Truth and myths: Gestation and activities of induction

So Jenny is 40+2 (weeks+days) now, and now people arent waiting to see us to ask when the baby is coming. Now they are calling, texting, facebooking, emailing - "Is she here yet? Why is she late?"

Like many people, we were hoping for a 40wk gest

ation. Its the standard right? Thats why they give due dates, right? Turns out not. The average gestation for a primiparous (first baby) mom according to a large study in the 1980s was 288 days. Thats 41 weeks and 1 day. True plenty of people go much earlier, plenty go later I suppose, though I havent heard of many going later than 40 and a few days (even in my OB rotations in med school and internship).

Curious about the distribution? Check out the graph.

So, while we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our little angel, I guess we shouldn't be surprised that she isnt here yet.

Then there is the whole thing about what to do to get the baby to come. We are getting these all the time now, espcially since she is past 40 weeks. Unsolicited advice from random strangers even. The most common ones are things like walking, keeping active. Yup, we've done that. Jenny has been doing an hour on the elliptical machine each day, and on top of that when I've been home we've done walks around parks, around shoreline in mountain view, and Fremont Older open space preserve.

What else do people suggest? Of course these are all anecdotal things that people were randomly doing when the baby decided it was time to leave the womb, but they are fun to talk about. My mom suggests picking up golf balls at a driving range or mini golf course. People have told us to have Jenny wash the car, mow the lawn, drink castor oil, have lots of sex, eat ribs (they cant be BBQ sauced, the have to be dry rubbed ones), eat jelly donuts, vacuum the house, bounce on trampolines or birthing balls. There is drinking a lot, or purposefully dehydrating yourself too.

Lots of stuff to try!

If Jenny makes it to dinner, we'll be having some Mongolian style ribs that were on the cover of this month's Bon Appetit mag, Sorry random mountain biker dude, we are gonna go without the dry rub.

Why is everything about food?

True, one reason I started this was to keep a collection of the keeper recipes that I've tried... but I'm realizing its kinda monotonous. Maybe I should mix it up a little bit. Wine? Medicine? Baby stuff? We'll see.

Gotta love the Farmer's Market

First weekend this month where I was free to make it to the Farmer's market, and we were happy to come across a great selection of produce including a cool fruit that I really like, the pluot.


First off, one stand had some awesome heirloom tomatoes, and sweet fresh white corn was in abundance. We grabbed some basil and a sweet baguette from Acme Baking to make lunch, a mixture of sliced heirloom tomatoes, pesto, and premium olive oil. On the side we grilled the sweet white corn and sliced up some sweet baguette crostini. Yum.

Then, we focused on what to do with the pluots. Pluots are hybrids of plums and apricots. They look like plums, have the same texture, but a sweeter flavor without the acidity. Bon Appetit this month has a little feature on them, with a couple recipes. We decided on the Smoked Duck and Pluot salad. Looking at the ingredients, its hard to see how the flavors would mix well, but the dish was really surprisingly tasty and harmonious. I wanna get more pluots just to repeat this. Delicious!

Recipe here.

We skipped out on the peanuts because some people have said perinatal exposure to peanuts may increase incidence of peanut allergy, and we dont want that with the new baby. nstead of doing just frisee, we used a Champs Elysees salad mix from Trader Joes that had the frisee with green leaf lettuce radicchio and carrots.

Dressing:

• 2 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar
• 2 tablespoons chopped shallot
• 1 tablespoon chopped peeled fresh ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon wasabi powder (horseradish powder)*
• 1/3 cup peanut oil or vegetable oil

Salad:

• 6 ounces frisée, torn (about 2 heads)
• 1/2 cup chopped salted roasted peanuts, divided
• 3/4 pound Pluots (about 3 large or 5 small), halved, pitted, thinly sliced
• 3/4 pound smoked duck breast, sliced
• 5 large Thai basil sprigs or 3 regular basil sprigs, leaves torn, stems discarded
• 1/4 cup chopped green onions

For dressing:
Puree vinegar, shallot, ginger, and wasabi powder in mini processor. Gradually add oil; puree.

For salad:
Toss frisée and 1/4 cup peanuts in medium bowl with enough dressing to coat. Divide salad among plates. Arrange Pluots and duck over frisée. Spoon more dressing over salad. Sprinkle with basil, green onions, and remaining peanuts.

I need new tools

Jenny is in nesting mode (now 39+ weeks), so today we did a bunch of errands and housekeeping things, including changing the filter on our air conditioning unit. The door is a bitch to get to open, and I was disappointed to find that my toolbox today was a huge mess of rusted crap. Made do, but its time to get new tools.

Great American Food and Music Fiasco

Another weekend waiting for the wife to pop... We decided to head out to Shoreline Amphitheater for the Inaugural Great American Food and Music Fest.

The premise: collecting an array of America's "Best dishes" in one festival along with some musical entertainment. Included in this collection were Pastrami sandwiches from Katz's Deli from NYC, Hot Dogs from Pink's in LA, Graeter's Ice Cream from Cincinnati, Buffalo Wings from Anchor Bar in NYC, Bagels and Lox from Barney Greengrass in NYC, Southside Market Brisket and Sausage from Texas, Tony Luke's Cheesesteaks from Philly, and Junior's Cheesecakes from Brooklyn. There were also a lot of demonstrations from Food Network celeb chefs like Guy Fieri, Bobby Flay, and more.

The price was steep, at $40 a ticket which included a plate from one of the vendors. Any additional food or drink would be from $2-12 extra. Given that it would cost well over $40 to fly to all these places to try this stuff out, we figured it might be worth it.

Unfortunately, it wasnt. The idea was great, the execution was abysmal. They expected about 5000 people at the inaugural event, and some 15,000 showed up. Lines were horrendous. When we got inside, we waited in line for almost 2 hours not even getting halfway towards the Philly cheesesteaks (our first stop). Ice cream was plentiful (and delicious - i might have to mail order some of this stuff from Ohio) because it was all pre-packaged and available at multiple booths However, each of the other vendors had just one stand, insufficient staff, and there were just way too many people and not enough food.

After 2.5 ours, we gave up, went to the front, and were happy to find that there was a line at the box office for refunds to get our money back. That was an hour line as well.

Again, a great idea, but a real disappointment.