Walks with Danger: The Final Birthday Weekend

This past weekend finished up the month o'birthdays we have in our family. We had hibachi and ice cream cake and made it a weekend of good food and lots of family time. My Father Unit surprised my Mother Unit (it was her birthday weekend) with a gift that was unexpectedly one for the whole family. My Mother is amazing and perfect and delightful (as most mothers tend to be, but I'm biased and think mine is a particularly superior specimen) and loves nothing more than when the whole family is together. Knowing this my Father Unit bought us ALL tickets to go see/hear Elton John in concert! Wooo!!!!! I know it's not cool but I. LOVE. Elton. John. Pretty sure my love is genetic as my Mother does as well. So in March we will all be going to hear EJ in honor of my Mothers birth.

Saturday I took the pup on a long long walk and returned home to start cooking. Friend N came by to celebrate a day of baking. She had a few things she wanted to make for a Superbowl party and I had a few recipes I had been wanting to try out, so we decided to cook together as there's nothing more fun than that. I greeted her with a piping hot cup of doctored coffee (mmmmm frangelico) since she had just gotten off of work AND braved the grocery store. After fortifying ourselves we set to work baking cupcakes, a gluten free peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies. We are both big huge gluten fans, but I found this recipe and thought it looked so good I had to try it. Also many dear friends have issues with gluten, so it's nice to have something delicious and indulgent and quick in the repertoire for when they come over. We moved on from happy coffee to modified Stokes 75's. To make frozen stemless martini glass, good gin, one ice cube, fresh lemon juice, splash of st. germaine, fill up to the top with something sparkly---we used a vino verde because that was what we had on hand, and zest a little lemon on top. Voila. Alcoholic but deeeelightful! At which point my Love came home and started working on dinner! I had started some french onion soup before N came over and we planned on having that with a nicoise salad. However, after my Love poached the cod in an insane lemon, garlic, tomato, caper, sauce of love, we decided it might be better over pasta. So we had a nicoise inspired pasta with cod and lots of olives, capers, egg, cheese, and tomatoes. It was absolutely perfect. The perfect end to a sweet and delicious day.

Sunday my Love headed out of town for business and I enjoyed an afternoon yoga class and another long walk with the dog. After picking up supplies I headed to my parents house to cook dinner for the family. Originally we were going to make cuban sandwiches, rice, beans, a mixed salad, and plantains. By "we" I really meant "my husband" and since he was out of town I decided not to risk ruining a perfectly good pork loin. I am both intimidated by meat, and overwhelmed with the idea of cooking it. It is usually overdone and terrible. When my husband is in Alaska in the summers for his work I rarely have meat in the house and in fact inadvertently stick to a mostly vegetarian diet. (Hummus is my chicken. I eat it almost every night.) So, anyway, no pork is what I am getting at. Instead I made a beef and broccoli rape stir fry I've made before and it turned out perfectly. For dessert we had insanely delicious ice cream cake that made me feel like I was six. It was awesome. Additionally, to cement my "I am occasionally a good daughter" status, I made my parents a pot of french onion too. It's their favorite and I had talked about it before but we either ate the leftovers before we could share, or we didn't make enough to save. So I made dinner for later in the week for them. Since I'd perfected it the day before, it turned out really well.

This week I want to make some soup (perhaps not french onion, but then again if it ain't broke why fix it?) splurge on a fancy coffee, walk the dog as much as possible, and start planning a vegetable garden with my Love.

Next week we are starting our wine club. The wine club is me, my boo, and our friend N. We will be having Bi Bim Bap night (N's recipe is stellar I've heard. And she is obsessed with Korean food and has been there, so she is super legit in our book.) and drinking some insanely delicious and expensive wine. My theory is to recognize good wine you have to have experienced it. So, we are starting a super geeky club (notebooks involved, as are non-ironic ---because they are necessary for sight---glasses) wherein we taste two really nice bottles of wine every two weeks or so and enjoy them with fine food and scintillating conversations (the ONLY kind of conversation we know how to have.) I just need to work on getting over my aversion to spending more than $15 on a bottle of wine. . . .