Goodbye 1st Trimester!

I am officially in my 2nd trimester! And, thankfully, I am starting to feel better. The best part, no more nausea!!!!!! That makes me the happiest. Now I know that I'm just always hungry. I have my other symptoms but it's so much more easier to deal with now. The most important thing is I have no more nausea!! As long as I keep my appetite in check.

I had another appointment with the doctor a few days ago and so far so good. I am actually doing pretty well with the weight gain (and, yes, it's a good thing =p) and the Bean seemed okay. I didn't have an ultrasound done but she did use a doppler to check the heartbeat of the Bean and that was normal. David came with me this time so he got to listen to it as well. I have listened to it before, but it's still pretty incredible to hear something we have created feeding off of me. And, I just thought of this.... I am part TIME LORD!! For the next 6 months anyway. After all, time lord/humans aren't meant to be.

Unfortunately, I'm not quite up to working out yet. Every time I do a set of push-ups during work, I feel hungry/nausea after I'm done. I feel like it's a pretty obvious sign that anything more strenuous will not be good. Once that feeling goes away, I will be a happy camper. Days have been really nice and I've been wanting to do something outdoors that's not just walking. Running would be fun or even a more rigorous hike instead of a leisurely stroll.

Since finding out I was pregnant, I've been doing a lot of research about, well, everything. A great website I found that has very good general information was FitPregnancy. It's a great site that talks about the stages of pregnancy, health, nutrition, babies, working out and the like. The one thing that really caught my interest was that it had a focus on health and exercising (the Bump doesn't really do that) and articles have just enough to where I get the information I need. If I need more detail then I know what I should google for.

Pinterest has been giving a more personal insight into pregnancy where I would read women's blogs about their personal experience. As usual a lot were not so good, but there were a few that were really helpful and interesting. If you want to see the things I have pinned so far check out my Baby Board!

And I've been doing a lot of baby product research. Just like weddings, everything is so much more expensive when you tag on the word 'Baby' to stuff. Thank God people give away a lot of baby stuff. Our first stop will be Goodwill and the like. However, there will be a few things that will not be used, like strollers and car seats. I will gladly spend a reasonable amount of money for stability and safety. I know that eventually we will have to go out buy this stuff, but man it's intimidating. A lot of crap for a lot of money for a small amount of time. Luckily, there are a few things that are versatile so I'm hoping that I could get most of those.

I have my super important ultrasound in a month so it's more sitting and waiting until then. Which I hate but I know it can't be helped. Can't rush the Bean.

Obligatory bump photo

I would like to note that most of that bump is bloating and fat. Oh and my internal organs being shoved up towards my diaphragm. But it's a bump, nonetheless, I guess. Yes, I am vain. I'm just really looking forward to when I really look pregnant. Just a few more weeks!

So far, 4 people have told us that we are going to have a boy. Anyone else have thoughts?

Classic French Toast

I love french toast. It is definitely one of my favorite breakfast foods. I haven't eaten it a lot since it's bread but it's definitely a nice treat once it a while. And a treat it is since today was the best I felt in a long time! I still get tired easily but the nausea is gone as long as I keep my hunger under control.

So to continue celebrating I am sharing my awesome french toast recipe with my friends so you can join in on the yumminess. Sidebar: When I cook something that's not from a recipe, I tend not to measure things, but I will explain/describe to the best of my ability (sorry).

Serving: ~7 pieces of french toast
3 eggs
7 pieces of bread
2% milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
Cinnamon sugar
Powdered sugar (optional)
Syrup/Honey

So, before I get to the recipe part, a few notes to the ingredients so you know why this is the best french toast (I'm so modest).

Yum!!

The recipe makes 7 pieces but if you want to make more or less, here is the formula to make it work and you won't worry about making too much or too little batter. For every egg you add to the recipe, double the amount of bread + 1. For example, for this recipe I used 3 eggs so I used 7 slices of bread. This definitely depends on how much batter you put on the bread, but I found it to be a good rule of thumb. OR, if you don't care how much you make just keep making them until you run out of batter!

