Really, anyone want some apples?
We went apple picking with Ellen and the Freehold Mom’s group today and ended up with 11 pounds of apples.
11!
I guess I shall make pie, or baked apples, or gourmet baby food, or …. pie.
Does anyone have good ideas for what I should do with 11 pounds of apples?
We had a lot of fun picking apples and Marlena did her best to strip the trees bare (as evidenced by the number of apples we ended up with.)
Oliver was not a fan of the sun, but once we were in the shade of the orchard he began trying to pick apples himself. He ended up with handfuls of apple tree leaves mostly. Happily none of them made it to his mouth before I could catch his hand and remove them.

The Mom’s Group is made up of really nice and interesting women. I think I am really going to enjoy making new friends. I know Marlena is. She was really excited to meet everyone today.

Marlena has a new friend at school who only lives a few houses down from us. We are planning a playdate with Mariah on Monday. I hope Marlena gets the chance to enjoy the benefits of having friends really close by. So far she plays alone a lot.

We also went to Costco today. We had an unusually nice time, complete with an easy going lunch. There is something so satisfying about feeding two people on less than 5 dollars. Even though the lunch is in a crowed store at haphazardly placed tables surrounded by shopping carts we always really enjoy it!

We still managed to spend too much today, even though all we got were a couple items of clothing, some coffee, granola bars, and diapers. They finally got me with the Executive Membership! There I was, bored 6 year old, cranky baby, having to renew the current membership anyway, and the checker tagged me! Literally, she looked me over and called over her manager to offer me the “upgrade”. I must have had “Sucker” written all over my head. Of course they guarantee the upgrade, so if I don’t earn enough cash back to pay for the upgrade they will pay me the difference between it and the renewal, but still. I never should have listened.

I finished my rough draft of the complaint and sent it to my mentor for criticism. I will have to cite check it this weekend, but I hope to be ready to file by Wednesday. I will work on my Pro Hac Vice application this weekend and be all ready to go! Yay law! I missed you so!

Well the baby needs me, so back to the world of Ollie Bobba and the forty dirty diapers.

It looks like stew weather. It’s dark and cloudy, rain is falling from the sky. Never mind that it’s 74 degrees out, it looks like stew weather to me. This was my frame of mind two nights ago, when I made my infamous “Irish” stew. It’s pretty easy really:

Pour three cups of beef stock and one cup of veggie stock into a large pot. Add one 14 ounce Guinness. Set on med high heat.
Toss in three tablespoons of minced Garlic. (Mmmmm… no vampires at my house.)
Dice a handful of scallions and one onion of your choice. Toss them in.
Cut a few potatoes and a yam into bite sized chunks. Toss them in.
Cut up a few carrots into bite sized bits. Toss them in.
Cut up a few stalks of celery into bite sized bits. Add them to the pile.

(If you have small children who want to help you cook the stew, I suggest placing the cut up food into tiny dishes and having them toss the contents of the dishes into the stew. Marlena really enjoyed helping me the other day and this method resulted in no cut fingers and no splash burns.)

Cut up a small portion of fresh Anise (Fennel) and add it to the mix. It has a licorice flavor, so don’t add too much, but it really adds to a savory stew.

Open a can of black beans. Pour the entire can, juice included, into your pot. Do the same with a can of stewed tomatoes.

Toss in your stew meat, place on a lid, and cook for about forty minutes on medium high heat.

You can do all this in a slow-cooker if you remember to start dinner in the morning, or on lower heat if you remember to start dinner before five. As I never remember to do either of those things, this is what I do.

The stew was a hit, and went very well with the beer bread biscuits I made the day before. We had a bunch left over so I made Pastys using Grands Southern Style biscuits for dinner the next night. They were so good I made a batch for the next night too! Marlena and I also made apple pie pastys for dessert, they were also yummy.

Mmmm…. I love the end of summer, all my cooking skill points were spent on cold weather cooking.

Marlena has adjusted well to school, claims to have made many friends and is generally happy with having something to do other than get in trouble with me. She likes her teacher and seems to like her school. Granted, this is day two for her, so we will have see.

Oliver and I went to a mom’s club meet and greet this morning, he was really happy to play with other children and spent quite some time sitting up all by himself. Between that and rolling over onto his back from his tummy the other day it looks like my little guy is getting serious about getting mobile. I really enjoyed meeting the other mom’s in the group, as they all seem very nice and low key. I was doubly excited because I thought I might actually get to work today. My master plan was based on the idea that Oliver usually takes a morning nap, but was awake at the meet and greet this morning and was more active than usual. As a result I thought he would sleep really well this afternoon.

Ha ha HA! He didn’t sleep at all!! Not a wink until it was time to get Marlena from school, he fell asleep about fifteen minutes before I had to wake him up. Oh what a cranky baby is he!

He knows. He knows I am coming up on a deadline. He knows and he will never sleep again!