What's the buzz?

Remember when K was stung by something on his forehead a few weeks ago while trimming the shrubs? Well, it happened again last weekend. He decided to pick up where he left off with the pruning a few weeks ago, thinking the bees wouldn't be on the shrubs with the weather so cool. Well, he fired up the electric trimmers and was attacked again, this time on his wrist.

Saturday, he discovered the problem. There is a huge hive that was built around the lattice under our porch. Some of the branches from the butterfly bush are actually being used as "supports" for the hive, so whenever he disturbs the bush, it disturbs the hive, and then the bees disturb him.

The hive is about 12 inches in height and maybe 6-8 inches across. I think we're going to have to wait until after a few good frosts to try to get rid of it. And when I say "we're" that means "he" or whoever we have to pay. I don't like bees even a little bit.

Menu Ideas?

While browsing a few of the other recipes on this week's recipe swap, I came across this little gem - Meal Plan Monday. Each week, more than 300 people post their family's menu for the week, many of them with links to the recipes! Isn't that clever? Now, if you're stuck for meal ideas, you can poke around out there.

Click here for last week's Meal Plan Monday. The new one will start tomorrow.

Bolognese Sauce

I haven't done a recipe swap in MONTHS! The last one I posted was way back in May. I see that this week's swap on Overwhelmed with Joy is the Sauce Edition. So, here is a sauce you can try. This recipe was given to me by a co-worker years ago when we lived in Florida. Supposedly, her grandmother had been a cook at Delmonico's in New York and this was their Bolognese sauce recipe (or some variation on it). I LOVE Bolognese sauce, and some of my favorite Bolognese comes from Salvatore's restaurant and Lawrence and South Boston. I like to serve this Bolognese with linguine.




For more sauce recipes from this week, click the graphic!


Ingredients:

• 1 clove garlic, pressed
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 1 rib celery, chopped
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped parsley
• 3 whole allspice
• 1 bay leaf
• pinch sugar
• 1/2 cup red wine
• 16-ounce can Del Monte stewed tomatoes
• 32-ounce can Hunt's tomato sauce
• 1-1/2 pounds ground round
• 1 pound ground pork sausage
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon marjoram
• 1/2 teaspoon oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon rosemary
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• dash cayenne and pinch of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Brown beef and sausage, drain fat. In dutch oven, saute onion, carrot, celery, and garlic until golden. Add beef and sausage. Add wine to deglaze the pan. Add all spices. Cover and let simmer for one hour.

This little piggy...

While K was out running errands this morning, the girls and I decorated for Halloween. EJ and Sophie had fun digging through some of the old costumes. When EJ was about 1.5, she was a pig - she wore these ears and snout with a pink sweatsuit that I had sewn a curly tail onto. Sophie thought she was pretty funny!

Go Phillies!

Okay, I know I said that I LOVE October baseball...known as Soxtober here in New England. But the one thing I hate about it is that all the games start later (8 P.M. instead of 7, at the earliest), and we won't even talk about those west coast games.

Therefore, I hereby declare that we must have a Red Sox/Phillies World Series. We simply can't have the Dodgers from LA in there screwing up my sleeping schedule. However, should the Dodgers (complete with Manny) make the Series, my only saving grace is that I will be on the west coast should the Series go more than 4 games. I'll be in San Francisco the week of October 27th, so any west coast games would be watchable there...and any east coast games would be on 5 or 6 PM local time. The only possible downside is that should the Series go to seven games, I'll be on the red-eye on the way back when the Sox win (notice how I threw in that shameless prediction).

Go Phillies!!!

Peanut butter - take 2

Well, the second test of peanut butter didn't go any better. This time, the miniscule amount of peanut butter was nestled between a bit of cookie and a layer of chocolate (EJ found the girl scout cookies in the freezer!). I allowed Sophie to have a little "neeble" (nibble), and she did the same thing a few minutes later - pulled at her tongue, coughed, and got some red splotches around her mouth. She was fine within a few minutes, I think a call to the doctor will be in order in the next few days. And we need to alert her caregivers that she can't have any until we get this figured out.

EJ and I walked in the breast cancer walk in Boston yesterday with a team from my office. Actually, we only walked with the team part way, and then we cut off to take the short loop (3 miles), while the rest of team did the long loop (5.7 miles). A bit chilly, but the walking kept us warm. It was a lot of fun - I've never walked across any of the big bridges of Boston before, so we had a chance to check out the view from the Mass Ave bridge.

Oh, and for those of you following the weaning process, Sophie has now gone to bed 5 of the last 6 nights without her bottle, so I think we're pretty much there! Yeah!

Weaning the wee one

Oh, Sophie was lovin' that evening bottle. She was able to get rid of all of her other bottles so easily. Even the morning bottle was easy to give up - just a few days and we were DONE with that thing. But we have been so negligent in getting rid of that evening bottle. I know it. It's all us. We cave in. We're weak. Actually, we're tired and weak and she's tired and ready for bed and moaning for her "Bah Bah",and it's just so much easier to calm her down, even if it isn't the right thing to do.

Well, Wednesday night after dinner, Sophie was having so much fun playing with Daddy that she completely forgot about it. She even brought me her empty milk cup and asked for more milk. I filled it up quickly, hoping that a full belly meant she would forget about the dreaded Bah Bah. It worked!

The next night, I was on the phone with my grandmother and she had a small meltdown, and I waited too long to placate it, so she started wailing for the Bah Bah. I gave in. See? I'm a sucker.

But the last two nights, we've been able to get her to bed without it. She hasn't even asked about it. Well, tonight, she did ask but I was quickly able to distract her until she forgot about it. You don't know how happy I will be to get rid of those darn bottles. You don't know how many times I've been standing in the infant department at Walmart buying those plastic bottle liners insisting that this would be the last box I would purchase.

Now, I'm gonna start counting down to the last case of diapers. I'll be a rich woman after that!

Now that Sophie is two, we've also eliminated the need to buy whole milk each week - she's drinking 1% with the rest of us. Yeah! More room in the fridge! And she's now allowed to eat more foods, including shellfish and nuts. Last night, I made kung pao shrimp and veggie lo mein for dinner. I put just a few teeny bites of shrimp in her lo mein and it didn't appear to bother her.

The peanut butter, however, was another story. EJ was eating an apple with peanut butter for lunch today and Sophie wanted some. I took the teeniest little bit on a knife and spread it on a cracker. She ate about 3/4 of it and then moved back to her lo mein, but was sticking her fingers in her mouth and started coughing a little. We're not sure if it really bothered her or was just stuck to the roof of her mouth, but honestly, there was just a little thin film of it on the cracker. She was fine about 5 minutes later, but it was starting to scare us a little, as she can't really tell you what she's feeling yet. I think we'll try another little bit tomorrow to see if she has the same reaction. By the way, she has had a similar reaction to fresh pineapple - it's kind of like the acid bothers her tongue or something...she reaches in and grabs at her tongue and obviously isn't happy about it.

Today was a busy day - I took EJ for her hip hop dance shoes and then to another store to get a nice pair of black knee-high dress boots (which she also plans to wear as part of her Halloween costume - Hannah Montana!). Then, this afternoon, she went to her good friend's house for her birthday party - they went to see Beverly Hills Chihuahua and then had pizza for dinner. She had a great time. We took advantage of the few hours she was there to take Sophie out to dinner and to try to do a little early holiday shopping (completely unsuccessful, by the way).