The funniest thing about growing an enormous gut in three months (if I was showing in my first trimester, it wasn’t enough to matter) is that you don’t really notice it. You know that sense of where your own body is that lets you touch your finger to your nose? That sense totally still thinks I’m skinny. Therefore, I run into things.

Also, I grunt and sigh when I stand up, not because it’s actually All That Difficult, but because I didn’t expect it to be difficult at all. I’m all ‘oh, hey, that took effort’. It’s like someone handing you a grocery sack that you thought was full of bread and it’s actually full of canned tomatoes. You can totally lift either, but the tomatoes are a real surprise. I keep getting surprised by my own mass.

On the other hand, bending over to pick things up is difficult enough that I’d Rather Not, Thank You. I was super excited I was able to help Mike install new windows, but the hardest part was picking the shims up off the floor. Later when he was back inside the window, he asked if I could hand him the tape measure or pencil or some such thing he needed from a few feet away on the floor and by the third item I was all ‘how about you get it yourself’. Then I felt like a jerk and he felt guilty, so that didn’t work out so well and I went back downstairs to my couch.

The other thing I’m not really noticing is energy. I’m not falling asleep at work, or wanting to go to bed super early, or any other signs of being tired in my normal schedule, so I assume my energy level is fine. But if I try to *do* something it’s just BAM, done for the day. So I have the option of trying to accomplish things and feeling exhausted, or feeling absolutely fine but laying around all day. Titrating to something in the middle has proved problematic. Laying around all day when you don’t actually feel tired is kind of a bummer.

And yeah, I’ve already gained at least 30 lbs, depending on how exact you are about my starting weight. Yes, I was pretty darn skinny before, but strangely, I still feel relatively skinny now (and not just in the ‘my brain is messing with me’ way) my face and my feet and my arms and all areas not directly related to my stomach (unfortunately, this does not include my butt) all seem pretty much unchanged. I’m a bit concerned about how much larger I’m still going to get.

Oh, yeah, and when I got home and read my form about the glucose testing, it didn’t say a darn thing about eating restrictions before hand, so my overthinking was confirmed. I managed to find something for breakfast without going completely nuts, and the drink really wasn’t that bad – like flat orange soda, nothing terrible. The worst problem was freezing the back of my throat from drinking it so fast. They give you up to 10 minutes, but I downed it in one because I’m a rock star like that. Anyway, they haven’t called me back yet, so I’m taking that as good news.

The only downside of the appointment was that the blood-drawing-nurse, who I love and adore because she does not make me cry, and hasn’t had to stick me twice yet confirmed that I pretty much don’t have anywhere to put an iv other than in my hand. Even the one very best elbow vein she draws from isn’t big enough to use for an iv, much less anything conveniently located away from a joint. Not excited about this. Strangely, I’m sort of hoping that I have more blood draws scheduled so that I can ask her to take some from my hand. It sounds masochistic, but I’d rather practice with her, who is talented and has a teensy needle, before I have to deal with some stranger of questionable skills with a great big needle while I’m in labor. Having her draw from my arm has done a ton to get me over my fear of blood draws. Unfortunately ( o.O ???) I think I’m done with blood draws at this point unless something unexpected comes up.

The way my office does it is I took a little bottle home and I’m supposed to drink it about a half-hour before my appointment. I don’t have to fast before hand, but she did tell me to have a low-sugar/carb breakfast. We went over a couple examples in the office, but I wasn’t fully prepared with possible breakfast menus at the time, so of course I feel completely lost now.

What I remember:

• Eggs and sausage are great. Of course. But I really don’t like eating that heavy of a breakfast unless it’s actually brunch. Ooof.
• White bread & OJ are no good. Seems reasonable, I don’t really like white bread that much anyway, and while I sometimes drink OJ, it’s hardly a requirement.
• Raisin bran would be ok except for the raisins. I’ve no objection to this, but I would need to go buy a new box of cereal. What exactly am I looking for on that box? I’ve noticed a lot of the high fiber ‘healthy’ cereals we’ve tried are actually quite sweet when you taste them, (presumably to trick people into eating them when they’re really rather be munching on count chocula). I’m guessing that’s to be avoided. I’m not terribly looking forward to reading the labels of the entire cereal aisle to find out which ones have stowaway sugar. Also, I sometimes like to eat my cereal with yogurt rather than milk. Is that ok? Better? Worse? Anyway, cereal isn’t my favorite breakfast in the winter, so let’s keep going.
• Wheat toast & peanut butter are fine. Ooook. That’s getting close. Unfortunately, I don’t *like* peanut butter on toast. Ironically, I think it’s too sweet. I much prefer cream cheese. That should be an OK substitution, right? But who eats cream cheese on toast? I’m guessing a whole wheat bagel isn’t the same thing as wheat toast. Speaking of which, what exactly do they mean by ‘whole wheat’? That label gets smacked on anything nowadays. How whole is whole enough?

So my current brilliant plan is that we have some super-dense dark brown european-style rye bread stuff* in the freezer that I think would taste OK with cream cheese, and I’m pretty sure it’s as whole-grain as you can get.  So that should be safe. And a glass of milk? Because they said milk was ok on cereal. But maybe that’s because they’re assuming you’re using a half cup or so to get your cereal damp, not a giant tumbler because you are a milk-addict eating dry european bread and want to be hydrated for your blood draws.

So I start googling about glycemic indexes, because that’s the goal of this, right? And let me tell you *that’s* a bad idea. Apart from crazy diet sites and lists with stuff like ‘fried eggs’, ‘whole puffed amaranth’, ‘spelt flour’ and ‘mcDiety brand health-o-nutrient bars’, the most reputable science-y sounding stuff I found was a uk site essentially saying the whole thing is bunk, white bread is barely different from wheat bread, there are 3 different scales and nobody ever tells you which one they’re using, and none of them take into account that a grain of sugar and a cup of sugar are not the same thing.

But that doesn’t help me decide what to have for breakfast.

The crazy(est) thing about this is that I probably have nothing to get worked up over. Diabetes doesn’t run in my family at all (we’re more heart attacks at 40 type people). It’s more out of some twisted desire to follow the rules. Gyarrrh.

*Sort of like ruis maybe? But it’s a square loaf with slices. It’s from aldi, and I think it’s one of their odd imported German items rather than their super-budget items. Actually, I really like the stuff. It’s in the freezer because we stocked up on it, not because we hate it. My immigrant grandmother & I are alike in our passion for bread you can use to construct buildings with in a pinch.

Worse, they are terrible, high-waisted, mom-butt jeggings.

*Hangs head in shame*

It was a fraught and treacherous path I took to this place.

When I first outgrew my normal pants, I went and found some low rise pants a few sizes bigger. Still, normal person pants. One of them worked great, and the others slid down a bit. Now, the ones that fit great are starting to get tight, and the ones that slid down a bit…well, they still slide down. I think the problem lies in my butt-geometry, not in my absolute size. I imagine they will always slide down. Anyway, around Christmas I went out and found a pair of honest-to-gosh maternity jeans with the giant stretchy belly and everything, that, surprisingly: ▸ Were long enough. ▸ Were a dark color without ridiculous distressing marks or glitter on the pockets or other things making them inappropriate for my work, and ▸ Were a reasonable price. So I bought them. And when I wore them the day after Christmas, I realized that while they fit nicely enough as I wandered around the dressing room, something as strenuous as walking from my living room to my kitchen made them slide down too*. Why does this happen? Why is walking in dressing rooms different?**

Anyway, having a grand total of three pairs of pants to my name (two of which slide down, one which is getting tight, and all of which need to be washed on the same settings) I end up traipsing about in my pjs when I do the laundry, which is less than ideal.

But for Christmas, my grandmother got me a pair of jeggings. Because, well, she’s my grandmother and apparently the lady in the store told her they were a good idea? And as I was doing my laundry in my pajamas, I decided to try them on before I returned them just for the heck of it.

And they fit. So I continued to wear them in preference to pajamas.

And they did not slide down.

So I have succumbed to the temptation of not having to hike up my pants 50 times a day and wore them to work.

On the upside, many of my maternity tops are long enough that they cover the terrible mom-pockets and it just looks like no pockets at all. Maybe? Is this ok? I suspect it may not be.

But I really hate hiking up my pants.

