Perhaps it is the fact that my in-laws are celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary in France (!!!), but I have been so longing for France these days...longing for the food, the people, the atmosphere...Oh, I miss it so!
Here's a recipe for a deliciously light, summery peach and blackberry galette which I made to console myself...
Crust
1 1/3 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
3 tbs. sugar
1/2 c. vegetable shortening
3-6 tbs. cold water
Filling
2 ripe peaches
8 oz. blackberries
1 tsp. lemon juice
1/4 c. sugar
1 tbsp. cornstarch
**Note: I should have made an egg wash for the crust (as you can tell in the picture), but I was a wee bit too lazy...
Preheat the oven to 375 F. Whisk the flour, sugar and salt together in a large bowl. Add the shortening and cut it into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the water and stir with a fork until the dough is moist enough to gather into a ball. Roll out dough and place on a cast iron skillet.
Slice peaches and place in bowl with blackberries. Add lemon juice, sugar, and cornstarch, and mix to combine.
Pour the filling into the centre of the dough, and fold the sides of the crust over the fruit. Bake for 40-50 minutes.
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And forgive me if I photographically reminisce about my trip to France a few years ago with my sister...
This past weekend, Alex and I tested out Dinkel's Bakery (within walking distance from our apartment!), a little Lakeview treasure which has been open since 1922. A full on bakery, they have far more than just doughnuts, which definitely complicated our decision making somewhat...in the end we ordered a raspberry "kolacky," a maple bacon doughnut, and a regular old old-fashioned. Mm. A+. The maple bacon was divine--better than Glazed and Infused's(which definitely skimped on the bacon a little...). The old-fashioned was lighter than both those from the Doughnut Vault and Firecakes (as I've mentioned, I'm a sucker for super dense doughnuts), but it was less sweet than it's competitors, which I enjoyed. And the kolacky...well, it's hard to go wrong with a fruit filled pastry. Yum yum.
Ambiance-wise, it doesn't have the same "cool kid" appeal as the downtown doughnut shops, with its pink signs and fondant-covered cakes in the window. However, the delicious doughnuts and nice sunny outdoor seating definitely will be bringing us back.
Ugh, I've been so behind on this blogging thing these days. My excuse is, no, not that I've had Evangeline, but that the trackpad on my computer has officially mutinied. It is literally impossible to write a blog post with the mouse randomly moving and clicking and backspacing everywhere and on everything. So I'm borrowing Alex's computer to write this post as many posts as I possibly can in order to catch up.
I really dislike overhead lighting (or at least the overhead lighting in our apartment). I much prefer natural lighting and, when necessary, lamps. However, lamps are expensive (at least, the ones I like), and because they're not exactly high priority on our list of things for the apartment, we just haven't gotten around to picking any up. Until last weekend that is, when we picked one up...out of a dumpster. There was no doubt about the fact that it had previously made it's home in a tween girl's room, with it's hot pink lampshade and it's faux-Grecian stand.
But it was free.
And we really needed a bedroom lamp.
And it's really not that hard to re-do a lampshade.
So I did.
I had a bunch of leftover duck from the fabric Alex's Mom had given me to re-upholster our dining
room chairs, which exactly suited my purposes. Oh, and E6000 is magical.
It was a little odd when I went to my most recent midwife appointment and they said, "well, if you're not in labour by then, we'll see you again in a week!"
What?
No...
Yes.
Hearing something like that for the first time was so strange. To think that we could actually have Evangeline any day now! While most of the thoughts that run through my head when I think about this fact are focused on sweet Evangeline and how excited I am to meet her, there are assuredly quite self-centered thoughts which lurk behind the good ones. I'm just very ready to not be so physically uncomfortable when I sleep, or walk, or stand up, or bend over...or even sit for goodness sake! I'd really like to begin to fit into my old clothes again. I'd very much like to stop constantly talking about being pregnant. I'd also very much like to stop being asked constantly about being pregnant.
Wah, wah, wah.
Anyways, on to some more interesting things.
Alex and I are still reading The Moviegoer, which continues to delight with it's mottled yet loveable characters. I really should start reading The Book Thief so that I can finish it in time for Balboa, but I just haven't found the time yet.