I know people these days are afraid of whole milk but skim and 1% milk are too watery for me; I think 2% is a good compromise. Making french toast today was a whim so I used whole wheat bread. BUT if you are planning to make some ahead of time, buy Pepperidge Farm's Cinnamon Bread. IT HELPS MAKE THE YUMMIEST FRENCH TOAST. But seriously, use whatever fancies you. Just don't get super porous bread, then the french toast gets too soggy.

So you have your ingredients:

I love recipes that have minimal ingredients

1. Once you crack the eggs in a medium bowl, pour the milk until you see only the yolk and little bit of the whites
2. Add the vanilla and cinnamon sugar (measure at your discretion) and whisk it all together
3. Grease (or PAM) your pan/griddle and once it is hot enough, dip the bread in the batter on both sides and place on pan
4. After 2-3 minutes, flip and cook for another couple of minutes
5. Keep doing that until you use the whole batter

This is what I mean by not measuring. Make sure your milk and eggs look like this

So you finished making the french toast but it's a little boring so it's time to add a few embellishments. I sprinkled a bit more cinnamon sugar (I really love cinnamon sure) while they were toasting. And then I sprinkled a little powdered sugar to make them look pretty. Lastly, I added some fresh strawberries.

So now enjoy with your favorite syrup! Happy Sunday!

Simple Turkey Burger

I wouldn't say that my diet is incredibly limited but it has become a little more difficult to plan for meals. We used to decide meals together where each of us would choose something for lunch or dinner. Well, since my body went all wonky, David learned early on that I should just choose all the meals because there are certain foods I don't want to eat. So I am now scouring Pinterest to find meals that I will want to eat.

I came upon this recipe for a simple turkey burger. And because it is a burger, the variations of ingredients are almost endless. So I took this recipe and changed up some of the ingredients to make it more palatable for myself (David will eat just about anything so he has no say).

Servings: 4-6 patties

1 lb ground turkey

1 medium yellow onion

1 tbsp garlic powder

1 cup chives (or any other herb you prefer)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

Toppings:

lettuce

tomatoes

cheese

whatever else you want

Dice the onion and if you have fresh chives/herbs, chop them up finely. Toss the onion and chives in a bowl with the ground turkey, garlic powder, salt and pepper and mix thoroughly. Form into patties. Grill or pan-fry them. We don't have a grill so I pan fried them. Sidebar: when you do buy ground turkey, make sure to get the one that is not so lean. This way your patties will hold better together and be juicier. I find 15% fat works pretty well. There is a time and place for lean turkey meat, burgers is not one of them.

Besides the burgers being better for you than beef burgers, having the onions and chives in the patty helps the flavor of the burger and if you don't want anything on your burger, you'll still have flavor in your burger and not just the taste of meat.

This is dinner for the week

Denver Art Museum

I love it when I go on a trip on the weekend. Since I work at home, going out on the weekend is a real joy. Of course it won't happen all the time (ex: bad weather, illness), but it feels like an extra treat. Besides being the weekend, Saturday called for sunny skies and warm-ish weather, high 50s. Great weather to be out and about. So we went into Denver.

David wanted to go to REI, which is a HUGE outdoor/sporting goods store, because they were having a members' only clearance sale. Apparently it's a huge big deal so we had to get there early. So we headed out early and took the light rail into the city. Unfortunately, we left so early that it was pretty cold so I had to make sure I layered myself so I could stay warm during the morning but not swelter in the afternoon. While David was doing his special shopping, I walked around the store (warehouse really) and was amazed at how huge the place is. Three stories and each department was in its own section of the store. Aside from men, women, kids, there was also, hiking, winter outerwear, bicycles, shoes, winter sports equipment, and I know I forgot a few.

After David's shopping spree, we decided to have breakfast before we arrived at the Denver Art Museum. It wasn't like we were at the store for very long but I need to be fed every couple hours now. So we found a breakfast place that was pretty decent called the Delectable Egg.

The logo is so cute!