*I’ve since found that if I wear a tight-ish shirt over them, it helps keep them out of trouble. So they aren’t useless, just with limitations.

**I suspect some of the problem may lie in that while they are long enough in the legs I think they are too short in the torso. That stretchy stuff is supposed to come all the way up to your bra, yes? These come, eh, an inch short, and I’m still about two weeks short of my third trimester. It’s hard enough to find tall enough clothes for normal life, I despair of finding maternity clothes with enough height. I’m not even officially in the ‘tall’ range, but most clothes are still too short. I feel sorry for models and legitimate tall people.

Blackberry Lilies *used* to be Belamcanda chinensis, and Candy Lilies are sometimes referred to as Pardancanda norrisii, or Pardancanda chinensis, but really, Candy lilies are a hybrid between Blackberry Lilies and Iris dichotoma, so despite the fact that they will grow essentially true from seed, they aren’t really a species, and so don’t deserve their own latin name. PLUS, Blackberry lilies were recently reclassified as Iris domestica, making Candy lilies officially Iris x norrisii, but most places haven’t made these update yet, so if you go searching for them you’ll come up empty except for a few taxonomy nerds. Therefore common names it is.

Anyway, they’re interesting plants. Leaves like iris, spotted blooms shaped a bit like a daylily, though you can see the iris relationship there too. The ‘blackberry’ in the name comes from the seeds, which are big and round and glossy and look rather like blackberries.They bloom around the same time dayliles do as well, but to my eye are rather more exotic looking – I particularly like how the spent flowers twist up into spirals.

I heard about them a few years ago, but they were hard to find, particularly in my price range, so I took a gamble growing them from seed. There wasn’t a lot of guidance on how this process was supposed to go at the time, so I thought it would be useful to make what I’ve learned available.

Growing outdoors:

I normally have poor luck direct seeding things, but these have worked pretty well. The flowering stems fall down in late fall, so at that point they can be cut off and scattered wherever you want to establish more plants. You don’t seem to need to cover them, despite the relatively large size, and I’ve never seen anything eating them. The seeds will sprout sporadically through the spring and summer, and will be big enough to flower the following year. The leaves look like tiny iris leaves and are quite substantial, so they are easy to see and you don’t have to worry too much about weeding them out accidentally despite the prolonged germination period.

Growing indoors:

One of the sources I got my original seeds from noted that the seeds did not last well and should be kept in the refrigerator until planted. I don’t know how true that is, but I did follow that advice. If you’re growing from your own seeds, you could also just leave them out on the plant until you’re ready. In any case, this isn’t the same as needing stratification. They should germinate fine without a chilling period, it’s just that they will theoretically dry out quickly if kept in warmer conditions.

The seeds themselves have a shiny outer coating which gives them the name ‘blackberry’. That coating is actually like a  brittle balloon containing the real seed, which is coated in dirty mossy looking stuff. You don’t need to remove the shiny coating, but don’t worry if it cracks either, it doesn’t indicate your seed has gone bad. I got similar germination from cracked and uncracked seeds.

The initial steps in growing from seed are very familiar and simple. Place the seeds in seed starting mix and water well. They don’t seem to care if they are buried or exposed on the surface, though I prefer the later as you can see germination that much sooner. They also don’t seem to have a temperature preference, though a warm location can be helpful as I’ll explain.

The big trick I’ve learned is to let the planting medium dry out again immediately. Don’t re-water until it is seriously completely dried out to an extent that would kill any other seedling. THEN soak them and let the cycle begin again. It seems the seeds germinate in response to these wet-dry cycles. Weird, but in my experience true. The reason bottom heat is useful is that it helps the soil dry out faster, so you can get more cycles in quickly.

My germination rates haven’t been bad (around 30%), but they take a long time, and are very irregular. I imagine I could have coaxed a few more seeds into sprouting, but by then it was springtime and I had enough and just planted what I had outside and dumped the rest rather than sit and fuss over flats of unsprouted seeds while spring was going on. I’m not kidding about slow and irregular. I would say one seed every week or so starting about a month after sowing. You want to start these three months or so before your last expected frost. Be Patient. They will sprout.

