Birthday Blast

 

Mother's Day coincides with our twin niece and nephew's birthday every year, and sometimes we have the pleasure of hosting their birthday party. This year, the celebration was simple, but the weather was perfect, and a good time was enjoyed by all. We updated traditional games, including apple bobbing (suspended from the porch with fishing line), hula hoop (the winner had more than 100 spins), pin the tail on the donkey (actually, pin the earrings on Indian glam actress Asywarae Rai--after 14 blindfolded spins to note the birthday milestone), and egg-on-spoon relay race, which is a blast with no updating necessary at all.

Refreshments featured root beer, homemade pizza, corn on the cob, double chocolate cake, and mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Click on the collage to see the action unfold.

Easter Menu 2010

Our Easter feast this year ended with a delicious strawberry-covered cheesecake, seen here on the dining table set off by the lovely placemats knitted by a dear friend in my favorite color. The menu--in full--was:

Cream of fresh asparagus soup
Fresh fruit cocktail in pineapple boats
Baked ham with port and apricot chutney
Sweet and white potatoes with leeks
Wild rice salad with almonds and cherry tomatoes
Key lime torte
Strawberry cheesecake
Lemon mousse (see Top Ten Recipes)

The weather was perfect and the company was lively.

Easter 2010

 

Click on the collage to see larger snaps of our tree-house building, new little chicks (they are now housed in an old bookcase, but we'll need a bigger home for them in about four weeks), lox and bagels breakfast, key lime meringue pie, cheesecake with strawberries, and strolling musicians.

Happy Easter to all!

Top Ten Recipes: The Perfect Party Cake

Under a lemony layer of buttercream, guests at my son and daughter-in-law's recent wedding rehearsal dinner found dense layers of chocolate sour cream cake and chocolate orange ganache.

I’ve been inspired to put together a list of my top ten favorite recipes of all time, and I’m starting—as wise men have so often advised—with dessert. I have found the perfect chocolate cake recipe, and tested it on numerous different auspicious family occasions. This was the cake at my daughter’s 18th birthday party, my husband’s 60th, and most recently, at the rehearsal dinner held before my older son’s wedding.

This cake:

• Is easy to make; just follow the recipe carefully
• Can be made up to a month in advance, fully frosted, and stored in the freezer, with no effect whatsoever on its flavor; the layers may be baked in advance and stored for longer
• Is delicious, without being cloyingly sweet
• Feeds a large crowd (up to 30, easily)
• Looks better than most professionally made cakes, and tastes better than anything made outside of a home kitchen
• Produces leftovers that taste good for two weeks or more.
  
  The cake consists of three sour-cream based chocolate layers; a filling of dark chocolate ganache flavored with orange zest and Cointreau, and a lemon-curd-based butter cream frosting. The ingredients, which include three pounds of butter and more than a pound of high quality chocolate, are expensive, but the end product is worth it. I first baked it following its publication under the headline “Three Tiers! The Perfect Party Cake” in the June 1991 issue of Gourmet magazine. Unfortunately, the complete recipe is not on line at Gourmet’s Epicurious site, but I will send it if requested.
  
  Kitchen equipment you need to create this wonderful dessert includes three 9- or 10-inch cake pans, a candy thermometer, a citrus zester, and a pastry bag with several size tips (numbers 21 and 32 suggested). You may also choose to add colored dragees, as shown in the photograph, but just the butter cream will do quite nicely.

In Memoriam: Father Michael Kelly

This morning, our parish buried our priest, Father Michael Kelly, saying goodbye at a funeral mass attended by dozens of fellow priests, our bishop, and a crowd of worshippers that extended out the doors of the church and down the street. Father Kelly (shown here at a Civil War reenactment), was a good priest, a man who enjoyed life, and a kind person, a virtue that ranks very high on my personal list. In October, he concelebrated the marriage of our daughter, having completed her marriage preparation with her fiance. He shared many other personal moments with the family. He will be missed.

