jelly belly




Dear Readers,

Lately I have found myself counting.  Obsessive, I know.  But, here are just a few of the things I've been tabulating...

1.) Today, I am 18 weeks and 5 days pregnant. 
2.) In the past week, I have eaten what probably amounts to 100s of jelly beans.
3.) In the next 45 days, the three and a half of us (Me, Ian, Abby, and "the pea") will have to move out of our lovely and cozy nest and into what is hopefully an equally good place to call home. 
4.) In the past month since the alleged "first day of spring," the average temperature in Albany has been 50 degrees and the general weather has been gray and rainy. 

All of these numbers have really taken a toll on me recently...until today.  It is true that when I look out my window, I could easily make the mistake of thinking it was a bleak wintry day...gray skies and leafless trees...but this morning I was awoken by the sweet sunlight streaming through our bedroom windows.  I thought about how long it seemed to have been since I saw real, unbridled sunlight.  Even the priest this morning in Mass said something like, "I bet you were all wondering what that strange light coming from outside of your houses was." It has been a very long winter for all of us "Albanians."  But this morning laying in bed in the sunlit room I could feel my mood change literally like a switch had been flipped.  I mean just yesterday I was wallowing around the house in my pajamas until 4:30 in the afternoon playing the world's smallest violin as I stewed in the thought that here it was the end of April and if I were to leave the house I would have to put on a heavy coat and to add insult to injury, a coat that can no longer button around my torso. 

Even though that sunshine only lasted for a few hours this morning, it's still almost 60 degrees out there and here I sit in happiness as I listen to the buzz of a lawn mower coming from a neighbor's yard.  Thank you, God, for this reprieve.  And thank you, Dad, for the jelly beans that got me through the past week.  And thank you, Ian for holding it together for the 3 and a half of us while we figure out what's next for our family.  And thank you, Showtime, for showing me in my darkest hour and fattest pants that Twilight can cure all ills for 122 minutes despite my resistance to joining in on the whole vampire craze.  I already know that the next week promises rain for days, but I will remain uplifted because I am blessed with love and life, inside and out, and I have so much to look forward to. 

Oh.  And if you, dear reader, are in need of a boost yourself, might I recommend (in addition to Twilight, sunlight, and jelly beans) taking a look at this hilarious blog that turns in the mundane into the absurd and this amazingly witty yet poignant piece of work by mother and comedienne Tina Fey. 

With love and laughter,
Katie
xoxo

sweet sixteen

So here I am, 4 months into this journey called pregnancy and I am finally feeling a bit like a mother-to-be.  My belly has begun to look more like a bump and less like a lump.  I often find myself resting my hand on it or rubbing it like I'm about to get 3 wishes granted.  On Friday, Ian and I went to my 16 week OB appointment.  We heard the baby's heartbeat again, but this time it came through the Doppler as soon as the wand touched my belly...loud and strong.  It was the sweetest sound.  The doctor said that everything looked good and that I was "just plain normal."  Definitely good news, but the doctor said it as if he felt sorry for me or something.  A month from now we'll go back for an ultrasound, which will show us whether we're having a boy or a girl.  So, I'm hoping the next month flies by. 

Egg in a Nest

This morning I write to you with a belly full.  Making breakfast is one of my favorite things about the weekend.  Today I made a childhood favorite of mine: Egg in a nest. 

It's one of the simplest recipes I know.  Just grill your favorite bread on both sides for a while with a little butter in the frying pan, cut a hole in the bread, crack an egg into the hole, add salt and pepper, and cook until the yolk is done to your liking, flipping once. 

As simple as it is, I thought this might be the perfect breakfast to make on a day like today...the day that I share with you that there's an egg in my nest!  Translation: I'm pregnant! 

I'm onto my 15th week of pregnancy, which officially puts me out of my nausea-filled first trimester and into the much welcomed second trimester.  The egg is now the size of an orange and I'm waiting for the day when I start to get a little more round myself because right now I just look like I've been drinking too much beer and have the gut to show for it. (And no, I haven't been drinking beer or any other fun libation while pregnant.) 

Our little one is due September 20th and Ian and I cannot wait to meet him or her.  (And in case you're wondering...we are going to find out the sex of the baby but we have to wait a few more weeks for that.)

I'm thinking that much of my blogging from here on out will be related to my experience as a first time expectant mom.  I invite you all to offer up your thoughts, memories, and advice about motherhood as I continue on this brand new journey.

