Moroccan Bites

Well, we did it! Pablo and I were able to drive up to San Antonio the after Christmas and it was the perfect opportunity to try out the famous Moroccan Bites from "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives." As you may have remembered, the last time we went the restaurant was closed because it was a Tuesday. We were a little afraid it might be closed again for whatever reason: the day after Christmas, renovation, etc. With our bad luck on the last visit, we imagined any possibility, haha. But we arrived, hungry and hopeful, to a very open Moroccan Bites. 
The wall of the front entryway is filled with plaques and awards. The place is well decorated, with areas set apart to look like authentic seating complete with cushions and rugs. Music played in the background and paintings of various Moroccan scenes and people hung between decorated lamp fixtures. Everything was so colorful and interesting. 
We started out with the famous Arabic mint tea. Have you ever read Three Cups of Tea ? That kind of mint tea. Oh man was that stuff divine. Understanding how iconic and important to the culture the tea was enhanced that aspect of the experience too. 
Our waitress helped us pick out the best on the menu and she didn't disappoint us. I had a traditional lamb shank tagini (stew cooked in a traditional triangle-like oven) with Moroccan bread and for Pablo a meat combo with chicken, lamb, and Moroccan sausage on top of saffron rice. The tagini, we both decided, was the winner of the two. The lamb shank came with the bone in and was topped with almonds and prunes. For dessert, we ordered the almond cake. Our waitress's sister makes all the cakes and she swears by them, so we couldn't refuse. That cake was seriously the moistest cake we've ever had. It practically melted in your mouth, no joke. It was a great way to end a great meal.

 

 
 I still think the Jerusalem Grill was our favorite, with their hummus and grilled vegetables; but that tagini would bring us back again for sure. Next time we visit San Antonio, in about three weeks, we want to go Mexican. I know we live in Mexico, but sophisticated, culinary Mexican is different than the street Mexican we have all over where we live. It would be nice to taste some elevated form of tacos and beans sometime.  

Feliz Navidad !

 Get ready for a lot of pictures:)
This year Pablo and I had a Mexican Christmas. We ate tamales, opened gifts Christmas Eve, and sang karaoke. Christmas Eve morning found the Velez family slaving away in the kitchen with the preparations for the traditional Christmas tamales. We split the duties assembly-line style and worked out  enough tamales to last all week. The kitchen smelled like roasted bell peppers, pork, and chile seeds.  
In the afternoon, after we had washed the masa flour off our hands, Pablo and I headed out to a nearby ranch to play "Capture the Flag" with the missionaries and some friends from the branch. When Pablo and I think "ranch", we conjure up images of rich farmland, maybe a grove of trees there somewhere. Nope, not here. Haha. What met us at the ranch and served as our playing field were miles of thorn bushes, scrubby trees, and just about any solid, scratchy sort of bush/tree you can think of. All of us left looking like we'd gotten into a major fight with a wild cat, haha. But the weather was warm and beautiful, and we all had a great time.
In the Mexican tradition, presents are opened at midnight Christmas Eve.There is no Santa Claus or Christmas morning. So P J had all the attention on him while he "opened" his presents a little earlier so he could go to bed. Tio and Tia bought him books and clothes, his Abuelos bought him his first Sunday suit, and Pablo and I gave him yet even more clothes. He's going to be a fashionable little guy this coming year ;) 
Put the little guy to sleep and it was time for the feast we had all been waiting for. Then gifts were exchanged and karaoke sung. Pablo and I did not make it to midnight, haha. I think we were in bed by 10:30. I think running through the brush earlier that afternoon tired us out, that, and eating way more tamales and pecan pie than should be admitted. Over all, we had a wonderful Christmas and loved that we could share it with Pablo's family. 
 P J got a real treat the 23rd of this December when he got to spend some time with his bis-abuela, his great grandmother Soto. She stayed the night with us on her way up from Mexico to spend Christmas in Texas with more family. She knitted a sweater for P J. I love it. I can't wait until P J is big enough to wear it, and how special is it that his great grandmother made it for him. Definitely a keepsake.

