A NEW WEEK

Last week was a big week for Bean, on Monday he walked all the way around his playpen holding the rails. Wednesday he clapped for first time (and loved the praises he got when he did it) and the Friday, Saturday and Sunday he slept in his room and slept through the night.

It is crazy to think about the rate at which he is learning these new skills, to go from barely being able to open his eyes to lifting himself up onto his knees getting ready to crawl in less than eight months. He is in awe of everything around  him, just our little walks to the grocery stores have him launching himself out of his stroller trying to see everything that is happening. H and I will sit on the couch and watching him play, wishing we could know what is going through his mind and he picks up each toy and contemplates what to do with it. It really is incredible watching him learn and grow as a little human being and I cannot wait to see what he discovers next.

"ONTSPANNEN" BIJ IKEA

SÖDERHAMN 3-seater sofa

Pardon my Dutch, it was my attempt to play with the heading "Ontspannen winkelen bij IKEA" underneath which there are several images illustrating the ease at which you can get your brand new IKEA products from their warehouse into your empty home. I thought this was funny because if you ask just about anyone who has spent any amount of time at IKEA, "relax" or "relaxing" are probably two of the least used descriptive words to describe the experience.

Over the past four years, I have had at least partially furnish three apartments from IKEA, plus several more trips to help friends find their new bed, table, chair etc. I, like many other twenty-something year old seem to live, eat and breath IKEA when it comes to housewares. So naturally, when I move to a brand new country (where all the apartments come pristinely un-furnished) some adventures to IKEA are in order. 

We purchased the last of our big household items this past weekend, the sofa pictured above, and while we didn't have one of those much feared fall-outs over the building the sofa (in order to fight we both would have had to have been involved in the building... I was making dinner) its was by no means an easy feat getting this couch home. First of all, when we first saw the sofa its price (690 EUR) was within our budget we wanted to hold out for something cheaper if possible. Then we came home after a day of shopping sofa-less so we decided to look at it again online. Online it was a whole 250 EUR cheaper, but it was going to take more than three weeks to be delivered (is there only one IKEA delivery man in all of Germany?) and we are impatient folk so that wasn't going to cut it. Stumped for a few minutes on how were going to get this hunk of wood, fabric and metal into our home H reminded me of one of (to me) the greatest things about Europe... let's just drive to the next country over and see if they have it for cheaper there. Sunday came around and we hoped into the car with Bean in tow and drove to IKEA in the Netherlands and found our sofa not only cheaper than in Germany but also 20 EUR cheaper than if we had ordered it online! With our receipt and cart full of miscellaneous items down we went to the counter to pick up the pieces of our sofa to bring home, everything had ended well...or so we thought. We had one, fairly large oversight, the size of the packaging. The numbers the worker in the store had given us did not quite correspond with the box that was wheeled to us. Luckily for us though, H's father was able to drive up to meet us to help and after almostfour hours at IKEA we finally were able to go home. Super-Opa to the rescue!.


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COOKING WITH A CAKE PAN + A (SORTA) RECIPE

First off I would like to begin with saying I really enjoy cheese, cheese is probably the only real obstacle preventing me from going vegan because even though \I have tried veganism I always succumb to temptation when presented with a cheese plate. Secondly I am also supposed to be cutting down on my cheese intake, something that I find damn near impossible in this wonderful country full of inexpensive, delicious cheesy options because my abnormally high dairy intake may be the cause of several of my body and health related troubles. Now that being said I ignored my latter inclination if favour of the first when cooking dinner last night.

I adapted this veggie baked macaroni recipe from Love & Lemons and I just had a few comments to make on the process. I was quite excited about this recipe because the original recipe calls for a combination of all my favourite things, asparagus, mozzarella cheese, and a cashew based cream but then I remembered that while these ingredients may seem run of the mill to me, I am living in another country now where food availability is also very different. For one, it took me two day and four grocery stores to track down cashews, locating them only (and for a steeper price) at a health food store. Second I subbed broccoli for the asparagus because here asparagus (or spargel) is white usually and twice the size, the green type that I more familiar with is far less common (and more expensive) plus spargel season ended about a month ago. My third challenge with this recipe was that I realized we don't own a casserole dish and the other pan we owned were not deep enough for this dish. However H pointed out that we did have a cake pan and thus that problem was solved. I would like to throw in a word of caution, when removing said cake pan from the over to be extra gentle with handling because the base is not super sturdy and cook possibly end up with piping hot cheese and pasta everywhere...I just barely avoided this disaster.

