Mom-To-Be Freezer Meal - Sweet Potato Chili

I have to tell you honestly, I'm doing my first taste test as we speak you read. My very first response to this recipe,  http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2012/01/05/sweet-potato-chili/ was a little less than enthusiastic. The recipe is super simple and really easy to follow - toss the prepped ingredients in a pot, boil, turn down and simmer.

I love finding recipes that have a little something different to offer and that aren't the exact same as every other recipe out there, which is why I found "sweet potato chili" intriguing. I love sweet potatoes, I'm a fan of flavour and spices, it's a healthy recipe - and what goes better with chili than a side of corn bread?

First response after the first taste? "Meh." I really thought that my favourite part of tonights meal would be the corn bread. The chili was still quite hot, which I think was part of my issue. My theory is, that with it being so hot, it tasted more bland than it actually is, because once it started to cool a little, I ended up liking the chili more and more - even though the corn bread was probably still my favourite part... but I love my carbs, and well, corn bread is pretty much awesome.

After being frozen, the sweet potato and the zucchini were pretty mushy, so I'd suggest that if you plan on serving it to guests, serve fresh the day of or the day after. (Katie said in her blog entry that she thought the flavour of the chili was better the day after.)

My freezer meal method for this recipe is the same method I use for my stocks and soups. the muffin tin method!

For my muffin tins, I know I can fit 1/4 cup of whatever I'm baking/freezing, which makes for easy single serve meals and easy measuring when I'm making a soup and need to measure out the amount of stock I'll need. It also makes it easy to take out the exact amount I need, instead of a bigger batch than I actually need.

Once whatever I'm freezing is frozen and ready to be packaged, I take out my tins and place them on the counter for a few minutes for things to loosen (If I'm in a rush, I'll put some warm water in the bottom of my kitchen sink to encourage quicker loosening - although, I'd make sure to have the extra few minutes for blended/smooth soups, since they loosen pretty quickly and if you place the tin in warm water, even for a few seconds too long, things can get messy and your soup moulds could end up frozen together once they're packaged and refrozen)

Once things are loose and I can turn the mould around while it's inside the tin, I know it's ready to come out. You can take the moulds out a few ways, I usually opt for grabbing a butter knife and popping each one out - but be careful, if you have really nice tins, you can scratch the sides and/or bottoms and they can rust if you let them air dry. Or, you can flip the whole tin over and let them fall out onto your counter or a big cookie sheet.

Then I toss my prepared frozen moulds into a freezer bag, labelled with the contents, cooking directions, the date it was packaged. If I'm giving packaged freezer meals to a friend, I will include a list of ingredients in case they have an allergy I forgot about and I might include the website or the written out recipe in case they like it and want to make it themselves.



All in all, I think I would make this recipe again, and wait for it to cool off a little bit before I started eating again so I can enjoy all the flavours right from the beginning.

In my next entry I'll be sure to include the recipe for the corn bread I enjoyed so much with dinner tonight. It comes from one of my favourite recipe books.

Do you have a favourite or go-to chili recipe?
Have an awesome day and thanks for reading!

Oh! And don't forget to scroll down past the comments section and feed the goldfish - I think it's been a while since they've been fed :)

Preggo Lady Survey 39 Weeks

39 weeks

How far along: 39 weeks - nearly there!

Weight gain: 40 lbs - from 175 to 215

Innie or outtie: I asked someone if I was an innie or an outtie a little while ago since it's hard for me to see my belly button without manipulating my stomach, apparently, I have a 'flattie'.

Maternity Clothes: 3 pairs of pants - one pair I've mostly stopped wearing recently because I can see the seam on the bum starting to stretch out, and it would be really embarrassing if the bottom of my pants ripped in public. A few mat shirts, but I also have shirts from regular stores that I could grow into. I also recently bought a couple nursing bras. Most comfortable bras EVER! I know they're not exactly 'mat wear' but they should be.

Sleep: Still doing pretty well. I only get up once, maybe twice a night to pee.

Pregnancy Perks: Being rushed to the front of the public washrooom line, people tend to move out of your way in a crowded area and having doors opened for you.

The downside? Getting shirts dirty in places
you can't see

Any downsides? Some people don't realize that with a belly, you need more room to get by. I mean, you really can't squish though spaces the same way. That AND with not being able to see the bottom of your belly, you could have something on the bottom part of your shirt and not even know it! (In my case, it's often dishwater, flour, chocolate from baking or some other such thing)

Any random strangers come up out of nowhere and touch your belly? No, thank God. I have people I know (or kind of know) touch my belly, which isn't a big deal to me. It wouldn't be a huge deal to me if another preggo came up and touched my belly. But if anyone else came up and touched my belly, I'm not sure how I would handle it.

