I was perusing some websites earlier and noticed a blog on being a frugal homemaker - the author of the blog posted an impressive series on feeding yourself for $14.71 a week.

Our budget for weekly groceries is quite a bit more than that. It’s a lot easier for us now to buy fresh, organic produce year-round and we recently decided that spending extra money to make sure we buy locally farmed/bred meats was worth the expense. Could we feed ourselves for $14.71? If I didn’t have diabetes I think I’d survive just fine. Some things in life are worth extra money, and for me, I am grateful we are in the position and have the opportunity to buy locally grown and organic foods.

I’m crossing our fingers but it seems like Matthew’s fever is broken. Yay! I am cautious because - well, I am. Today, though, was really good - he woke up a little early (5:47AM is his latest favorite time to wake up, yay?) but has been in fairly good spirits. I sucked an insane amount of snot from his nose when he got up, but it’s been relatively dry then afterwards. I took him with me to Weight Watchers, and after the leader asked a question, he said, “Oh!” in a very knowing manner. This kid is cracking me up. We grocery shopped, Berkeley Bowled, and flea marketed (I got Matthew some crayons and a coloring book for him on our plane ride on Thursday).

Grandma update: she’s at the convalescence home and is planning on being there indefinitely. We’re planning on having Thanksgiving with her on the 11th. It is all so surreal. I started crying today in the supermarket, thinking about how this is the last Thanksgiving I’ll spend with my grandmother (after passing the canned cranberry sauce, ha!). What a week.

I know I live in hippieland now: check out these brussels sprouts:

I had no idea they lived on little stalks until I saw a gargantuan one with a ton of sprouts on them (or as Grandma likes to say, “little cabbages”) at the Berkeley Bowl.

Also, obligatory baby picture:

I don’t know if it’s a result of his being sick lately or what, but Matthew has within the last week been ultra-super affectionate. He was occasionally a cuddler, but he seems much more expressive with his emotions lately and it’s so neat to see. He will grab our necks and bring our chins in for a “kiss” - i.e., put a slobbery mouth all over the chin. When we pick him up, he’ll snuggle right into our necks, and the other day when he was really sick and not feeling well, he took a bottle while curled right into my armpit.

He loves trains - he probably thinks they’re all called BART, ha! Every time we see one go by, we “wave bye bye to BART!” and he waves madly. When we’re underneath BART tracks and one goes by, he automatically reaches out and waves.

I know Matthew is really my son because today I caught him rocking out to NPR. He turned the radio on (on top of the dog crate) and hanging on to the dog crate, he jammed to the “music”.

And the cutest thing of all now - Josh put him down for nap and then down for bed (Josh does bedtime on the weekends) and both times, he puts M down, M rolls over, and smiles and waves bye bye to Baba. It is enough to make your heart melt, I tells ya.

The Berkeley Bowl is like manna from heaven if you are into things like organic EVERYTHING and fresh fruit and produce and gorgeous meats and fish. Holy crap. Everyone in the world needs a Berkeley Bowl.

In other news, I’m down 1.2 lbs for a total of 5.6 lbs. Woo! Too bad a lot of that was due to the stomach flu sideswiping me this past week. Bah. Tomorrow, I am slated for a run, and perhaps, just perhaps, I will drink more water than I did today, which was… zip. On the docket: the farmer’s market, a run to the Apple Store so I can finally put in motion what I need to get my stupid computer fixed, and a mad cleaning of the apartment, including under our bed. You can see crazy drifts of dust and dog hair gathering in the middle of the floor. Ech. And Ava, the amazingly hairy dog, continues to impossibly shed all over the place. I dread sweeping because as soon as I dump out the dustpan I know I’m going to see another coat of hair on our floor. Agh.

Josh is making tortilla chorizo pie for dinner tonight.

Envy me. Mmm.

Things we still need for our apartment:

- a sofa (I like this one)
- a coffee table
- desk chairs (we are partial to these from Target - we had these in Chicago and they lasted us quite a long time!)
- dining table and chairs (I’d prefer to scour craigslist, but the not having a car thing makes it a little more difficult to just go and pick one up)
- dresser and changing area for Matthew
- trash cans
- mop
- dvd player
- computer screen (my poor iMac screen took a beating, damn USPS)
- coffee maker (see, Madelah, I’m listening!) so I can get Dunks coffee in the mail. There is no Dunkin’ Donuts here. This is outrageous.
- shopping cart (like this one)

Other things to get because I like Stuff:
- digital SLR
- sewing machine (Adrith, I have the fabric for the project, but now since I don’t have a sewing machine, I fear that half of the persons for whom this project was intended will outgrow the need for it soon. Is that cryptic enough?)
- bike
- iPod Touch
- a washer and dryer. Disposable diapers are so 2006!

