One of my favourite Summer past-times is sitting out on a patio surrounded by good friends and plenty of food. Laughter and full bellies are pretty much a guarantee, and I find these experiences extremely relaxing and satisfying. However, the icing on the cake comes on those rare occasions when you cook up a dish that leaves a good handful of people asking for the recipe. Yesterday afternoon was one such time.

I decided to take on another one of the Pioneer Woman’s recipes (http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/), typically simple in concept, but a bit time consuming. I’d recommend either taking this one in shifts or preparing it on a day where you don’t have to leave the house. I can imagine that this would be perfect on a cold winter’s day (not during the peak of Summer), where you can curl up with a good book while these mushrooms simmer and fill your house with an amazingly warm and delicious smell. Enjoy! And be warned… once simmered down, you’re left with a whole lot of butter, so this is definitely not fat-free! But really, is any of the good stuff in life ever really fat-free??

Burgundy Mushrooms

4 pounds white button mushrooms *
1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter **
1 1/2 tsp. Worcestershire Sauce
1 litre Burgundy wine (other dry red wines will work) ***
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
2 cups boiling water
4 chicken bouillon cubes
4 beef bouillon cubes
1 tsp. dill seed
1 tsp. garlic powder
2 tsp. salt (optional)****

* I filled a lunch paper bag full
** I used salted
*** I used a 750mL bottle of French Pinot Noir and just added another 250mL of water
**** Because I used salted butter I did not add the 2 tsp. of salt at the end – it definitely wasn’t necessary

DIRECTIONS:

Thoroughly wash the mushrooms and throw them into a large stockpot.

Add all of the remaining ingredients except the salt. Stir to combine.

Bring the mixture to a boil over medium-high heat.

Reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered for 6 hours.*

Remove the lid, then continue cooking, unconvered, for 3 hours.

Add salt to taste at the end if desired. The mushrooms will be dark in color. They can sit in the pan until ready to serve.

Serve straight from the pot or spoon the mushrooms and cooking liquid into a serving bowl.

Have crusty bread nearby to soak up the deliciousness.

* I simmered on medium-low for 5 1/2 hours covered, then for 2 hours on low uncovered.

You know that feeling… the one that suddenly siezes your heart… as if you can actually feel it spasm and truly believe that it might break? Scary as it is, sometimes I actually love that feeling. It reminds me that there are people in this world that I love more than anything; and now, for the first time in my life, it reminds me that there is someone I can honestly say, without fear, I would give my life for.

In 8 weeks and 6 days I will become a mother. As frightening as that thought is, I wouldn’t trade that opportunity for the world. I can imagine no higher honour in life than to raise a child and do it to the absolute best of your ability. To watch them grow into a decent human being and know that  you had a hand in that. Despite the major hiccups that have occured along the way, pregnancy has been an incredible journey for me. Without even knowing what he looks like, I have grown to love this tiny human inside me to the point that my heart breaks at the thought of finally meeting him and getting to know him.  I can only imagine how amazing the journey of parenthood will be and I welcome the good little heart breaks that come along the way.

Some of my earliest memories are of sitting in bed snuggled up next to my mom or dad while they read me a story (probably Green Eggs and Ham for the umpteenth time). Naturally, being avid readers, my husband and I hope to carry on the tradition and instill the same love of books in our children. Truth be told, we’ve been reading to my growing belly for about a month now, purely to get into the habit and because it’s the first of many things to draw us together as a family. Some say that reading to your child in utero will breed a genius… I’m still not convinced, but if that happens to be one outcome of our nightly reads, I definitely won’t be complaining. So, in order to prepare my mind to deal with a child that could quite possibly outsmart me at a young age, I hope to get through this list over the coming months.

Using seven lists that I found online, including The Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels and the BBC’s Big Read, I compiled my own list using those books that appeared three or more times. I added a few of my own favorites to fill in the holes. Later, I plan to create an alternate list that is less focused on classics and best books of the last few centuries, and more on my own personal favorites, so please feel free to comment if you have any suggestions. Enjoy!

