Good Stuff!

A few months ago, I was listening to NPR while driving somewhere. The Kojo Nnamdi show came on and Kojo talked to Chef Spike Mendelson. I’d never heard the name but he apparently rose to fame on Top Chef, a TV show I never watch, so no surprise there. They talked about the two joints the chef founded, The Good Stuff Eatery and We The Pizza (both located on Capitol Hill in Washington, D. C.), as well as about the guy’s new book, The Good Stuff Cookbook.

The more I listened, the more intrigued I was about the guy’s approach to food. He was all about using fresh, high quality ingredients to make otherwise unassuming foods such as burgers and pizza. The idea is not that novel but it seems to resonate more and more with me as I get older and I think about what we eat and what we feed our child(ren). I also liked their community involvement, their concern for the environment and their effort to teach kids about healthy eating. That was enough for me to want to try the two places.

Though we haven’t yet tried We The Pizza, we did finally go to The Good Stuff Eatery with some friends, who were visiting from out of town a few weeks ago.

What did we think? We all ordered different types of burgers and we all loved them. The fries didn’t look as appealing as the fries do in other restaurants but that’s because of the type of potato they use. What they missed out on looks the fries more than made up on taste. Nia and I also had their milkshakes and they were excellent, though very, very filling. The prices are a little higher than what you’d pay at Five Guys, my husband’s standard for burgers, but the quality of the ingredients and the taste justify the difference, in my opinion.

Will we go there again? Hell, yeah,  though this is another place, where you usually have to wait in a long line to get your good stuff.  We  had to sit outside because there were no available seats inside – luckily the weather was nice. It is a family operation but the chef’s a celebrity and has been featured on Oprah, Rachel Ray, The Food Network, The View and the like. The place is also one of Michele Obama’s favorite burger joints. So, it’s not exactly a quiet place but good it sure is.

Oh, and just so you know, both places are closed on Sundays - we learned that the hard way.

Next, we have to try We The Pizza.

Paul, Nia and our friends Anna and Eran, with their daughter Maya enjoying the Good Stuff.

30 Weeks and Counting…

Yep, 30 weeks down, 10 more to go. Or 8-ish, if I am lucky.

  

So, far things seem to be going well with the baby. I ended up not doing the amnio because the non-invasive tests we did looked very good. That and I am a chicken – I was afraid of the possible complications the amnio itself could bring. Hopefully everything is still honky-dory in there.

As far as we know the baby is still a boy and we are still calling him Chutney because we haven’t finalized the name, though Max is looking like a very strong candidate right now.

I was hoping for a smaller, calmer baby this time around but judging by his antics in utero, this baby is going to be just as intense as his sister. The doctor says he’s measuring larger than the average for this stage of the pregnancy. Second babies tend to be larger anyway and and so do boys compared to girls, so my wish may not come true, unless Chutney takes pity on his poor mom and decides to come a couple of weeks early. The chances of that happening are not very high but a girl can dream, right?

His sister did attempt so come out early (at 34 weeks) but the doctors managed to convince her to wait and she made her final appearance exactly on her due date. She weighed 8 lb 9 oz (or 3,9 kg) and it was no picnic to get her out. The thought of this baby being larger is making me very nervous but I guess the most important thing is that he’s healthy.

So, I am thinking healthy thoughts…

Happy Belated New Year!

I am sorry it’s taken me forever to get this blog post out. I’ve had a little bit of a blogger’s block since my last post. I really wanted to start the new year with a post about our holidays but have been at a loss for what exactly to say and how to arrange it. 

I started once and had to scrap that first unfortunate attempt because it was just so trite and boring, I couldn’t stand it. And it’s not for lack of content. On the contrary, our holidays were jam-packed with events and were everything we could possibly ask for – we visited family (Paul’s brothers, who live in the DC area), hosted friends from near and far, cooked and ate industrial amounts of food, gained the obligatory 5+ holiday pounds each, got fantastic gifts, did fun things around the house and outside. I guess I was so overwhelmed by everything that I was not sure where to begin. That and because I was actively preparing and cooking for a lot of the festivities, I didn’t have the time or motivation to take a lot of pictures and I am kicking myself for that now.

Since I can’t come up with anything better, I’m just going to let the  few pictures of our holidays that I got (even though I didn’t take all of them myself)  speak for themselves and let that be a lesson to me for next time. So, here we go.

About a week before Christmas we went to a holiday dinner, hosted by Paul’s eldest brother, Ray and his lovely wife, Mary, complete with a yummy pork loin, salads, side dishes and deserts galore and the Swider Annual Secret Santa gift exchange. Pictures courtesy of my better half.

