Pre-Op

Eddie's testicle retrieval and hernia surgery will happen tomorrow morning at 7:15. He'll be in good hands with Dr. Edward Levin so I'm not worried...just...nervous since any surgery is "major."

The nurse called me yesterday for the pre-op interview. She said he can't have anything to eat or drink after 3:30am...but to be sure to bring his favorite teddy bear or blanket to comfort him since he will be upset by the change in his schedule and not eating like he usually does. I pointed out that he has no "lovey" and that the only thing that can calm him down in the morning if he's upset is food or going out to visit the chickens. She laughed. I did not. He's gonna be MAD when he can't eat! Thank goodness he's not still nursing because if he wasn't allowed to suckle then he'd be REALLY MAD.

My parents are coming up for the weekend to be here for Eddie and to celebrate my birthday. Dave is home this week but he's in a water treatment course and can't come to the hospital so my mom will come with me instead. We have to leave at about 5:45 (ug) and will hopefully get back home by 11am. Since he's a minor I can't leave the hospital once we arrive. So my mom will probably be sent out to acquire some caffeinated beverages and food for me and her while Eddie's under the knife (a KNIFE! That's not something a mama wants to think about happening to her precious babe!).

Tonight I'll pack a bag of goodies for Eddie to have when he comes out of surgery--I'm thinking donuts, milk, cookies, etc. When I asked the nurse what his temperament will be like when he wakes up after the procedure she admitted that most little boys wake up MAD. She said the act like they've missed out on something and are pissed when they realize what's going on. Great. Hopefully his favorite treats will calm him down. I really hope they are no complications with the procedure, recovery, or anesthesia so we can go home happy. He's really into a photo book I made for him on Shutterfly--it has pictures of him with all of his family members and he likes to point to each person and say their title or name--so I will bring that along, too.

I'm supposed to keep him "calm" for a day or so post-op to let his body recover a little. However, if the pain medication he's taking work well then that'll be a hard task to achieve. If it isn't raining too much we might go to the zoo with some friends since I can strap him in the stroller and he'll (hopefully) remain contentedly still while looking at all the animals. (Wishful thinking, I'm sure.)

Wish us luck tomorrow! Prayers appreciated! I'll post an update tomorrow sometime.

2011 Horwath Lab Sausage Party

A few Saturdays ago we hosted my lab's second annual sausage making party. It was tons of fun, delicious, and worth all the mopping I had to do the next day! The night before I'd gone to Livermore to see Skyler in a musical (Godspell...he was Jesus and he was AMAZING). Dyani, Batiste, and Donovan were there, too, which made it even more fun. But I stayed up way too late so I was tuckered out by the time the party started.

Last year we made 60 pounds of sausage...ALL with Will's super garlicky Hungarian recipe. So this year we decided to make a few flavors.We started at 5 by cutting all the meat into chunks and then got people started on the grinding. The blade on Will's trusty hand grinder was pretty dull so we ended up using his new Cabela's brand electric grinder and saved the hand one for stuffing only. My labmate bought pork from the meat lab on campus (animals raised, dispatched, and sold on campus by students) for every one to share, Will brought 20 pounds of his own, and I brought 18 pounds from Costco so we could make our own breakfast sausage patties after the party. In total I think we ground 42 pounds of pork!

The doggies were super good the whole time...even though I know they were seriously considering stealing some meat!The flavors we made (and stuffed into casings) were:

• Will's family recipe (Hungarian--mainly paprika and garlic)
• Red wine and garlic
• Beer and chipotle dry rub mix Dave and I made a few years ago and still had in the cupboard
• Another one that had beer....I can't remember right now!
  

Will was in charge of cooking the sausage that we ate that night. He used my giant cast iron skillet and basically braised it in beer. It was FREAKING AMAZING. I made the dang-yummiest gravy EVER the next morning with all the caramelized beer and meat goodness in the skillet. Dave and I saved our ground meat until the next day when we made half into a copy-cat Jimmy Dean flavor and our dad's clove breakfast flavor (both varieties as patties). Here's a picture of me and my helper making our sausage the next morning. I flash froze the individual patties and then put them into zippy bags in our deep freeze with freezer paper between them so they won't stick together.

Once all the raw meat was being processed in the grinders, I sanitized the counter so we could prepare toppings for mini pizzas. I'd made 30 balls of pizza dough ahead of time, set out a Costco sized bag of cheese, and a pot of homemade pizza sauce (just let a #10 can of tomato puree simmer with EVOO, garlic, minced onion, oregano/thyme/rosemary/pepper/salt for a while). We wanted to have people build the pizzas inside and then bake them on the baking stone inside the BBQ so the house wouldn't get smoky. But--of course--we discovered that night that the regulator is busted. Dang. (It worked just enough that I could heat a pot of water on the burner to wash the meat-covered restaurant-sized cutting boards in the tub outside.) Ug, so now we have to replace the regulator...and if that doesn't work then we'll have to shop around for a new BBQ.

