Berry happy returns.

Hi, it's me again!

Where did we leave things last? Oh right, I was nine days from Bun's arrival...which turned into 17 days. Going stir crazy, I wrapped things up at work to focus on willing the baby into the world (as the stern nurse ordered). Mom arrived a week before our due date ("I think you'll be on time or early!"), and to pass the time we made dumplings, filled the freezer with post-partum meals, and baked cookies to share with hospital staff. Nick and I took walks and ate spicy food, to no avail. Mercifully they induced me at a week overdue, all went well, and we brought our sweet Charlotte home Monday morning.

The last nearly eleven months have been a blur -- maternity leave was suddenly over (I had grand plans to learn to bake bread...I'll give you one guess as to how that turned out), and we were learning how to be working parents. Charlotte is healthy, happy, and (surprising no one) a big eater. Introducing various solids has been super fun, but cooking for us and coming up with Charlotte-friendly snacks doesn't leave a ton of room for recreational cooking / baking.

Last weekend we visited friends with a three-year-old and seven-month-old twins. Given Charlotte's in what my sister calls the "Golden Age of Baby" where she's still relatively easy to supervise and takes reasonable weekend naps, I seized on the opportunity and baked something other than lactation cookies for the first time in nearly a year.

You may remember my undying love for local strawberries -- I was so excited when *proper* strawberry season arrived and I could introduce Charlotte to them.

The cupcakes we brought over to our friends' house were not only berry-ful in the cake batter, but topped with a crown of strawberry cream cheese frosting. The three-year-old solemnly declared them "the most exciting cupcakes I have ever seen" and tucked his away with a speed which reassured me I hadn't lost my touch. Indeed, I found them to be the perfect vehicle to highlight the summer's bounty. The cake was velvety and not a bit dry, and the frosting was decadent but not too sweet.

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Fresh Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting
from the Butternut Bakery Blog
(Originally a sheet cake, this is the ultimate unfussy summer dessert.)

Cupcakes
2 c all-purpose flour
3/4 c cake flour
2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
3/4 c vegetable oil
1 3/4 c granulated sugar
4 large eggs
1 1/2 c lightly pureed strawberries (pulse in a food processor until just a few small chunks remain)
1 t vanilla extract

Strawberry cream cheese frosting
8 oz cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 c unsalted butter, room temperature
3–4 c powdered sugar
1/4 c lightly pureed strawberries

Preheat oven to 350*F and line a cupcake pan with cupcake wrappers. Whisk together all-purpose flour, cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In another (large) bowl, whisk together the oil, sugar, eggs, strawberry puree, and vanilla extract. Fold dry ingredients into wet until barely mixed.

Pour batter into cupcake wrappers (this recipe made about 24 standard cupcakes). Bake for 15-18 min. or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean with a few crumbs clinging to the toothpick. Let cupcakes cool completely before frosting.

Using an electric mixer, cream together cream cheese and butter. Mix in two cups of powdered sugar, one cup at a time, then the strawberry puree. Add more powdered sugar until you've reached desired thickness. I added just a pinch of salt to bring out more of the strawberry flavor. Slather and serve!

The steaks are getting high (temperature).

NINE DAYS -- we're into the single digits! I can't believe our Baby Bun is *actually* almost here! Of course, I don't love change, so I try to do a few things at the same time together so they camouflage each other. Previous examples:

• Moved to Boston and started a new job (I suppose these were directly related, but within six months of getting engaged)
• Got married and started a new job (unrelated, and it was awkward stumbling over my own (new) name during introductions)

This week, at 38.5 weeks pregnant, I started a new job. I've learned a ton over the last three years from my job and team, but I'm ready for a new adventure (because the next few months were looking as though they could use some livening up...).

There were definitely moments when I doubted my ability to start anything else new right now, but with a lot of encouragement from family and friends (including an avalanche of much-appreciated text messages/outreach on my first day), things are off to a great start! I'm also very grateful that my new company is so understanding of the situation -- in times when you can't take this sort of thing for granted, I know (sadly) how lucky I am. I'm also extremely lucky that Nick is used to my "change clustering" behavior and has, as usual, encouraged and supported me every step of the way.

