Lomo saltado at the beach

We spent the weekend at the beach with my parents and Antonia's godparents. It's so relaxing to spend the night in front of a fire grilling pizzas and drinking wine. We all took our dogs so the next morning we let them out to run on the beach. Silly Angus tried to follow Lucy the lab into the ocean. He wasn't very successful and quickly learned to wait for her on the shore.

During the summer, the fun part of the beach house is cooking lunch for everyone. This weekend was no exception. Daddy made his famous lomo saltado in his new paella pan and this was served with sweet potato and yellow potato shoestring fries. My favorite! My whole family cooks and I think we each have our specialties and Daddy's lomo saltado is definately his. His other great is his spaghetti carbonara with liters of cream and pounds of bacon.

Daddy's Lomo Saltado

1 small beef tenderloin

2 Red Onions sliced into ribbons

5 Plum tomatoes seeded and sliced into 8 lengthwise

2 chilis of choice (we use yellow aji) cut in thin strips

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon fresh oregano

1/2 cup pisco or substitute for red wine

1 cup red wine

4 tablespoons soy sauce

1 handful roughly chopped cilantro

1 handful roughly chopped green onion

Heat pan until smoking and add oil. Once very hot sear meat in batches making sure it's well seared but still rare.
Remove meat from pan and add the onions sauteeing rapidly to remove all brown bits from pan. Once onions begin to wilt but are still crip add the tomatoes and the chili and sautee rapidly. Add the cumin and oregano letting them toast in the pan for 20 seconds. Add the wine and pisco and allow alcohol to evaporate. Add the meat back in the pan and allow all the ingredients to meld and the meat to cook just until medium. The vegetables should still be intact and the onions should retain their bite.

Add the soy sauce, cilantro and green onion. Check for salt and season with salt and pepper.

Serve with white rice, shoestring yellow potatoes and sweet potato fries.

The Perfect Scrambled Eggs

One of the things that I could never make properly were fluffy, soft in the middle, scrambled eggs. In my house my father was the inarguable master of the scrambled egg and I never learned how to make them. Then I met Rodrigo. He makes the BEST scrambled eggs I have ever had. His method is really simple, hot pan and a little cheese.

This morning I made scrambled eggs for him while he went to buy fresh bread and prosciutto from the bakery around the corner from our house. Antonia was fast asleep and I was happy in my flannel pijamas thinking about my Sunday morning breakfast. As soon as the eggs hit the pan she woke up and started crying. I ended up eating my eggs 45 minutes later in a crispy sandwich. I think I ended up with an even better breakfast because I added some goat cheese to my prosciutto and egg sandwich. Delicious!

3 eggs

1 tablespoon cheese grated or chopped (gruyere, emmenthal, fontina)

salt

freshly ground pepper

1 teaspoon olive oil

1 teaspoon unsalted butter

Beat the eggs slightly and add the cheese, salt and pepper.

Start with a really hot pan. When it starts to smoke slightly add the olive oil and the butter.

Immediately add the eggs and count to 5 waiting for the eggs to form one solid base without browning. Quickly lift the edges around the pan and center folding the eggs into themselves rather than scrambling. This should take no more than a minute for soft but not runny eggs.

A new CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!!!

I'm so excited we FINALLY after waiting for two months picked up our new car. We bought a Honda CRV in indigo blue. I feel like such a soccer mom.
LOve it!

What I've learned so far

So quick overview of what I've learned so far.....
1- Babies know more than you
When we were in the hospital the doctors and nurses told us that we HAD to nurse her every three hours MAX. So we would wake her up and force feed her every 2.5-3 hours. She was cranky, sleepy and not hungry. When we came home, I noticed that she would wake up on her own every four hours and nurse both sides no problem. So I started letting her wake up by herself when she was hungry ever four hours or so. She's been gaining weight steadily and she's used to her own schedule now.
2-RELAX and you'll have milk
I stayed in bed and lounged in my pijamas all day and let her nurse and I watched tv. I had milk like crazy. I was never stressed about not having milk. I did pump in the hospital from day one no matter what. She would finish feeding and I'd pump a little bit just to stimulate production. Now I have too much milk so I freeze whatever extra I pump.
3- Drink lots of water, eat lots of vegetables.
Your body uses all your liquid for milk so you might get constipated the first few weeks. Get a large water bottle and keep it by you at all times.
Eat vegetables in large quantites at every meal but beware of some which might make baby gassy.
4- Natural is best.
Her face broke out a few weeks ago and I've been cleaning it after she feeds with a little chamomile tea. Also she had some serious diaper rash and instead of wet wipes I cleaned her with cotton balls and chamomile tea. I cured the diaper rash bathing her in oatmeal. I just boiled half a cup of plain oats in water and strained the water. The gummy goo I added to her bath water and then rinsed her with a little extra at the end. I put lansinoh and butt paste on her butt and she was cured in two days. The lansinoh I figured would help because it's so thick it was the perfect barrier.