Having learned just how much smoke our oven produces when baking 20+ individual pizzas over the course of a night, we took the batteries out of the hallway smoke detector. We forgot to take it out of Lucas' and it went off, but thankfully it didn't wake our sleeping babe in the next room.

I just realized we also made a batch of vegetarian sausage since not everyone is a meat eater in our lab. It was really good...and if you didn't know it was vegetarian you could have convinced me it was made with finely ground poultry instead of wheat gluten.

• 2 1/4 cups vital wheat gluten
• 1/2 cup nutritional yeast flakes
• 1/4 cup chickpea flour
• 2 tbsp Bills Best Chik’Nish Seasoning or Spike seasoning mix
• 2 tbsp granulated onion
• 1 to 2 tbsp fennel seed, optional
• 2 tsp coarsely ground pepper, preferably freshly ground
• 2 tsp ground paprika
• 1 tsp dried chili flakes, optional
• 1 tsp ground smoked paprika
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp ground allspice
• 2 1/4 cups cool water*
• 6 to 8 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp soy sauce

1. In a large bowl, mix together all of the dry ingredients. Whisk together the water, garlic, olive oil and soy sauce and using a fork, gently stir into the dry ingredients. Stir just until ingredients are mixed. If dough mixture is too dry, you can add another tablespoon of water or as needed.
2. Scoop 1/2 cup dough mixture at a time and shape into logs. Place logs on piece of aluminum foil and roll up, twisting ends. Place sausages in steamer and steam for 30 minutes. Once sausages have cooled, remove from foil and refrigerate until ready to eat. After cooling, the sausages may feel a bit dry on the outside. Don’t worry, as they will soften and firm up considerably after chilling.

It was a very fun, full house that night indeed!

Summer Seeds Choices

Oh, the choices! I went to the Petaluma Seed Bank on my way back from Gualala. This place is adorable, as it is in a historic bank building, and it is stuffed full of non-GMO seeds of every type. Most I haven't seen before...which meant I had to force myself to choose only what we could reasonably sow this coming season. We will still get a few more standards either as starts or seeds (zucchini, dill, basil, jalapenos).

So here are the seeds I chose:

Tomatoes, which we will grow in the front yard in cages and/or on the ground.

Hot peppers.

Pole beans, which we will grow on our tomato cages in the beds where we grew tomatoes last year (gotta rotate for garden health!).

Squash and sun flowers for the front yard, along the driveway. Everyone who walked by our house last spring and summer would stop and smile when they saw our spaghetti squash and pumpkins. This year I will try adding sun flowers and some rarer squash varieties. Fun!

The cashier gave me two packets of last year's melon seeds (Iriquois and Honeybrook)...so I'll have to figure out where to tuck those in.

I'm hoping to find a few other gardener friends who'll be interested in swapping summer plant starts--I won't need all the seeds I bought but would like to also have a few okra plants.

We have an asparagus bed as of January and two half wine barrels where I have started lettuce greens. Both are on the north side of the house so I'm hoping to be able to grow lettuce far into the summer heat since they will be kept a little cooler than the regular garden beds.

But first I need to mix up some soil block mixture so I can sow my Petaluma Seed Bank seeds!

What are you planting this year?

Google Maps is a Time Machine

Weird...Google Maps currently has an old picture of our house, from a unique angle.

I can see our completed retaining wall in the front yard but no sod in the utility yard so (according to my old blog posts) that dates this picture as between May 11 and June 7, 2009.

Isn't it fun to see the evolution of our house according to Google? Or am I the only one who enjoys this type of thing?

Pet Peeves

1. I don't like blogs that have auto-playing music on them. It interferes with my Pandora!
2. fEw ThInGs BoThEr Me MoRe ThAn WhEn PeOpLe TyPe ThIs WaY oN tHeIr BlOgS--It isn't cute, clever, funky, or trendy. It is annoying, hard to read, and trashy. Yep, trashy. Just like skinny jeans: you'll wish you hadn't when you look back at your blog in a few years.
   
3. Number 2 is only slightly more annoying than when People capitalize random Words while Typing. The only excuse is if you are German--those people give special recognition to all nouns, but even that's not random because it is for nouns only. But since most of us aren't German, please just take a little time to proof read before finalizing your text. This goes for blogs, posters, emails, etc. If you're not sure if a word should be capitalized, then it probably shouldn't be. The end.
   

Edi-TALKA-amus

As of today, these are the new words Eddie can say. I thought about listing the ones he can understand, too, but there are way, way, way too many.

• Outside
• Food
• Boot ("boo")
  
• Brother
• Leila
• Chicken
• Whoa
• Uh-oh
• Night-night
• Book ("buck")
• Water (used to be "wawa" and now is a phonetic "wah-ter" with a distinct "t" sound)

It seems that he learns to say a new word everyday!