Embarrassing Pregnant Moment: Still don't really have one.

Lastest Baby Purchases: Some more crib sheets; a playpen with bassinet attachment off of the Toys R Us registry (Yes, I bought the playpen... *grumblegrumble*) For the first while, Victoria will be spending her nights in the master bedroom - as suggested by Health Canada.

Latest Baby Gift: My friend Katherine sent me some really pretty flower headbands and an udder cover for when I breastfeed in public.

Movement: Big rolls and jabs. Most of the time she doesn't hurt me though

Food Cravings: Hmmm. Nope.

Food Aversions: I haven't really wanted to eat pork.

How's Mama? Still doing really well and still comfortable. I was telling one of my friends that with how well things are going and how comfortable I am still, she could be two weeks late if she wanted - although, I do REALLY want to meet her.

What I'm Looking Forward To: Meeting my little girl, being able to sleep/lay down on my tummy again, be able to see if I have anything anywhere on my shirt

My Baby in Veg/Fruit Terms: A watermelon!

What Do I Think My Baby Will Look Like? Blonde/light brown hair, greenish-blue eyes, chubby little cheeks but a long/lean little body.
Natural/C-Section/Drugs? Natural with a midwife baby. (Although if I have to, I will do whatever it takes to get Victoria out safely. And if I have a LONG and hard delivery and I need relief, I am open to taking drugs... I've made it very clear that I'd rather be encouraged to do without rather than have my support group just agree with me that I need the drugs)

Signed up for any classes? I've done my prenatal classes, preperation for labour classes (Mostly about comfort measures) and breastfeeding 101 - a GREAT class! I learned some new things, techniques I didn't know about, and just random bits of info.



My newly developed stretch marks. Funny, most of them
are on my left side, and fewer are on my right side.

Stretch Marks? I have some on my bum, a few on the very tops of my thighs where my legs meet my torso, and on the bottom of my belly. Am I ashamed or will I cover them up at the beach this year? No way. My body is doing something awesome.

Are you ready for it to be over? I'm ready to meet her, but she can come whenever she wants.

Any weird dreams? Not weird dreams... but I've had a few dreams that it's going to be a boy... which freaks me out a little bit because I originally thought that we were having a boy, just a feeling. If we do end up having a boy? Plus side, we have a name picked out. Down side? He'll be wearing girl clothes for a little while - but I did buy gender neutral clothes... I don't want our little girl to be dressed in pink from head to toe... that's a lot of pink to handle.

Life Lessons I Hope To Pass On To My kids-Part III

1. Grandma Mary also says, "If you get in a fight, fight to win."
2. Stay loyal to those who are important and who love and like you for you. Sometimes it's hard to know who those people are from the people who only want something from you.
3. Take the time to spend quality time with those you love. Time passes quickly. Money comes and goes. True friends and family are always there for you.
4. If you ever, EVER, EVER have a problem - TALK ABOUT IT! It's better to talk it out than to let it get under your skin or hold a grudge.
5. Allow yourself to trust others, unless they give you a reason why they don't deserve it.
6. Always be treated with dignity and respect. Let people know that it's NOT okay if they treat you badly.
7. TRUST YOUR GUT! If you don't feel right about something, that's a pretty good indicator that something is wrong.
8. Try your bewst to do well in school (and everything that you do) and get good grades. It's only when you're done school that you'll be kicking youself if you didn't do well - and that way, you won't have to pay to upgrade.
9. NEVER let others tell you that you can't be friends or spend time with someone you care about (some exceptions apply) whether they verbally say "Your dad can't ever come to visit/stay again" or just don't like the person - making you choose not to spend time with them.
10. Don't EVER start smoking. It's a needless expense, hard to quit and bad for your overall health.

Making My "Mom-To-Be" Freezer Meals - Intro

In the earlier stages of my pregnancy, I decided that I definitely wanted to make freezer meals so in my future sleep deprived state, I wouldn't have to be stuck with trying to figure out what to eat last minute - as well as not having to eat fast food for nearly every meal.

BUT!

I had NO IDEA where to start. Making freezer meals wasn't practiced in my house growing up and up until recently, I didn't see much value in preparing freezer meals. Needless to say, I had a lot of online reading to do. I didn't know what would freeze well, how to package and store them - as well as for how long.

I have to say, thank GOD for Pinterest! I found the majority of my information, ideas and recipes on Pinterest. Seriously, if you haven't checked it out yet, you really should. I think the next few blog entries will be dedicated to the recipes, websites and techniques I've learned to better prepare myself for motherhood.

One obstacle that I needed to overcome was that I needed more than just the fridge/freezer combo. I wanted an extra freezer for the basement so I could have the room for the amount of extra food that I planned on making to make meal planning easier in the earlier days. Chest freezer. Standing freezer. Didn't matter to me. I wanted extra room.