On Christmas Eve we were at Chris and Cathy’s (Paul’s third brother age-wise and his sweet wife) and had a delightful evening feasting on Cornish hens and all kinds of delicious accoutrements. Unfortunately, we did not take any pictures of this event, so all I can say is that it was wonderful.

On Christmas Day we hosted a dinner at our apartment for our friends the Shows and the Hollidays and their lovely daughters (including one-week-old baby Neve). My mom and I made a lot of delectable Bulgarian food and everyone had a great time, especially the kids. I didn’t take any pictures but thankfully, our friends did, so I can share a few with you:

For New Year’s we had my Bulgarian friend Anna, her Israeli husband Eran and their cute daughter Maya (who’s 4 and speaks as many languages) visit us from Norfolk, VA for another big dinner, heavy on the Bulgarian dishes. I am proud to say that we all, including the kids, stayed up till midnight and were able to wish each other a Happy New Year before hitting the sack. This is pretty remarkable for us considering that we usually zonk way before midnight – we are lame that way. The following day we went to the National Harbor with Anna and her family and had a lovely afternoon there.

In addition to the above mentioned festivities, we also managed to get together with my Macedonian friend Gordana and her family, who were visiting the US for the holidays. Gordana and I worked together in international development 12 years ago and hadn’t seen each other since, so it was neat to catch up and meet each other’s husbands and kids, which didn’t exist the last time we saw each other.

We also had another Bulgarian friend, Nevena and her Romanian husband, Dan, for dinner at our place. Nevena and I met at the University of Maryland where she was working on her Ph.D. and I on my MBA. We were the only Bulgarians at the business school in our first year (2000), so we hung out quite a bit. It was great to reconnect with her and her husband and reminisce about the good old days. No pictures of those two get-togethers, unfortunately.

Well, this may not be the best post I’ve ever written but I had to get it out in the interest of chronicling our lives and so I could move forward with the other posts I want to write, which are starting to pile up.

2010 in Pictures

As the year is coming to a close, I decided to put together a little video/slideshow with the most memorable moments of 2010. This is my first attempt at creating something like this, so I know it’s rough around the edges.

Hope you all had a terrific 2010 and wish you an even better 2011!

Happy Holidays from the Swiders!

The Swider Family 2010 in Pictures

Little Girl Gourmets

Our friends Carrie and Jason Show are having their third baby today. While they are at the hospital, we are watching their darling girls, Maia and Mackenna. Her cuteness (Nia) has been waiting for a sleepover opportunity for quite a while now, so she was ecstatic. While we were waiting on news from the hospital, we decided to make a mini cake. I got Nia a Girl Gourmet Cake Bakery set for her birthday and she had been itching to try it out. Tonight was the night!

 

I had a little dilemma. The set was intended for 8+ year olds and the girls are only 3, 5 and 7. Of course, all three girls are way advanced but I had to make a few adjustments in terms of parental involvement and supervision as well the complexity of the design, without robbing the little gourmets of their fun. The set uses actual cake mix that the kids “bake” in the microwave and then decorate with fondant and frosting. Our design was a little simpler than those on the package but everyone enjoyed making the cake and especially eating it. The cake you end up with is really tiny - we are talking a couple of bites for each girl but it was their cake and to them that was a huge deal!

Here’s what it looked like:

If you think cake making is easy, think again. Look closer at our littlest baker, Maia, who was so drained by the experience that she fell asleep a couple of times during the process. Once on the couch during the 30 seconds it took for the cake to bake in the microwave and a second time on the floor while I was prepping the fondant. She did perk up again in the end though and participated actively in decorating the cake with icing and the best part, eating it – YUM!!!

First Snow

We got snow in Northern Virginia today and Her Cuteness is in heaven. This is only the second time our Florida born child has EVER seen snow. We were in Chicago for Christmas last year and it snowed but it was  just a little more than a dusting.  Then last January we watched the news reports about the big snow storm here in D.C. a.k.a. “snowmageddon” and she so wanted to be here to play in the snow. As soon as we moved to the D. C. area, Nia asked me to promise her that we’ll have enough snow this winter to make a snowman, a snow fort and  snow angels.

And today her wish came true! The snow beautiful and powdery and the kids had a blast playing in it.

If we are lucky, we may get a white Christmas – how awesome would that be!

My 2010 According to Facebook

There’s this Facebook app called My Year in Status that creates a collage of your most interesting status updates. Mine is below. It should have started with “My awesome husband got a job with the Foreign Service/State Department.” For some reason it didn’t but other than that it does a decent job of summarizing my 2010. 

To create your own, just type My Year in Status into the search window of Facebook. You can customize the colors and pick which statuses you want included (there is limit). Enjoy!