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30 May 2013

Guilty pleasures

Hello!

Its been a long time sine I posted. We are all late on this part of the Haeley's link up but here goes.

So let me see. I don't know if I have any huge or embarrassing guilty pleasures. All I have to offer for this post is what I do to waste time. There have been so many times when Luisa wakes me up early and I am so tired. But, as soon as she heads to her room for her naps, I suddenly feel a burst of energy. Its perfect, I think to myself, now that she is asleep I can finally clean the house, do the laundry, organize school work, write that blog post I've been meaning to get to... but instead, I slump on to the couch to catch up on those shows that have been sitting on my DVR, or I spend too much time reading other blogs, or I look online at all the things I CAN'T afford to buy but that I all of a sudden really, really neeeeed. Like...

These....

And this dress,
These adorable shoes for Luisa,


Oh and while we are taking a trip Impossible-never-going-to-happen-ville, I would like this,


And a private jet to take me to this place whenever I need a relaxing vacay,


And then Luisa wakes up and I realize that I've wasted all of that time that could have been used so much more productively. I also realize suddenly how tired I am when she wakes up. So I guess my guilty pleasure is wasting time. Whats yours?




17 May 2013

A (very) late Mother's Day post

Honestly, as Mother's Day was approaching this year, I was thinking about what to get my mom and my mother in law and it really didn't even hit me that I now belong among those celebrated on that day. It was weird for me because I always remember any and every day that I should be celebrated...birthday, anniversary, ALL of the Marian feast days...but I somehow forgot about Mother's Day. We ended up "celebrating" it on Monday because I was working on Sunday. Motherhood has been strange. In some ways, I feel like I haven't changed a bit. In other ways, im so utterly different. One thing is for sure, my everyday experience of life has so dramatically changed that I can no longer fathom life without the constant and unconditional love (dependence) that Luisa has for me. 

Right now I work part time for the school. It seems to be a perfect balance because I get to be with Luisa every day. And even though I spend literally alomst every minute with her, Donny and I still miss her when we put her down for the night. We often contemplate waking her up just to hang out for a little longer. We don't wake her (most of the time) but we will spend a lot of those night flipping through photo after photo, video after video, of that little wonder. 

Donny and I have spoken about the many experiences of having a baby, but one thing that has stuck me is how I so often feel like she is not really my own child. Maybe this has to do with the fact that I grew up babysitting my whole life, or maybe because I have so many nieces to play with. But when I think about it in a larger sense, I realize that in fact, it is true. Luisa is not mine. She belongs to someone much greater and more capable than I. She is my little gift that I get to take care of for a while. Hopefully it's a long while.











11 May 2013

Colors-Green

I have been eyeing the color green! I'm always into blues of course but emerald green has been standing out to me and how could it not with the trees bursting with green leaves everywhere. I have noticed that I don't really own anything green either.
Tree outside our apartment!

Green just brightens everything up! I love it!
http://www.darcyeden.com/posts/2012/4/3/green-for-spring.html
How do I not own anything green? Granted, I do have a slight tinge of green in my skin... okay more like A LOT of green in my skin... I guess this spring I have been embracing my green-ness. 







Cake for Company

So I looked through cookbook after cookbook, recipe after recipe, and I just couldn't find anything I liked.  Well I liked plenty of what I saw but none seemed like the right cake for this post. So I had an existential crisis of sorts. Do I even like cake? Who am I if I'm not the cake lover I thought I was? Well that lasted for a whole...2 minutes when I realized that I'm more of a cookie, brownie, pastry type person. I find most cakes to be too rich, too decadent for me.  So I looked on my shelf for what I had and I looked through some different dessert recipes and I came up with a solution...A COOKIE CAKE! Who doesn't like a good cookie cake?

I had all of the ingredients for a Nutella cookie cake. 





Here is the recipe

  • 1/2 C butter, salted, at room temperature
  • 1/2 C brown sugar, packed
  • 1/2 C sugar
  • 1 1/2 C all purpose flour
  • 1 egg
  • 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/2 C Nutella
  • 1/8 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 3/4 C semi sweet chocolate chips
Instructions
  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees
  • Line baking sheet with parchment paper
  • In a bowl beat butter until soft, about one minute
  • Add in sugars and beat for an additional 2-3 minutes or until soft and fluffy.
  • Add in vanilla, egg and Nutella. Mix together well.
  • Add in flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix until just incorporated.
  • Add in chocolate chips.
  • Bake for 8 minutes
And throw it in a pan! Or in my case a skillet. I'm a big banana bread fan (Donny and Luisa are even bigger fans) so maybe the next recipe will be banana bread.