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My sister-in-law, Sara, threw me and Evangeline the most lovely Baby Shower (I wish I had pictures to prove it, but you'll just have to take my word for it). Eve made out like a bandit that night. I'm pretty sure her wardrobe is bigger and more fabulous than mine is at this point. A few of our favourite things:
This little Gap lobster romper.
I can't even handle thinking about it on her at the beach!
Blueberries for Sal, which remains one of my favourite children's books.
The illustrations are perfectly charming (as is the story), and I love the fact that it's set in Maine.
Teething beads (thanks, Jessica!). I'm so excited to use these. I'll look so hip.
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Fact: Alex and I both really like Alexander Calder. (You know, the guy that made hundreds of kinetic sculptures--which, interestingly, Duchamp dubbed "mobiles"--and built the Flamingo in Downtown Chicago?)
Calder, Flamingo, 1973.
We really want to build a Calder-esque mobile for Evangeline. I really like this one:
I love how it looks like leaves...but it's also perfect, because high contrast colours
(black and white) are especially stimulating and helpful in visual development.
I really don't think it would be that difficult to create one yourself, as long as you get the equilibrium right. He used wire and sheet metal, but I bet you could use wire and thin wooden slabs if you couldn't get the sheet metal... (Technically, you can buy onehere for a hefty price, but it would just be way cooler to make your own.)
The Millennium Park concerts are beginning again! Hurrah! I'm so excited for The Planets, which is being performed on July 12. I was always a huge fan of Holst, but he is so much more meaningful now, because the theme from Jupiter was our wedding march.
The march begins around 2:55 if you care to know...
As well as being free and outdoors (and byob--awesome!), these concerts have numerous showing times throughout the week. Babies, champagne, and music on summer evenings are exactly my cup of tea.
I feel so hip and prepared because I packed the hospital bag yesterday. Not that I really felt a need to do so. If labor takes at 15-20 hours and at least 5 of those are early labor, then I would have plenty of time to do it then. But my pregnancy app told me to pack my bag, so I did (also, it was super humid and I had nothing better to do). You can't really sweat sitting on the floor and throwing a few items into a bag...or so I told myself.
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I was reading in The Baby Book (which is an amazing, infinite source of knowledge; thanks Pete and Emily!) that one of the things that will disrupt infant sleep is a dusty environment. Uh oh. It seems that the nature of Chicago apartments is to be a haven for dust bunnies (I have friends who struggle with the same dusty problem), but whereas before it was just annoying, it's now even more so. Literally, I sweep daily and still manage to collect an entire dustpan of dust! No good. Any suggestions on minimizing dust? I really don't like the thought of Eve having fuzzy lungs.
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We've been on the lookout for some sort of dresser for Evangeline in which to store various things like diapers and extra blankets and the like. Luckily we don't have a lot of unnecessary stuff for Evangeline which is really wonderful. However, even the small, neat piles of diapers, blankets, stuffed animals, and clothes in our living room corner are getting on my nerves. Seeing as we don't have a room for her, it would be great to find something that would double as a bedside stand for our room...I'm dreaming of something sort of like this:
photo from Vogue Living Houses Gardens People
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Also, apparently I'm supposed to be eating 100 grams of protein a day? How does one person even consume that much protein? (One egg=6 grams of protein; 6 oz chicken=40ish grams of protein) Seeing as there were a lot of eggs in those delicious lemony cupcakes I made post-dinner last night, I don't feel badly about the fact that I had one for breakfast. (Besides, I also took one of those magical prenatal pills...)
So many happy, exciting things happened this past weekend that I suppose it's easiest to just start at the beginning and list them off.
Firstly, on Friday I went to my 36 week midwife appointment (36 weeks--what?!), and got a surprise ultrasound! It was such a pleasure to be able to see Evangeline wiggling around, especially because I didn't think I would get to until she was born. It turns out that our Little One also has developed an intense thumb sucking habit while in there. It was hilarious to see her, sucking away so tremendously, losing her thumb and opening her little mouth super wide, finding it again and then sucking away with renewed vigor. (My Mom says that I was born with a callous on my thumb from all the in utero thumb sucking...I guess she got those genes of mine...)
here's a shot of her with her thumb in her mouth. can you see her little arm and hand?