Showing off our battle wounds

Kisses from Tia:)

Playing with his presents

Our first Christmas Eve as the three of us :)

P J waking up on his first Christmas morning

Great-Grandma Soto and her handmade gift

 

What a special time of year to remember what things are most important in life and celebrate the birth of our Savior with family. I can't wait to establish our own Christmas traditions to help teach P J how special the Christmas season is and why we celebrate it with such joy. Merry Christmas friends and far away family and a Happy New Year!

Three Months

Today our Baby Cakes is 3 months!!

-- He is SO CLOSE to rolling over! I watch him fling his leg over his body until he's on his side and wait, excited, to see if he'll make it this time. He's definitely trying!

-- He is always so happy to have his diaper changed. He smiles, laughs, and waves his hands like he's at a party.

-- He likes having lotion smeared on everywhere but his chest and arms. He doesn't mind his face but hates the chest. I thought it would be the other way around, haha.

-- He talks up a storm! We've moved from "oooh" and "aaahs" to "gggggggg." Sometimes he talks pretty urgently, like he's surprised or really excited about something. My favorite is when I lay him under his play gym and he throws his hands up and shouts out his "GOOOOGLAA!!" Seriously, I can't get enough.

-- He's grabbing! Everything, anything. Now we are working on the depth perception and hand-eye coordination, haha. Because right now we'll place something in front of him and he'll bring up his hand, opening and closing his fists. Pablo and I are both like "You have about another 3 inches forward to go buddy." Haha.

-- He's now 14 lbs

-- We have started putting him to sleep at 8:00 now and he sleeps until 6:30 in the morning, usually with a feeding around 1 am. It gives Pablo and I a chance to chill on the couch with the television or cook our dinner together. 

-- And my personal favorite... he's LAUGHING!! One time, Pablo's family and I were sitting around and P J let out a huge chuckle. It startled all of us in the room! We followed his eyes and realized he was laughing at Abuelo (Grampa Velez) tearing up his junk mail. My favorite is "attacking" him with kisses. Oh man does he laugh and laugh! 

Happy 3 months Chaungito!

Santi Clause

There isn't much time now until Christmas! It feels great to have our cards sent out and our gifts wrapped and given to loved ones. Last night we went to the English branch Christmas Party to celebrate with our church and eat lots of good food. People in our branch really know how to cook! Sister Loveland brought her famously delicious bread rolls and Sister Odell baked a four-layer Schwarzwalderkirschetorte (spell checker just asked me if I meant Schwarzenegger, haha), which is German for Black Forest cherry cake. It was covered in chocolate frosting, sweet cherries with glaze, and had a perpetual tilt that made everyone wonder at what point it would eventually collapse. But it was gone so fast it never got the chance :)
 Each table was given a day for the "Twelve Days of Christmas" and we competed for the loudest verse. We were "Four goose a-laying" and shouted it with pride when it came around to us. 
Our little baby cakes got plenty of love and plenty of people willing to hold him while we ate. He already has a fan club with the branch:) It's amazing how small he looks when I see him with others. So little. When I see that I want to hold him so close to me and never let him go, but I hold it in and just hug all the tighter when I get him back. He was awake for the entire evening, except for the loud singing/shouting competition with the days of Christmas. How he managed to be asleep for the loudest part of the evening I'll never know. 

P J getting some lovin'

 Good ol' St. Nicholas made an appearance. He hasn't forgotten us all the way down here:) When  PJ woke up we introduced him to Santa Clause for the first time. I was curious to see how he would react. I'd seen enough babies get totally freaked out by the curly beard. Santa Clause is a BIG guy when your 13 pounds and staring up at him! Our baby boy must be so used to being shared with others that he just looked at him, settled comfortably into the fluffy red suit and looked at mommy.I'm glad he woke up so we could get a photo of his first time on Santa's lap.

Pablo and I celebrating at Pablo's work Christmas party

 

We left PJ home with a babysitter this past week to celebrate Christmas with Pablo's job. We had a great time, but were so excited to go home and see our little baby cakes! There he was sleeping like a charm, all perfect and snug. We watched him sleep awhile, commenting on his little nose and peaceful breathing. Then we did the thing no parent should ever do. We woke him up. Two hours later we were laughing with each other as we took turns bouncing the babes, trying to get him to sleep again! Why did we do this to ourselves?! haha. Good time, good times and lesson learned :)

Bed Head

 PJ's hair has been going crazy on us lately. He's growing a cute layer of short hair all over, especially on the top and front. It's the long hair he was born with that going a little wacky. It never wants to lay flat and insists on sticking up- straight up. Pablo wants to cut it already. I can understand his desire, his hair is starting to resemble a mullet in the back, haha. We'll see. I feel like he's still too young to be putting sharp objects close to his head and I can't bare to cut his newborn hair. Besides, I think that 'straight-up' style is kinda cute!

