Menu Monday (on Thursday)

     So, after shopping at Albertsons on Monday last week and finding out that they were sold out of all the on-sale products that I had planned my meals around, I have decided to start shopping on Thursdays instead. New sales begin on Wednesdays at Albertsons, so this way I'm more likely to snatch up the on-sale items before they are sold out (particularly meat which is so expensive here that I always double-check the tag to make sure it doesn't cost my first born child). 
     So I will now post our meal plan on either Wednesday or Thursday. Which means I'm now in the market for a new clever, alliterative title. Suggestions would be appreciated. Anyway, now to the point of this post. What we will be eating this week. Most of the recipes were chosen because I have chicken, Italian sausage and shrimp in the freezer already. 


Thursday: Upside down hamburger casserole with a side salad and fries. This is a recipe I found online while I was pregnant. It is really tasty and easy.
Friday: I'm not cooking this night because Tim's work is having a cookout for the younger employees so the management folks can get to know them and mentor them and stuff like that. I get to come mainly so I can wrangle the baby and Tim can show us off to his bosses. Most of the guys there that are Tim's age aren't married and don't have adorable kids so Owen is like catnip to all the old guys. 
Saturday: Ritz cracker chicken with zucchini-corn fritters and green beans. The new recipe for tonight is the fritters. It is a recipe from the newest issue of Food Network Magazine. It reminds me of a recipe that Tim's mom makes with squash, so I'm excited about trying it out. I am really not a big fan of zucchini (unless it's baked in bread or hidden in things like spaghetti sauce), but I'm pretty certain that frying it will help. 

Sunday: Grilled chicken with corn on the cob and black beans. Tim picked out the marinade we'll be using. It's Lawry's Havana Garlic and Lime. It is a Cuban-inspired sauce with garlic,  chives and lime, orange, and grapefruit juices. I will serve it with seasoned black beans and corn to round out the Cuban-themed dinner. 

Monday: Italian sausage with bowtie pasta and broccoli. This is a recipe I found on Pioneer Woman Cooks. It's actually a recipe she found on another website on a post called 3-2-1 pasta where you use three cups of vegetables, two cups of meat, and one package of pasta. That way, you can create supposedly endless combinations of ingredients to make easy pasta dinners. We'll see if this one is a winner and maybe I will use the formula in the future to make dinner when I have a few random things on hand that I don't know what to do with.

Tuesday: Italian sausage pizza with side salad. We have plenty of Italian sausage to use up, so I'm going to try making a homemade pizza. And really, is there such a thing as bad pizza? 


Wednesday: Creamy shrimp with corn and bacon. This is a recipe from Real Simple magazine. After buying some frozen shrimp on sale last week (generally it is outrageously priced so we never buy it), I wanted to make some of our favorite shrimp recipes. This one is so creamy and tasty, with the fatty saltiness of the bacon to balance the sweetness of the corn and cream. A glass of white wine makes this one delicious splurge-worthy meal. 

And in case you were wondering, here's what we ate earlier this week:
Monday: Chicken tikka masala. This is a recipe that I made recently using McCormick Recipe Inspirations premeasured spices and recipe cards. I have been really interested in trying some more ethnic meals, especially Indian dishes, and this was a safe way to kind-of dip my toe into the waters of Indian food. The cool thing about these recipe cards is that if I like it, I just keep the recipe card and the next time I can save money by just using the spices from my spice cabinet. 

Tuesday: Shrimp arrabbiata with sauteed spinach. This recipe is from Cooking Light magazine. It is so tasty and spicy. If you are not a spice-loving person and want to make this recipe, I would for sure cut down on the red pepper flakes. 

Wednesday: Chicken lo mein. This is a really simple recipe that I got from Real Simple magazine. It uses chicken ramen noodles for the noodles and some of the seasoning. I just stir fry chicken with some oil, the ramen seasoning, and some soy sauce. Once the chicken is no longer pink, I add in shredded carrots, sliced onion, and cabbage and sautee until the veggies are softer, though I still like the cabbage to have some crunch. Add the cooked ramen noodles and mix it up and it's done. It takes maybe 15 minutes to make, which is a plus.


And then... I am going to make a special treat this weekend. I found this recipe in Food Network magazine in a special about treats for men. And as a special "I love you" to my sweet husband and the best daddy my baby boy could have, I am making Peanut Butter-Chocolate Chip-BACON(!) Cookies. And I admit, this might not be an entirely altruistic plan. I've been known to enjoy some bacon as well. 

Beach Baby

     As some of you know, we recently returned from a week-long beach vacation to Sanibel Island with my parents. Oh, it was fun. Sun, sand, time by the pool, reading, fishing, dinners out, and more games of Angry Birds than I can count. My family has been vacationing on Sanibel Island since I was a kid, and it is one of my favorite places in the world. We have so many great memories there and every year we go back, we make more. It was so special to be able to take Owen there and such a blessing to be able to enjoy a week of fun and relaxation with my parents. As much as we love going back home to visit family and friends, after a big move this year and a new baby, these pooped parents really needed to be able to go somewhere to relax. We even got to go out on a little date together (sans baby) while on vacation. We also were able to briefly visit Tim's family on our way back to Washington too.
     Here are some pictures from our trip. 

