26 weeks + 1 day

Well I didn’t post the “week” entry yesterday, but it has been another week.  I’ve been a little tired, and I notice the belly getting in the way a little more (whose design idea was this, anyway?) but all in all everything is well.  Docs visit at the beginning of this past week and had a bp reading of 118/80, which is more my usual bp.  Have no idea why the spike happened early on, except that I was stressed about getting the health care and the sick cat (only one then) taken care of, and still stressing over space and money.  Everything just has to get dealt with as it comes, pretty much, doesn’t it?  Save and prep as you can, and then roll with it.

Still not sure what due date we’re going to go by — as I said, the December 3rd makes better sense to us, so I’m sticking to it until we have a truly official reason to go by a different one (12/3 is the ultrasound’s given due date).

I think this is the official last week of the second trimester.  Baby is supposed to be about 1.7 lbs and 14 inches.  (The feet are like 2 inches long now!)  Third trimester, here I come!

Meatloaf Cups

Continuing the idea of food made in cupcake tins, tonight I made little meatloaf cups. I took a pound of ground turkey, an egg, about 1/4 cup of ketchup, about 3/4 cup of Italian seasoned bread crumbs, some garlic powder, and a dash of pepper and mixed it up, and spooned it into the six muffin cups (nearly filling each). I put it in the toaster oven at 350 degrees for half an hour. Then I topped each with a swirl of ketchup and a little shredded sharp cheddar cheese, and put it back into the toaster oven for 5 minutes.

Separately I made some tater-rounds, and put three on each meat-muffin. They turned out very cute. Someone at Pennsic was talking about making meatloaf cupcakes for kids, so it was fun to try it out. (The toppings should be fun for kids to eat too — I saw some online with mashed potato frosting, but I didn’t feel like making mashed potatoes.)

Cookie Dough

I bought a tub of Nestle cookie dough at the store, it’s supposed to make like 40 cookies. I wanted the tub because it was resealable, so I could make a few at a time whenever I wanted cookies. Last night I made a tiny batch, and I made another tiny batch today. The only problem is that I’m going to be spoiled by cookies on demand…warm and soft from the oven. Mmmm.

Muffin Cup Eggs: Sausage and Cheese

I had fun playing with a cooking idea this morning. In my head it boiled down to mini-quiches, or maybe mini-crustless-quiches, but while my google searches turned up similar ideas I didn’t find exactly what I wanted (most involved adding Bisquick to make little biscuit balls, or using wonton wrappers — both ideas I may try later). So I decided to wing it.

Basically I wanted to make eggs in muffin-cups in my toaster oven. I thought it would be neat to add something to them, so I cooked up a third of a pound of turkey sausage and got out some shredded sharp cheddar cheese. I took three eggs and whisked them up, adding about a yolk’s worth of water, a layer of garlic powder, and some salt and pepper. I added the sausage and about a half-cup of shredded cheese. I sprayed my six cup muffin pan with non-stick spray, and spooned the mixture in. (I alternated muffin cups with every spoonful to make sure they all got roughly the same goodies.) And I put the muffin tray into the cold toaster oven and turned it on bake at 350 degrees for a little over 10 minutes (about 12 I suspect, it’s a dial).

I took out the muffin pan, loosened the edges of my muffin creations with a spoon, and used the spoon to pop them out of the cups. (I cut one open to make sure it was cooked through before removing them all.) They were pretty tasty — like with omelettes I suspect you could add anything you wanted. I bet zucchini and cheese would be awesome (I’ve recently fallen in love with zucchini). I may also try suggestions I read other places for cutting a pie crust with cookie cutters to make little mini crusts to go in the muffin cups. Or it occurred to me to smash down one of my egg muffins onto an English muffin to eat it as a sandwich.

Overall a pretty successful experiment — and I don’t have to watch the skillet to make my eggs! Sometimes it’s the little things…