Josh and I celebrated my 30th birthday with a dinner out last night - 2 weeks later (October was a slim month money-wise because the end of my maternity leave was unpaid; and November is shaping up to be as well - what with holiday plane tickets and the end of my maternity leave being unpaid (I get paid on the last day of the month, so at the end of September, my pay was a little less because of the few days in September that were unpaid, and the same in October) ).

Anyway, fourteen thousand parentheticals later, we ended up going out west to Albany Park, to Chicago Kalbi, a highly recommended Korean restaurant. We haven’t had Korean food in forever, not since our first few weeks in Chicago, and the last place we went didn’t compare nearly as well to our favorite Korean restaurant in Hadley, Gohyang. The parking outside Chicago Kalbi was horrendous - I have a rental this weekend via work, so we took advantage of having a car and did a bunch of errands. But I wish we’d left the car at home; driving and trying to find a place to park in Albany Park was the pits!

The food was excellent - there was tons of it, including the customary condiments on the side - kim chi, potatoes, seaweed, and a spicy soy bean/tofu paste thing. We had bulgogi, chicken and squid - so good.

I wish we had a Korean place closer to us. Alas.

Checking in drowsily from Pill City, population: Matthew.

These past two days I’ve been experimenting at junk cooking - tossing some stuff together from the refrigerator that hasn’t gone bad and seeing what will happen. Yesterday I made an egg, bacon, and red potato scramble that came out quite tasty, using leftovers from the week’s food pillaging.

Today, I decided to go back to my roots (ha!) and made fried rice. We had a delicious Thai green curry tofu last night with brown rice (courtesy of Josh) and had leftover rice. Along with the pork theme, I heated a pan, tossed in a few slices of chopped up bacon, kim chi, some of the brown rice left over, an egg, and hoi sin sauce.

Ahh. This is sort of like cheap junk food.

Josh’s grandmother is in town visiting the baby (and presumably us !) and as a gift, she shooed us out the door with a wad of cash and told us to go eat by ourselves. So, we did.

We headed down to Edo Sushi, a place we’d found when we first moved to Chicago. Because of the pregnancy, I’d been avoiding raw fish (woe) and so as the case may be, the last time we went out for sushi wa s nearly a year ago. It was time to go back.

The first sign something was amiss was when from a block away, I saw a banner hanging up that said “Free DJ” or something like that. We walked in and suddenly, our cozy corner sushi joint became a Hip, Cool place, with new chichi menus and a decor to boot. Our favorite meal (which was reasonably priced, given the amount of fish there was) was no longer represented on the menu. Of course, that didn’t stop us from indulging, and indulging we did.

We started out with miso soup, green tea for Josh (purist!) and diet coke for me (addict!). Our appetizer arrived shortly thereafter, tempura calamari, four pieces of calamari and two veggie. Delightful - not heavy at all, still piping hot from its frying. And then, the piece de resistance - the sushi and sashimi dinner that topped the menu. A dragon roll topped the plate - tempura shrimp roll covered with eel and avocado; six pieces of delicious sashimi, and seven pieces of nigiri. All excellent. Josh and I traded pieces of nigiri - I gave him an eel for a white tuna - and with a few satiated sighs and grunts, we ate. And ate. And ate.

Dessert was a piece of mango mochi ice cream for Josh, and a red bean mochi ice cream for me, drizzled with chocolate. We paid our bill and stumbled out, waddling toward the El.

Perfection.

Shrimp & Peanut Salad (Josh’s was in a burrito form), cooked by Josh.

Blueberry Buckle (a recipe from my dear friend Diana), baked by Casey.

Holy crap, I have been a productive person today. Since 10AM, I made:

- 4 dozen pumpkin chocolate chip cookies;
- 4 dozen nipple cookies;
- 6 dozen chocolate chip cookies;
- the dough for stained glass cookies that I was going to make but now I can’t find my damn cookie cutters (I think they went by the wayside during our move from Amherst);
- 2 loaves of chocolate chip biscotti;
- Egg salad sandwiches for lunch;
- Tostadas for dinner.

I also cleaned up the entire kitchen from top to bottom, finished up my baking tins and candy bags for work tomorrow (last work day in the office before the holidays!), took Ava out for a walk, took 2 naps, ate a half a grapefruit and a small bag of barbecue chips for breakfast (I know, I know!), watched a few episodes of King of the Hill with Josh, and ripped songs for a mix CD of my favorite songs.

Tomorrow, I have to pack a box of stuff to ship out to my mom before we leave for California, buy stamps and ship this package tomorrow (agh!), do laundry, and mail out all of the holiday cards (we have two cards to stamp left).

I am beat. I am glad the holidays come only once a year. I think I might hibernate until November of next year, at this rate.