Mixed herb falafels (Thankfulness #1)

Oh, it feels downright spooky to try to write a blog post without a theme, so I thought of a new one! Until Thanksgiving (or until I see something shiny and wander away from blogging), I will open each post with something I am thankful for. Maybe food related. Today's not really food related.

Thing I'm thankful for #1: that I'm still able to be mobile and active and generally pretty healthy at ~30 weeks pregnant.



(Yes, my bathroom mirror needs to be cleaned. I literally cannot reach it at this point.)

I was thinking about this today while I was biking home from work. People (mostly co-workers) have started asking me pretty often if I'm still biking. When anyone hears that I am still biking, the followup question is: when are you going to stop? The answer is: I guess when I have to. One of my only regrets from my pregnancy with the Emperor is that I stopped exercising almost completely at about 32 weeks-- and that is the exact point at which I started to really feel crappy/tired of being pregnant.

Comically, the biggest problem I'm having with biking right now is wind. Like, the wind blowing on me. (Not gas from my innards.) You would think that being larger, wind would bug me less... but maybe I've gotten wider. Like a big sail. So I catch more wind now! I normally bike all the way home in 6th gear with no trouble but today I was stuck in 5th and really pushing it because the wind was against me the whole way.

Speaking of wind: let's eat some beans! Tonight I decided to put together one of my favorite recipes out of one of my favorite cookbooks, Appetite for Reduction. You can tell I've loved the hell out of this cookbook:



In general, the more a cookbook looks like it was hit by a filth comet, the more I like it.

I wanted to make the baked falafel out of AFR tonight. Usually I double the recipe, because I like these as leftovers a lot and they're sooooo freaking easy to make. Things kind of spiraled out of control in my kitchen this afternoon, though, the way that they often will. First I accidentally opened one can of chickpeas and one can of white beans instead of 2 chickpeas. Okay, no big deal. Just mash them together. Oh hey, I don't have any parsley in the fridge... cilantro? Nope, out of that too. Rosemary and sage and thyme? YES! So I just chopped those up and put in like a cup and a half instead of the 1c of parsley. Then I swapped out the hot sauce (out of it) and put in soy sauce for moisture instead. Garlic powder instead of minced garlic. You see what I mean? These are barely the same falafels that are in the book.



Still yummy, though. We had them with chopped vegetables (carrots, zucchini, and cauliflower) and leftover baba ganoush. The Emperor ate exactly one. He was dismayed to find a whole chickpea in it: "I don't LIKE chickpeas. I don't want this chickpea. I want mommy to take the chickpea out." I rolled my eyes and pulled the chickpea out for him, after which he ate the whole thing and said he liked it. Joke's on you kid, the whole thing is made out of chickpeas.

He also ate some vegetables, a little of this and a little of that. 3 or 4 sticks of zucchini, all while telling us, "I don't like zucchini. I'm not going to eat it. I don't like it." WHILE HE WAS CHEWING IT. He is kind of a nut sometimes.

Speaking of which, he took today's bonus picture: