Food... For a change...

If you cook a slow roasted lamb shoulder, you can make another fabulous meal out of the leftovers.  Piles of cold roast lamb, green tomato pickles, mustards, sharp cheddar, bread and butter, some re-heated parsley potatoes, and some steamed green beans.  Bottle of Shiraz optional.

Our dinner guest, when warned we were just having 'leftovers', commented that the cold leftover version of the lamb, with the cheese and pickles, is possibly even better than the original hot version.  I won't argue with that - particularly on a warm evening!

On Saturday morning, I made an enormous amount of beef stew to freeze.  I like to do this around once a month - it makes eight servings, which means we can eat it for dinner once a week for a month, then I make another batch.  I am a haphazard sort of cook - see below, I wanted to add some beef stock, I had some in the freezer, so I just sort of smashed it up and sat the frozen pieces on top of the stew before I put it in the oven.  Easier than bothering to defrost it, and did no harm.  Yes, I am that lazy...

My father comes over most Saturdays - The Daddy works on Saturdays, my mother works on Saturdays (she has a ballet school), my sister does ballet classes on Saturdays.  Since I can remember, since I was very small, Saturdays have always been a day that my dad and I spend together - when I was young, he'd take me to spend the day with my horse.  These days, we hang out at home, go for a walk, do some cooking, eating, and play with Tabitha.  She adores her grandpa 'Gra'!

Dad made a pit stop on the way at Le Croissant, an excellent French bakery which is, conveniently, roughly half way between our house and my parents'.  He brought with him croissants, almond croissants, a baguette and some ficelles, a bread and butter pudding made from croissants, and some blueberry jam.  He also picked up some Camembert.

Yesterday evening, I went out for dinner and a movie with my best friend, Amy.  We went to one of my favourite restaurants, David's, which I haven't been to (except for lunch) since I was around eight months pregnant.

We had Peking duck - so, so good:

Really excellent fried rice:

Amy had something with beef.  I'm not sure what it was, but the beef was melt-in-your-mouth tender:

The whole reason for going to David's, for me, is their Mock Crab.  It is an unusual regional dish, basically sliced scallop stir-fried in egg white.  That is a very simplistic explanation.  It is like eating clouds,  delicious, scallopy clouds.  It also has black vinegar to pour over it.  It is making my mouth water to think about it - I first learnt of David's Mock Crab from John Lethlean, a Melbourne food writer, and it quickly became my favourite dish.  I could certainly eat it every week.

Here it is - it is not, it must be said, a pretty dish:

Covered in vinegar goodness:

Here is my date for the evening - we drank 2008 Chardonnay from Freycinet Vineyards in Tasmania, one of my favourite wineries in the country:

We then scurried off to see Harry Potter in 3D at the Jam Factory.  The movie was good, and I was proud of myself for staying awake through it, until nearly 11pm, even after two glasses of wine.

Oh - and I must mention, although I am afraid of jinxing myself, that Tabitha has been sleeping much, much better over the last week.  Almost every night, she has only woken twice for a feed!  So she's been going to bed at 7pm, then wakes for a feed at around 1am and 5/6am, then wakes for the day between 7 and 8am.  Amazing!!  Hopefully this continues.

What have I done differently to see this improvement?  A few things...

a) Under suggestion from my ABA counsellor, I stopped feeding her just before putting her to bed.  So, instead of feeding her in her room, then putting her straight to bed, I now feed her in the living room around 30 - 45 minutes before bed, then put her down later.  This breaks the 'feed sleep' association, so when they wake up they don't necessarily need a feed to get back to sleep.  Instead, I notice that she wakes, then makes a few noises, or cries out once, then goes right back to sleep on her own.

b) Now that she is walking - easily covering a few metres or more at a time - she seems to tire herself out a little more.

c) I decided that she might be a little cold at night - now she's past the first year, the high SIDS risk year, I felt comfortable dressing her a little more warmly.  I've added another long sleeve layer each night, and it seemed to make a difference.  I think she was possibly waking, and unable to get back to sleep because she was a little chilly.

d) She is certainly eating more, all of a sudden, over the past week or so.  She now eats, for example (taken from yesterday):

• one weetbix with milk, plus some yoghurt, plus a cube of melon, plus a one inch x two inch piece of toast with almond spread for breakfast;
• Some sultanas and half a pumpkin muffin at around 10am;
• a cheese and pickles sandwich, plus some apple, for lunch at 11:30am;
• Some baked beans (maybe eight teaspoons) at around 3pm;
• Some fruit at around 5pm;
• Some lentil soup (around ten teaspoons), some yoghurt and a few bits of steamed veggies for dinner at around 6pm.

I'm not sure which of the above (maybe all, maybe none) have contributed to her improved sleeping, but she is also sleeping more during the day (often 2 - 3 hours for her midday nap).  We certainly haven't done anything harsh, she has really made these improvements on her own, and I am thrilled!  I can completely cope with a couple of night wakings.  Like I said, hopefully this pattern continues...