In times long before ours, families would join for feast to celebrate special occasions. This year's birthday weekend was a family gathering for feasting. While we had some great meals, it was really about the time spent preparing and enjoying the meals that was the most memorable and enjoyable. Mom and dad came to see us, ok they really came to see Gwen and we happened to be her, but all the same they came here for a long weekend.
Since Gwen’s arrival I haven’t had as much time to play in the kitchen. I really enjoy cooking and since I don’t have 8 hands, the gourmet stuff has gotten thrown to the wayside as my energies have been spent on the care of a newborn. So this weekend, since we had 8 hands in the house, I got to play in the kitchen.
Dad had his meal of steaks, baked sweet potatoes and salad upon their arrival on Friday night (had to wait for him since the steaks were in his cooler!). The gourmet touch to this meal was one of Emrys’ strawberry-rhubarb pies and homemade vanilla ice cream. It was wonderful!
Saturday sent us in a lot of different directions since Emrys had an all day meeting, the ‘rents and Gwen and I ended up down in Binghamton running some errands. Sunday was church and then my grand-daddy of cooking projects. Last summer I got a ravioli mold at a random little kitchen store in Pennsylvania. I kept saying that I wanted to make ravioli and somehow fall turned to winter turned to parenthood and I didn’t get the chance. We have the pasta-rollers for the Kitchen-Aid but it never happened, until Sunday. I started with this recipe and I tweaked it enough that it only remotely resembled the original for pumpkin ravioli with a pecan cream sauce.
My dad is a fan of kitchen toys. He got a food processor for my mom for their anniversary that he has more fun with than she does, I think. The real gift is that there are now dishes that she doesn’t have to gook! So when I proposed the ravioli project which requires the ravioli mold and the kitchen-aid pasta rollers and dough hook, Dad was in. We started rolling pasta dough while Mom and Gwen snoozed. The dough kept going and going and by the time we were done we had the pumpkin ravioli that was the original plan as well as cheese ravioli and sun-dried tomato pesto raviolis and blueberry and cream cheese raviolis.
All of them were so good and I have cheese raviolis in the freezer for later. One of my kitchen philosophies is that if I’m going to make that big of a mess, I better get more than one meal out of it. So I had the original round of raviolis for dinner on Sunday with green beans and Tiramisu Cake and leftovers of the pasta and the cake on Tuesday for my birthday!
Emrys’ birthday fell on Monday which is also his day off and he wanted Eggs Benedict for his birthday meal. This brought on two new kitchen firsts for me. The first was making hollandaise sauce; the second was poaching eggs in boiling water. Both were great successes and the eggs were served with fruit salad and OJ.
I crammed in about 3 months worth of cooking into one weekend. I was tired, but it was fun to have family here and to spend so much time on a hobby that I really enjoy.
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