Quick! While He's Asleep!

We got a new refrigerator. Normally this would be a happy, but not momentous occasion. We, however, have been dealing with an incontinent refrigerator for a while now, and simply did not have the time to deal with it due to baby things. Yes, I said incontinent. We used to walk out into the kitchen every morning and have to avoid the sudden lake that had sprung up in the night. It was frustrating.

Our new fridge is lovely. It also opens on the correct side for optimal cooking, which is important in a tiny little kitchen (seriously, we have maybe ten square feet of floor space in there) like ours. The freezer part is smaller than the previous fridge, but the fridge part is larger, so I'm sure we can work around what we need to freeze v. simply chill.

We also got our hot water pressure fixed, yesterday. We'd been having issues with the pressure in our shower for a while (read: three years) and it kind of just peed on you. Now showering is fabulous again, especially with the low-flow shower head we installed to optimize what pressure we DID have.

The average person is probably saying "Oh awesome, you got it fixed" but the women out there with children are thinking "Oh my goodness you poor creature how did you ever LIVE without a good shower?" They're thinking that because they know that when you have a child, sometimes the shower is the only escape you have, the only place in the house where you can't hear them crying out in their daddy's arms.

So it's been an eventful few days.

I also got my IUD out. No, we're not already planning more children. I seem to be in that lovely 1% of women for whom an IUD means frequent and heavy periods. Like one week on, one week off frequent. Since I don't want to deal with that, even if it does mean not having to use any other form of BC, I had it out. And it turns out it was a good thing, too, since it was seated wrong and wasn't actually protecting me. That could have ended badly. You hear horror stories of babies being born with IUDs clutched in their hands, and that is exactly how that happens.

On another positive note, I ran today. In the couch to 5k style, if not exactly the way they want me to. TJ and I went out to a lovely trail/fire road area in one of our county parks (Rancho San Antonio <- map) and walked 3.5 miles. We only ran about .5 miles, but I figure that's better than nothing. Also my shoulders are killing me since our original intention had been to walk and I did not wear the proper *ahem* support.

The running was endless amusement for L. Itsababy until he got chilly. Then he was Mr. Whinypants until we put him in over-shirt and an extra pair of pants and wrapped him up in an extra T-Shirt I keep in the diaper bag for when L. Itsababy decides to spit up all over me. We also saw a few deer and a whole warren of rabbits. Ok, probably not the whole warren, but a whole ton of them!

L. Itsababy likes being jostled. He prefers rides in TJ's 1989 Jeep Cherokee with the bouncy suspension to any other vehicle he's ever been in. He prefers we take his stroller over gravel than pavement. He likes to be jiggled while on his side, and if he's sitting or leaning on me I better be patting his butt hard enough to move his head. I get the feeling spanking will never be a threat to this kid.

Since E didn't take a nape today he passed out pretty quickly when we got home, so I was able to cook real food. I made hobak bokum with turkey, spicy basil stir fried vegetables, and rice. so that's TONS of squash ingested today. Super happy!


Hobak Bokum:

1 pound ground turkey
1/2 cup dark soy sauce (I forgot the /2 in the original post, I apologize if anyone tried to make this and got sodium poisoning. Props to kira-hime for noticing!)
1 piece of fresh ginger about the size of your thumb (I actually use quite a bit more than this, but I really like ginger)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 medium zucchini (courgette) sliced
sesame oil
vegetable oil
sesame seeds (shiro gami)

Grate the fresh ginger into the soy sauce, add the garlic, and stir until even. Pour over turkey in a ziplock bag, and massage until fully dark brown. Feel free to add more soy sauce until your desired color is attained. Let sit for at least half an hour.

Heat a few tablespoons vegetable oil in a wok or pan on medium high. Add a few drops sesame oil. Brown meat. Add sliced zucchini and cover. reduce heat to medium low, let cook until zucchini is almost done (about 5 minutes) uncover and let reduce for another minute. Garnish with sesame seeds. Serve over rice.


I also sauteed 3 small crookneck squash, 2 mexican grey squash, 1/4 of an onion, 2 sliced carrots, and a red bell pepper with kra-phao sauce (I will add a recipe for this soon, I promise) which ended up being a bit too much food. Hurray leftovers!