Hot mama

Some of you might be amused at this. If you remember, Angela was hoping for the child to come on the 16th for St. Urho's Day; I, hoping that I wouldn't have to name my child after a Finnish saint involved with grasshoppers, was hoping for not. But Angela's had a really nasty cold over the last couple days and, because she's pregnant, can't really take anything to alleviate it. So I thought I'd use the tried and tested cure for us: hot and spicy Thai food.

This goes back to our wedding and honeymoon. We were both really sick during the wedding, to the extent that everyone thought I was crying -- and I just lost my voice from all the coughing. By the time we drove up to Maine for the honeymoon and found the house we were staying at, we just passed out without even turning on the lights. And our honeymoon was spent almost entirely in bed, just recovering from our respective colds. The only time we went out was to find a Thai restaurant -- in Maine, if you can believe that -- to order the spiciest, hottest things they had on the menu in order to burn through our sinuses. And, oddly enough, it worked.

So flash-forward to a couple days ago, when I agreed to make this shrimp-dumpling soup with an incredibly spicy stock. She was very exciting about this and it was actually fun to make. She got home, and the soup was really, really hot, requiring some milk to take the edge off out tongues.

And then, I remember that one of the pregnancy books said something about spicy food. Grabbed the book out and saw that that it was step #1 in inducing pregnancy. Which of course made Angela beam and got me worried that my son's initials were going to be AU.

As you can tell, it didn't happen. But it provided a funny moment of panic. Right now, I'm hoping for the first day of spring myself.