melted smoosh

oh, how i love to cook. it's a labor of love and creativity with delicious rewards! every Thursday, i'll link up to some of our very favorite, tried-and-true recipes. thank goodness Nick and i have equally adventurous palates, with a penchant for bacon and buffalo chicken! i'm constantly on the lookout for 30-minute weeknight meals that make enough for leftover lunches, as well as more elaborate weekend feasts that make the whole house smell like a Williams & Sonoma store.  while i do consider myself decently handy in the kitchen, i am not a food photographer by any means, so these photos are linked directly back to the blogs from whence they came! i'm also linking up to Taste and Tell 's weekly round up !  here are some of our favourites: grilled chicken ranch cajun pasta from plain chicken image credit from Plain Chicken this recipe calls for marinating the chicken at least two hours. i often make the marinade in the morning and let it soak into th

bump watch: nada. a little more bloat, perhaps? i've always had a little pooch under my belly button, and now i'm resigned that it's not going anywhere anytime soon.  sweet pea: is now the size of a blueberry, at a quarter-inch long! and that DHA in my prenatals better be doing its thing, because baby's brain cells are growing at 100 cells per minute.  limb buds are growing and those tiny little kidneys are working!  image credit from What to Expect When You're Expecting best moment: watching The Business of Being Born , a documentary produced by Ricki Lake about how the birthing culture in the US is totally out of whack with the rest of the world. okay, the phrase "birthing culture" makes me gag a little, but it was fascinating to see how the hospital birth i've always envisioned is in many ways counterproductive to how our bodies naturally function during birth. the most intriguing aspect was watching many first-time mothers (who were

it's probably one of the more acceptable vices to have, this insatiable appetite for books. and it's hard  unthinkable to only be reading one at a time. the only gripes i've had with books are 1) not having room in my purse to tote around multiples, 2) the awful dilemma of bringing enough reading material on a trip without exceeding the checked luggage weight limit, and 3) trying (and failing) to remember what page i'm on, because i can never get my act together enough to use bookmarks.  thus imagine my delight when my dear auntie kris gave nick & i each our own kindle for a wedding present. hundreds of books at the switch of a button! magical page-remembering (even if i fall asleep while reading)! the ability to borrow e-books from our local library so i have a steady stream of free reading fodder without even leaving the house!  so enamored was i with this convenience that i didn't set foot in an actual library for months. until yesterday. yesterday, i dro

greetings and salutations! it's been a few years since i tried my hand at this blogging business, and the impulse to chronicle the ups & downs of this crazy life has struck again. throughout high school and college, i joined the hordes on xanga , and now that i'm older and wiser (ha!), we'll try blogger on for size.  so, why blog? the reasons are two-fold. first, to keep in touch with far-flung family and friends. second, to record each day as it happens -- from a quick overview of the daily grind to in-depth processing of life-changing events. and what does this all have to do with melted smoosh? this gorgeous view of the Romanian mountains takes me right back to the days of braces, social awkwardness, bushy eyebrows and mood swings circa 1999. the bright spot in the midst of all this thirteen-year-old turmoil was an incredible week-long trip around Romania with some fantastic members of the World Vision family. we toured orphanages, ate wild boar, marveled at C