As I mentioned earlier, I'm trying to cut out white sugar and white flour as much as possible while I'm pregnant, which has led me to look for recipes for healthy baked goods that taste reasonably good. Here are two recipes that I've been happy with so far.

Healthy Banana-Date Muffins

This is based very heavily on this recipe, but I made enough tweaks that I thought it would be easier to rewrite the recipe here than to list out my changes. These muffins are nice and moist. I like having one with a glass of milk for a morning snack.

1 1/2 cups (240g) whole wheat flour
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup (60g) wheat bran
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup (75g) chopped dates
1/2 cup (70g) coarsely chopped toasted walnuts
1/4 cup (60ml) whole milk
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup (75g) mild molasses
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
3 medium sized ripe bananas, mashed (about 3/4 cup)

1. Preheat oven to 350F and line two muffin tins with paper liners (recipe makes 16 muffins total; you can do this in two batches if you only have one muffin tin).

2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, wheat bran, and salt in a large bowl. Stir in dates and walnuts to coat with flour mixture. Make a well in the middle of the mixture.

3. Microwave the milk and butter on medium power until the butter is melted. Whisk in the buttermilk, molasses, and vanilla extract.

4. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs, then slowly pour in the milk mixture, whisking as you do. Whisk in the mashed bananas. Pour this mixture into the well in the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.

5. Scrape the batter into the prepared muffin tins and bake for 15-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean (mine took 18 minutes). Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then remove from pan and let cool to room temperature on a wire rack.

Makes 16 muffins

Chewy Apricot-Almond Granola Bars

This recipe is based closely on a recipe from Jane Kinderlehrer's Smart Cookies, which has a whole chapter devoted to cookie recipes for pregnant ladies. I've tried a few other recipes from this chapter, but they turned out kind of weirdly textured. But I like these granola bars. They're very hearty, but they taste good (I mean, a brownie would taste better, but I'll take what I can get right now!). I like them crumbled over cottage cheese or milk, to add a little more protein.

1 1/4 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup sliced almonds
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 tbsp + 1 tsp mild molasses
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp peanut butter
1/4 cup wheat germ
2 tbsp dry milk powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup dried apricots, slivered
2 tbsp raisins

1. Toast the oats, sunflower seeds, and almonds on a cookie sheet in a 350F oven for 7-10 minutes, until dry and crisp.

2. In a saucepan over low heat, combine the egg, molasses, and peanut butter, and heat for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. [The original recipe has you heat just until combined, but I cooked the mixture a little longer because I was nervous about the raw egg]

3. Stir together the peanut butter mixture, oats, sunflower seeds, almonds, and remaining ingredients.

4. Lightly oil an 8-inch square pan (or line with foil), and press the mixture into the pan. Chill for a couple hours until firm, and then cut into squares/bars. [I stored my bars in the fridge after cutting, but I'm not sure if that's strictly necessary.]

Twenty-seven weeks! We've got about three months left until the baby is due, which seems like a long time to wait, but I guess it takes a while to grow a human being from scratch. It's a good thing I'm enjoying being pregnant!

• I've noticed recently that it's harder for me to get comfortable and stay comfortable when I'm sitting down. My back tends to start hurting. It doesn't help that our couch pillows are old and have lost their oomph. I guess it just gives me extra incentive to get up and walk around, rather than sitting on the couch so much. Luckily, I'm still sleeping just fine--yay, Snoogle!

• Feeling the baby kick still entertains us. Every so often, he flails hard enough that we can see and feel a tiny appendage (foot? elbow? Who knows...) protruding a little from my belly. He seems to like having his head nestled on my right side--sometimes I can feel it pushing against my belly. It's nice being reminded that there really is a little person in there.

• I still haven't had any food cravings, as far as I can tell. I have been eating a lot of citrus though--grapefruit and oranges are so tasty! I guess I do have cravings for junk food, since it's not allowed right now, but I think that's a pretty standard response; I don't think it's pregnancy-related.

• We spent most of our hypnobirthing class this week discussing birth preferences and talking about what to expect when we go to the hospital. It's helpful that the teacher is a nurse at the hospital we'll be delivering at, so she has the inside scoop. I had been a little nervous about what the hospital would be like, so this helped demystify it a little.

