This is kind of a long video, and it’s the weekend so I’m being lazy, so I didn’t bother to embed the video. You can check it out on the gallery, here.
Leyla doing her first crayon drawing
February 20th, 2010Leyla Walking Around Bumping Into Things
February 14th, 2010Leyla recently started putting things over her head and then walking around blind, bumping into things. We’re not sure why, but it’s kind of fun to watch.
Leyla’s First Drawing
March 24th, 2009Leyla made this drawing using the Draw! program for Android on my phone. I selected the different colors and then let her draw for a while with each color, using her fingers. Drawing time ended when she tried to eat the phone.
Leyla's First Drawing
Leyla Eating and Laughing
March 8th, 2009Leyla has been laughing for months, and we’ve been trying to get it on camera, but every time the camera comes out, she clams up. Not last night. Last night, while we were feeding her, she did her best to make up for that. Click the image to get to the video.
Leyla laughing and eating solids
Leyla in the Jumperoo
March 7th, 2009I finally got a video of Leyla playing in the Jumperoo. Nomming of the plastic bug and other inedible things ensued. Click the image to watch the video.
Leyla’s First “Solid” Food
March 3rd, 2009Leyla has been acting very interested in our food lately, and after putting it off as long as we could, we finally decided to give her some rice cereal with her milk. Click the image below to watch the video — I haven’t been happy with how the videos show up when embedded in this blog.
Leyla trying rice cereal
Also, please let me know if you have any problems with the video. It was looking a little choppy to me. Perhaps I’m using too high-quality of a setting when encoding these in flash video format.
Leyla Attacks Smoochy
February 15th, 2009Leyla spontaneously started attacking her plush frog Smoochy the other day. We think it may be related to teething. We did not know she was going to do this when we turned on the camera. We just turned it on because she was being cute.
Leyla posing with Fortune
January 25th, 2009Leyla picked up her bear (Fortune) today and pretty much posed. Of course I obliged her and took a picture.
Brock’s Thai Drunken Noodles
January 9th, 2009We tried this recipe (or the one at the link at the bottom) last night for the first time, but found that it needed a lot of tweaking for our tastes. We’re also not strictly vegetarian, as we allow seafood, so Amanda made the very good suggestion of adding fish sauce to the recipe. Neither of us has had very good luck duplicating restaurant-grade drunken noodles, and while this is good it’s not spot-on. It may just be our reluctance to pour on the oil. However, if you have suggestions, or simply a better recipe, we’d very much like to hear about it.
Ingredients
7 oz. dried flat rice-stick noodles
Sauce Ingredients
6 tbs light soy sauce
2 tbs oyster sauce
3 tsp brown sugar
2 tsp fish sauce
Stir-Fry Ingredients
3 tbs canola oil (or more if you can spare the calories)
1 block extra firm tofu (~1lb)
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
6 thai chilies, sliced into rings (to taste)
2 stalks broccoli
1/2 medium red onion, thinly sliced
1 cup bean sprouts
2 cups thai basil leaves (regular basil if you have to)
Instructions
I highly recommend you break the noodles into sane lengths before soaking them. Soak noodles for 15 minutes in water. Meanwhile, chop/slice tofu, garlic, broccoli, onion, and chilies. Pick basil leaves from stalks.
Remove noodles from water and start water boiling as soon as their 15 minutes are up.
Heat oil in a large skillet or wok over medium-high heat. Once it just starts to smoke, carefully add tofu and cook for about 5 minutes. You want them golden brown, but that may not happen with 3 tbs of oil. While you wait, take care of the noodles and sauce (below).
Your water for the rice noodles should be boiling at this point. Add them and let them cook for 1 minute, then strain them and set them aside.
Prepare the sauce (mix sauce ingredients in a bowl).
Add garlic to the wok and cook until it is very lightly browned. Then add the chilies, broccoli, and onion, and stir-fry until the onions just start to become tender. Then add the sauce, noodles, 2/3 of the sprouts and basil, and stir-fry until the sprouts become translucent and everything is heated through.
Transfer to serving platter and put remaining bean sprouts on the top or side.
Based on the recipe here.
Leyla playing with plushies
December 18th, 2008We have a very very soft plush bunny, and a kiwi from New Zealand. Leyla is starting to giggle, and she likes it when we play with her with these toys. Long video, but cute (of course), after the cut.