My Disdain for Wal-Mart

I know in the past I have mentioned how much I can't stand going to Wal-Mart. So I am checking out and this tiny tiny girl is ringing me up. She is probably 5'2" and weighs 90lbs and she is pregnant, I am not kidding. I though surely she is maybe 4 months. Even though she was tiny, her belly was definitely round. I was not going to even mention anything to her about her pregnancy... much less mine. Sure enough, she is like "When are you due"?, I casually let out a "whew" and say "November". Then my diarrhea mouth says "when are you due"? She says "October", I'm like
"wow you are so little!". She says "yeah... now I don't feel so bad". Geez, thanks for the compliment, just what I needed after my kid has screamed for 10 minutes not wanting to sit in his seat and the other one has hounded me during the whole shopping trip to get his UNO cards that I promised to buy him. I am done for the day. All done I say. I just want to sit in my bed and eat thickburgers for the rest of the afternoon.

My Poor Baby....

I know it's a little weird to post a picture of your hurt child for everyone to see but I had to do it. Listen to this....or actually read on.
Another long story...made short. Marschall accidentally hit Garrett in the head swinging his baseball bat yesterday afternoon. Yes, he about knocked his head off. We could tell right away it needed attention, more than what I could give. We all headed to the pediatrician. Keep in mind I have a 5 year old, almost 3 year old and I am 6 months pregnant. I don't do well moving fast or being in chaos these days.
Garrett is bleeding and Marschall is crying from feeling so bad. We had our hands full. Pete was able to go with me, thankfully. When you look closely at Garrett's pitiful teary eyed picture (why Pete brought the camera? because he is a sicko.) you will see something purple. One may think it is some sort of bandage, not so much. Instead of stitching his laceration, they glued it together. This is very common with close to the eye cuts. (This is the third time we have had this done). The doctor glued her purple glove to his head over the wound! Why purple, because the doctor was allergic to latex. It couldn't have been a nice beige glove.Seriously, do these kinds of ridiculous scenarios just happen to us? Come on!
Yes, she had to cut her glove off her hand and trim it back as close as she could to his forehead. She said it would just fall off in a few days. However, today Garrett fell trying to walk up the steps and landed on his eye and popped the cut back open. We couldn't see how bad it was because the glued glove was still on his head. I headed back to another doctor recommended by our pediatrician because we expressed our concerns with the wound opening back up. We weren't too thrilled with their laceration work either, so to speak.
The piece of glove is now off and his wound is on it's way to be healed, I think. As long as he can walk erect and stay away from swinging bats.

My Nieman Marcus cookies from TJ Maxx

I'll get to the meaning of my title in a bit. So here's the deal.....I don't like to bake because anytime I bake, I screw it up and it is gross. Let me share what I mean exactly.... I love cooking, with cooking you can always do some "doctoring" as I call it. Add a little more salt, pepper, butter ect to finish off a dish. However, baking you have to be precise, if it says to "sift dry ingredients" you better do some sifting. One time, I made a red velvet cake from scratch and it tasted like a huge ball of flour. I really think it was because I skipped over the sifting aspect of the recipe. With my hectic kitchen, what I mean by hectic is it is not a quite place of solitude, it is hard to concentrate. My kitchen is in middle of everything else going on in our family.
Here begins my latest disaster. On Sunday, my friend Shannon shared some of the ABSOLUTE best cookies I have ever eaten. I drilled her about how she made them and she begins to say,"It is a very simple and easy recipe". She may have even added "that you can't mess up". I'll have to ask her about that later.
She said it is the Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookie recipe. Well, that peaked my attention enough that by today I had looked up the recipe and headed to the store. I said to myself, how hard can cookies be, seriously? Every child needs to remember their mom making homemade chocolate chip cookies. See the pressure!
After the kids were fed, I thought I will go ahead and get these done so the boys can have a little treat before they go to bed. Now if I was a "good mom" I would have let them help me. But I thought, I can't risk them messing up my yummy homemade cookies. Hindsight is 20/20.
I swear I read that recipe 3 times over, used my pointer finger to go over each line of the ingredients and the measurements. To make a very long story short.... In the first batch I realized I left out 1/2 cup of brown sugar. I thought I had my 1 cup measurer out, not so much. So, I take my second dozen that I had not put in the oven yet back in my mixing bowl and throw in the sugar and "re-mix" it, this is probably considered a baking no-no, I would imagine. I am literally praying over my kitchen-aide at this point. (Yes, I have a fancy mixer that I use to screw up all my baking concoctions, I'm sure it is embarrassed to be sitting out on my counter.)The second dozen goes back in, they look better and seem to be cooking well. I glance over the recipe again and realized I left out the salt. At this point all bad words to say have even left my mind. I am dumbfounded and am laughing to myself. I pictured myself sprinkling salt over them as they came out of the oven. My sweet, Marschall, who was none the wiser as all this was going on said my cookies were good. He has a whole dozen he can eat by himself. My positive spin is that they are healthy, they have 1/2 the sugar than regular cookies and less sodium!
So back to my title, I love TJ Maxx. However, you know how you will find a great name brand dress that looks perfect on the hanger, however when you try it on you realize the belt loops are empty because the sash is no where to be found? Yeah, just like my cookies, a little something is missing.