Valentine's Day with the CIA

How, you may ask, did our Valentine's Day celebration affect national security?  Well, only if eating too much French food is a crime.  The CIA I'm referring to is the Culinary Institute of America.  The main campus is located in Hyde Park, NY...about an hour and a half drive from Albany toward The City.  The CIA is the place where chefs like Anthony Bourdain, Cat Cora, and several of the Top Chef winners acquired their culinary skills.  As part of the training, the Institute has several restaurants that are run mostly by the students.  Since moving to Albany, I had heard from a number of people that the French restaurant at the Hyde Park campus was by far the best and so I have had Escoffier on my list of Places to Eat in/around Albany for quite some time now.  The trick was getting a reservation.

Along with all of the raves, I had also heard that you needed to make reservations to dine at Escoffier months in advance.  Around November I began thinking about how I could get The Haags into hog heaven.  Just for the heck of it I went to the CIA's online reservation site and looked to see if there were any reservations still available around Valentine's Day thinking that it would be a great surprise for Ian if I took charge of our Valentine's Day plans but preparing myself to be shot down by the world wide web.  Imagine my surprise when I realized that not only was Escoffier still accepting reservations for the Saturday night before Valentine's Day, but that my only option wasn't to dine at either 5:30 or 10:00. So I jumped on the opportunity for a one-of-a-kind fine dining experience with my husband at 8 pm the Saturday before Valentine's Day.  As I began the reservation process I realized the CIA required a credit card deposit for the reservation and I knew I wouldn't be able to get this charge on the credit card statement past Ian without causing him to raise an eyebrow.  This called for some covert ops...

I called special agent/brother Ryan and asked to borrow his credit card number to cover the reservation deposit.  He was in.  Then when I saw him on our visit to NC in early December I slipped him cash to pay him back without leaving a paper trail.  Then came the hard part....keeping a secret from Ian for 2 months and secretly hoping that he wasn't also planning the same thing.  The week before Valentine's Day I told him that I had planned something for us to do.  He was surprised and went along with it.  That Friday I put the address for the CIA in the GPS and saved it.  The next day I told him to be ready to go by 6:15 in something "business casual."  All dressed up we got in the car and Ian started driving to an unknown destination.  I turned the GPS away from his view so he wouldn't see that our ETA was an hour and a half away.  We were finally almost there, starving and weary, and I had begun to wonder if this was such a great idea after all.  Then it happened...we passed a Dairy Queen!  You see, since we moved to Albany we've been tormented by commercials for DQ and all of its glorious blizzardness and the closest DQ is 25 miles away.  It turns out the next closest DQ is 60 miles away in Hyde Park.  All 4 of our eyes lit up and we vowed to stop for blizzards on the way back home.  Even if it meant I had to pass on the CIA creme brulee. 

The next hour and a half was pure gustatory bliss.  We dined on foie gras, sweetbreads, roasted sea bass and beef medallion.  You could see into the huge kitchen from our table and watch the students and teachers prepare our meals.  The students did a wonderful job on the culinary aspect of the dining experience.  The service, however, left a lot to be desired.  I guess I didn't realize that our waiter(s) would be sweaty-faced, nerve-wracked students who were probably resentful of the fact that they were on serving rotation instead of in the kitchen.  We waited a long while before our order was taken, water refills were non-existent for the first 15 minutes, one kid couldn't seem to get the 2 forks to stay in his hand while attempting to serve us bread using traditional French service, and our gnocchi in truffle oil didn't make it to the table with the rest of our dinner.  Still, the food was delicious and the apologies and oversight of the exceptionally well trained maitre d' made up for the other faux pas.  The maitre d' was a bit concerned that we did not order dessert as he feared they had "run us off."  We assured him that was not the case but thought it would be less than high class to tell him that we intended to get our dessert at Dairy Queen instead. 

Ian and I would have skipped out of the CIA if it weren't for our extended bellies.  DQ would be the perfect end to a lovely evening.  As we approached the place where we left that DQ behind...eyes peeled for the big red and white sign... our spirits began to sink little by little.  We couldn't find it.  We kept thinking that it must be just a little further down the road than we remembered it.  So, we kept driving until we realized that we were back on the rural highway well on our way back to Albany.  All we could figure was that it must have been closed and the sign dark when we drove by.  I rationalized my disappointment by telling myself that I saved the calories and (added) gastric distress that would have accompanied a mint Oreo blizzard.  And I comforted myself with a package of gummy bears I bought at a gas station that we stopped at to get gas.  Maybe I'll plan a surprise trip to Dairy Queen for next Valentine's Day. 