Our Day Off

The last few days have been a little weird for us since we have two new house guests.

Since Saturday night we've had a family friend staying in Eddie's room so she can avoid paying for a hotel. Her first grandson was born last week and she's helping out the new parents, who live here in Davis.

On Monday we got a new roommate (for just this month probably)--his name is Lucas, he's from Brazil, and he's the new post doc in our lab. When I heard he was looking for a place to stay, I offered our extra room after Arek moved out. After emailing back and forth, he decided he probably didn't want to live with a family long term but that maybe he could stay for the first month, until he got his bearings and found some roommates or a single apartment. Having a new roommate is quite an adjustment, especially in this case. I got SO used to Arek's schedule and antics (he holed up in his room working most of the time, was pretty shy, and quite a night owl). Lucas is almost the complete opposite--he's outgoing and gregarious and plays with Eddie.

Yesterday Jonah came down with a stomach bug so Morgan and I had to cancel swap-sitting again. We haven't actually swapped for three weeks now (they were on vacation, then her mom was in town and watched Jonah, and now he's sick). Sigh...I just hope we can make it more regular come spring quarter because I'm gonna be b.u.s.y. with TAing and whatnot.

So today Eddie and I stayed home together.

With all the changes in our household lately, it was actually nice for me and Eddie to just hang out all day. We accomplished a lot, but none of it was "must do" stuff--just little things that were mostly for fun.

We started our day with a full breakfast like usual (Eddie ate two eggs, cereal, some banana, AND apple sauce). Then we fed the chickens, I ordered my Groupon-discounted Sunday paper subscription (coupons!) and dog medicine refills from 1-800-Pet-Meds, and then we planted some pansy seeds in a flower box. Eddie was very insistent that he get to scatter seeds, too. Next time I will give him some corn meal to scatter since he won't know the difference because his aim sucks. I'm going to have pretty flowers growing all over the place!

Our local library was just renovated and we've not been to the new digs yet. There was a "Mother Goose on the Loose" story and activity time at 11am for toddlers. So I loaded Eddie into the bike trailer and off we went. He was not happy that I made him relinquish his snack before we went into the library, but he calmed down when I gave him a toothbrush to chew on (don't ask...). He was sort of shy during the activity time, but he did get up and dance with the teacher a little bit. At the end everyone got a set of bells to dance with (parents included! woo!)...Eddie kept throwing his so we left early. I'd like to blame his behavior on the timing since it was right around his nap time, but he's in a "throw everything to see what happens to it or Mama's mood" phase. It's real fun.

We biked to Chipotle to use our last buy 1/get 1 free burrito coupons. I had to wake him up before I took him out of the trailer! Poor bumkin was so tired...but he did eat a bunch of burrito before we headed home. Luckily he stayed awake during the ride home, but later only took a 40 minute nap. I tried to nap at the same time, but it wasn't long enough and I got up more tired than I started out. Bleh.

After a diaper change and snack, we headed to Vacaville to sell our original double stroller at a consignment store (it doesn't work well for heavy kids). Unfortuntely they woudn't take it because there are some minute mildew stains on the label...so I'll have to sell it on Craigslist (where I got it), which is fine, just more work for me. We stopped at the hospital on our way home and got Eddie's blood drawn for a blood lead level check. He was a good boy and only fell apart briefly while the needle was in his arm. But once the lady handed him a couple of Nemo stickers he calmed down. It didn't hurt that I also gave him a Lemonades Girl Scout cookie, too!

When we got home I set out all the fixings to make mini pizzas for dinner, then we headed out into the garden yard to play with the chickens. Eddie was mesmerized by Vindaloo, who was taking a dust bath near his bedroom window. I have NO idea what he was saying, but he was narrating the whole thing. Dang, I wish I'd had the video camera with me to capture it!

The other chickens were busy eating all the worms I was unearthing while I turned the soil to plant more lettuce seeds. It was really annoying because they kept getting in my way--they are lucky they didn't get stabbed with the pitch fork. Once I got the soil bed nice and leveled with the rake, Eddie realized I was scattering more seeds and he fussed until he got to "help." I had to put the chickens back in the pen (except Vindaloo because she was still bathing) because they were eating all the lettuce seeds! After I covered the seeds with soil, we went into the front yard and planted the wine barrels with left over seeds from last year--I mixed everything together since I doubt most of it will germinate. I figured we'll get what we get (hopefully something will grow of the carrots, beets, butterhead, romaine, arugula, spicy mesclun mix, and Asian greens).

Then it was pizza for dinner, bathtime, lots of stories, and bed for Eddie! I know how lucky I am to be able to stay home with Eddie on days like this--not many people have this type of flexibility. We usually only get an afternoon alone together each week so having a whole day really was a blessing. That being said, I'm looking forward to getting some work done at school tomorrow!