  This class was also focused on releasing our fears (so that we can be more relaxed during birth). In advance of the class, Patrick and I listed out our baby/birth-related fears and then talked about them with each other. We had a decent amount of overlap. I think it's pretty standard stuff--financial concerns, preserving our relationship with each other after the baby comes, making sure that we have the kind of birth experience that we want. It was good to talk about it. And then in class, we did a fear-release session, where we pictured unpleasant memories from our past and then replaced them with a mental picture of the two of us, smiling and confident and eager to meet our baby. It made me kind of emotional, but in a good way. Even though we do have some fears, they don't occupy my mind most of the time. We are, more often than not, happy and confident and excited about having a baby. Life is good :) It doesn't hurt that the sun is shining and the flowers are blooming outside right now. It's easier to be joyful and eager in the springtime, I think.

In kitty news, I'm happy to report that Patches recovered really quickly from her hospital visit last weekend. Less than a day after returning home, she was back to her normal, hungry self. It's such a relief to have her back. We still don't know what caused her to get so sick, but hopefully it was a one-time occurrence. Poor kitty does have some fur to grow back though; they shaved her belly and front leg at the hospital. I think she's a little embarrassed about the missing fur.

So in addition to the healthy baked goods I just posted about, we've done pretty well eating healthily this week. We've definitely added more meat back into our diet, just because it makes me worry less about whether I'm getting enough protein. I'd like to cut back again once the baby is born though.

1. Kamut, broccoli, and sausage medley (from Whole Grains Every Day Every Way). I cooked the kamut ahead of time, so it didn't take Patrick too long to put this meal together at dinner time. Not a bad meal, though it might benefit from a little more sauciness to pull everything together--maybe mix in some pesto next time?

2. Popcorn-crusted catfish and cornmeal spoonbread (both from Whole Grains) and pickled coleslaw. A very beige meal. The catfish was fine, and the spoonbread tasted good (mmm, butter), but the texture was a little too light and insubstantial for me. I prefer a nice creamy polenta instead. The coleslaw was too vinegary for my tastes, but we learned in class that eating acidic foods might help prevent group B strep, so at least I felt good about eating it.

3. Cannellini bean and sausage gratin. This tasted good but reinforced my ambivalence about Italian sausage (I'm just not wild about the flavor). If I make it again, I'd probably try using a different type of sausage. Or no sausage at all!

4. Our hypnobirthing class this week included a potluck dinner, so we brought Tracy's favorite lentil salad (with a few slivered sun-dried tomatoes and about 10 oz of steamed spinach added for good measure). Always a good choice.

And Patrick baked two loaves of Otis Cafe brown bread, using our newly cultivated sourdough starter. It smelled so good when it was baking, and it tastes good too! Patrick had some problems with his first attempt at starter (it got taken over by leuconostoc bacteria), but his second attempt (using pineapple juice and more frequent stirring, as suggested on the linked page) behaved like it was supposed to. Go little starter!

5. For my lunch this week, I made a batch of chunky lentil soup from Super Natural Cooking, but I added some chicken sausage and sliced mushrooms, and I used cubed sweet potato instead of butternut squash. I was worried that with all my changes, it might turn out badly, but I was pretty happy with the results. It was thick, so I served it over brown rice. I topped it with a little ricotta salata that we had on hand. Not bad!

Okay, that's enough computer time. I'm going to go take a walk and enjoy the beautiful spring weather while it lasts!

Twenty-eight weeks! We've made it to the third trimester. Good job, baby! Here's a bonus family portrait to celebrate (we tried to get Patches in there too, but she wasn't interested).

We had our last hypnobirthing class this week. We spent most of it talking about labor and birth logistics (like how to apply what we've learned when we're actually in labor), and we watched a few more birth videos. I'm glad we took the class; I've enjoyed it. Now we just have to keep practicing regularly!

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I'm loving my pregnant belly! It's just neat that my body is set up to protect and support a baby. Early in the pregnancy, I was worried about whether I'd need some sort of support for the belly (like a girdle), but it seems to be doing just fine on its own. The human body is pretty impressive! I'm enjoying tracking the progress of my belly button too--it's pretty much flat at this point. I had expected it to just pop out at some point, but that doesn't seem to be what's happening. I guess it still has three months to do something dramatic.