Dutch Baby

I got the message LOUD and clear from some of you that my last post had some shortcomings, if you will.  Mea culpa.  And now my penance...(you might be the sorry ones after this post...)

This morning Ian made me breakfast.  He found a recipe for Dutch babies in his latest issue of GQ and has been keeping it in mind for just the right Sunday morning.  In case you're wondering what a Dutch baby is, look here:

It's a big, puffy, eggy, delectable pancake.  And the smell of one (or 3) of these baking in the oven is like nothing else I've ever smelled.  It was a wonderful treat. And it got me thinking about the Dutch origin of my married name...which is just one of a few of its origins by the way. 

I'm someone who finds herself intrigued by names and the origin of a name can tell you so much about a person and where they came from (physically and psychologically).  For example, we've all heard someone tell the story that they went to school with twins named Oranjello and Lemonjello.  What kind of upbringing do you think those poor souls had?   Just the other day a friend and retired school guidance counselor told me she had a student named Takila.  Wow.  Now, before I got married I never really questioned the ethnic origin of my name.  Katie Fitzpatrick.  As my parents would say, "it sounds like she just got off the boat." But ever since I adopted Ian's last name I've found myself up a creek without a paddle so to speak. 

If you look up "Haag" on Wikipedia you get this:

Haag may refer to:


The Hague, in the Netherlands (Dutch: Den Haag)


Several places in Germany:


Several places in Austria:

It turns out that the name Haag was first found in Bavaria and some of the first settlers with the family name were Hans Caspar Haag and his wife Andreas Haag, who immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1752.  Interestingly (or not), Albany was founded by the Dutch in the 17th century.    So us Haags are right at home here.

I started actively looking into all of this after a strange encounter with a TSA officer at the security checkpoint at the Asheville airport.  We were at the outset of our return trip to Albany. As we approached the exceptionally senior citizen behind the podium at the ID checkpoint, we snickered at how rinky-dink and hassle-free the security line appeared.  I handed the man my boarding pass and New York State driver's license and started to feel a bit anxious after it seemed like a minute went by with my documents still in his hand.  When he finally relinquished them from his wrinkly cold hands he looked at me and mumbled something that I had to ask to be repeated.  I was holding up the rinky-dink line now.  He mumbled something again and I figured out that he was asking me something to do with the origin of my last name.  I panicked and paused and looked at Ian...a silent but desperate plea for help. I noticed the middle-aged couple behind us react to the fact that I, a grown woman who unbeknownst to them just received her Ph.D., did not know where her last name originated from.  I just mumbled and nodded and moved quickly past the podium.  I could hear the couple laughing with Ian that I had to look to him for the answer.  Needless to say that was a humiliating experience.  Then the officer operating the body scanner commented on the "originality" of my socks and sweater.  Yikes. As you can see from this post,  I'm determined to avoid a repeat of that kind of situation, namely.   

On my first Kansas Christmas...

my true love gave to me...

4 games of poker

3 (or more) glasses of wine

2 fashionable and high-quality wigs

And the cutest nephew in a cool tee.

The First Thanksgiving

So the real first Thanksgiving featured three cornered hats and headdresses and the consumption of turkey is debatable. This year was the first Thanksgiving that I hosted and my how the times have changed in 389 years.  This modern celebration was quite intimate.  The attendees included myself, Ian, and my mom...oh and let us not forget that Abby (along with her infamous appetite) was certainly in attendance.

As for the apparel...I donned an apron and bedroom slippers during my day-long commitment to cuisine.  Instead of deer and squirrel, turkey was the piece de resistance of this feast...or at least I hoped.  I couldn't help but fear a reenactment of The Griswold's family turkey scene on Christmas Vacation.  Behold...

Fortunately, my turkey tasted at least half as good as it looked.

The rest of the menu consisted of Paula Deen's green bean casserole, Bobby Flay's stuffed sweet potatoes with pecan and marshmallow streusel, Tyler Florence's velvety mashed potatoes, and sausage and sourdough bread stuffing.  I must say it was all really delicious.  I look forward to hosting many more holidays but I certainly earned a new appreciation for all of the holiday meals that my parents prepared in the past.  I really had no idea how time consuming it can be, but totally worth it. I have so much to be thankful for.