All day Friday and Saturday I cooked. It’s what I did. I cooked. It was hardcore intensive work. It was so important to me that the food turn out well. I was lucky, though, I had help. Friday night my aunt sue came over and we caught up on old times. She is only a few years older than me, we spent a lot of time partying together during my college years. We slugged through most of the prep. I crawled into bed, aching and sore at 1am.
Saturday I got up around 8:30 and as I was trying to wake up I got a call from my aunt saying she and her brother, my uncle donnie, were coming over to help. Like perfect guardian angels these two swept into my place and immediately started washing dishes and working on food. Donnie ran to the store for me and he ran to get lunch for all of us. Lovely.
Later, a dear friend of mine and Sue’s, Chad showed up and I had yet another set of hands at my disposal. Chad is the expert at clearing, organizing and assembling. He stuffed and rolled all the croissants and assembled all the crostini for me. With all the help I got I was actually finished with time to spare. Time to spare, that’s pretty much unheard of for me.
Sue’s little girl, Evelyn, came along on Saturday and she fell in love with the dogs. And Ghengis, realizing that children are mobile buffets, fell in love with her. Ghengis profited dearly from this relationship.
The party was a lovely, warm event. My grandfather got to celebrate his 80th birthday surrounded by friends and family that truly loved and admired him. It was a great time and I got to see relatives I’d not seen in ages.
Unfortunately, I am getting old. The party started at 6pm and I was done before midnight. I got home, went to bed and kept my pitiful, semi-hungover, completely pained body in bed until noon when my mom called.
My mom’s cousin, Rebecca, had a flight out at 9:45pm so she spent part of the day with my sister then came over here so we could visit before she left. I don’t know much of my extended family so it was nice to spend some time getting to know her and getting perspective on family history.
For dinner we went to Everest on Grand, the local tibetan/nepalese place. I can now say that I’ve eaten yak! YAK! I ate YAK! Actually, it sounds more exotic than it tastes, if I didn’t know it was yak I would have assumed it was beef. So there, you can eat yak and it won’t kill you.
Yak, it’s what’s for dinner.
The rest of my evening will include crocheting and watching movies and generally spacing out.
Monthly Archives: February 2006
cook…clean…plan…cook
work…clean…plan…cook. That’s it right now.
An aunt and an uncle come in to town tonight for the party this weekend. I suspect that with the snow that came through, their travels will be a tad delayed, but maybe I will get to see them. If not I am going to spend the day tomorrow iwht my aunt Sue catching up on old times and cooking together.
So much cleaning to do. So not excited about it.
menu update…(not that I really think you’re interested…)
Veggie plate has been replaced with lettuce wraps as demand for the lettuce wraps was overwhelming
I decided the salmon will be served as smoked salmon and roasted sweet potato on curried mascarpone on crostini.
I may not do a big ham but do either ham stuffed croissants or puff pastry crocque monsieur. Everything else being served is finger food, able to be picked up directly off the platter. Serving up a ham with rolls requires things to be cut, added to rolls, condiments served…etc. It messes with the flow AND takes up too much space. Essentially, with this many people in such a small space, we need to keep people moving. Slicing ham and building little sandwiches would cause back up.
Okay, I’m off to round up the boy and clean. damn.
chobo
Why I like David so much, #456,983 in a series:
One plain frozen cheese pizza begging to be dressed up. On one side he adds golden raisins, sliced bananas, vindaloo and garam masala. On the other half he puts onion/garlic pistachios, artichoke spread, sliced boiled egg and spicy paprika.
It sounds terrible. If he’d mentioned it to me before he made it I would have given him the look.
But he experiments and you know what? Both sides were good! Weird in their own way, but very good.
I like that David experiments and the experiments turn out so well.
puttah
On we go with the party planning. Tentative menu is as follows:
* Spiced ham with rolls
* Salmon and lemon cream crostini
* Crostini with hazelnut pesto and roasted butternut squash
* Croissants stuffed with feta/dill/spinach and/or curried veggies
* Mini crabcakes with cilantro cream
* Veggie sushi
* Stuffed strawberries
* Veggie platter with dip (dip suggestions or ideas? hummus?)
* Cheese plate with 2 kinds of homemade bread, olives, spiced nuts, homemade cherry ginger jam
I’m still tweaking it. I’m still contemplating the lettuce wraps.
In non-food related news, I think I am destined to live a life with dogs who constantly have ear infections (of course it would help if I stopped adopting shar-peis and shar-pei mixes). I looked over at Hippo Head Jones when I got home and was greeted with a sore red ear. Damn. Crocodile Bob’s ear infection cleared up fine. It’s always with the ears. it’s always with the icky Q-Tips and the tube of goo. Luckily the vet gave me extra ear meds so I don’t have to keep coming in.
I’m making congee for our lunches. I should be making bread but I don’t feel like washing measuring cups.
adventures
So it seems the Amazing Adventures of Mavis Potato and Charlie Pumpkin (in which Mavis Potato learns she’s actually pretty normal!) have not been getting much play lately. That’s what happens when there’s another human adult around to talk to, you just don’t have to make up stories to tell the dogs.
But now we’re on to the Super Fun Times of Hippo Head Jones and Crocodile Bob! Hippo Head Jones is the calm, level headed leader of the expedition and Crocodile Bob is her short fused right hand man! Together they are sure to find themselves in many sticky situations!
Yeah, or something…
oh, what’s to say, I make up stories about my dogs, for my dogs.
A friend of mine is going to have a baby so we spent a lot of time looking at crochet patterns. I’m way more confident now about my abilities and will be making stuffed animals and booties. If the stuffed animals go well, I have a secret project that will make me giggle. If it turns out, I will share it with you.
My head is aswim with menu planning. I’m at the good point where I have too many things picked out and will have to cut back.
And I will leave you with this happiness. When Maddie came to live with us in June she didn’t play. She didn’t play with toys or people or Ghengis. Steadily she’s been playing more and more. I watch her and Ghengis making up games to play, she waits until he is watching her then she steals his toys and plays keep away. They wrestle together all the time. The happiest, though, is watching David jump around on the floor with the two of them. Maddie’s piggy little tail going a mile a minute while they jump and growl and retreat and posture. I laugh so hard my belly hurts and my face is stuck with a smile.
It’s a good thing I’ve got going here. That boy of mine and these two dogs. A pretty damned good thing.