I'm also pretty frugal, so I didn't want to have to pay an arm and a leg for a freezer. Solution? I checked the store fliers for sales. I also checked Kijiji - often. I eventually found a small chest freezer on Kijiji that was being sold for $50.00. I was a little skeptical since they were selling it for so little a price, but they'd had it for a few years already and had recently upgraded to a larger, standing freezer. And they'd told me that if I had any problems with it, I could bring it back to them and they'd give me my fifty smackers back. I decided to gamble and buy the freezer from Kijiji.

And! I love it! It was the best $50.00 that I've spent.

AAAALLLLLLLL that being said, stay tuned for my tales of making freezer meals, swollen ankles and check out the recipes. And consider making your own freezer meals, whether you are about to be a new parent, just have a busy schedule, for unexpected guests or to learn something new.

Do you already do freezer meals? What is your favourite freezer meal recipe?

Life Lessons I Hope To Pass On To My Kids-Part II

In this pregnancy, every now and then I write a letter to Victoria telling her how things are going and I try tro come up with some life lessons/tips to include, in hopes that maybe she will learn from others experiences or mistakes. (I did the same in my last, brief, pregnancy and I will do the same for my next one.)

Here are a few points that I hope for my little girl to learn.

1. Learn what your boundaries are and stick to them
2. Family comes first. (We begin and end with family)
3. Find a few good, trustworthy friends of quality - not a lot of friends you never speak to
4. Don't allow anyone to walk on you, especially loved ones (boundaries)
5. You teach people how to treat you. Teach them that you deserve respect and love
6. Know when it is time to end a friendship, sadly, not all of them can last forever. There will be few friends that you will have your whole life - there will be many who won't be there long. It doesn't mean they weren't good friends when they were there or when you needed them, but sometimes, it's better to end a friendship before it causes damage or anyone gets hurt
7. Your family will always love you and be there for you whenever you need us
8. Wait until you are in your 20's to get a tattoo. They are costly and aren't easy or cheap to remove. Be 100% sure that what you plan on getting is something you can live with for your whole life
9. If you do decide to get a tattoo one day (same goes for any piercings/body alterations) be sure to check out the tattoo artists previous work to ensure quality. (You won't want someone to spell something wrong or have wobbly lines) Take a good and careful look around the tattoo shop - make sure it's clean and in order. See if the tattoo artists there wash their hands during your first visit. And again, be sure that whatever you get is something that really means something to you and that you are going to be okay with having it on your body forever
10. If you want to change your body there are no shortcuts, no magic pill, no short term solutions. You have to change your lifestyle in order to gain and maintain the body/life you want. You have to eat right, exercise and choose to be healthy. Trust me, once you move into your 20's, that junk food starts to stay on your body. 

Life Lessons I Hope To Pass On To My Kids-Part I

1. Find healthy ways to deal with stress, anger and sadness. You don't need to comfort eat, do drugs, drink alcohol or any other distructive behaviours to deal with problems.
2. Be very careful with credit cards and debt and your credit score. There is good debt (A mortgage, student loans etc) but you have to be sure to make your payments on time - and there are bad debts (consumer debt, where you don't have anything to show for what you borrowed money for: food, clothing, fun spending.) Again, be sure to make your payments in full, on time and before you are charged interest. Keep the number of credit cards you have to a minimum, it really isn't necessary to have more than one.
   http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2013/04/01/a-seven-year-old-learns-about-credit-cards/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thesimpledollar+%28The+Simple+Dollar%29&utm_content=FaceBook
3. Keep your banking simple: The more accounts you have, the harder it is to keep everything organized and the more likely you are to make costly mistakes. The fewer accounts you have, the fewer financial institutes you deal with you’ll find that it's easier to avoid late fees or overdrafts as well as you may be able to reap more benefits.
4. Don't ever get sucked into talking bad about yourself or your body just because other girls are talking about what they don't like about themselves/their bodies. You might notice, that whenever I hear people saying bad things about themselves, I always say something like, "Don't say bad things about yourself."
5. You don't always have to get along with or like everyone, and people aren't always going to get along with or like you - but don't be mean or cruel or get pulled into a fight. Walking away is not losing, it's refusing to play a game that has no winners (and you can possibly avoid getting into trouble or getting hurt needlessly)
6. Always find ways to be nice and generous to others. You will find that by being nice, people will be nice in return. Be nice and give the benefit of doubt to people who seem to be grumpy, mean or just plain rude - it could be that they are just having a bad day. (But don't allow them to be disrespectful to you or treat you badly.)
7. Don't lie. ALWAYS tell the truth. You have less to worry about and less to remember. AND people don't have a problem trusting you if they know you tell the truth. Even if you are scared of getting a bad reaction from telling the truth, whoever it is will be WAY more upset to find out you lied and felt you couldn't tell them the truth.
8. Think about how you would like to be treated by others - then treat everyone better than that.
9. Take measures to take care of yourself. Dress well, brush your teeth and hair and be the best that you can be.
10. Grandma Mary always told us (us being me, your Uncle Mathew and Aunty Spring) growing up when she left us to stay with friends or family, "Say what you need, say what you feel, and say what you want - always stand up for yourself! No one else will."

