Six!

Our Rose Lilliana turned 6 today. Being someone who loathes the passage of time, I’m always a bit of an emotional wreck on her birthday. Fortunately, I was able to snag a chaperone spot on her school field trip today. This kept me from sitting at my desk all day, mourning the loss of the baby, toddler and little kid that she once was.

Rose had a couple of requests for her birthday dinner. One was steak, the other, a purchased cake. It kind of breaks my heart that she wanted a store-bought cake instead of a homemade one, but I don’t want her to grow up feeling all deprived because she never got a cake from a store. Also, I let her have Doritos today, for the first time in her life.

We got a nice Local Harvest shell steak from Fresh Direct, which I seasoned with the leftover steak seasoning from our chili, and grilled in the grilling pan. Shane and Rose approved of the seasoning, Rose saying that it was spicy in a good way, like Doritos.

For starch, we had potato and celery root mash, from this recipe, again, except without any measuring. It seems like any reasonable combination of potatoes, celery root, butter and sour cream with a squirt of dijon, is delicious.

We kept up the Kale Challenge tonight too. A friend (who is an actual food writer) recommended preparing kale Greek Style to really get through a lot of it. What this means is that you blanch your greens (baby kale in our case), squeeze out the water and dress liberally with olive oil and lemon juice.

I decided to add crumbled feta, because cheese is my solution to all problems. The blanched baby kale (two varieties) came out tasting a lot like lightly-cooked spinach, and only benefitted from the addition of lemon, olive oil and feta.

For lack of a better way to describe it’s pre-cooked volume, I’d say the recipe used up approximately 1 cubic foot of baby kale. Our kale supply is now fully depleted… until we get more on Thursday.

We ordered a birthday cake from Billy’s Bakery in Chelsea which is our go-to bakery for purchased cakes. They make a classic cake that looks very much like homemade, but is just perfect enough to give itself away as bakery-made. Rose approved, so all was well.

Happy Birthday baby girl. We love you.