve salt in 2 tbsps of water and add it to the mixture. Pour in 1/4 cup olive oil. Once well mixed, increase the speed to medium. Mix until dough is smooth. If dough is too wet, add more flour; if too dry, add a bit of water.

Turn dough out onto a clean surface and gently knead it a few times. Form dough into a round ball and place in an oiled bowl. Cover with a damp towel and place it in a warm place. Allow the dough to rise (when it is doubled in size) for about 1 hour.

Once dough has doubled in size, place on a clean surface. Roll out dough to desired pizza size and desired crust thickness. We are a fan of thin crust, so we roll it out until dough is about 1/4” to 1/2” thick. Place desired toppings to create your pizza. When we make pizza, we usually have the oven at the highest heat setting possible and depending the toppings, the pizza will bake anywhere from 10-18 minutes.

The pizza we made for our fall-ebration was an Acorn Squash and Gorgonzola Pizza taken from here. It is really yum, but we like more spice to we used a chili garlic oil right on top of the crust before we put on the cheese (and we even drizzled just a smidge on top before we ate it)

This morning was a pretty cruddy. It put my whole day off balance (at least my morning). Let’s see, I was downstairs getting the older two girls breakfast when I heard Ben yelling upstairs, so I ran up to see what the ruckus was. He said Soul’s poop came out!

That’s not unusual as she usually likes to explode in her diaper and it often leaks out. She goes poop once a day but it really is like an explosion! Not today though. Today was different. Somehow she managed to unloose her diaper while in the play yard, so as Ben was going to pick her up, he thought, “Well, it smells kinda funny in there.” He looked inside and saw her little poop droplets. He freaked out! Picked her up and carried her out, only to unloose the diaper even more and more droplets fell out (onto carpet mind you) and then he stepped in it! YES, HE STEPPED IN IT! I finally get upstairs to see him changing her and I see the poop all mushed into the carpet and dragged along. So who is stuck cleaning it? Me. I guess it is in my job description (just look under mom). But let me tell you, I hate cleaning poop off carpet (who does though?!). As I was cleaning it, I vowed that we are never ever getting a pet! Ever.

I bathed Soul before I cleaned the mess, put her in the crib where she cried her head off until I finish cleaning the mush on the carpet. Finally, Ben was leaving for work and the car wouldn’t start. He is yelling at me about it from downstairs. I am mad cause I am cleaning poop off the carpet (he usually does this nasty kinda of cleaning, but today he had to go to work… how convenient!). I run downstairs into the garage to see what happened. We both don’t know. He keeps trying (mind you, his car is at the shop getting fixed so he had to take mine today) and finally, it started. He pulls out fast. I go back upstairs and continue to clean up poop.

So that’s that. I feel out of sync today. And cause I am not a fan of a picture-less post and was not in the mood to take a picture of the mishap (plus, you probably wouldn’t want to see it), I am sharing a stinky but yummy lunch we had over the weekend.

Five simple ingredients: sardines, smoked herring, fresh tomatoes, and olives atop a yummy cracker. Now, this was something stinky but really yum.

Okay friends, how was your morning? I hope it was better than mine.