And just in case anyone is wondering, here was my adaptation of the recipe (measurements are whatever...I just threw it all together)

Cashew cream

Fusilli pasta

Broccoli (chopped)

Pea (blanched quickly)

Mozzarella balls (halved as well)

Basil and Sage (chopped)

Gouda (grated on top)

Paniermehl (closest thing I could find to breadcrumbs)

Olive oil

Red pepper flakes

Toss all together until evenly coated and distribute evenly in your cake pan, bake at 175 degrees for 15-ish minutes. Eat with curry ketchup (because I am pretty sure H is fifty percent ketchup...at least)


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LITTLE GERMAN BABY

I am the proud mama of newly registered German citizen. Yesterday H and I spent the morning down at city hall with an interpreter (for me) signing papers acknowledging his (half) German parentage. Initially I was under the impression that Germany did not allow dual citizenship, and that Bean would have to give up his Canadian passport if he ever wanted his German one but clearly this is not the case.


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GETTING SETTLED: FOOD

A picture, finally! I got a snazzy new (compact) camera, however I have no clue how to use it yet so until then I will settle with the auto mode. We are in the process of getting unpacked and settling in to our apartment here but between garbage runs and trips to Ikea sometimes I forget that as a human I need nourishment to compensate for my activity. The first time I visited Germany I had a complete meltdown in a grocery store of H's hometown because I couldn't figure out what anything was and there were no fresh fruits or vegetables. The second visit a few months ago yielded slightly better results since we found a different (and better stocked) grocery store but there are still some very large obstacles for me.

one. Language

This one is quite obvious but also one of the easier ones to work through. As of now I do not have a working cell phone here (or handy as my German boyfriend says) but hopefully it will not be too long until we can jailbreak my current iPhone so that we can program it for Deutschland use. With a working phone and data plan, so long as I have reception I can use my handy translator to find my food.

two. Pre-packaged food/ Instant food

While I may not be the worlds healthiest eater, the bulk of my groceries come from the produce section. I don't know if it like this in bigger German cities but there are aisles filled with boxes of powdered sauces, gravies, and hamburger helper-esque types of meals where all you add is the pasta, water and meat. I am a big fan of making all my food from scratch so it is hard when the grocery stores are fully stocked in this department but are lacking in the produce, grain, spice areas.

three. Exotic ingredients

To me I feel like I have a pretty standard diet, but standard to growing up in a multi-cultural, metropolitan city. To say that I was spoiled in regard to the availability of ethnic food would be an understatement. Products such as  red curry paste, soy sauce, coconut water, chilies are harder to come by here

four. Health food

This one isn't so much a problem of availability (well I'm not sure yet) but rather of location. I am used to giant grocery stores that mostly contain a health food/ organic section but here I have to go to a completely different store. Part of it is a laziness factor, the other part is that I find it super intimidating going into small specialty stores and even more so when I don't speak the language.


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LANDED

The last twenty-four hours in numbers

Fourteen hours door to door
Ten hours carrying Bean
Eight hours flying
Seven old ladies telling me how sweet my baby is
Five countries
Four hours driving
Three other babies flying too
Two hours in Iceland
One mid-flight poopy diaper

Happy to be here, sad to leave all my friends and family behind but more than anything excited for the beginning of this adventure


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EN ROUTE

A trans-Atlantic move is a long journey. With a six day pit stop in eastern Canada to say goodbye to relatives we are now repacking our bags and getting ready to jet-off on the last leg of our voyage tomorrow. Bean has really been taking one for the team, despite being exposed suddenly to all these new places and new faces he has really been good, we only had one bad night due to the sudden shock of being on a plane and a new bed but he still wakes up smiling ear to ear.


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JULY GOALS + JUNE RECAP

First things first, I will go over last months goals and see how I did. June has just flown by, and this month has been hectic to say the least, between packing and saying goodbye along with the full-time job of being a parent I have barely had a moment to breath. That being said I did have some really great baby-free moments with some friends and I was able to feel a little bit normal again which was refreshing. Now onto last months goals

1. Complain less. Ehhh...

I think this goal was a little ambitious, while I definitely am working harder at being more grateful I think I just enjoy the sound of my own voice too much.

2. Be organized and packed BEFORE I leave, and avoid my usual last minute packing frenzy. Mostly

All the big stuff is done, just a few more little things to pack but I still have to clean up my place, and I leave tomorrow...ehhh

3.Say goodbye to Vancouver. Check

I got to say goodbye to almost all my favourite people, places and things here.

4. Blog post 2-3 times each week. No

I have changed my view on this, mostly I wanted to do it in order to get into the habit of blogging but I think if I am going to blog it's going to only be when I feel like I have something to say, maybe that will be several times a week or maybe not.

So overall not that great but I think I needed to reevaluate what kind of goals I want to set for myself, so without further ado here are my July goals.

1. Write a little bit every day.

2. Survive flying with Bean

3. Unpack and organize one small space for me

4. Appreciate my little family

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