The seedlings themselves are slow growing, but pretty robust. I normally pull out the sprouted ones to a different tray to keep them more consistently moist, but they won’t die even if they do dry out completely along with the unsprouted seeds. They also aren’t particularly susceptible to mold or damping off or getting leggy or any of the other common seedling ailments. I don’t think I’ve lost a single seedling of these once it’s sprouted, which is pretty impressive given how attentive to these things I usually am (how do you think I figured out they needed to dry out in order to sprout? It wasn’t careful research and controlled trials, I’ll tell you that). Anyway, it takes at least a month to get from the first leaf to a size that you could conceivably plant outside. They grow slowly and hold well in pots, so err on the side of earlier when deciding when to sow. Assuming they aren’t too tiny and late when you transplant them, there’s a good chance of blooms the first year, though fewer and later than on older plants.

So, this is all terribly unscientific, but that’s what I’ve learned. They sprout on wet – dry cycles, and try your patience like nothing else, but ultimately are pretty simple and hard to kill assuming you can wait for them to do things at their own pace.

So, yeah, warmer. Huh. Not a bad thing, though it’s really throwing me off. I keep thinking the previous days must have been a fluke and not dressing cooler (also, most of the maternity wear I’ve acquired thus far is sweaters, because, duh, cold person in December)

My belly button is getting increasingly weird. First, it pulls the flesh in the general vicinity inward like a dimple. While this isn’t overly noticeable from most angles, when I myself look down on my stomach it has a cleft in the middle, making it look rather like a very large second butt on my front side. Unfortunate. Also, while it hasn’t popped, it has flattened, revealing all the normally hidden interior belly-button skin. Which is weird. It feels different than normal skin. It also feels differently* than normal skin, as in, it can feel pressure, but it’s slightly numb to light touch. Nothing uncomfortable, but I find it inappropriately fascinating, probably because I thankfully have nothing more pressing to worry about.

Other random things. (or shall I say: notes from the world’s most boring pregnancy)

• The Friday after thanksgiving (that would be end of week 20) I started to feel kicks on the outside. Which is a significantly different sensation from previous movement. Harder to describe, but pretty much what you would expect it to feel like if something was trying to poke out of you from the inside – bringing to mind disturbing alien imagery. It was quite weird for a while.
• I started having trouble getting comfortable to sleep this weekend. Apparently, I’ve gained enough weight that if I lie on my side my arm falls asleep, to which M replied ‘welcome to my world’, but, uh, it hadn’t been a problem for me before. Additionally, if I try to tilt forward to put less pressure on my arm, my belly gets in the way, which isn’t uncomfortable per-se, but it prevents my middle from turning as far as my hips and shoulders, making my back displeased. I remembered my mother having one of those big body pillows (not a pregnancy specific one, just a big pillow) and picked that up after two unsatisfactory nights. Despite taking up a ridiculous amount of bed space, it seems to have done the trick for now.
• I realized that my prenatal vitamins don’t actually have any potassium in them. I’d been getting stomach cramps (pretty much identical to what you get if you try to run after eating) and just passed them off as par for the ever-expanding course, because, hey, I’m taking these giant pills, shouldn’t they have all that stuff taken care of? But no. Things have greatly improved after adding bananas to my meal plan. Surprisingly tasty bananas.
• I started making milk a few weeks ago. Not enough to feed, well, anything, and thankfully not spontaneously leaking, but it amuses me, because I’m easily amused. I suppose it’s also a good portent for successful breastfeeding?
• We’ve signed on officially with a doula. I initially called four, heard back from two, and decided not to keep calling the other two because I liked the first one so much. It honestly felt a little silly even doing the second interview because we were pretty sure we had our decision already, but it just seemed dumb to go with the first person we met without even talking with anyone else (also, the second lady was super-highly recommended, not that the first one wasn’t, but pretty much everyone I asked had a good impression of #2). So, there go our worries on not being able to find someone nerdy and analytical enough in the sea of hippy baby people.
• We’re also signed up for our birth class at the hospital, it wasn’t what I thought I’d end up with, but I don’t know that M has the time to do Bradley and still finish the upstairs, I am absolutely not the target audience for hypnobirthing**, and both the doulas we talked with recommended our particular hospital’s classes and one of the instructors specifically. Unfortunately, the only session of hers we could make was a one-day class, which, again, wasn’t my plan, but there we are. There was a two-day class with her that I think was too close to my date, but the only four-day classes were on days we couldn’t do or with one of the less-recommended instructors. I think I’ll do better with less time and a good instructor than lots of time being cranky with a bad one.
• We’re at 24 weeks, which is the cusp of survivability*** not at all a good time to be born, but not an automatic dead baby card either. Which is nice to know, particularly since everything seems to be going well at this point. Dang, have I jinxed myself enough yet? I’ll stop.