I went in for my glucose screening on Thursday. The Glucola wasn't as bad as I'd expected. It just tasted like flat 7-Up, maybe a little sweeter. My doctor's office called yesterday, and I passed the glucose test (yay!), but I have low iron levels. I wasn't too surprised about that, since I haven't been eating a ton of red meat or leafy greens (with the exception of my weekly green smoothie from Sip). So I'm supposed to start taking an iron supplement in addition to my prenatal vitamins. Fair enough. I'll take low iron over gestational diabetes any day!

Good glucose results aside, it has been a rough week for a couple of reasons, one of which is that we're in the middle of having some major electrical work done on our house. It's just tough having our daily routines (and typical peace and quiet) interrupted. The good news is that the electricians should be able to finish up on Monday. I thought it would take weeks to get all this work done, but it has only taken four days. Pretty awesome! And even better, our house's electrical system is in way better shape than it was before. The temporary disruption has definitely been worth it.

The impetus for this work was to get rid of the old knob and tube wiring in our house (to reduce our insurance costs and make it possible to insulate our walls in the future), but we figured while we're having holes cut in our walls, we might as well make other improvements to the electrical system. We had the electricians update all of our light fixtures with wall switches (instead of pull chains) and upgrade the lighting in our closets, stairwell, and entryway. We're getting a second light fixture in the kitchen (better lighting for food pictures!), and--the thing I'm most excited about--our old and noisy bathroom fan has been replaced by a new model that is super quiet, with a timer and a built-in heater. Very luxurious for those cold winter mornings :)

We're getting a couple new light fixtures from Schoolhouse Electric (yay for cool Portland companies!). I'm excited to see those go up, but that has to wait until we can get a plaster dude in to patch up the multitude of holes left by the plumbing and electrical work. It's like a giant mouse has gone through our house and nibbled holes all over our ceilings and walls. It's kind of cool to see the inner workings of our house, but I'll be glad to have things looking a little cleaner and not have plaster dust all over everything.

Once this round of work is wrapped up, that should be the end of our big house upgrades for a while. The goal was to get as many big items as possible taken care of before the baby comes. Patrick has orchestrated all of our house repairs so far, and I'm so grateful to him for doing that.

Since our kitchen was taken over by electricians for a good portion of the week, there's not much to tell about food. We had a major cooking flop early in the week--cabbage rolls that were fiddly to prepare and then turned out to be totally undercooked and full of raw meat after an hour in the oven. Ugh. Thank goodness for boxed mac and cheese. We did better the next night. Patrick made lemony broccoli and chickpea rigatoni, using whole wheat penne. It seemed pretty easy to make, and it was tasty. Thanks to Alison for mentioning this recipe!

For lunches this week, we had otsu again. Tasty, but I'm feeling a little pasta-ed out at this point.

Patrick's birthday was this week (yay!), and to celebrate, I baked the lemon buttermilk rhubarb Bundt cake from Rustic Fruit Desserts, using some of our frozen rhubarb from last spring. Definitely on the tangy side, but the glaze balances it out nicely (even though much of the glaze slid right off the top and pooled underneath the cake). I love how majestic Bundt cakes look right after glazing. Sadly for this particular cake, I have no picture of it in its uncut glory; this one will have to suffice.

Having a whole Bundt cake sitting around when you're trying to avoid delicious baked goods is dangerous, but luckily we were able to send some home with friends, and then I sliced and froze most of the rest of it, to make it a little less tempting.

Speaking of delicious baked goods, we went to Besaw's for brunch today, and Patrick had a jelly roll, which was pretty much a cinnamon roll, but with jam in the middle instead of cinnamon-sugar, frosted generously with cream cheese icing. I can confirm, it was tasty. My eggs benedict (with spinach and oven-roasted tomatoes) were yummy too. The service was fast and friendly, and we only had to wait about 10 minutes for a table. Definitely a good place for breakfast if you're in NW Portland.

Twenty-nine weeks! This belly means business.

• I wasn't sure if I should mention this, because it might move me from the "slightly unorthodox pregnant lady" category to the "crazy new age pregnant lady" category, but what the heck. So in one of our hypnobirthing classes, the teacher mentioned the concept of placenta encapsulation--dehydrating the placenta after birth and making it into pills, which are then taken daily for the first few months following birth. The assertion is that they can prevent postpartum depression, improve milk production, and prevent anemia, since the placenta is full of hormones and iron. Not surprisingly, there's a local midwife who offers this service (which is good, because if I had a food dehydrator and had to use it to dry my placenta, I don't think I'd want to make dried apricots and fruit leather in it later on, you know?).

