it's october...

finally. september really seemed to drag. maybe it's because i couldn't kill any time by going to the grocery store. other than milk, meat and cheese, everything else was pretty much off limits for "whole food september." we visited the farmer's markets as always, loading up on lots of fruits and veggies, but gosh, a girl would really like a bag of chips here and there. (if my tortilla recipes had worked, i could have made myself tortilla chips--but i digress.) throughout september, i found myself highly involved with a non-napping lucy, and didn't get to try as many recipes as i'd have liked. of those i did try, there were some successes (the granola, stuffed zucchini, and homemade pizza dough) and some total failures (tortillas (flour AND corn)) that ultimately became dog food.

the upside to the last month is that our pantry is looking much cleaner. we ate through a bunch of canned stuff, and also cooked up some boxed baked goods (peanut butter cookies, shortbread, crumb cake, brownies) that had been hanging around for, um, years. our freezer is also manageable again with stuff like bagel bites, trader joes bambino pizzas and fishsticks gone (all of the aforementioned purchased while i was pregnant!). it does feel like a fresh start to what's in our house. i can't say that we learned too much, as we had a ton of food on hand and also got invited to eat with family quite a bit (i suspect they felt sorry for jeremy). and you might have read a prior post on our general failure of limiting dining out to twice during the month.

i walk away from september with a bit of regret that i didn't cook more (i was dying to try my hand at making butter & a bisquick-type baking mix), but also a teeny bit of enlightenment about the reward of making food from scratch. i like knowing what's going into my body. i'd already pretty much assumed that i'd be making lucy's food when she starts solids, but this experience (along with melamine-tainted infant formula in china) cemented that assumption.

as an added bonus, i am now fitting kinda-back-to-normal-comfortably into my pre-pregnancy jeans. this is nice. this probably has very to do little with how we ate (can you believe that list of desserts?) and more with the passing of yet another month, but hey, i'll take it without question.

as for what to give up in october--well, i think i am taking a month off. between general sleeplessness over the last few days, stress about possibly returning to work part-time, and coming down with some kinda achy-icky bug, i'm doing myself a favor and taking it easy. perhaps i'll come up with something for later in the month, when all is running smoothly and beautifully again.

a girl can hope, can't she?