*I think this is the correct use of adverbs and grammar? Maybe?

**you know those ‘are you a good candidate for hypnosis’ checklists? I pretty much meet none of the criteria.

***this is the sorts of strange things I learn by reading infertility blogs****

****No, I’m not at all infertile. I just apparently have strange taste. I guess the sort of person who chooses to write about that sort of thing in public just tends to have a point of view and way of thinking that appeals to me? I started reading them well before I was married or even remotely considering children, just because I thought some of the authors were good writers.

Anyway, this is a recipe that I like a lot more than M does (especially with the capers), but I’m constantly amazed at how swanky it is for how little work.

Required ingredients:

• two thin pieces of the white meat of your choice
• flour enough to coat meat
• 2 tsp, or a large hunk of butter (don’t skimp and use cooking oil instead, this goes into the sauce)
• white wine

Some pointers for the wine. You will want a generous serving’s worth. Those single-serve bottles are a great size if you don’t want to try to finish the rest of a full bottle between the two of you. Otherwise, use what you’ll have with dinner. Ideally, you want something that isn’t too tart or too sweet. I had savingon blanc on hand, which is on the tart side, and it worked ok, but really needed cream to not be overpowering. Chardonnay should be fine, as would dry Riesling, and that all the kinds of white wine I know other than moscato, which would be way too sweet.

Directions:

Coat the meat in flour

Melt the butter in a pan until sizzling, (medium, medium high-ish heat)

Add the meat and cook until browned on both sides. Add more butter if the level gets low by the second side. (If your heat is too high, it will start to burn before the meat cooks through, but it needs to be high enough to get a good sizzle or you won’t get the browning right. Err on too high, as you’ll see on the next step)

Put a paper towel (or regular towel you eco-friendly person you) on a plate and the meat on the towel and the towel in an oven on as low as it goes. If you oven only has high settings, turn it on for a bit then kill the heat without opening the door. If you are worried the meat might not have gotten done, turn it up to 250 or so to cook it a little more (no, you won’t set a towel on fire at that temperature for as long as it will be in there).

Deglaze the pan with the wine. If you don’t know what that means, check the entry on kale for a deeper explanation.

Turn the heat to medium/low and simmer until there is about half the wine there used to be… 10 minutes or so since you don’t have that much liquid. Somewhere in that simmering, consider adding some or all of the following ingredients.

Optional ingredients:

• Thin slices of lemon
• Splash of lemon juice
• heaping spoonful of capers (drained)
• chicken broth
• cream or milk

Lemon slices should be added right at the beginning (possibly before you even deglaze) so they soften up. Juice or capers can be added at any point. Broth or cream should be added near the end. You’ll want to taste the reduced sauce, and if it’s overpoweringly strong or tart, add additional liquid until it’s tasty. Something like a half a cup give or take a few sloshes usually does the trick. Personally, I like the cream better than broth. You can also add some of the pasta water if you need to make it less strong and don’t have other things on hand.

I like to serve this over angel hair pasta. Angel hair cooks ridiculously quickly, so if you start the water boiling first, and put the pasta in right after you deglaze the pan, it’ll be done in plenty of time.

Anyway, the first couple times I’m pretty sure what I felt was it flipping over, hence the ‘whump’. More recently, I’ve noticed more subtle things like what felt like feet on my left side last night. I don’t feel something every day, but my best chances are right as I’m going to bed, reclining while M reads to me, and right when I get to work if my stomach ends up pushed against my desk a little bit.