Of course, over the course of nearly ten years working, I've been perfecting my not-sad-desk-lunch technique. The silver lining of the pregnancy-mandated well-done steak is that it can be eaten cold as a great next-day salad. I'm the kind of person who finds many salads to be unfulfilling by themselves, but greens can be a superb vehicle for fruit, cheese and leftover meats or ancient grains -- no recipe needed. In this case, I took some backyard tomatoes (we rescued a few handfuls from the chipmunks!) and added cheddar cheese, leftover steak, avocado and greens, and dressed them in a simple vinaigrette (1:1 balsamic: olive oil, with salt and pepper). Bonus points for throwing in a few handfuls of leftover cooked farro.

Baby Bun, we are so excited to meet you -- our lives are about to change forever.

Shower power...A.K.A., it takes a village.

FOUR WEEKS TO GO!! I can hardly believe it. Per my pregnancy apps, today we have a large cantaloupe or two plates of beignets. We're into the home stretch with weekly doctor's appointments, and officially not flying anymore. But we're nearly ready with the essentials:

• Car seat: purchased (with an extra base for our second car...yes...it happened), not installed
• Hospital bag: all supplies acquired/list made, just need to pack
• Name: closing in on options, not quite finalized
• Bassinet: set up
• Pediatrician: selected/pre-registered
• Day care: on more (long) waiting lists than I was aware there are day cares in the Greater Boston Area
• Nursery: set up! Already full of love in the form of handmade art and blankets from friends and family, cards from well-wishers, an impressive collection of books and adorable swaddling cloths and outfits to keep our little Bun snug

The last item was all the result of not one but *two* generous and adorable baby showers: one was hosted by Mom and J, the other (surprise!) by my team at work.

At-Home Theme: Woodland Creatures! Featuring a few of these guys:

...an enormous (and delicious) savory and sweet spread, complete with the cutest (most delicious) cupcakes (owls and paw prints)...

...and yes, that's a fruit salad in a watermelon baby carriage:

At-Work Theme: "Baby-Q" (can you tell we're an innovation team?):

...a catered picnic from Sweet Cheeks Q (this plate was one of three rounds for me that day)...

...and cake from the most scrumptious bakery, Blacker's:

This baby is so loved already -- we are so lucky. Even if we're not completely checklist-ready, we're the more important kind of ready.

With hostesses, J and Mom

With Nick's mom and my mom

Yep, that's about right.

Some good ombre.

Week 29! Time is flying by. I'm happy to report that our list of pre-Bun to-dos is quickly shrinking, seemingly directly proportionally to the speed of my growing belly (I can't see my feet anymore when I look down). Making up for lost time in the first few months, I've been cooking and baking up a storm. Most recently, Nick's whole family visited a few weeks ago -- the Bev and Breakfast was at full occupancy -- and we celebrated not one, not two, but three June birthdays. With ambition I'll only ever be able to achieve fueled by pregnancy hormones, I made three birthday cakes...well, two cakes and a batch of cupcakes. Two recipes I have down pretty well by now:

• For Nick -- upon request -- the London Fog chocolate cake with Earl Grey-vanilla buttercream and salted caramel made another appearance:

• For one sister-in-law, I made a batch of lemon cupcakes with fresh blackberry buttercream:

For my other sister-in-law, I tried something new. She 1) tends not to love super-sweet/thick frosting (happy to play clean-up crew anytime), 2) loves coffee, 3) was about to head off for a fabulous Eurotrip and 4) for a few years has had balayage highlights which create an awesome ombre effect in her long, brown hair. Add the inspiration together, and I give you ombre tiramisu cake:

  

I've had this amazing cake book (as delicious to look at as to eat from) for a while now, and often what I find makes her cakes so stunning is that the author actually makes small-diameter, sky-high stacked cakes. The easiest way to achieve that is using a bunch of smaller pans, so this was the perfect opportunity to buy four, six-inch rounds (what's a house in the suburbs for, if not to have storage for a growing collection of cake pans?). I ultimately used a different recipe than one in the book to achieve a more "pure" tiramisu and ombre effect, and for my first time making it, I was quite pleased with how it came out.

These little cuties made four tiny layers: one vanilla, two coffee and one chocolate:

The secret weapon of this recipe is espresso powder (available in many grocery stores), which is used in every element of the cake:

It dissolves easily into whatever you've stirred it into, making it ideal for batters, liquids and even frosting -- all the flavor, zero graininess.