  There's not really much scientific evidence on the subject, apart from a study conducted in 1954. On the one hand, most non-human mammals eat their placentas after birth, so maybe it's not a bad idea, but most humans don't consume their placentas, and they do just fine. I'd be more inclined to try it if it weren't so hard to get the placenta from the hospital after birth. Apparently the hospital we'll be birthing at holds all placentas for 10 days, and then you have to request your placenta in writing (and make sure that they store it properly so that it doesn't go bad while they're holding it). Otherwise it goes into a big bin with all the other placentas and gets incinerated (poor placenta--after nourishing a baby for 9 months, you'd think it would get a little more respect!). Word has it that a doula once stole her client's placenta from the hospital so that it could be encapsulated promptly, and it caused a rift among the nurses--those who believe the placenta belongs to the woman it came out of vs. those who believe hospital procedure must be followed. I thought that was pretty funny :)

  So yeah, it sounds like it would be a hassle to liberate my placenta from the hospital, and there's no guarantee that the pills would actually have any benefit. I probably won't do it. But it is an intriguing concept...

  By the way, I find it pretty amusing that I just devoted three paragraphs to talking about placentas. This kind of thing was totally off my radar before I got pregnant. See, pregnancy is expanding my horizons :)

• We're still not making much progress in narrowing down our list of baby names. We've got our top 10 list (five from me, five from Patrick), but we've kind of lost momentum in narrowing it down further. We'll get there! And actually, after seeing a recent episode of The Office, we're down to only nine names, since one of my top 5 was also on Dwight's list of acceptable baby names (Ebenezer, Jebediah, Honus, Jedediah, and Worf). Nope, it wasn't Worf...it was Honus! When I first came across it (probably in a baby name book), I thought it was kind of neat--old-timey, but not trendy, and the baby's nickname could be Dutch! I associated the name Honus with baseball, not Pennsylvania Dutch beet farmers. Shows what I know! I was already on the fence about it, since it's pretty unusual, and now that it's associated with Dwight Schrute in my mind, I'm feeling like we should spare our kid and give him a slightly more normal name. No offense to any Honuses out there!

On to this week's food...

1. Quinoa and gruyere with sauteed mushrooms (from Super Natural Cooking). I wasn't expecting much from this recipe, but it turned out surprisingly well, especially given how easy it was to make. Not very fancy, but if you're looking for healthy comfort food, this would be a good recipe to try.

2. Healthy pancakes (from Morning Food) with blueberries and pecans added during cooking, shirred eggs, and buttered toast fingers. The pancakes were indeed healthy, perhaps a little too healthy. The flavor was good, but the texture was a bit on the leaden side. The eggs were a fun change from our normal egg preparation methods--a good recipe to try if you have a couple teaspoons of heavy cream leftover from another recipe. I love food in ramekins!

3. Pot-roasted brisket with rhubarb and honey (from All About Braising), spicy sweet potato wedges, and sauteed kale. I tried the brisket recipe because we have a bunch of rhubarb in the freezer from last spring, and I was looking for recipes that used rhubarb without a lot of added sugar. This one fit the bill. It required a decent amount of work to prepare, but it did turn out pretty tender. I'm not thrilled with the flavor, but that could just be because I'm not wild about beef. Now the sweet potatoes--those are definitely worth a remake.

The recipe made a lot of brisket, so based on a suggestion in the recipe notes, I turned part of it into sandwiches for lunch--on multigrain ciabatta spread with plain chevre and grainy mustard, topped with arugula. They sound more exciting that they actually were, but again, that could be because of my lukewarm feelings about beef. Oh, and those pickles are the icicle pickles I made last August. I like sweet pickles, but these were a little too sweet, even for me. They also weren't quite as crisp as I would have liked. Not bad though.

4. Earlier this week, my lunches consisted of non-photogenic crockpot white bean chicken chili topped with avocado and Monterey jack cheese, with a side of jalapeno corn muffins (recipe from Whole Grains Every Day Every Way, substituted nonfat yogurt for the sour cream). Maybe I'm just sick of protein or I have an unfair bias against boneless skinless chicken breasts, but the chili just didn't do it for me. Patrick liked it just fine though. We both liked the corn muffins. They're made with whole wheat pastry flour instead of all-purpose flour, but they're not heavy at all. Definitely worth making again.