In some ways it’s nice to be able to feel things, but it also makes me panic a bit that it isn’t moving All The Time, which of course, it won’t be. But if I haven’t felt anything in a while I start having crazy thoughts, like ‘my pants were too tight yesterday, it must have killed the baby’ or ‘I woke up hot and sweaty last night because I had too many blankets on, it must have killed the baby’ or ‘I sneezed and pulled a muscle in my stomach, it must have killed the baby’. I don’t like being crazy. It’s even weirder that I can be simultaneously worried about accidentally killing the baby by sneezing and about whether we were crazy to decide to have kids now in the first place. I hate-hate-hate things that you can’t go back on, particularly when there’s a waiting period for them to take effect, specially designed for second-guessing and worry making. Once things start happening, I deal with them and stop worrying, but anticipating having to deal with things in the future is bad-bad-bad.

Our 20 week*** ultrasound is tomorrow. I’m hoping for boy bits. I think that’s unusual and most women want girls? It’s particularly unusual since I don’t think I’ve ever really known a boy baby or young child. All my 8 cousins+siblings are girls. If it is a boy, there will be no hand-me-downs to be had, but I want one anyway.

Broke down this weekend and bought fat pants. Not maternity pants, as while I have heard rumors of early maternity pants that go under the belly and are only slightly stretchy instead of giant swaths of knit elastic, I have yet to see them offered for sale. I’m definitely not big enough for the full-on up to your bra pants yet, so I just bought regular pants several sizes too big. My mom thinks they fit better than the pants I normally wear. They keep sliding down though, so I think I’m going to try to sew in some elastic. I’m way more amused at the elastic than I should be. Our marching band uniforms had elastic ‘seat belts’ as we called them, and it cracks me up to think of adding that to regular pants, but it seems like it would work.

*Favorite paraphrase: ‘don’t use electric blankets, because electric fields haven’t been proven to be harmless to fetuses’ errr, neither has the color green I imagine. Also, they seem very insistent that I break off my crack habit. How many people with crack habits are reading pregnancy books?

**Have you ever really paid attention to sensations coming from your gut? You can feel a lot of things moving around down there, most of which aren’t really discussable in polite company.

***actually only 19 weeks…I’m still unconvinced at the scheduling at my OBs – I seem to be a week early for everything, but they assure me it’s fine

This is a recipe I made up about a year ago, becoming relevant now as other than a slight sweet tooth* the one thing I’ve been craving this pregnancy is greens. So, this has been getting a lot of play.

Anyway, many greens recipes use bacon, but I find the smoked flavor awkward with vegetables, so this goes a bit of a different route with sausage instead. The name comes because superficially it resembles chinese food with a pile of grain covered in veggies and a little meat. The cooking technique is pretty similar to stir-fry as well, but the flavors are distinctly different. It isn’t authentic or anything like that, I just used polish since I’m using polish sausage.

It is really, really fast to make, with most of your time spent cleaning the kale and slicing the sausages. Once the pan starts going you do need to be there and watching it the whole time, but it cooks in well under 15 minutes.

Serves two as a (smallish) complete meal.

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch greens (preferably Kale, see variations)
• 1/2 bottle of light colored beer. (like a pilsner)**
• 2 kielbasa or similar sausages (the small, bratwurst sized ones, not the big rings)
• grain of your choice. (barley or faro recommended)
• One large, flat pan. Do not use a non-stick pan. The pan will need to fit all the kale. If your frying pan isn’t big enough you can use a dutch oven or other large pot instead, but a large bottom helps the liquid cook off quickly. If you’re really tight on pans, you can add the kale in batches, as it does cook down some. A lid is helpful, but not 100% necessary.

Directions:

• Depending on the cook time of your chosen grain, start that first. Follow the package directions. If doing barley or something else where the liquid absorbs use broth or add a teaspoon of bullion to the cooking liquid. (Also, toast the barley in the pan before adding liquid. That always makes it better. You just have to be careful to stir a lot so it doesn’t burn)
• Cut the thick midribs off the kale and tear the leaves into large-ish pieces. Wash and set aside.
• Chop the sausages into thin slices
• Heat a large flat pan to high / medium high. Unless you’re using some strange fat-free sausages, you won’t need extra oil, everything you need will be released from the sausage as it cooks.
• When water flicked on the pan sizzles, add the sausage and fry until browned – about five minutes. You want to stir them enough that they don’t burn, but if you stir them constantly they won’t develop the tasty crust. Don’t worry if you  get a dark brown crust on the bottom of the pan. That will be taken care of in the next step.
• Turn the heat in the pan down to medium, and deglaze*** with some of the beer. You don’t want to add the entire half bottle at this point, just enough to get the stuff off the bottom of the pan.
• Add the washed kale to the pan. Stir around a bit to get the flavors from the sausage and the beer on the kale, then cover for a few minutes, or until you see the kale starting to turn bright green. If you don’t have a cover for your pan, you can compensate by stiring more and adding extra beer to keep things from drying out and sticking to the bottom.
• Take the lid off and stir some more, again trying to get the bottom stuff up top. Add more beer to taste and to increase the amount of steam cooking the kale on the top. When the kale is tender (another two or three minutes or so), turn off the heat
• If you have a lot of extra liquid in the bottom of the pan at this point, leave the heat on until it dissipates – don’t worry, kale is relatively hard to overcook. Also, keep in mind everything is still steaming hot, so a little extra liquid will cook off on its own while you’re serving, you just don’t want it swimming
• Serve in a bowl over the grain

Variations:

Almost all the ingredients can be substituted depending on your mood, adventurousness, grocery availability, and how many times you want to trick your husband into eating this in a week. Some guidelines:

Kale is the most suitable green, as it doesn’t cook down too much, but isn’t bitter tasting. We’ve used turnip greens too, and while they don’t disappear quite as much as spinach, you still don’t end up with a heck of a lot of greens once they cook. If you use those, go for a whole bunch for person (I know, you will see the gigantic bunches your supermarket has and think I’m crazy, and that they must sell it in tiny single leaf packs where I live, but trust me) Cabbage has a different flavor so wouldn’t work well. Spinach and beet greens are just too wimpy for this dish, save then for something else. I haven’t tried chard or collards, but they might work too. Honestly, Broccoli Rabe might have potential too.

If your local store stocks fancy sausages, you can substitute those too. I would recommend you *start* with kielbasa or polish sausage or something similar to get the idea, but depending on your preferences, anything with a relatively assertive flavor should work. Also, I list one sausage per person because my husband is a meat fan, but you could really use one for both people instead. I find myself picking around the sausages a bit with this much meat. Don’t omit them entirely, or you’ll really mess up the flavors, though I see no reason why vegetarian sausage substitutes wouldn’t work.

Finally, grain. We normally make this with barley. Spelt or Faro would probably be even better, but the pack we bought came with little rocks in it and I never want to bother with picking them out first. You can also use noodles, though I would recommend whole wheat or something else a bit heartier than your basic spaghetti or egg noodles. If you don’t flavor the cooking broth (i.e. with noodles), add the cooked pasta to the pan with the finished kale and sausage and stir in a bit more beer to give it some more flavor.

*It’s not so much that I’m eating ice cream for dinner now as I really didn’t eat barely any sweet things before. I used to much prefer hummus, or cheese and crackers or plain yogurt or other savory snacks to vanilla yogurt or cookies or jam on apples with peanut butter, but I’m finding myself swinging more towards what I assume is normal for this country. I still think sweet potatoes and beets are disgustingly sugary, and jam is a terrible thing to do to toast.

**You’re going for the bite and acidity, so much as I like dark beers, they aren’t as suitable. Pilsner is our favorite, and we’ve used a particularly strong hefeweisen with good success. It would probably work well with a pale ale, but I’ll never know as I like to drink the second half of the bottle while I’m cooking, and neither I nor husband likes to drink IPAs. American beers are nasty, but if that’s all you have in the house, you must not mind drinking it, so maybe you won’t mind it here. If you are a beer snob like us, and bought a fancy beer in a large bottle that didn’t get finished the night before and is now flat, that will work too, though you miss out on the drinking while cooking. If you’re anti-alcohol, you can use some lemon juice or mild vinegar (rice vinegar?) as well, though be aware the extra acidity will turn the kale an olive green ‘overcooked’ color. If doing this, use plain water or stock or something to deglaze the pan, as the lemon juice is much stronger and you will want to use much less.

