So today is my birthday. Shane, as always, orchestrated something amazing. The table was gorgeous, the food spectacular and perhaps most imporatantly, my living room is packing box-free!!!
My folks came over (ie: upstairs) for dinner. Shane chose and shopped for an Ina Garten potato leek soup which my mom prepared. The recipe’s got a lot of steps and you could tell because it was more delicious and complex tasting than an ordinary potato leek soup, even Rose at it and she’s not a soup gal.
The main course was something like penne alla vodka (but a little different) from one of our favorite Italian cookbooks, Trattoria Cooking, which I picked up at a yard sale in the 90s when I lived in Tucson, AZ. We still love it, so that’s something.
Salad was a last minute addition, to the tune of: “Nina, I didn’t think you’d want salad because there are already two courses” “Shane, I always want salad.”
For a change of pace, I requested a flourless chocolate torte for dessert, and that’s what I got along with a hefty dose of drama from my kids. Turns out, kids these days have no idea how to use matches. Rose almost “burned her entire arm off” and Sid ran around frantically screaming “pause, pause, pause!” when he realized she was lighting matches and he didn’t have his guitar to accompany the happy birthday song.
Shane, who was a seasoned smoker by the time he was Rose’s age was appalled by our kids’ complete lack of match-lighting skills and gave them a quick how-to. When Rose complained about the risk being posed to her life, he persisted with “just keep going, light the candle, light the damn candle!”
Our cat just jumped out of the 3rd floor window as I was writing this. He’s fine, but there’s some real chaos surrounding the birthdays in our family this season. The cake was delicious, I’ll leave it at that.
xoxo