O time despised during life, you will be ardently desired by worldlings at the hour of death. The thought that they must very soon appear before Almighty God, to give an account of their lives, fills them with untold confusion and anguish. They will ask for another year, another month or another day to settle the accounts of their conscience, but they will ask in vain. To obtain a single hour they would give all their wealth and worldly possessions, but this hour shall not be given.
Let us therefore exert ourselves to the utmost to accomplish the work of our salvation while there is still time. Do now, what, on the day of judgment, you would then wish you would have done. For at the moment of death, the time of grace will have passed, the time of justice will have come.
--Saint Alphonsus De Liguroi

Cook, Baby, Cook

We celebrated Christmas Eve with a hearty selection of finger foods.














The gorgeous greens before preparation for Christmas Day dinner.

The gin-flambéed roast duck surrounded by wild duck fillets wrapped in bacon.

In the space of four months, October 2008-January 2008, our family is experiencing two weddings, two military deployments, the turnover of tenants in the rental property that helps to pay our mortgage, a job change for one of our breadwinners, final exams, and various and sundry “life happens” events, such as the failure of our 23-year-old heating system. So one might expect—in advance and with some certainty—that there will be emotional bumps along the road during the holidays.

What is a mother to do? What have many mothers, in many places, over many centuries done before? My antidote to anticipated holiday blues is (taking a prosodic cue from the GOP presidential convention): “Cook, Baby, Cook.”

Cook, Baby, Cook means gingerbread men, pralines, and sugar cookies before Christmas week begins, and huge spreads for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I only hope that I am blessed, for many years to come, with the health, happiness, and company of the loved ones who gathered to eat it all.

The concept for Christmas Eve was finger food, with the menu including crab puffs, scallops wrapped in bacon, Italian mini-meatballs, brie en croute, spinach dip, salmon mousse, and celery stuffed with blue cheese spread. We began with egg nog and finished with chocolates. Whew!

Christmas Day was more formal. The menu was inspired by my son-in-law’s gift of five wild ducks, which produced a number of boneless four-ounce duck breasts and an equal number of tiny legs. This was a gift of true love from both him and my daughter: They plucked, cleaned, and filleted the ducks themselves. To the wild duck, we added one farm-raised Long Island duck. The cultivated duck provided a good supply of fat to roast the wild meat, which was totally lean. I relied on James Beard’s Theory and Practice of Good Cooking for the details on roasting the duck and making the sauce, and followed his suggestion of flambéing it with gin at the table before serving.

The full menu was:

Steamed artichokes with butter sauce
Salad of baby frisee with spiced walnuts and pears
Roast duck, wild and cultivated in Port and orange sauce
Curried rice
Asparagus with lemon
Frozen lemon mousse
Chocolate Christmas trifle

The frozen lemon mousse recipe is also from Beard’s Theory and Practice. It is an absolutely foolproof dessert. Anyone can make it and everyone loves it.

Getting Ready for a Wedding: The Bridal Tea

Martha Stewart's early 1980s book Hors D'Oeuvres was the inspiration for my daughter's wedding shower, which we did as a high tea. Her book has a gorgeous chapter titled "Tea Party in the Library."

I wanted my daughter's wedding shower to be a delicious and relaxing afternoon for her bridal attendants, her friends, and the several of my old friends who had seen her grow up. We settled on the idea of having high tea, a celebration we had done together as mother and daughter several times in the past, including the Mother and Daughter Tea for her high school. The menu consisted of two courses: a savory course of tea sandwiches, stuffed cherry tomatoes, and quiche (provided by a friend who makes the best), and sweets, the traditional scones with clotted cream, raspberry and apricot thumbprint cookies, and trifle. Four generations of well wishers and family were on hand for the lovely event.

The menu was:

Mimosa punch

Variety of teas
Savories
Cucumber sandwiches on white bread
Curried chicken tea sandwiches on pumpernickel bread
Strawberry walnut tea sandwiches on cinnamon raisin bread
Cherry tomatoes stuffed with salmon mousse
Cheese quiche
Sweets
Tea with lemon, cream, and sanded sugar
Thumbprint cookies with apricot and strawberry jam
Scones with clotted cream and raspberry jam
Mocha chocolate torte

I am happy to share recipes. Please ask.