Hello 3rd Trimester!

According to the "handy dandy" app I have on my iPhone from What To Expect...  today marks the very first day of my third trimester with the little man!  I am so excited and a little scared all at the same time.  I can't wait to meet this little guy, he's been wanted for a very long time, but at the same time, I don't feel like we are "ready" yet.  We're ready to be parents, but the house...oh the house!  His future bedroom/nursery is still a working office, we have nothing (okay, I do have a few {dozen} diapers, but not nearly in the quantity we need) to put on his rump, clothes...well, we have lots of hand me downs, but not a ton in any one size (my sister has given me everything nephew #4 is outgrowing and another friend gave me a box of 6+ months stuff) and I just have this sneaking suspicion that this guy is gonna be tiny! 

I was complaining (whining really) over the weekend that it felt like the little man was trying to "make more room in there" for a growth spurt and I think I was right!  Besides the fact that clothes that fit last week no longer fit, he is really rocking and rolling in there!  Last night before going to sleep he was really hunching/kicking really hard, harder than I have ever felt!  And he continued it all...night...long!  Even as I type, he's in there practicing to be an MMA fighter I think!  I'm thinking tomorrow will be a "quieter" day though since he seems to be doing a lot today!  Just as long as he cooperates on Friday, we have yet another ultrasound because the doctor hasn't been able to "see everything" he wants to see yet, this will make our third "anatomy scan"!

Other than baby stuff, I have had a pretty full week so far (keep in mind it's only Wednesday)!  Yesterday I made another batch of dog food, this time we used Hamburger, mostly because we had bought a pound for us to eat and plans changed...we are horrible about using stuff in our freezer, so I made dog food with it instead of trying to "save" it for another day.

Before the Rice got added!

Beef/Veggie/Rice "Dog Stew"

• 2 lbs Hamburger (I used 1 80/20 & 1 93/7, we buy leaner meat for us than we do for the dog)
• 12 cups cooked Rice
• 2/3 of a 1 lb bag Frozen Chopped Spinach
• 1-1 lb bag Frozen Green Beans (French style cause they're $0.98 a bag)
• 1-1 lb bag Fozen California Blend (Cauliflower, Broccoli, Carrots)
• 1 Qt Beef Broth (I use 4 cups of hot water and a heaping tablespoon of Better then Bouillon in Beef Flavor)
• 1 container Cottage Cheese (okay, it was more like 3/4 of the container, but it was going bad)

I started by making up a batch of rice in our (still new) rice cooker, it makes 6 cups of rice at a time.  After that batch, I took the rice out and put in a big glass bowl to cool and let the cooker cool so I could handle it to clean it and get another batch going!  After getting the second batch of rice set up, I grabbed the steamer basket that came with the rice cooker and tossed in about two-thirds of the bag of frozen Spinach, it filled the steamer basket!  By the time the rice was cooked, the Spinach was perfectly steamed and all the nutrients from it had dripped into the rice (I see a few dinners for us being made this way in the near future), turning some of the rice green!  After the last batch of rice was cooling (the first batch went into a ziploc and the rice and spinach went in the bowl), I got the hamburger cooking in our "dog food pot", which is a 12-Qt stock pot that I burned rice in (you remember the day my rice cooker died and I got to talk to the alarm company because I set off the smoke detector, right?)...most of the black is gone from it, but we weren't using it for anything else and this way, I can add doggie supplements (when we have them) without worrying if I have them all scrubbed out before I cook for the humans in the house.  I didn't bother adding any oils this time, the meat had plenty of fats in it! 

While the meat browned, I finally got my Laundry Soap bottled (in milk jugs that have been washed out and saved)!  I don't fill the jugs all the way, that way there is room to shake up the contents and distribute the soap in the water better.  This batch (the double batch I made a month or so ago) turned out really runny.  But, I got it in three 1-gallon jugs and four half-gallon jugs (but really it's only about 4 gallons of laundry soap)!  Some of it is going to go home with my Mom when she visits next month, but with what I have left still from the first batch I made (about half a gallon) and what I keep of this, I should have a year's supply of soap, lol.