• How do you make three different types of cake with one recipe? By making one big batch of vanilla batter, then stirring in some espresso powder and cocoa into the corresponding layers.
• Then tiramisu (can I use that as a verb?) it all by painting the layers of cake with generous swipes of espresso syrup during assembly.
• The frosting is a not-too-sweet, also-layered mascarpone that ombres (taking another verb liberty) from vanilla to espresso to chocolate, swirling and blending sections together along the height of the cake sides.
• For an authentic finish, pipe remaining frosting into little dollops on top and sprinkle with cocoa, that handy espresso powder and a touch of powdered sugar.

...all creating an ombre homage for a Very Special birthday girl.

The legend of tuna noodle casserole...and other maternity advice.

Just entered Week 24! (App 1 tells me she's an ear of corn, and App 2 tells me she's a "demi-baguette.") The cutesy pregnancy literature out there calls the second trimester the "smooth second" because it's the most comfortable time...after the exhausting first trimester and before I become too big to bend over and buckle my sandals. I wouldn't have noticed that I'm nearly done with Part II of III except that Nick had to help me unbuckle a sandal yesterday, so I figured I'd better savor the next couple weeks and commemorate with another post.

As I mentioned in the reveal, I was pretty lucky as far as eating goes in the first trimester -- apart from a brief period of nausea and sometimes-debilitating smell-sensitivity, I didn't have terrible morning sickness nor insatiable, guilty cravings (with the exception of mac and cheese...miraculously I mostly craved fresh fruit). There was one minor meltdown circa Week 12 during which I sobbed into a previously-beloved bowl of ramen that tasted like a cast-iron pan, so filled with fear was I that food would never taste the same again. My older sisters -- one with a five-year-old and two-year-old, and the other with a nearly five-month-old -- reassured me relief was near.

That's been the most wonderful thing about being pregnant...your world becomes this loving melting pot of other people's advice (the most consistent piece being that you will get a lot of inconsistent advice), stuff (thank goodness for the generous collections of rotating maternity clothes, gender-neutral baby onesies and toys and gear) and traditions.

Around Week 16, I was getting pretty fed up (pun intended) with metallic-tasting food when my mom told me that while she was pregnant, she had had basically no appetite and awful morning sickness until a family friend brought over an unlikely meal: tuna noodle casserole and peach pie. She ate both with gusto and was apparently cured.

Regular readers may raise an eyebrow...Campbell's soup and canned tuna? I had grown up eating "tuna bake" with some regularity, and I assure you, it's delicious...but it had been probably over a decade since I had last eaten it. I got the recipe from my mom and gave it a try. It tasted like home, and I ate two giant pieces. Was I cured?? As it turned out, later that week I was back to metal-mouth -- my mom astutely pointed out it was probably because I hadn't made the peach pie -- but it didn't last much beyond that.

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Gretchen's Tuna Bake
Makes one 9x13" Pyrex (serves 8, or 2.5 pregnant women)

12 oz wide egg noodles
1 can Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup
1/2 can volume of milk
8-10 oz canned tuna (look for a brand/grade with low mercury, for Ms. Expecting)
1-2 c frozen green peas
1 c breadcrumbs
2 c shredded mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 400*F. Cook egg noodles in boiling, salted water, according to package instructions. Toss cooked noodles with drained tuna (flaked with a fork) and frozen peas. Add soup plus one half can of milk, topping off the rest with water (= 1 full can of liquid once the soup has been emptied). Top with shredded mozzarella and breadcrumbs. Bake 30 min. or until golden brown and bubbly.

Food and Bev and Bun.

It's been a few months, but I promise I have a good excuse this time...three hints:

1. I haven't feel like cooking much (what?).
2. I couldn't be in the same room with onions sautéing in butter (never before!).
3. I've been eating my burgers well-done (now you know something is going on).

Yes, in September, Food and Bev will add a new diner to the reservation! We are so excited to be expecting a baby girl. Before we knew what we were having, we wanted to be able to call her something besides "It," so we dubbed her "Bun" (a double play on a loose tie to a family name, and, well, she's in the oven).

Thankfully, things have been pretty smooth. The worst of it has probably been the fact that, for the first 16-18 weeks, food didn't taste the same. I couldn't season anything properly (only once did Nick actually not finish his over-salted oatmeal). The more umami, the worse things tasted...I completely skipped braise season this year. Soy sauce was out. Even chocolate lost its appeal. But otherwise, I've been very lucky, and it's been pretty great. Family, friends and co-workers have been excited and supportive, offering well-wishes and welcome advice.

