Monday Night Dinner

Remember when I said, “Hush, now – spoilers!”?  This is the grand reveal.

Firstly, I have the world’s most awesome friends.

Secondly, in wildly non-revelatory news, when presented with too many choices I dither in an epic manner.

Thirdly, I inadvertently managed to carry on a family tradition by celebrating my half-birthday.

Let me back up.  My grandmother was born on December 24th, but since that’s a completely unfair day to be born she always celebrated her birthday on the 4th of July at her half-birthday.  My birthday is in early December smack in the middle of the birthdays of two other friends, and just before the holiday party season.  Finding a week that isn’t already jammed with parties, cakes, cookies and late nights out in December is basically an exercise in futility.  So, we always push my birthday to January, or February after the excesses of Christmas have been forgotten.  This year, it ended up getting pushed to July because I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do and then once I did (mini-golf & ice cream) it took a while to find a workable date.

However, in the end it all worked out so well – plus as my roommate pointed out I’m much more of a summer person than a winter person, by which she means I love the heat and cute little sundresses a whole lot more than I love snow and wool coats – that we’ve decided that this should become tradition.  Celebrate my birthday in the summer when I can force everyone to frolic in the sunshine (I know a large number of vampires who don’t generally share my obsessive love for the sun).  When said this to my mother she replied, “Just like Mimi,” which I had forgotten, but yes, exactly like Mimi.

This brings my back to my first point about the world’s most awesome friends.  They all got together (+ my roommate’s parents, who are also pretty awesome) and bought me a Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer – one of the ones that comes in the pretty colors that you walk by in places like Macys and want to pet.

Seriously y’all, I was floored and touched and possibly squeaked just a little in excitement.

Proving that they understand that the most important part of the Kitchen Aid Mixer experience is deciding what color to get, they left that part of up to me (I got the doll house version over ice cream after mini-golf – it’s got a detachable bowl and the head lifts up and down like a real stand mixer and it’s totally going on our Christmas tree this year).  This brings me to my second point, about the epic dithering.

There are some things I never dither about – milk shakes are always chocolate; when I go out to a fancy restaurant I will almost invariably order lamb, duck, or whatever comes with a fruit sauce; sundresses should be flirty; heels should always be high.  Then there are things that I dither over epically.  As a child these kinds of things tended to be weighty issues like which flavor of candy stick to select – Green apple?  Cinnamon?  Watermelon?  The adult version of this is clearly what color of Kitchen Aid to select – Blue Willow?  Majestic Yellow?  Cornflower Blue?  Cinnamon Gloss?  Persimmon?  The difficultly was only compounded by the fact that all the colors look really different depending on which website you were surfing at the time.

Eventually I decided on Cornflower Blue, with Majestic Yellow & Cinnamon Gloss as back up options and committed and sent the email to the person responsible for ordering the real life version.  Through a convoluted series of events I actually ended up with a better quality mixer in Blue Willow, and it’s all purty and shiny y’all.

The mixer actually arrived on July 31st in an enormous box with a bow, but I’ve been waiting for a full house for its Dinner inauguration, and that’s taken about a month what with me going to Montreal, other people going to South Carolina, and general end of summer madness.  However, now it’s after Labor Day, and this is the annual all-farmer’s-market all-the-time Dinner, and the official inauguration of the stand mixer.

Now it just needs a name.  I am open to suggestions.

This post was entirely too long so I split it into two parts – this week’s Dinner + recipes can be found here.