t-ONE DAY!!

Still no baby! Even the intensity of watching Avatar in 3D at IMAX wasn't enough to coax him out... though it was enough for me to feel seriously overwhelmed for a few solid hours after the show ended. What an awesome movie - I loved it! But the metaphors and lessons and parallels overwhelmed me, and so did the beauty of the blue people and their culture and their planet; last night I even dreamt that I was one of them, living on Pandora. The special effects were incrrredible - I'd love to watch a how-it-was-made deal... it won most of the Academy awards last year, no? Anyways, in retrospect it may have been a little too intense for me, but I'm glad that I saw it on the big BIG screen. I wonder how superSteve felt about it, with all of the noise; probably none too happy.

Soooooo it looks like the little guy will be here by December 7th, at the very latest. If nothing gets going before then, that's my induction day - eeeek! Eek. It's still a ways away, and we're both super excited to meet him, so hopefully it happens before then... wait wait, waiting waiting. And sleeping sleeping. No other baby news really; I'm feeling good, and am definitely not at the get this thing out of me stage... yet. We are both getting more and more excited about meeting him, and that's the only real hook that is pulling the days forward and by.

Okay, projects. I saw something like this on a design blog a few months ago (I might have blogged about it... I think), and we finally put it together ourselves. It was, for the most part, a one-person job, so Steve was all over it - with the super glue and staple gun and man tools... arrr. SO! We finally have something up on our wall! A year later - incredible. It looks great though, and we love it; it's easy to change the pics too - we just don't have so many vertical photos, which isn't a bad thing, since it made the task of choosing pics a whole lot easier. So, voila.




Also voila, pics of the delicious roasted red pepper soup that I made the other day; it was SO good, and so good with corn bread (said with very twangy southern accent). The corn bread recipe was gleaned from allrecipes.com and was decent, but not amazing... I don't think it will be my go-to corn bread (accent) formula - I'll have to keep looking. (Or does anyone have a good recipe? Light and not too sweet?) The soup recipe follows.... YUM.

ROASTED RED PEPPER SOUP, C/O MARG!

1 oz. sun dried tomatoes, about 8 pieces (do not use the oil-packed variety) - I did!

soak in warm water for an hour.

4 large red bell pepper

1 medium yellow onion, peeled and diced (about 1 cup)

1 large potato, peeled and diced (about 1 1/2 cup)

3 cloves garlic

1 carton chicken stock (or vegetable stock for vegetarian option)

1/4 cup milk

3 Tbsp butter

Cayenne or hot sauce, salt and pepper to taste

1 Cut the red peppers in half and take out the seeds. Roast by placing skin side up on baking sheet and bake in 425 oven for about 25 min...the skins will start to blacken. Place the blackened peppers in a bag, close the bag and let the peppers steam for 10-15 minutes, or until the skins feel like they can easily be slipped off. Remove the peppers from the bag, peel off the blackened skins. Chop the peppers roughly.
2 Heat the butter in a large soup pot over medium-high heat. Add the chopped onion and saute for 2-3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the potatoes and cook another 1-2 minutes, then add the garlic and roasted peppers. Stir well and cook for 2 minutes.
3 Add the stock, stir well and bring to a simmer. Cook over medium heat until potatoes are soft.
4 Purée the soup in a blender/hand blender or food processor until very smooth. Fill the blender about halfway with the soup. Start the blender on low and keep your hand on the top, in case the lid wants to pop off from the rising steam. Once everything is well chopped, turn the blender to its highest setting and blend until smooth, about 1 minute. You might need to do this in batches.
5 Return to pot set over low heat. Add the milk, stir well and taste. Add some cayenne or hot sauce, salt and pepper to taste.
Serves 4-6.

Next time I will double it up for SURE. Delicious.