Food and Drink

Placenta Smoothie

By Jen | February 12, 2010 |

Before giving birth at home, I watched my fair share of homebirth videos. As disturbing as it was to watch a woman in so much pain, push out a baby, it was almost equally disturbing to watch the placenta just fall to the floor later on. Ew. Delivering the placenta ended up being more stressful than delivering the baby. No joke. Delivering a placenta is something I never even knew about until I had to do it the first time. If all goes well, your placenta just sort of falls out after the birth (like I watched in on the youtube videos), not right away, but eventually. Well, my placenta was stubborn. Maybe it knew what was in store for it! I guess my bladder was way too full and for some reason, I had either the worst case of pee shyness or I just physically could not urinate. The…

A Day at the Park

By Jen | September 14, 2009 |

I’ve decided to start being better at taking Maisie to the park due to the fact that she is pretty much a lonely little puppy here. Daily she asks to play with friends. Daily she talks about her cousin Avery. Daily she asks if she is going to go to school. We tried to get her in school, but they are full and we are now on a waiting list. These are a couple of pics of her yesterday after a little girl ran away from her in a square we were eating in. She was sad, needless to say. So with all this sadness and two year old depression going on, I decided I needed to be better about getting her around other friends and hopefully I can make a couple as well. Let’s just say that our first day at the park wasn’t the most successful. First of…

Fish Eyeballs and Other Stuff

By Jen | March 12, 2009 |

Who ever knew I would actually be okay eating a fish eyeball? Certainly not me! I did it tonight for the first time in Barcelona. I don’t know the name (and at the moment I am too lazy to try and find out what it’s called), but it was a plate full of teeny little whole fried fish. Crazy!!! The funny thing is that Maisie LOVED them! She was eating them like they were candy! She was totally into them until about the fifth one. That’s when an eyeball got stuck on her front tooth and I laughed about it and pointed it out to the table, where there was gagging and gnashing of teeth. Well, not the gnashing of teeth, but there was gagging. After that, she didn’t want anymore. She went on to eat shrimp. I swear this kid is a better eater while in Europe than in…

Belgian Waffle

By Jen | November 8, 2008 |

I am in Brussels, Belgium right now and had a very real and wonderful Belgian waffle yesterday. It was NOTHING like the “Belgian waffles” that we have in the states. NOTHING!!! Only a million and a half times better!!! YUMMMMM!!! But they aren’t called Belgian waffles here. Only waffles… of course. My friend nicely corrected me on that one before I made the mistake of asking for a Belgian waffle. Thank you for friends. We are having so much fun here spending time with fellow CAI friends and also working on a big service project for the city called, Serve The CIty! I’ll post more on that later!

Taco Bell Hot Sauce

By Jen | October 12, 2008 |

There is seriously something that goes on in the brain where if you KNOW you can’t have something, you want it even more. This is a theme I am seeing from yesterday’s blog post as well. I love you Taco Bell hot sauce!!! I always will!!!! I’m going to have to look into why I am freaking out about the things I can’t have right now. T.V. shows, taco bell hot sauce…. What is wrong with me!?!? Is it ridiculous to say I feel desperate to just have a bean burrito right now? So yeah, seems dumb to write about this on my blog, but it is my ish for the moment. Wanting things I can’t have. And while I’m at it, I’ll also throw in my family and how I can’t have them either right now. That sucks too. But I think at this point, I might take the…

Maisie is a helper

By Jen | October 5, 2008 |

Maisie has always loved helping me. When we lived in Portland, one of her favorite things to do was help with the laundry. She actually still loves it and now I find all sorts of things in the washing machine. A lot of the washing machines are front loading in Europe, so they are at just the right height for her! Lately though, laundry hasn’t been enough for little gooby. She wants to help with MORE! So I have given her the chance to help in the kitchen! She LOVES it! Her “responsibility” has been helping with the salad. At first, I was a little peeved at the size of lettuce bits she was tearing off, but then I thought, “WHO CARES!?!?” Isn’t it better for her to help and be a part of something then the lettuce bits to be just the right size? So now every time I…

I love Lebanese!

By Jen | July 21, 2007 |

Justin and I are in love with middle eastern food. My best friend from high school is Lebanese and we would come home after school and eat delicious homemade Lebanese foods till we couldn’t eat anymore! When Justin and I moved into our apartment on Montparnasse we were blessed by the most delicious Lebanese restaurant right across the street. We would eat there several times a week…pretty much whenever I didn’t cook. So this last weekend I was motivated by Laina to start cooking at home more. I did it tonight. I made a whole Lebanese feast! It was my first time ever and I have to say it wasn’t that bad. The hummus was a bit chunky (our blender is going downhill) and the baba ganoush was a bit too runny. Other than that, it was delicious and I learned for next time! Here is a picture of all…