Lazy

I sure have been lazy blogging for a while. It seems I'm on a food kick. I went to the doctor today and to much my surprise my thickburger did not send me over the edge in lbs that I have gained, "whew". I'm still not going to indulge again, though.
Anyway, I am making my all time favorite dinner tonight. It seems fancy and little weird with the raw eggs yolks tossed in at the last minute but it is "super fantastic", as my good friend would say. It's even better if you have left overs the next day. I know of people that have put shrimp with this too and said it is good, I am not a huge shrimp fan. This is from my squeaky voice friend, Rachael Ray, gosh I love her, but I always have to turn down the volume when I watch her. Let me know if you try this! We like things pretty spicy so I always add more red pepper than it calls for. I don't quite use that much garlic either, 2 cloves or so.

Pasta Carbonara

Ingredients:
# Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
# 1 pound pasta, such as spaghetti or rigatoni
# 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (enough to coat bottom of pan)
# 1/4 pound pancetta (Italian bacon), chopped (I use reg. bacon)
# 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
# 5 to 6 cloves garlic, chopped
# 1/2 cup dry white wine
# 2 large egg yolks
# Freshly grated Romano cheese
# Handful of finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley, for garnish

Directions:

1. Put a large saucepot of water on to boil. Add a liberal amount of salt and the pasta. Cook to al dente, about 8 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add the olive oil and pancetta. Brown pancetta 2 minutes. Add red pepper flakes and garlic and cook 2 to 3 minutes more. Add wine and stir up all the pan drippings.

3. In a separate bowl, beat yolks, then add 1 large ladleful (about 1/2 cup) of the pasta cooking water. This tempers the eggs and keeps them from scrambling when added to the pasta.

4. Drain pasta well and add it directly to the skillet with pancetta and oil. Pour the egg mixture over the pasta. Toss rapidly to coat the pasta without cooking the egg. Remove pan from heat and add a big handful of cheese, lots of pepper, and a little salt. Continue to toss and turn the pasta until it soaks up egg mixture and thickens, 1 to 2 minutes. Garnish with parsley and extra grated Romano.

I should be ashamed....

So I don't really get too caught up in my baby weight that I gain. Yeah, sometimes I get a little disappointed when I've gained 6 lbs in a month but then other weeks/ months it evens out. My goal is to stay under a weight gain of 40lbs. Which is a pretty generous amount in most people's eyes. But hey I want to be realistic and not a fanatic. With my past pregnancies when I find out I'm pregnant, it is like an automatic 5 lbs jump on me with my positive test.
Needless to say, we found ourselves at Hardees on Saturday. Yes, Hardees. Who still eats at Hardees? We do, we both have an affection for their thickburgers. Those who know us, we always have restaurant coupons.
Of course, I ate my entire burger, I could have also eaten some fries if they had been ordered. I felt immediately guilty. In fact, I just looked up the nutritional value and here is why I should have felt guilty.

2/3lb Double Thickburger 1250 calories 90 grams of fat 2160 milligrams of sodium (were suppose to consume less than 2400mg a day)

So I know, cry me river. Never again.....I have posted about it and now this is my accountability.

PS I guess I need to quit complaining about my wedding rings not fitting because of my swollen fingers, geez!