Sick to DEATH of Chatums Eye Issues

I am pretty much sick to DEATH about this dogs eye! (For those of you who don't know, we've had issues with Chatums right eye for AGES!) There have been problems with it since he was adopted almost a year ago in July, but were only first noticed a few weeks after adoption - and he was a stray when the animal shelter found him, so NOTHING was known about his medical history other than he was a 2.5 year old dog that had been neutered, was in (relatively) good health, happy, well adjusted, liked people/other dogs, had been previously trained, had LOTS of mats in his fur and his nails hadn't been trimmed in quite some time.

He's had multiple dye tests to check for ulcers, tear tests to make sure that his eyes were producing enough tears and were able to get rid of any bacteria that might be in his eye, cultures were taken and sent away to see if there were any underlying issues that might present as an eye condition, eye pressures taken on multiple occassions... and on and on.

The vet we see originally thought that he had pink eye, which made sense at the time. It was red, it was irritated and we had a discharge going on. They prescribed a little bottle of BNPH (a steroid cream) to put in his eye. On the meds, his eye cleared up, but a day or two after he went off the meds, it came back in full force. Our vet thought that maybe not all the pink eye bacteria was wiped out and it was just a matter of being on the meds longer since it got better with the steriod. So, we went home with another little tube of the stuff, only to have the issue flare up again one-two days later.

It was after that that I'd noticed that the whites of his eyes were white after he slept a full night or had naps during the day and started turning pink/red when he was awake. The conclusion? It wasn't pink eye. The next diagnosis was uveitis. Put simply, his eye was inflamed and the pressure was higher in his right eye (the one with all the issues) than his left eye - sort of like when one of your kitchen sinks is clogged and the other one doesn't drain as well as it should. The solution? New meds. This time a drop. Outcome?  His eye STILL turned red shortly after discontinuing his meds.

FINALLY we were referred to a pet opthamologist (but in the meantime were given another kind of drop until we could get an appointment). Downside? We had to take a LONG drive from our tiny middle-o-nowhere town to the city (but I got Starbucks and indian food, it was sort of worth it) It was the longest car ride Chatum had ever been on, so he whined the whole way there, was crazy once we got there because we were in a new place with new smells and LOTS of other dogs waiting in the lobby. I had to fill out new patient paperwork for him. So I'm sitting in the lobby, trying to control an excited and restless dog pulling to try so he can visit with the other dogs, fill out paperwork at the same time, with a pen that didn't work... did I mention that was in my second trimester and I was alone? Yeah. Not so fun.

We did find out what was wrong with his eye though. I can't remember the medical term for what is going on with Chatums eye, but his eye membrane "fooled" into thinking that something was in his eye and was trying to get rid of it. His eye membrane was thickening in one spot which was causing the irritation, redness, swelling and discharge. So, we were sent home with some eye drops he was supposed to receive for 3 times a day for a few weeks, then 2 times for a few weeks, then 1 day for a few weeks and then finally discontinue. The first course was successful... for longer than just a couple days until the redness returned. Thankfully, we didn't have to take a drive again and our doggy eye doc suggested to use the same drops for a little longer. Outcome? Two weeks passed before his eye started turning pink again.

So, this time we *did* have to drive back. This time, our doggy eye doc noticed that it was the same condition and that he didn't miss anything, his membrane wasn't thickening anymore, so there had been improvement, which was REALLY good news. Now, we have the same drops as before, which we have to give to him 3 times a day for a month, then two times a day for a month, then one time a day for a month and then alternating days for a month - along with a steriod tablet which he has to take with food. Two tablets once a day for two weeks, then one tablet once a day for two weeks, then half a tablet a day for two weeks. The hope is that the tablets in the beginning of this course of meds in addition to the drops will be aggressive enough to finish this thing off. It's rare that a pet will have to have one type of medication for an eye condition like this for the rest of its life. Right now, for us, it's a matter of finding the right meds in the right dosage to put this behind us. Hopefully, by the end of July - and going into August, we see improvement and don't EVER have to worry about this again. I'm just REALLY thankful that Chatum is really good about taking his meds and is (more or less) okay with things being put in his eye. I guess it doesn't hurt that by now, I'm a pro at administering his meds.

Another plus side? With this last trip to the city I was able to get Starbucks again :)