It was a nice place. And the food was pretty good. I didn't even finish my food there was so much of it.

Seriously. Who actually needs that much butter?!

After breakfast we decided to walk to the museum since it wasn't too far and the weather was nice.

Nothing like still seeing snow in 50 degree weather.

When we got the museum there were some funny statues heading to the entrance.

One of the entrances to the museum

It was a pretty cool museum. They have a thing every first Saturday where admission is free. And, well, yay free culture! When we first started walking around, I thought it was pretty small, really interesting, but small with only a few galleries. However, we realized that the first three floors were connected and the rest (7 floors in all) you had to take the stair or elevators. The two buildings that made up the museum were also connected. A lot of great things to see. But what made it really awesome was that there were a lot of stations for kids where there were interactive toys the could explore or actual art stations. Then, while we were there, some kind of yoga session was also going on. That's what I call my kind of museum.

I would definitely go back.

The Big Announcement... It's a... an Alien Bean!!

I have finally announced to my friends that I am pregnant. And I thought this would be a perfect time to talk about my other life from these last few months.

And let me just say how crazy we are before I go into detail about my time so far.

We got married in October 2012 and at this point we agreed that we would try to have children starting 2013 or after David got a job and we moved. Well, David had a couple interviews since the wedding and we knew for a fact we would probably be moving by the end of 2012. So we decided, what the hell, we'll start trying now. That was December. David got the job and we were scurrying around getting our ducks in a row to move and squeeze in a trip to my parents for Christmas. We moved here at the beginning of January 2013 and one week later I found out I was pregnant. One month later I got confirmation at the doctor's office. This was all in 4 MONTHS. We may be a little crazy.

Like I said, a little crazy

So, back to me being pregnant. I am in my 12th week and, no, I am not really showing. I have packed on some pudge, but my pants still fit even at the waist, except when I sit. There is pressure on my abdomen when I sit. Very annoying.

Actually, there are a lot of annoying things. I've been doing a lot of reading. And everyone says the first trimester is always the worst. That's when the morning sickness, constant hunger, constant bathroom breaks, painful breasts, mood swings and fatigue all happen at once. Thankfully, my morning sickness hasn't been so awful where I've been vomiting. But I have been having constant nausea. I eat all the time but at the same time I don't want to because of said nausea. And my bedtime is at 9:30, but I'm actually tired by 6.

Now I understand that my symptoms aren't horrendous, BUT it's been messing with my normal routine and that's what's really bothering me. I can't workout because I'm either between I just ate or I'm really nauseous. And then when I do eat, I have to do it carefully because sometime I can't tell if I really am hungry, full, or nauseous. I'm usually fine in the mornings, but when 2 o'clock rolls around nausea hits me for the rest of the day.

And how on earth am I maintaining my health if I'm not working out? I've been really conscious about what I eat. I definitely have been eating more, but I've been eating a lot more frequently and smaller portions, which is what experts recommend. I've also been eating a lot of wholesome food like fruit with plain yogurt, lean meats, veggies, cheeses and the like. The one thing that came back into my diet, and I'm not too thrilled about, is gluten. Before it used to be that something super gluten-y was a weekend thing and I really wouldn't eat it on the weekdays. Not any more. If I had a craving, it was to have gluten carby stuff. I needed bread (or pasta) back in my diet and the only thing I can think of is that my body needed quick energy which is what carby grains provide. I haven't gone overboard but it is a daily intake. Oh, and I really don't want to eat anything kimchi (which saddens me) and super garlicky foods (which also makes me sad).

Yay wholesome food!

Active-wise, I wish I could be better. But the food/nausea thing really screws me up. Luckily, I've doing some sort of walking (mostly hiking) on the weekend and I do some small exercise sets while I work. And I got a yoga ball to sit on for part of the day (this also helps with my digestion). Thank God or I would go crazy.

Here's hoping to a better second trimester.

