Hiatus

My apologies to my small band of faithful readers. Danny and I went to New York for a week and my blogging fell by the wayside. Then we returned to Fidenza with colds, a further reason to postpone taking up the blogging burden. Our runny noses are due either to being with so many members of the family or to the whipsaw effects of the repeated time changes. Just when we'd begun sleeping through the night in Italy we traveled to Eastern Standard Time and were six hours off again, and once we'd settled into that time zone we came back to disrupted sleep in Italy.

My mom continues to amaze us all with her almost supernatural staying power. She moved into a new apartment in the same building, which turned out to be bigger than her old one and with an actual river view. Despite the inevitable disruption, we were all happy with the move. (Me especially, since my New York brother and sister have been saddled with most of the work of sorting and arranging what Dot wanted to keep and disposing of the things she didn't. I love you guys!)

Our daughter had flown in as well, so the whole nuclear family was on hand for dinner at our son's place. To think this guy used to be someone who thought putting a Pop Tart into the toaster oven was as much cooking as he ever wanted to do... He served us hamburgers, and they were easily the most impressive burgers I've ever had, and the most delicious. And they must have taken him several days of work.

He made the buns himself (they were gorgeous as well as tasty), made the ketchup, ground the meat (hangar steak, rib-eye, and short rib), and made the "special sauce" (a cream-and-leek-based version of the Big Mac condiment).

He cooked the burgers sous vide, each in its own little vacuum bag, then deep-fried each of them for exactly 10 seconds to give them a sear. God, they were good.

But wait, there's more. He'd also whipped up his own high-end version of Velveeta, using some chemical wizardry to create a shiny, easy-melting "cheese food" that was made with gruyere and cheddar instead of whatever reject cheese Velveeta is made out of. And a cucumber salad. And a big green salad. (I'm sure his lovely domestic partner had a hand in at least some of this extravaganza, too.) Plus there were wonderful salted chocolate-peanut-butter cookies for dessert, homemade, of course. And did I mention the two of them also made the dishes the food was served on?

He did not, however, make his own Tater Tots.

While this dinner was a show-stopper (and a bit of a gut-buster), the other big meal of the week charmed with its nonchalance. For my birthday, my brother and his wife hosted a party for the whole family, including our mom and her helper, plus several dear friends, including a couple who came all the way in from the wilds of Connecticut for the occasion.

My brother showed once again that he can whip out a terrific dinner for a dozen people as easily as if he were slapping together a sandwich. He and his wife are somehow able to throw any kind of party, intimate, large, or huge, without any visible signs of stress, and do it really well, from the opening drinks and hors d'oeuvres to the post-prandial table tennis on their dining-room table and the late-night conversations over the last of the wine (or beer). I can do a dinner party, too, but there's a hell of a lot more ulcerating involved.

The dinner itself was great: salmon with mustard-and-dill sauce and with teriyaki sauce, rigatoni with pesto and tomatoes, spinach with garlic, a big salad, and plenty of bubbly. (I'm afraid I was too busy enjoying the latter and gabbing with everyone to take photos of the food, which, trust me, looked as good as it tasted.) And for dessert my daughter took up the considerable challenge of cooking in someone else's kitchen and made her and my favorite layer cake, the "Hurry-Up Caramel Cake" from The Wooden Spoon Cookbook. It's a bit heavy, full of brown-sugar flavor, and sweet enough to make your teeth sing. High-calorie heaven!

Here I am, about to (successfully) blow out my candles.

To have so many of those I love feeding me so well, and being such caring people, and gathering around for my birthday...all that left me with very little to wish for. Except perhaps a quick cure for jet-lag.