Feeling a Little Better

I started feeling better on Sunday - I'm not sure if it's because I'm 13 weeks or that I'm taking the B6/half a unisom mix each night, or maybe a combo of both factors. The real indication that things are on the up... I have made dinner three times this week! We had homemade enchiladas, chicken soup, and Cafe Rio pork tacos (though I keep dreaming about the REAL Cafe Rio pork barbacoa burrito... Rachel R - will you bring some home to me when you fly back from UT?? :)

Here are some pictures from the last week or so:

23 days until we move... 23 days til no more dog barking and the stomper upstairs waking up my child. I can't wait! (Though I'm not ready yet either - packing is still low priority for me at the moment)

Not Your Typical Thanksgiving...

Ben and I have spent every Thanksgiving in our almost 7 years of marriage with my family (my parents, Davey, and Gram). This means I have never had to even think about making a Thanksgiving dinner on my own. Well, this year was a little different.

My Gram went to Italy a few weeks ago to meet up with some friends. Keep in mind that she is 82 years old, but very spry and energetic. However, while they were in a train station in Milan, she tripped on a bolt and broke the neck/top of her femur. Gram had to have surgery (in Milan, where few staff speak English) to have a pin placed in her hip. Since then, she has been at this hospital recovering and having physical therapy. My parents decided a few days after the accident that they needed to fly to Italy and help her, so they used up every airline mile they could muster up and went to Italy, totally last minute. They will all fly home on Nov. 29th. Gram is doing well, working on walking with crutches. She said her Italian surgeon is "dashingly handsome," which cracks me up!

Well all of this meant my parents would be gone for Thanksgiving. I thought about cooking the Thanksgiving meal for about 2 minutes, before deciding it would be way too much work, especially with Eli. So we ended up going with some friends to a very nice Thanksgiving dinner hosted by Kellogg, the business school at Northwestern. As you may know, I am QUITE picky, but I was really impressed with the quality of food. There wasn't too much or too little -we had turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, tasty sweet potatoes with marshmallows, a green bean/bell pepper dish, different types of rolls and croissants, etc. We even had the option for some Indian food - basmati rice and a sweet potato curry - apparently this was on the menu because the Dean is Indian (and there were a lot of Indian business students at the dinner). Then there were lots of desserts to choose from, from an eggless chocolate cake to mini pumpkin pies.

This ended up being the easiest Thanksgiving - we showed up at 1:45, ate dinner and socialized until 4, then came home and relaxed. There was no cost, no cleanup, and no fighting the crowds at the airport or traffic on the highways. Thank you Aaron and Jenn for inviting us!

We had Davey with us last weekend and then again for Thanksgiving through this weekend.

We put a napkin around Eli's neck and he looked like a little bandit!

We gave him a lemon wedge to chew on - he loved it!

The dinner was in the Allen Center, with a nice view of the Lake behind us.

Eli chewed on that toy for a while...

Ben played some football in the snow/wind with temps in the 30s on Thanksgiving morning - he had a great time but I heard the game was pretty rough...

Big Boy Eli, a Nationwide Lack of Home-Cooked Meals, and Happy Birthday Davey!

Today's blog is a little random... I weighed Eli this weekend and he is up to 18 lbs at 5 1/2 months!! He is my cute chubby baby, that's for sure. My favorite of his features are his rubber band wrists, dimpled elbows, cute tummy, and squeezable thighs and bum. And of course his fun cheeks! I kiss and squeeze him ALL the time, poor guy. :) Here are some pictures from this week:
And the other topic I wanted to blog about came from this article I read today in the Chicago Tribune - apparently 46% of families confessed in a national survey that they eat a home-cooked dinner just two to three times a week. The article then asks what we are eating the other four or five nights of the week?

So that got me thinking. Ben and I were just talking about how when he was growing up, his family of 8 kids rarely went out to eat. And my family with 2 kids went out a little more often, but my mom made most of our meals (which was probably often torture since my brother and I are both picky eaters). Fast forward to today... I remember thinking when I worked full time that once I was a stay-at-home mom I would make a wonderful, well-balanced dinner every night. All I can say is, YEAH RIGHT!!

My excuses range from:

• I am too busy with freelance projects
• Eli doesn't stay entertained long enough for me to make a full dinner (or take long enough naps to give me time to do it)
• His bedroom is right next to the kitchen, so even if there is time to cook during his nap, I usually wake him up when I'm clanking around
• I'm too tired
• I didn't have time to go to the grocery store during the day
• It's too hard to take Eli to the grocery store because he screams in the car seat, but can't sit up on his own, so I tend to go late at night after Ben and Eli are in bed - but there isn't always energy for this
• Raw meat grosses me out, so I'm always looking for a good vegetarian meal to make
• I'm out of ideas of what to make for dinner
• Everything I want to make is too complicated/takes too much time

So this brings me back to the article. It talks about a book, The Take-Out Menu Cookbook: How to Cook the Foods You Love to Order Out. I hope our library has it so I can check it out! Usually for our little family, Eli eats baby food and Ben and I often just fend for ourselves. Our easy choices usually consist of one thing for dinner - roasted potatoes or other veggies, spaghetti, sandwiches, homemade salsa with my current fav. tortilla chips, Xochitl (found here in the organic section at Jewel - they are DELISH!!), soup, salad, etc. Not too exciting! Otherwise we tend to order food from:

• Dozika in Evanston (I love the mild curry chicken and honey garlic chicken, along with their sweet potato maki rolls)
• Cozy Noodle in Evanston (I love the noodles panang, pad thai, and pad see ewe)
• Joy Yee's in Evanston (I love the orange beef there)
• Wholly Frijoles in Lincolnwood (I love the tortilla soup and Lincolnwood burrito)
• Carmen's Pizza in Evanston (I get a thin pizza with pepperoni, no cheese and Ben gets a deep dish special)
• Merle's BBQ in Evanston (It has $1 bbq pork/chicken/beef sliders on Monday nights... yum!)

As you can see, I like to take out more ethnic foods (with the exception of the bbq and pizza) since I don't know how to make them myself. I love the blog Pimp My Dinner because there is a variety of fun recipes. But somehow I still get in a rut, and we end up eating a real meal just a few times a week. Do any of you have a good system for making good meals for your families on a regular basis? If you're in Evanston, what are your favorite places to eat out?

And finally, (speaking of eating out... sorry that this is the world's longest post!) here is a picture from going out to dinner on my brother Davey's 23rd birthday - my grandpa and his wife Judy flew in from Utah (my aunt and uncle and cousins Abby and Natalie from Ohio drove in too - more pictures from our weekend get together is below).