Random Updates

Work:  Saturday was my last day at part-time job #2. It is such a relief to be done there. I enjoyed the experience much more than expected, but retail is hard on pregnant bodies. All that standing, yo. I am in awe of women that waitress or work in retail right up until they give birth.

Pregnancy: I am now 34 weeks along, with 6 weeks to go (assuming a standard 40 week pregnancy). All goes well. I am fairly uncomfortable most of the time, as can be expected. I'm wearing a lot of slip on shoes. At 36 weeks (our next appointment) we have a sonogram to check the boy's position and estimate his size, etc. Our last sono was at 18 weeks, so I'm really looking forward to seeing the little guy again. We met with a pediatrician and toured the birth center at the hospital, so I was able to check off a couple baby-related items from my 2015 To-Do List.

Reading: Or in this case, re-reading: The Birth Partner by Penny Simkin. I read it years ago for my doula training but decided a refresher was in order.

Watching: All the 1/2 hour shows about people buying houses on the beach, in the Caribbean, on Hawaiian Islands, or other warm parts of the world not currently buried in snow and experiencing record breaking low temperatures. I've hit my personal wall with this winter. It's bumming me out.

lawn chair in our front yard

For Fun: We visited the 1890 House Museum a couple weekends ago for a guided tour, followed by an early dinner at Ciao in Ithaca.

sitting area in the turret in the master bedroom

the Fernery was added in the 1920s

the library

We like history and such. And wood-fired pizza, of course.

Cinnamon Chia Seed Granola

I'm back on my yogurt and granola for breakfast kick. I have very specific preferences when it comes to this daily meal. I use one kind of yogurt (and when the grocery store is out of it on our weekly shopping trip, I get GRUMPY) and one kind of granola. The granola is expensive though, so I am constantly thinking I should make some at home that would be ideally cheaper and lower in calories. My preferred brand is pretty calorie-rich (perhaps why it is so darn tasty).

I had oats and chia seeds in the house, so I googled to find a simple recipe that didn't call for fruits or nuts (a big granola no-no, in my opinion). I found this one and decided to whip up a batch. After all, it was categorized as "quick and easy." I like both of those words.

I measured out the dry ingredients as per the recipe and added a pinch of salt (because, well, I like salt). When it came to the wet ingredients, things got a bit rocky. I misread the recipe and put in double the oil. Oops. Although I used half vegetable oil and half olive oil, so I don't feel bad about it. I'm a firm believer in the goodness of olive oil. Then when I pulled the honey out of the cupboard I discovered it was solid and no amount of running it under hot water was changing that. So I abandoned the un-squeezable honey and went for the organic white Hawaiian honey, which exists in a lovely creamy solid state naturally. I figured if I had to deal with solid honey, I might as well use the good stuff. Of course, this made mixing it a real pain in the butt. After it'd been baking about 6 minutes and the honey was thoroughly melted I gave it another good stir. Problem solved.

As you can see from the third picture, the recipe doesn't produce a ton of granola. And in this case, that's probably just as well. Because it's just not as good as the stuff I buy at the store. I will eat it as a snack, but I can't see substituting it for my regular, much-loved granola. For one thing, I don't think I'm really a nutmeg person. So if I made it again, I'd definitely try leaving that out. Also, the brand I buy doesn't have ANY seasonings, so I probably should have predicted that would be a problem. However, this granola is tasty. Just not tasty enough, I guess.