When I came home, I told Alex about the ultrasound and asked him "what do you think we saw?!" He couldn't guess, but told me later that his heart definitely skipped a beat because he thought for sure I was going to say that we found out she was a boy and not our little Evangeline. Not that we would have been upset, but still...it would have been quite the shocker.
Later on that Friday, our friend Will came into town for the weekend, which meant that the majority of our weekend looked like this:
We played an absurd amount of Catan (energized by an absurd amount of ice cream sandwiches), and just enjoyed spending time with him, since he is joining the Dominicans in July! His brother Micah joined last year, and my friend Br. Sebastian told me today that it has been a few decades that two biological brothers have been in the order! So exciting. Please keep him in your prayers.
On Saturday, we all celebrated the engagement of our friends Johnny and Fiona! (The reason Will was in town for the weekend...)
When we went to lunch with them the next day, Fiona pointed out that we all had major things going on--they're getting married, Will is joining the Dominicans, and Alex and I are having a baby.
Yeah, I guess you could say those are all pretty big things...
I stumbled across this Chesterton quote today while (embarrassingly) not reading Chesterton, but readingthis article of things Chesterton never said.While I know it's lengthy, it's really too wonderful not to share (especially because it corresponds, if sometimes obliquely, with many thoughts I've been having regarding Evangeline lately, eg. sleep-sharing, nightmares, imagination, and Alex's and my belief in the importance necessity of fairy tales).
"The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. They dislike being alone because it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Barbarians fear the unknown for the same reason that Agnostics worship it– because it is a fact. Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.
Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear. When I was a child I have stared at the darkness until the whole black bulk of it turned into one negro giant taller than heaven. If there was one star in the sky it only made him a Cyclops. But fairy tales restored my mental health, for next day I read an authentic account of how a negro giant with one eye, of quite equal dimensions, had been baffled by a little boy like myself (of similar inexperience and even lower social status) by means of a sword, some bad riddles, and a brave heart. Sometimes the sea at night seemed as dreadful as any dragon. But then I was acquainted with many youngest sons and little sailors to whom a dragon or two was as simple as the sea." (Tremendous Trifles)
Usually when I see diaper bags I want to cry. Not because they're beautiful. Because they're so ugly I just can't take the thought of having to carry such a monstrosity around for the next year (at this point, my fears at being a Real Life Mom are manifested in the most superficial of ways...how embarrassing). Call me snobby, but I just can't take the hot pink snakeskin or the lime green flowers! (And does everything have to be chevron...?)
It's too bad that these beauties I wrangled up are a wee bit too far out of our price range...
It feels a little funny to try to write an appropriate Mother's Day post. Not because it's late (after all, it's not like we should cease being grateful for our Mothers after Mother's Day is over....), but because it truly is so difficult to articulate how grateful I am to have both my Momma and my newest Mom (in-law) in my life. I feel so blessed to have such kind, beautiful, courageous women as models: as a woman, a wife, and now a mother.
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To celebrate my first Mother's Day, my dear husband stayed up till 4am the night before baking a delicious breakfast and making the house look like a garden. How lucky I am to have this man in my life!
“It is the custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can’t) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtinesses and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind; and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.” ― J.M. Barrie
We visited Lincoln Park on Saturday, enjoying the chance to finally spend as much time as we want outside in this perfect weather! Chicago is so lovely this time of year. Though sometimes I feel the amount of rain we've been getting borders on preposterous, the lush green grass and foliage definitely make me grateful for the precipitation.
Alex brought his juggling clubs with him. He's "so rusty," but I was delighted to watch him and was definitely impressed, especially since he hasn't picked them up since last summer. I can just imagine how thrilled Evangeline will be by his juggling skill...Along with the clubs we brought a picnic and The Moviegoer (by Walker Percy), which we've been reading aloud together. It's wonderful. This is the first Percy novel I've read, and I'm transfixed by his style and story. The writing is simple, yet elegant, acutely rendering 1950's New Orleans and the shallow, yet fantastically deluded narrator-protagonist. I will waive further thoughts and speculations until finished with the book.
"What is the nature of the search? you ask. Really it is very simple; at least for a fellow like me. So simple that it is easily overlooked. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life." -- Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
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