5. And to satisfy my need for sweet things while avoiding white sugar, I did some more baking from Smart Cookies--another slab of apricot-almond granola bars and a batch of peanut and raisin cookies. Considering that these cookies don't contain any sweetener or white flour, they're not bad. The dried fruit, cornmeal, and peanut butter add some sweetness. But I'd still rather eat a brownie...

In other news, it has been warm and sunny the past few days, which has been wonderful! Our front yard is in bloom (tulips should be opening any day now!), and Patches has developed a sudden affinity for sidewalk dirt baths (I'm not sure why she feels the need to roll around in the dirt, but she looks cute doing it!).

Our electrical work is done, the sun is out--I'm definitely feeling more relaxed and happy this week. Another big contributor to this improvement in mood is that my family got some great news this week. I hadn't mentioned this before because it's not my story to tell (and it's a little more personal than I normally get here), but it definitely deserves a mention, considering how much space I devote to baby minutiae and baked goods. The short version is that my sister has a brain stem tumor (which still makes no sense to me--she's 20 years old!), which we've known about since November. She had a biopsy last week to figure out what type of tumor it is, and the preliminary prognosis was not encouraging. BUT! They got the pathology results back on Tuesday, and it turns out that it's a much more treatable type of tumor than the doctors originally thought. The expectation is that after 5-6 months of radiation/chemo, her life should be back to normal, which is such a relief compared to what they were originally projecting. I know Lianna is going to kick this tumor's ass!

Wow, 30 weeks! Three-quarters of the way there. I'm definitely starting to feel a little unwieldy, but it's not too bad.

• I've been feeling fewer sharp kicks recently, which is consistent with what the pregnancy book says--the baby has less space to flail around in at this point. Now he's working on putting on some fat, rather than growing any longer, which sounds like a good plan to me.

• It's becoming harder to sit comfortably for long periods of time. I can sit on the couch for a little while if I cram two pillows behind my back, but that only works for so long. I think I need to start carrying around a little lumbar pillow for when we go out to restaurants (I've also found that a roll of paper towels works well, but Patrick doesn't want me carrying those around everywhere). We finally got around to buying an exercise ball for me earlier this week, and that has worked out pretty well as a couch alternative (it's also supposed to come in handy during labor, and the books say you can use it to soothe a gassy baby).

• And hey, I have a new pregnancy side effect this week--sciatica! If I stand up for more than 20 minutes or so, the upper part of my right leg goes numb. But it goes away when I sit down. I'm just glad it's manifesting as numbness instead of shooting pain. It kind of puts a damper on making complicated dinners (or washing the dishes from complicated dinners), but it's not so bad. Plus I get to walk around the house talking like an old lady and complaining that my sciatica is flaring up again.

  Also, I think I might have had my first practice surge (Braxton-Hicks contraction, for those of you not up on the hypnobirthing lingo) this morning. It didn't hurt at all; my belly just felt extra firm for a few minutes, and then it went back to normal. Pretty cool!

• I wasn't feeling super excited about our name list last weekend. I'm just having a hard time finding a boy's name that I'm excited about (when it comes to girls' names, I have much stronger preferences!). Like every other parent out there, I want a name that is unique, but also one that won't be so unusual that it will be a burden to our son. I shouldn't worry so much; it'll be fine. Anyway, I spent some more time with our various baby name books (this one is my favorite; it has more information than is available on the website) and our full list of names and added some more names to the in-the-running list. So now the list is up to 30 names, but I'm sure Patrick will veto some of those. We're also working on narrowing down our girl name list, though we're a little less motivated on that front. But it seems wise to have a girl's name in reserve, just in case the ultrasound was wrong :)

• I've been feeling anxious about not being prepared enough given how far along I am. We are pretty well prepared in some respects (educating ourselves about how to take care of a baby), but we're kind of lagging in the "buying stuff" department. Part of it is that we want to buy as much as we can used and/or locally, and that takes more effort than ordering everything off of Amazon. I think most of my anxiety stems from the fact that we haven't made much progress on the nursery, which is a silly thing to worry about because (as Patrick helpfully reminds me) the baby won't care if his room is finished when he gets here. Still, there are definitely a few more basics that we need to buy--like a dresser/changing table (we're working on that one this weekend).

