Baby Boom Boom is soon to have a new, real name, he's on his way! Stacey and Bowen are at the hospital as I write this. Oh, a baby, a beautiful little boy, everyone is so excited. A baby. Soon to be called, by his mommy, a Cuteness and a Fruitzer, two very Stacey words for little cutie pies. He's pretty much guaranteed, via both his mommy and daddy, big hazel-brown eyes, curly hair, and a wiry, athletic frame. Good cheek bones. Full lips. Smarts. Wit. An artistic eye. Iconoclast urgings. Ants in his pants. Gentleness. In other words, he'll be - is - awesome! Can't wait to meet him!

Update: Boom Boom is going to be delivered via cesarean at some point this afternoon, no word yet if he's arrived... I'm freaking out a little bit, which surprises me, so I went to the store and am making healthy food to freeze and take over to Stace when she goes home. Blueberry muffins, banana walnut bread, vegetable soup, empanadas (I'm making those for us for dinner, doubling the recipe, freezing some for her). I bought everything organic, I kept picturing that teeny little baby (since Stace will nurse him, he'll eat what she eats), no chemicals for Boom Boom! I'm so excited!!!

HE'S BORN! Cooper Meyer Howard, March 12, 2006, 12:25 pm, 5 lbs, 15 oz!!! He's healthy, adorable, blonde hair and eyebrows, and totally asleep right now (all this via Stace, I haven't seen him yet, of course). Welcome to the world, Cooper - a new little peanut! Stacey is doing well, resting, and so is Bowen. We have to wait until tomorrow to visit - darn. But I'll posts some pics of the little cuteness as soon as I can...

Well, adventures in empanada making tonight. (As I look at the empanadas in the oven, I'm giggling that I chose to make them - they not-so-subtly resemble a pregnant woman's round tummy; little Freudian action there, ha.) They're in the oven baking, and I think will taste fine, but there were definitely a few bumps (nice pun! What's my problem?) along the way. I clipped the recipe out of this past Thursday's StarTribune. First of all, the measurement for one of the seasonings, adobo, is way too much - 2 tablespoons. I foolishly did not taste the seasoning first - pure salt, I basically dumped 2 tablespoons of powdered salt into one pound of hamburger. Hey, no one likes salty tasties more than me, but this was inedible. I actually rinsed the cooked ground beef with hot water to try to remove some of the salt. I also quickly diced and boiled two potatoes and stirred them in, also to dilute the saltiness. The two steps helped, enough to make it edible, but oh my am I going to be a puff ball tomorrow. Damn. Then, it says to pull the dough into 20 tennis ball-size pieces (to make 20 empanadas). I could see pretty quickly that there wasn't nearly enough dough for 20 tennis-ball size pieces, in fact, the recipe made 11 large ping-pong ball size pieces. Which matched up pretty well to the filling, and made what I would call normal-size empanadas, so I guess it's just a mistake in the description. But irritating! So I'll post the heavily revised recipe, and check back in with a conclusion on their flavor...

OK: the crust is wrong, wrong, wrong. Too hard. Not enough fat in it (which made it incredibly easy to work with, I should have known), so very hard and brittle. I think I'll have to pass on posting this recipe - sorry! I'll work on it a bit more and post it at a later date. Damn! We'll eat them anyhow, they're tasty, they're just not quite right...