With Grams at the beach. Check out my cute froggy bathing suit.

Sandy toes.

Can you spot the baby?

A quick visit with Nana and Papa before we flew home.

Owen is four months old!

I'm four months old!

At four months old, Owen was:

Weight: 14 pounds, 1 ounce, between the 25th and 50th percentile

Height: 25.5 inches long, 75th percentile

Head Circumference: 16.4 inches, between the 25th and 50th percentile

     
     The best thing that happened this month was that Owen laughed for the first time on July 3. His laughs are amazing, all gurgly and cute. He is super smiley now too and gives everyone big gummy grins whenever he first sees them.

Eating:

     Owen still eats about every three hours during the day, sometimes sooner. I think he was having a growth spurt this month because he was eating more too. He usually drinks around five ounces at each feeding. He is still fed expressed breastmilk primarily, but gets a formula bottle every so often just to help me keep up with his increased demand this month. Also, our freezer was left cracked open while we went on vacation this month, so I had to throw out my entire stash of frozen breastmilk. It was sad. I had hoped that would allow me to stop pumping sooner, while still being able to give Owen the good stuff. Hopefully I will be able to start restocking the freezer soon.

     This month we have let him taste some of our food occasionally just to see how he would react. The kid is nutso for ice cream. He did the typical sour face look when we let him suck on a lime and to Tim’s surprise, Owen gnawed away at a dill pickle while we were on vacation. 

Mmmm... pickles are tasty!

Sleeping:

     Owen now sleeps in his crib in his bedroom every night. It has been better for everyone I think. We don’t keep each other up with our various sleep noises and stirrings.  He goes down for an evening nap around 7 each day and then we generally wake him to feed him one last time around 9 or 10. He will then wake up once during the night, generally around 3, and then wakes up again in the morning around 6. He takes about three naps during the day, two shorter ones in the early and late morning and a longer one in the middle of the afternoon. 

I still sleep swaddled for the most part. It makes me feel safe and secure.

Other Things I Want to Remember:

Owen is wearing a lot of 3-6 month size clothes now. He can still fit into some of his larger 0-3 month size outfits, but we’ll probably begin phasing those out soon and storing them for a potential little brother in the future. He is in size 1/2 and size 2 diapers.

     His still has a good amount of hair minus the part in the back that has rubbed off. His eyes are getting darker and are now a greenish brown color.

     Owen’s favorite toys are most anything that makes noise. He likes his activity mat and will play on it for about 15 to 20 minutes at a time.

Who is that handsome fellow?

     Owen loves when we read to him. He pays attention and looks at the pages with interest. When I read “The Jesus Storybook Bible” to him, he always squeals and babbles along like he is really excited. It is so cute.

     Owen’s favorite times of the day are early in the morning when we come get him out of his crib, bathtime, and when Daddy comes home from work and plays with him. 

My Daddy is so much fun.

     We celebrated Owen's first Fourth of July this month. We grilled burgers in the backyard and made s'mores. Then we walked around the neighborhood to watch fireworks going off around Richland. Owen really enjoyed the fireworks surprisingly and would actually begin fussing whenever they stopped for a moment.

     Owen went on his first trip to the beach this month. We put his feet in the ocean on July 24. His reaction made him seem pretty unimpressed.

This froggy bathing suit is really embarrassing.

Here are some pictures from Owen's four month old photo shoot:

Rawr! I'm a monster!

Check out the color of my eyes. For now...

Menu Monday

     As most of you know, we just got back from a week-long vacation last night. I'm really excited about getting back to eating some good home-cooked meals after several days filled with fast food and other restaurant entrees.

Monday: Pizza. We got in really late last night and Owen has had a hard time getting back on our west coast schedule, so I didn't get a chance to go to the grocery store, but I did plan our meals for this week. Tonight we will have pizza so that I can work on unpacking and getting back into the swing of things without having to cook.
Tuesday: Roasted tilapia with red potatoes and lemon. This is a recipe from Real Simple magazine. The last time I made it, we still lived in Georgia. The thing I love the most about the recipe is the olives. They had a nice salty, briney flavor to the fish that really complements the lemon and potatoes. I'll serve it with sauteed spinach with garlic.

Wednesday: Cajun chicken pasta. This is one of my favorite recipes. It is from the website Pioneer Woman Cooks. The other good thing about it is that it contains a good number of vegetables that Tim doesn't really care for, but he likes them in this.

Thursday: Leftover cajun chicken pasta. Our small group meets on Thursday nights so we have to eat beforehand and it's easier to just eat leftovers.
Friday: Grilled steak with sauteed onions and peppers with baked potatoes and asparagus.
Saturday: Island pork tenderloin with sweet potato fries and sauteed spinach with garlic. This recipe is from the P90X workout diet. It is really good. It uses a spice rub on the pork that includes chile powder, cinnamon, cumin, salt and pepper, garlic, hot sauce, and brown sugar. It makes a really delicious crust on the pork and tastes ridiculously yummy.

Sunday: Seafood Paella. This is a recipe from Tyler Florence on Food Network. I had paella at a restaurant while we were at the beach and it was really good so I wanted to see if I could make it at home. I will not include the clams though because I'm not a big fan, but I will use chicken, shrimp, and sausage.