***If you don’t know what deglaze means, you can probably find videos and better descriptions online. The basic idea is you add a little liquid to the places in the pan that have stuff stuck to them, and rub with your spatula. The liquid will sizzle and boil rapidly, loosening the tasty stuff stuck to the pan, which dissolves into the liquid when you rub it. It’s great because it cleans your pan and makes a flavorful sauce at the same time. The pan has to be hot when you do this. If the liquid doesn’t sizzle when you pour it in, turn up the heat and try again. For the same reason, only add a few tablespoons worth (a small to medium slosh) at a time or you will cool down the pan too much.

****I make a lot of references to drinking the beer here, but I promise I’m not actually doing that while I’m pregnant. (trial though it is). I don’t think the quarter bottle of cooked beer than ends up in a serving is harmful.

I’m surprisingly pleased by it. I’d never thought I was particularly vain, but I am naturally very slim, and well, I’d sort of gotten used to things in the dozen years since I stopped getting taller. The idea of having my body be a different shape for the rest of my life really upset me more than I was expecting. But, now that it’s here, rather than in the mysterious and worrisome future, it’s OK. I like it.

That said, it’s hardly dramatic. There are exactly two items of clothes that are starting to not fit. My yard work jeans (pretty much the only pants I own that fit at my waist rather than super-duper low rise), and this one sweater that has a tie around the waist. The sweater really looks rather stupid now. It’s pretty funny. I plan on wearing it over to my mom’s in an attempt to convince her.

Oh, yeah, and the boobs (wow, this blog is taking a turn for the tmi). They’ve gone from pleasantly filling out my ridiculously tiny bras for the pre-pubescent** for the first time ever at the beginning of pregnancy, to now finding all my usuals unpleasantly tight. I’m finally an A cup! Unfortunately unless I make it all the way up to a B, there don’t seem to be any nursing bras available in my size, so I’m hanging with the two that sort-of fit*** for now in the hope that we will continue this trajectory.

I’m thinking I should order some extra-long t-shirts to tide me over until I need maternity clothes, as I should be able to wear them at my normal size too (I’ve thought they would fit better anyway, but always been put off by having to have them shipped, the regular sizes are close enough). I anticipate having trouble with maternity clothes as ‘size 0′ + ’5 foot 7′ plus ‘chronically cold’**** is hard enough to shop for without adding ‘pregnant’ to the mix. Maybe I’ll get lucky and the extra length will be more standard in maternity sizes. Anybody know where pregnant teenagers shop?*****

*Except my mom. I showed it to my mom, and her response was ‘I don’t think my stomach’s ever been that flat in my life’. She refused to be convinced.

**The downside to a naturally thin figure I guess. Did you know size 34AA existed? Oh yeah, you might remember it from the training bra section.

***While I had no shortage of bras that were too large, very few of them seem to be too large in the correct ways. Instead of being generically too big, they now just generically don’t fit.

****I’ve found some fashion blogs with maternity sections, and while a lot of the things are super cute, a lot of them also involve short sleeves and skirts (in winter!) which I pretty much would freeze to death in. I know you’re supposed to get warmer while pregnant, but I can’t imagine getting that much warmer.

*****I gotta clarify, I’m not at all a teenager, I just currently find most of my clothes in the juniors section. I also refuse to shop at forever 21 despite the fact that they are a teenager store with an alleged maternity section, because the name always conjures haggard cougars or trophy wives in midriffs and pigtails to me. I may have to sacrifice my principles.

I don’t have a history of reacting well to medication. Whether it’s preferring the pain of newly extracted wisdom teeth to the blurry feeling of the pain medication, or the birth control pills that made me depressed,* sudafed and ibuprofen are about the only medications I can remember using that were better than the symptoms**.

There are a lot of elaborations and tangents*** I could go into here, but what I think it really comes down to is based on my history I’m more afraid of what a doctor might do to me than what my body might. Maybe that’s really, really dumb naive thinking****, but that’s where I am now.

* Thank you trojans for six years successfully free of both babies and crazies

** Well, and antibiotics and such. Duh, but those are a lot less comparable to an epidural.

*** Such as: I really don’t like being told what to do.

**** Which is part of the whole ‘not in my living room’ stance – if I find out it was a dumb idea, I’d like to be able to change my mind.