Between filling each jug, I stirred the meat.  Once there was no more pink in the meat, I added both bags of frozen vegetables, normally I thaw these while the other parts cook, but I forgot, so they went in straight from the freezer this time.  It works either way, but the frozen veggies solidified all the fat and looked really gross.  After giving the veggies some time to hang out with the meat a little, I added the Beef broth (to make this, I take my 2-Qt glass measuring cup, [get one if you don't have one they are a kitchen neccessity] and this time only used 4 cups of hot tap water because the rice was already cooked.  I used a Tablespoon and just made it heaping, 4 teaspoons of the base makes 4 cups of broth.  Once you get it off the spoon, microwave it for 2 to 3 minutes and get it nice and hot!  It'll help dissolve the base.).  Let that all come to a boil, it cooks the veggies and lets everything soak up a little broth.  Then, turn off the heat and dump in the rice!  I mixed between each addition of rice, it gets really hard to stir with 12 cups of rice in there!  After it's all mixed, I divide the mixture between the glass bowl I let the rice cool in, the measuring cup, and the stockpot so that it cools faster...don't add dairy to hot food!  Then, we left the house and went to lunch...this stuff takes forever to cool off! 

 

Rosie follows me when I'm cooking Dog Food!

Later in the afternoon, I divided what I had of the Cottage Cheese between the dishes and gave it one last mix.  Then, it was portion-bagging time!  Rosie weighs in at 61 pounds, and most sites suggest 2-3% of the dog weight be fed daily, that puts her food needs at 19.5 to 29.3 ounces.  We give her roughly 2-cups of food, twice a day (two bags of pre-portioned food weigh in at 25.0 ounces).  We bag it all up once cooled into sandwich size ziploc bags for easy feeding throughout the week (Garrick does most of the feeding, I do the cooking).

This batch gave us 13.5 servings (or 6.5 days of food and a little "taster" plate for Rosie when we were done bagging, because who can resist that look on her face after hours of seeing it?

The chickens got the rest of the bag of Spinach, but they didn't eat it!  It's the first thing other than potatoes that they refuse to eat!  I was shocked because they loved it in the winter, but this time it was served room temperature, not hot like before.  Speaking of the gals, they got a mini-coop clean up this morning!  I noticed that the hook we hang our water from was being bent under the weight of the water, so I took it down, scrubbed it clean, and moved it to a new hook (we have 3 to use for the water and food, luckily).  I also hosed out their sandbox, which has been empty for a while now and was beginning to look more like a public bathroom than a place to take a bath in!  Since I was out there anyway, I also took them one-quarter of a "personal size" watermelon that I bought (in June).  The flesh was still very firm, but it was beyond anything I would want to eat.  It took some convincing to get the girls to try it, but they eventually did and last time I checked, they were enjoying the cool treat!  The rest of the melon got cut into sections, bagged, and tossed in the freezer (we have some high 90's days headed our way) for the girls to have another day.  To get them to try the melon, a new food for them, I sprinkled the pieces with Red Chili Pepper pieces (a favored treat and natural wormer), BOSS (just a yummy treat), and finally, a few Meal-worms (Gerty is the only chicken I have that likes these, but once she got interested in the melon pieces, Clyde and Henri soon followed)!

And since I was outside anyway...I went ahead and watered my "deck plants".  They don't get any direct sun in the afternoon/evenings, so I figure I'm okay to do that.  It also is only 83 today, so not scorching!  My Raspberry bushes are really filling in this summer, as is all the weeds and "voluntary" Blackberry bushes!

The one and only tomato plant that I have actually producing any tomatoes is absolutely loaded with them!  I may pick one or two to have with dinner tonight, they look like they might be ready.  They're a little bigger than a Cherry Tomato!

One night this week I'm finally going to harvest some of my Pineapple Sage too, though I'm not sure what night that will be just yet.  It is such a full, bushy plant this year!  I'm hoping that it will make the transition to an indoor plant this Fall, the Stevia did well last year so I am hopeful.  I'd really like to have this herb around year-round!

I'm not quite done with my busy day today either, I need to go do some shopping!  (Twist my arm, huh?)  I'm looking to get enough fabric to make two reversible/lined slings...mostly because my pre-pregnant size is between sizes on the cutting chart, but also because Garrick is squarely in the lerger size and I want him to be able to pack little man around too.  Also, I found a tutorial for making a quilt out of a Jelly Roll that looks super simple and a new skill to be learned (quilting) at the same time!  Then there's the "cover the window on the door" project that I still need to get some magnets for, groceries to buy, and baby stuff to ogle!