Smash

(from imdb)

I wasn't immediately hooked when I saw the first episode. One of the main reasons was Katharine McPhee. She has a really great voice but I wasn't too keen on her character and her acting. It also took some time for some of the other characters to grow on me. But I had a feeling that the little things would not matter if I kept watching. Also, I saw that Jack Davenport was in the show and I thought, "Steve and Norrington guy is in this show?! He's awesome!" He plays such a great jerk. Anyway, I was right. I LOVE this show now!

Granted I am still not a fan of Karen or Katharine McPhee and the storyline is pretty typical. HOWEVER, at least it's written well and the music is fantastic. I can handle a cookie cutter story as long as it is kept interesting and the characters are memorable. And that's what I think Smash does. You can definitely see a lot of the plot unfolding from a mile away but the characters are engaging and you get pretty invested into their development. I may not have been completely fair with the typical plot, there are some moments where a kink is thrown in and it's pleasant to come across. And, I will say it again, the music is FANTASTIC!

And season 2 has gotten to be pretty drama-filled. And I can't wait to see what happens to Bombshell. Although it's great to see that they are not completely focusing on that. I was kind of curious how they were going to keep going once Bombshell would be on Broadway, but they found a good way to keep that from happening in a pretty realistic way.

I just finished watching the last episode, which wasn't too song heavy, but Ivy has an amazing voice and I love listening to her sing. And the end of the episode wasn't earth shattering or cliffhanger-y, but it only gave you a snippet of what was to come. A very good ending.

This is how Glee should have been in my opinion. Have a great consistent story, stable characters and stop trying to cater so much to the fans. That's what made Glee fall apart so much. Although it seems that Glee is trying to bounce back. We shall see. Smash is still superior.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies (Flourless)

I am not the biggest peanut butter fan. I don't like peanut butter jelly sandwiches and you will never see me eat peanut butter out of the jar. That's David's go to quick snack. However, I do enjoy peanut butter cookies. Probably because the extra sugar helps mask some of the peanut taste. So I definitely enjoy these cookies.

They are especially tasty because they are gluten-free. When we decided to cut back our gluten intake, I started to be on the look out for desserts and snacks that were gluten-free. We both love sweets and dessert-y stuff, so finding recipes that were gluten-free was a little important. I happened upon this recipe in a Southern Living magazine a couple of years ago and immediately copied it so I could bake it at home. It was a huge hit for everyone in the apartment. Not only are they good cookies, but we found they were a good snack after a big workout and great travel food. If they didn't have some self-control the guys would have probably eaten a good 3.5 dozen cookies in 2 days.

The cookies aren't exactly healthy, but if you are cutting back on carbs and/or gluten, this is a great cookie to have around. I made a few adjustments to the original recipe because I felt too much sugar was being used and the chocolate chips weren't quite right. One more note before I share the recipe, 1 cup of peanut butter is about half the jar. So I just use the whole jar at once and this way you don't have leftover peanut butter if you don't eat a lot of it and you make more cookies at one time. The recipe I'll be sharing is for using a whole jar of peanut butter and yields 3.5 to 4 dozen cookies.

1    jar creamy peanut butter
3/4 cup sugar
2    large eggs
1    tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 bag mini-chocolate chips

*If you are going to half the recipe, keep using the 3/4 cup of sugar because that was in the original recipe. Or half it if you want to still cut back on the sugar.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Stir peanut butter, sugar, eggs, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl until well blended.
3. Stir in chocolate chips.
4. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto parchment paper-lined baking sheets.
5. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes or until puffed and lightly browned. Cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes then transfer to wire rack to continue cooling.

The batter will be a little mushy but will stiffen up when the chocolate chips are added.

I spray baking Pam on the tablespoon so the batter won't stick to it and will drop onto the pan easily.

If you use regular metal pans, I highly recommend using parchment paper. But if you use a stone pan, just spray a little baking Pam and it will work great.

The cookies are REALLY soft when they are taken out of the oven, so definitely let them sit and cool for a few minutes before transferring them to the cooling rack.

They are great with tea or milk or coffee. And perfect as a dessert or a snack.

Enjoy!