  I thought it might help motivate me if I post a before picture of the nursery. Here's what it looks like right now (the first picture is the room, the second picture is the closet, which is actually pretty big!). I'm not a big fan of the brown color, so I'm excited to paint it! So far, we have been cramming all baby-related stuff in there willy-nilly, along with guest room sheets, laundry drying rack, out-of-season clothes--you name it! Everything is extra disorderly because we had to move stuff when the electricians were here. Anyway, stay tuned for a dramatic nursery transformation sometime in the next 10 weeks. Well, maybe not dramatic, but there will be a transformation of some sort. There has to be!

  
  
  

  I actually made a good amount of progress on sewing the Roman shade for the nursery last weekend, but we won't be able to hang it up until we've painted, which we can't do until the plaster man does his thing and fills all the holes from the electrical work. We've got two plaster guys coming to give quotes early next week, so that should get the ball rolling.

This past week, we made some fun plans for my 30th birthday in early May. Since I'll be 36 weeks pregnant at the time, we didn't want to travel too far away, so we decided to take a quick overnight trip to Hood River. I'm excited! We're going to stay at the Columbia Gorge Hotel, which is supposed to have awesome breakfasts, and on the way there/back, we'll get to see the Historic Columbia River Gorge Highway and Multnomah Falls (can you believe we've lived in Portland for one and a half years, and I haven't seen Multnomah Falls?!). I'm looking forward to it!

Patrick continues to do lots of work on our garden, which I appreciate, since I haven't given it much thought this year. I wanted to share a cool project that he did. He made cloches out of used bike wheels (which he got for free from Seven Corners). He removed the spokes, cut the rims in half, and then covered them with plastic sheeting (using wire to attach the plastic to the rims). He used some of the spokes to secure the rims to our raised beds. Our baby radishes and spinach seem to like them, as does our cat. Perfect for warming up on a cool day!

We've had some pretty good meals this week.

1. Sole with chanterelles, cherried and chickpea'd couscous (both recipes from How to Eat), and roasted broccoli. I was happy with this meal--it wasn't too hard to prepare, and it was tasty and pretty healthy. I was worried at first because the sole was full of bones, but most of them stayed attached to the backbone, so we ended up with perfect fish skeletons at the end of the meal. Plus it was cheap and locally caught. Yay, sole!

2. Red split lentils with cabbage and whole wheat naan (recipe from Whole Grain Breads). The lentils were pretty good, though not remarkable. The naan was hearty, but not bad. Definitely not as delicious as the naan at Indian restaurants, but that was to be expected.

3. Braised pork chops and creamy cabbage (from All About Braising) with roasted sweet potato wedges. The pork chops turned out fine, but I probably wouldn't make this recipe again. I think my main problem with it were the caraway seeds. I'm just not a big fan of them. But if you like caraway, definitely give this recipe a try!

4. For lunches this week, I made the tart and tangy baked beans recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook. I was expecting them to be like normal baked beans, but that's not really how they turned out. They're more like beans with some baked apples and tomatoes thrown in. Not exciting. On top of that, the recipe made 10 servings instead of 6, so we've got plenty of disappointing beans waiting in the freezer to be eaten later. Oh well, it's food!

5. I was craving rice pudding last weekend, but since I'm still trying to eat more whole grains and less refined sugar, I tried the coconut-black rice pudding recipe from Whole Grains Every Day Every Way. It sure is purple! It was more hearty and less sweet than normal rice pudding, but definitely not bad. Patrick and I both ate it happily.

Ooh, and last night we finally made it to Dove Vivi for the first time. We'd heard good things about the corn pizza, and it did not disappoint. Yum! After dinner, we went to the Laurelhurst and saw The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was fun. An excellent Portland date night :)

I wanted to leave you with a few recent pictures from our garden. I'm sure I posted an almost identical tulip picture last year, but I just can't help it--it's so exciting to see flowers blooming! I've also thrown in a picture of a surprise anemone growing under our grapes, plus a very sneaky kitty hiding in some long grass in the front yard. I love hanging out with Patches. She's always entertaining :)