Thanks for the link up, French!






04 May 2013

Selfie

Haeley, all I have to say is... Selfie=AWKWARD!!

Cheeseball!


Easy Week Night Dinners

Okay, I had some trouble with this post for several reasons. For one, our easy dinner is pasta with a basic red sauce but there was no way I was going to write about cooking pasta with an Italian family reading my blog. And everything else that we make, I just realized, takes a long time which would go directly against the point of this link up! It also explains why dinner feels like such a to-do every night. Donny and I have also been into Indian food recently. It all started when I was a couple days past my due date last June, and everyone told me that Spicy Indian food would send me right into labor... we went twice in that week to a great Indian restaurant and I still ended up being 10 days late. Indian food=labor was a BIG lie but it ended up being fine because through that, I discovered my great love of Indian food! So I can't write about pasta or about chicken, which we do a lot, since everyone else pretty much did a chicken recipe...

Besides just ordering pizza or Chinese food, for an easy week night dinner, we Cowan's like to make a simple meal that I grew up with. Rice and eggs. Sounds strange but having eggs as a part of dinner is a common thing in Argentina, and many other countries actually. In fact, those countries see having eggs for breakfast a very strange. Okay, let me just get on with the recipe.

How to make: First, I boil a pot of water (which has some olive oil, salt, and a clove of garlic in it) and throw some rice in it. While that is cooking up, I grab a pan, put some olive oil in it, and cook an egg or two. The key to this meal is cooking the egg just right. It shouldn't be a seriously fried egg but the edges should be a bit toasty with the yolk remaining... well, yolky. And Voila! you scoop rice on the plate and place the egg right on top of that mound of rice. Don't forget to salt and pepper it of course.



How to eat: make sure to break the yolk and mix it in with the rice. As your fork approaches your mouth, it should contain a balanced mixture of egg, rice, and yolk (I feel like this sounds less and less appealing the more I describe it. I also did such a great job choosing an appetizing picture too!). 
Mix it up: the great thing about this meal is that you can spice it up in so many ways! For example, sauté some veggies in the rice, or (my favorite) make a tomato salad to enjoy mixed in (tomato, garlic, basil, olive oil) with the egg rice combo. 

Well, since I did such a good job of making you want to have this meal, I have to say that Donny was skeptical at first but after one bite, he became a true believer! He appreciates those simple meals with simple flavors (he automatically adds 7 different spices to any meal he cooks) that taste great! Also, if you want to Americanize this meal a little bit, add some ketchup to it, although don't tell me because I consider this blasphemy!

Ciao for now! Happy cooking!

01 May 2013

Summer!

So I might be jumping the gun here but I am feeling like spring is finally here which means summer is just around the corner. I have even rearranged my closet so that winter clothes are out of sight and only the bright, nice-weather clothes are in view. Luisa and I went outside and soaked up some rays while Donny and all the students were in class. Granted, we only stayed outside for a grand total of 15 minutes because Luisa began eating rocks and the moment I took them away she screamed so loud that the students might have confused the scream with the sound of the bell. 
Mischievous!

The beautiful weather outside has really made me excited for the summer. We have some big plans! Let me tell you about a few of them.

1. We have developed a strict schedule whereby I will finally finish my Master's thesis. Since finishing my coursework, my poor thesis has been so rudely interrupted (marriage, moving, new job, baby...) but I am so ready to jump into it completely and fully now. I'm writing it on Virgil's Aeneid. I love, love, love this work and I will literally defend Aeneas to the death! I actually have a lot written already but it needs some serious editing. Anyways, I am so excited about it!

2. We are thinking about taking two trips this summer as a family. One right when school ends, and another to celebrate finishing my thesis. The first trip will most likely be a Boston trip where we will most likely visit Haymarket Square and the Chocolate Cafe. The second is still a mystery. I'm thinking beach, beach, beach! We'll have to wait and see!

3. Luisa will be walking... I hope! Until then, she is completely content lounging on the couch with her dad and speed crawling all over the house. 


What are you all up to this summer?