Our older son recently celebrated his Big 4-0; amazing, when one considers that I'm simply not old enough to be his mother. Regardless, we had Gary, Sara and Reed for dinner last evening to celebrate Gary's birthday. We usually have an all-family dinner, but the kids' current work schedules make it next to impossible to have them all at once. Later this week, we will have Jon's family to celebrate Brittany's recent birthday.
Ever since Gary became an avid golf enthusiast, it has been our custom to include golf balls as part of his Christmas and/or birthday gifts. I told Gary last evening that his Dad and I decided we must be too busy or getting old (Nah!) because this is the first time we have not come up with some extraordinary way of disguising the golf balls. We have done everything from wrapping 100 of them individually and putting them in a large box of styrofoam peanuts (time-consuming!), to frosting the boxes in order to make them look like a cake (disappointing to 4-year-old Reed who was looking forward to eating it)(2008 picture below), and the very best, according to the kids, having the balls be the "innerds" of a very long snake that Steve designed and I sewed (2007 picture below). We had toyed with the idea of a scavenger hunt this year, but we simply didn't have the time or inclination to get it together, so this year's gift was boringly wrapped with paper and ribbon (but the wrapping did have both black and yellow labs on it; or as Reed put it, "Caesar and Samson!").
Kyra was here as I making preparations for yesterday's dinner and I noticed the name "Haricot Verts" on the thin, French green beans I was pleased to find at Sam's Club. I told her I used to read cook books like other people read novels, and especially liked the ones that included the stories of how the recipes came to be, or what they meant to that person or family. An example would be the Pepperidge Farm Cookbook, wherein I learned that the original bread recipe was developed by a loving mother who was desperate to find something her ailing child could eat, and later shared with other young patients referred to her by her son's pediatrician. These loaves were often wrapped in paper and carried to the city by her husband, who rode public transportation to work.
So, I told Kyra that the first time I ever saw the term Haricot Verts in a recipe, I had no idea what it meant (and it wasn't explained), and I couldn't find it in a dictionary at the time. I think I called the local extension service and talked with the Home Economist (it was in a recipe, afterall). Another term I had to look up in a later recipe was Merliton (vegetable pear). The steamed Haricot Verts (with carmelized Vidalia onions and bacon) turned out well last evening; I have never prepared a Merliton. :) One day, I hope to write (if even just for my family) my own narrative-style cookbook of faves.
It is fun to watch one's children grow into adults and become parents themselves, as in Gary's and Jon's cases. The greatest satisfaction for me is realizing that they finally have some idea just how very much we love THEM!
My personal version of Cinnamon Rolls is Gary's favorite "birthday cake," so I made those again this year.
