Christmas and other babies

Christmas was low-key - we just hung out with baby while the rest of the family were elsewhere celebrating. They eventually brought us some of the dinner and cuddled Al while we ate it. I cried while listening to Sixpence None the Richer's "Last Christmas". I thought more about the vulnerability of the Son as a wee baby and the incomprehensible humility of that (diapers! spitup! can't hold his own head up!). I thought of the women of the past and around the world who may have lost their baby in the kind of labor I could have had sans drugs, and the blessing of the knowledge we have of the human body and how to help labor along.

I remembered Eve's "with the help of the Lord I have brought forth a manchild" - not a mere platitude of thanks. She had never seen a baby born before; no experienced mother was available to explain to her how to help her bear the pain and what the process would be like. More and more I wonder if "the help of the Lord" was quite direct and engaged in an embodied fashion of some sort--an incredible mercy in what appears to be the grip of the curse. In Paradise Lost, Eve contemplates killing herself so that she won't spread the curse to other humans born of her, but our God is bigger than mere damage control. Amazing. Still thinking about this - Eve and Mary and the seed of the woman.

You can call her Al

Vital stats:

• DOB: 23 December, 3:26am
  
• 6 lb. 13 oz.
• 19 1/4 in.
• 25 hours of labor beginning around 2am when Ladybug sprang a leak; took 18 hours to get to 4cm and then held there while contractions got stronger and stronger and I got tireder and tireder and Al went nowhere fast; last 6-7 hours were mercifully helped along by drugs with about 45 min. of pushing at the end (because the midwife was slow in getting ready to catch).
  
• copious quantities of light brown hair
• daddy's feet
• long fingers
• can do daddy's raised eyebrow trick
• perhaps right-handed (oh well)

Summer Gardening

I believe it is well known that, in contrast to those of you with green thumbs, I have a black thumb of death. I am very good at killing plants, whether through neglect or through over-watering or what have you. Pancho, however, thrives on yard work, and my mom loves growing things, so between the two of them we ended up with 4 tomato plants, 2 bell peppers, an assortment of lettuces and herbs, a dwarf lemon tree, and a frankenstein-like apple tree with 6 different varities plumbed in, all to nurture into fruitfulness.

The lettuces thrived faster than we could eat them, especially after I went off leafy veg early in the stages of my own nascent fruitfulness. You will notice in the picture that one is actually taller than my head. We have now learned not to plant too many lettuces, and that they love the spot right next to the apple tree, but aren't too keen on being on the back porch step. So I didn't manage to kill off these hardy little guys, but that's largely because the sprinkler system seemed to give them everything they could ever want.

Our other success was the tomatoes, which apparently thrive whether you neglect them or shower them with care. We were pretty chuffed when they just seemed to spring up without much help, and we glowed with excitement when we saw those first glimmers of ruby red.

Then, they started taking over the path and growing taller than me standing up. (You can't really see this, since the vines got so heavy they plunged back to the ground or looped around each other.) If you walked along the path, you inevitably were tinged with a slight shade of chartreuse and emerged faintly scented with tomato. I would have stripes of color on my arms and legs pretty much every time. I learned quickly not to walk back there with khaki pedal pushers on.

Given the bumper harvest, I'm thinking next year we'll stick with 1-2 plants, instead of 4. I'm running out of ideas for what to do with so many tomatoes! This morning, I took a boxful and am now slow-cooking and also oven-drying them all. Although people say that you can just individually freeze cherry tomatoes, I don't quite have the freezer space for that, so I thought taking some of the water out via drying would help. Apparently, I can put the results into a jar with olive oil and herbed vinegar or (for longer storage) in an airtight container and into the freezer. So that's why, on what promises to be a hot day, I am running my oven on the lowest possible temperature and why the slow cooker was banished to the dining room floor.

And I still have another box left...and more coming...

And lest you think that the black thumb of death has found new life, let me assure you that I have substantially weakened (if not killed) two expensive golf-ball plants, and the lemon tree is sick.

Mitigated Triumph, that is

Ah, the espresso battles are not yet over. Some sort of hidden variable was at play, and I cannot yet with consistency make myself an espresso of which I can be proud.

*sigh*

That said, I think I'm on to something. Our tap water is very cold, and I think that may be influencing the time that it takes for the water to come up to the right temperature for the espresso ooze to do its magic, Bialetti-style. Yesterday afternoon met with more success, as I pre-warmed the water chamber a bit before adding the water. Well, actually, I filled it with near boiling water and then nearly burnt my hand. Yes...aluminum definitely conducts heat very well. I then decided merely "warming" and not raising the pot to scalding temperatures, was sufficient.

Anyways here are the results. I was feeling very continental yesterday, and so added the rolled chocolate wafer and book to my espresso experience. This, my friends, is an espresso macchiato, an espresso "stained" or "marked" with foamed milk. Unlike the latte macchiato, there is little hot milk, so the charm of the drink lies in the concentrated blast of rich, dark espresso. And in the cute white and blue tablecloth...

Triumph over Espresso

I have now, thanks to Wikipedia and YouTube, made a latte macchiato. It is a beauty to behold, so I thought you should behold it.


And...it stays in layers while you drink it, at least at first. I just realized that I'm enjoying experimenting with espresso-making more than the drinking of the espresso made. I think that's partly because I really can't drink more than three shots a day. Which I'm hoping is a virtue. Of some sort.

Yum!

On the Italian moka method of stovetop espresso-making, it turns out that the main factor affecting the outcome was not the fineness of the grind of the beans, but the amount and density of grinds put in the filter basket. I saw some people just absolutely stuff if with grinds on YouTube video demos, but that didn't work at all for me. As the grinds expanded with heat and steam, there simply wasn't enough pressure to push the espresso up the percolator and I would end up with over-cooked coffee exploding and sputtering from the top of the percolator after 10 minutes (instead of the 4-5 that is expected). Fewer grinds left more room for the steam to do its magic, and I would have espresso softly flowing, almost oozing out of the conical top, followed by that characeristic gurgle that signals the end of the brewing. Just watching that alone is a delight. Sweet Maria's had a helpful guide to brewing that set the record straight on a few of my questions and is, in general, a super-awesome coffee maven site.

Pancho, however, is worried about my caffeine intake, so the experimentation is going to have to slow to a more reasonable pace.