1. 1984, George Orwell
2. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
3. A Farewell to Arms,  Ernest Hemingway
4. A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
5. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
6. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
7. A Room With a View, E.M. Forster
8. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
9. Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner
10. All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren
11. An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
12. Animal Farm, George Orwell
13. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
14. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
15. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
16. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
17. Beloved, Toni Morrison
18. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
19. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
20. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
21. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
22. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
23. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
24. Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
25. Dune, Frank Herbert
26. East Of Eden, John Steinbeck
27. Emma, Jane Austen
28. Go Tell It On The Mountain, James Baldwin
29. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
30. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
31. Harry Potter (Series), J.K. Rowling
32. Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
33. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
34. Howards End, E.M. Forster
35. I, Claudius, Robert Graves
36. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
37. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
38. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
39. Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
40. Light in August, William Faulkner
41. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
42. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
43. Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad
44. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
45. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
46. Main Street, Sinclair Lewis
47. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
48. Middlemarch, George Eliot
49. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
50. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
51. Native Son, Richard Wright
52. Nostromo, Joseph Conrad
53. Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
54. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
55. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
56. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
57. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
58. Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
59. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
60. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
61. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
62. Sons And Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
63. Sophie’s Choice, William Styron
64. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
65. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
66. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
67. The Call of the Wild, Jack London
68. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
69. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
70. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
71. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
72. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
73. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
74. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
75. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
76. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
77. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
78. The Lord of the Rings (Trilogy), JRR Tolkien
79. The Magus, John Fowles
80. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
81. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
82. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
83. The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway
84. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
85. The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles
86. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
87. The Stand, Stephen King
88. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
89. The Wings of the Dove, Henry James
90. The World According To Garp, John Irving
91. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
92. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
93. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
94. Ulysses, James Joyce
95. Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
96. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
97. Watership Down, Richard Adams
98. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
99. Women In Love, D.H. Lawrence
100. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

Fast forward to today and I am now 22 weeks along; just over halfway there… kind of. You see, due to some complications, I am now at risk for pre-term labour. Last week I was put on bed rest for 10 weeks and there is every possibility that my OB will want and early delivery for our much wanted offspring. Now, in some ways, this is quite fine with me, as I am already so in love with this baby and can’t wait to meet the little one. Ultimately though, I want our baby to be as healthy as possible, so the longer they stay in my momma oven, the better. In the meantime, I’m taking the doctor’s orders to heart and staying horizontal (or at least semi-horizontal) for most of the day. My type A side is working hard to just get used to the idea of letting others do things for me, while I just enjoy the rest that I will be longing for once baby arrives.

One thing I just can’t let go of though is my need to create to-do lists. Although I can’t paint the baby’s room and stain furniture like I had planned to, there’s still plenty I can do while armed with a laptop! So, I present, the Great Bed Rest To-Do List:

1. Blog more often.
2. Write more often.
3. Create a list of Top 100 Books to read and get through them all.
4. Sleep as much as I can.
5. Watch the entire series of Lost.
6. Watch the entire series of Sex in the City.
7. Read new books that didn’t make it onto my Top 100 list.
8. Enjoy the silence.
9. Meditate.
10. Write more snail mail.
11. Organize my 15 year highschool reunion.
12. Make some long overdue phone calls.
13. Scrapbook.
14. Design and make Baby Announcement cards.
15. Practise the art of conversation.

*sigh*… Type A side is gratified for the time being.

If this had been a mid-term exam for Daring Bakers 101, I would have failed miserably. The 2010 March Daring Baker’s challenge was hosted by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings. She chose Orange Tian as the challenge for this month, a dessert based on a recipe from Alain Ducasse’s Cooking School in Paris. I should have known things would go awry when I first saw the name for what I’m sure is normally a delectable dessert. Ti-a… what???

Though I’d never heard of a Tian before, I naively went into this challenge with the over-confidence of a two-year old. First mistake. Not only did I leave a fairly time consuming recipe to the last minute, but I chose to use an alternate option for the recipe as well. I am in no way a fan of oranges in my desserts. In fact, I’m not much of an orange person in general. To me, oranges are for half-time, to be eaten fresh, torn right from the skin, juices dripping down your chin as you replenish yourself for the rest of the big game. I’ve never understood the wide-spread devotion to the pairing of say, chocolate and orange, such as with Terry’s Chocolate Orange Balls (most popular around Christmas). So, I chose to use lemons instead…. second mistake. Lemons are sour. Duh. Very sour. The failures carried on from there… not enough sugar to temper the tartness of the lemons… a pate sablee that was far too crumbly and required much more than the recommended “couple drops of water” (it was more like 1/2 a cup by the time I was done)… a caramel that I not only burnt the first batch of, but had my spatula partially melt into as well… and so on and so forth.

Despite all of that, I still managed to make the end result look a bit pretty; and ignoring the sour zing that seemed to go straight to the back of my eyeballs with every bite, this lemon tian actually tasted a little like lemon meringue pie. Now that I can deal with!

I won’t be posting the recipe for this one, but for the linguistically thorough, here’s a quick run-down of what a Tian is all about: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-tian.htm Enjoy!