Antonia

It's been another six months and between pregnancy, work and the house it's been impossible to keep up on this end. I gave birth via C-section to a 5 lb baby girl on May 10th. She was so small at birth it made me really nervous when I finally was able to carry her.
We were told a few weeks before our due date that she was breech and my doctor scheduled a c-section for May 14th which was 38 weeks. At week 34 I started having contractions and we went to the hospital for a fetal stress test it ended with me being put on partial bed rest. Basically what my doctor wanted was for me to quit working like a maniac and start taking it a little bit easier. I was able to hand in all my work via computer while sitting on my bed or being at my mothers house.
We went in for an ultrasound at week 36 and the amniotic fluid was really low so he moved my due date up to the 10th. The c-section was no big deal hardly any pain and seeing her made it morth while. The only thing I didn;t like was the anesthesiologist doped me up after she was out so it took me quite a long time afterwards to feel comfortable holding her and getting to know her.
She's now a month old and motherhood it amazing. I'm really lucky that I have a saintly baby she's sleeps up to five hours straight at night and never really cries. She'll fuss in her bassinet and that's how I know she's hungry. All in all I'm really happy, tired but happy.

A serious update

A lot has happened since the last time I wrote about six months ago. The two main things are I’m pregnant and I have a new dog. A week after Eros died, I was inconsolable and R decided that it might be a good idea to get me another dog. We called around and rescued a 6-8 month old Frenchton (boston terrier, French bulldog mix) who we named Angus because he looks exactly like a short Angus cow or a little pig. He’s full of energy, spunky, rough and tumble and not the sharpest tool in the shed. We are madly in love with him and he cracks us up on a daily basis.
On December 31 we went on our regular morning walk in the park with his friend Lucy the Lab and he tugged on the leash and I tugged back and he whirled on his left hind leg and broke it in two places. We knew he was rescued from a puppy mill and that he had been fed chicken meal and kept in a tiny cage all of his life. Since we had been exercising him regularly and feeding him the best food available to us as well as extra vitamins we thought he was doing well. Apparently there has been extensive damage to his bones as he has not had a source of calcium as they were forming. Sooooo, he now has 4 screws coming out of his leg and a huge cone on his head. We have 10 more days to go with him looking like an alien and hurting like hell. It’s been good practice though for when baby comes because taking care of him has been a huge chore. He’s totally worth it.
I’m now at 23 weeks and still have 119 days to go. No, I’m not crazy babycenter.com sends me weekly updates and so I know how many days, hours and minutes I have left. Let me tell you about pregnancy IT SUCKS!!!! Having a baby inside you is wonderful, the idea of a life inside you is amazing but the symptoms are seriously awful. That said, I finally was able to sleep through the night last night!!! I was so tired and cranky and annoyed at the world in general. Of course the main brunt of it is absorbed by R as the poor thing has to deal with me every day. I mad myself a little nest in the other bed and was out from 10pm until 8:45 today.
We came back from the beach yesterday and I really wanted a home cooked comfort meal. So we bought two baby chickens, some fat asparagus that looked too tempting to pass up, fresh corn and potatoes. We roasted the little chickens with mustard, white wine, butter and orange juice and cut up the potatoes and added them to the mirapoix at the bottom of the roasting pan. I roasted the asparagus with butter and threw in some parmesan cheese at the end and made some garlic butter rice with corn in it. It was the perfect end to a nice weekend. We opened a bottle of wine and watched a stupid movie. I love Sundays.
I promise to write more often. I was thinking about it yesterday and this is the perfect way to record our lives as future parents for our baby. A nice way to look back later and laugh at how good it was.