A Day in San Antonio...and Jerusalem

 We got to make a mini-trip to San Antonio, Texas this last tuesday! San Antonio is about 3 hours away from us and we haven't been able to stop there and enjoy everything it has to offer. It was exciting to think about all the restaurants and parks the city offers that we were missing in the small town AND we were both ready to get some different food in our system besides Mexican. Since we are both avid Food Network and Travel Channel followers, we turned to their vast pool of reviewed restaurants for culinary guidance :). Turns out San Antonio has 10 restaurants that have been featured on TV, with one place in particular that caught our eye; a small joint called Moroccan Bites. Guy Fieri featured the place on his Food Network program "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives" and it had received multiple awards. Can we say "YUUMMMM" ?

So we piled the baby chumps into his carseat early Tuesday morning and headed north to the big city. I found this cool Q&A sheet for couples on Pinterest and printed it out for us to try during the roadtrip. (http://www.lovethegrows.com/p/qa-questions.html) Most of the questions we already knew, but it was fun to talk about stuff we hadn't really thought about or expound on stuff we had. We laughed a lot, haha!  

Mommy and her favorite little monkey:)

 So here's the fun part. JPablo gets Tuesdays off of work every week, so we planned our appointment and day trip to San Antonio on his day off. Well, guess which day is the one and only day in which Moroccan Bites is closed?  That's right, Tuesday :)

What are the chances?!

 We had a fun time laughing at the sheer coincidence of the situation, while at the same time being really, really, really hungry. Pablo's brother met us in the empty parking lot and we all loaded into his car in search of some good ethnic cuisine. An internet search brought up Jerusalem Grill. There were no bad reviews, it was one of San Antonio's top ten, none of us in the car had really had authentic Israeli dishes before, and we were soooooooo hungry.

 The place smelled like spices, meat, olive oil, and balsamic. They had the place decorated with fabrics, painted walls, and featured Arabic music videos on a television. It smelled and looked authentic. It was a first for all of us so we ordered the Family Feast, which introduced a little bit of everything.

 And they weren't kidding when they said 'feast'. Bowls were placed on our table piled with hommos, baba ghannoug, tabouleh salad, grape leaves, Jerusalem salad, fried cauliflower, shawarma beef and chicken, and pita bread. We were just making ourselves comfortable when our servers brought us a plate of chicken, lamb, and grilled vegetables, another plate piled with falafels, and a dish of Israeli rice.

Zeniff and JPablo ordered this strawberry-flavored soda from Israel

There was SO MUCH FOOD on our table! And it was, seriously, all delicious. We piled our favorites on our little plates and then scooped them up with our pita bread. 

 We had enough to continue the feast again when we got home. This plate is maybe a quarter of the meal we had and just some of what we brought home.

You can see the grape leaves in the forefront, rice, and veggies. Behind the rice is a fried cauliflower and just hiding behind that is the top of a falafel. To the right of the falafel and in-between two pieces of cucumber is the eggplant (it looks brown).

I was crazy for the eggplant, cauliflower, hommos, Jerusalem salad, and the shawarma meats. The grape leaves had a sharp green olive taste that I enjoyed to. Pablo really like the meat, eggplant, and kabobs:) Everything seemed flavored with oil and vinegars and those flavors really resonated with our palettes. I think the Middle Eastern cuisine is going to be my favorite for a little bit, haha.

It was really nice to enjoy an experience like that and open our doors to whole new flavors and spices. We can't wait to go back and try the Moroccan restaurant and then we want to try an Indian or central south African place.

We were in San Antonio for a special appiontment of PJ's. The ladies at the reception desk could not get enough of him. They LOVED him! I owe it to the monkey on his shirt with and the chubby cheeks they both share, haha.