Like a proper Millennial mom-to-be, I have two separate phone apps to track the pregnancy. Sure, there are other mom-to-be discussion forums, places to keep notes from doctors' appointments, calendars to log weight gain, nutrition and exercise. But my favorite part is definitely the weekly update (refreshing every Thursday, based on my due date) that tells me what size fruit/vegetable Bun is. Though the produce progression has been a bit suspect (the tomato appeared four weeks after the orange), it's great fun to imagine. The primary reason I got the second app was because an also-pregnant friend told me it had an option to size the baby based on a Parisian Bakery theme. This week we're on banana and brioche, respectively.

Just over half way through -- appetite and energy to cook are both back in full force, so expect to see more posts this summer!

China, Part III: Double dipping.

To wrap this China series, we end with an encore story. Yes, we stuffed ourselves full of the greatest hits we had been dreaming of for months leading up to the trip (see the grey squares on the NINGBO card for a small sampling). Yes, we had our adventurous share of unfamiliar fare (I forgot to mention the waitress who took one look at Nick and asked in the local dialect, "Should we make him a steak?" which my parents quickly declined). But of all the amazing food we tried, we only repeated one restaurant the entire trip:

Officially "Hong Yuen Nan Men Hot Pot" (but better known by its short name, "Nan Men," or "South Gate" based on its location at the South Gate of Tian Tan in Beijing), this local gem is famous for its Mongolian lamb hot pot -- my parents had found it nearly ten years ago. Our first dinner in Beijing (not counting the late-night room service when we arrived the night before), we hopped in a taxi and Dad tentatively asked the driver, "Nan Men?" who replied with a big smile, thumbs-up and Mandarin even I could understand: "Nan Men is the best lamb hot pot around."

We arrived maybe an hour after opening (like amateurs) and had to wait in a bullpen of lined-up rows of chairs for what felt like eternity (but was probably more like 45 minutes). We were finally rewarded for our patience with a cozy, screened-off booth. Each table has its own gas hookup, and on top of the burner sits a copper pot with a central chimney (kind of like a bundt pan with a tall center, around which the ring-lid slides up and down). My parents said this is a remnant of back in the day when hot pot was simmered over coals which filled the chimney for maximum heated surface area:

The menus were somewhat like giant, reusable sushi menu cards: they were laminated, and you select your components with a grease pencil which gets wiped away for the next guest. The waitress came over and lit the burner with a deft flick of a match, and we placed our order.

Meanwhile, we enjoyed the table snacks:

But we quickly discovered that the only snack that really mattered were these perfectly roasted peanuts:

We had ordered enough food for about twelve people (there were four of us), starting with two types of lamb (one cut was fresh, another frozen) and beef; building on a giant platter of assorted mushrooms; tofu; followed by vegetables and noodles (both bean threads and wheat noodles).

Once the pot was hot, it was off to the races! Just dip a few seconds in the boiling brew...

...dab the prize in your personal bowl of tahini (swirled with a dot of what I think was cilantro paste and another of a mild chili paste)...then pop into your mouth and enjoy nirvana.

It was so cozy in our little booth, building flavors and memories in the copper pot. We sloshed happily home and were fueled to take on the rest of our final leg of the trip. Though we enjoyed amazing and special meals the nights after (the Imperial chef's tasting, ridiculous Peking duck), we had one "free space" the final night and unanimously opted to come back for a second visit.

THIS time we wasted no time -- nor stomach room -- and optimized based on our first experience:

• Arrive RIGHT at opening (we timed our exit from Tian Tan perfectly) -- we were the last group to be seated before guests were corralled into the bullpen, mooing unhappily
• Ignore other snacks and order more roasted peanuts
• Order fresh lamb only -- forget the beef and frozen lamb
• Order half the mushrooms
• Ask for a bit of salt for the end broth: at home, we do hot pot with broth, but there they used water with herbs and spices. This is more than sufficient for imparting good flavor to the dippables (especially with the tahini condiments), but just a touch of salt brought out all the amazing brewed flavor, and we drank every drop.

It was the perfect end to an amazing trip.

The South Gate of Tian Tan, or Nan Men:

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When we were first planning our trip to Asia, my parents asked where we wanted to go -- at first we were interested in Japan, Singapore, and other places outside China in addition to the Motherland. Ultimately we focused on China, knowing that we could go other places on our own someday, but couldn't possibly experience the ancestral villages and less English-speaking parts of the country without my parents. We are so glad we made the choices we did -- between thousands of photos and over 40 pages of journal scribbles, we'll be savoring this one for a while.