 

We arrived back at the house just in time to get the baby cakes bathed and in bed, change into some baggy, comfy sweats and watch our Tuesday night flick--Abbey's Ultimate Dance Competition. Yes, Pablo and I BOTH love that show-- there's no shame ;)

Manti

This week Pablo and I have had a visitor! His name is Manti. He's been hanging out on our door for a week now in different positions. First he was hanging out on the left panel, then near the door handle; there was a moment he thought he had left, but it turns out he had only migrated to the top window. In the pictures he's hanging out on the far right of the door. It was fun to see him as we rushed in and out on our various errands. On this day, after we dropped off the groceries inside, we grabbed the camera and rushed out to take these pictures of our praying mantis friend. It's a good thing we did because, after a week and three days of seeing our praying friend, he disappeared the next day. Come back soon Manti  :)

Hellooooooooooooooo

Love, the Velez Fam

 Pablo and I decided to send out some Christmas cards this year and wanted to add in a picture of our new family of three. But then we ended up mostly being silly, making faces, leaving PJ in the middle wondering exactly what he got himself into. Of course we didn't notice the tree was turned off until after ALL the pictures were taken and we were sweltering in those sweaters, haha. Too much fun...

Really Mom and Dad? Really? This thing is going to fall off.

...and there it goes.

Eh, maybe we'll go with this one - even though my face looks kinda funny in this one....

An Adorable Turkey and a Delicious Duck

This year there were just four of us for Thanksgiving: Pablo, his brother Zeniff, P J, and I. The morning was pretty lazy and laid back.

P J fell asleep while watching the Macy's Day Parade with me. He's going through this thing lately where we doesn't want to be flat on his back. So we've been propping him up and he's happier with that.

Earlier in the week I took some time to make a turkey out of PJ's hand and foot prints. It took some skill to get those outlines since his hands are usually fists and clenched. But I managed to get them and the resulting turkey is ADORABLE!! I "laminated" it by just putting packaging tape over it on both sides and cutting around the edges- I want to keep this cute little poultry bird forever, haha.

 Pablo came home from work at 5 and that's when the real cooking began! We had mashed potatoes, corn, bread rolls, stuffing, gravy, and duck. Pablo and I saw the duck while out shopping the days before and decided to go for it. We've never had it before and saw it as a culinary adventure. It was good! 

Duck is different from turkey in that it doesn't need to be cooked all the way through; kinda like a steak. When we cut into it it was pink and juicy. I like my steak medium rare so I picked up some of the pinker pieces while Pablo grabbed ones on the cooked side. It turns out that barely cooked duck is the best way to eat it, since Pablo's cooked pieces really started tasting like liver. All in all, it was a big hit and very tasty!

And as a side note- Pablo ate, and loved, my sweet potato dessert! Which is so awesome because in the four previous Thanksgivings I've shared with him I've never seen him even touch the sweet potato dishes. I think he tried it this year just to please me and was pleasantly surprised. What can I say? I owe all the credit to the terrible, yet soooo yummy, combination of butter, brown sugar, and marshmallows:) 

Every year has come with blessings in which to give thanks, and this year is no different:

-- I am so very grateful for my husband, JuanPablo. With everything we've been through this year, I have found myself leaning on him more then ever. Not only has he taken the weight, but he's lifted me up :) 

-- I am grateful for family. My parents, my brothers and their families, and my sister. I am grateful for Pablo's family and the love and support they show me. And I am grateful for my own family--I have been blessed with a handsome and healthy son and my best friend to share eternity with.

-- I'm grateful for my faith and the strength it gives me. Being a new mom and awaiting replies from graduate programs to plan where we will live next year has been a little scary. My knowledge and faith in personal revelation and the gift of the Holy Ghost puts my mind at peace. 

-- And I'm grateful for the opportunity to be a mother. I would not trade the responsibility for anything less. I know that there are some who maybe haven't been able to be parents yet and I do not take the blessing of motherhood lightly. 

"It is not HAPPY people

who are thankful,

it is THANKFUL

people who are happy."

 

Now that the fridge is devoid of Thanksgiving feast leftovers, the tree is coming up and we are ready for Christmas! This is my first Christmas with no snow and no cold weather. I think I could get used to that ;)