MND – End of Birthday Season 2013

December 10, 2013

I am always fascinated by what people select for their Birthday Dinners. I feel like I ought to be able to divine some deep psychological meaning from their choices. Mostly, however, what I learn is that we all like corn pudding, and that we lack restraint or subtlety when it comes to dessert. I find that Birthday requests tend to go one of two ways – either people start with an old favorite dish, and then get experimental with their dessert option; or they opt for a new recipe for their main course and go old school with dessert.

This year’s Birthday Dinner dessert requests have been the antithesis of understated. I started us off this year by asking for something that answered to the names ooey and gooey, and involved chocolate. I got a cake so decadent and amazing that nine months later I’m still thinking about it – chocolate peanut butter heaven.

We then progressed through a Sticky Orange Cake drowned in a Bourbon Marmalade Glaze (which honestly was probably one of the least decadent requests in that it did not involve pints of heavy cream, entire cartons of eggs, or several pounds of chocolate – fortunately it didn’t taste as restrained as the ingredient list).

We got back on track to decadence with a Black Forest Meringue Pie – and then hit our stride in August when we worked our way through a cup of butter, a box of graham crackers, nearly 2 lb of assorted chocolate, and a jar of marshmallow fluff with a double feature of Seven Layer Bars and Fluffernutter Smores Bars.

Then we hit Birthday Season. Half of Dinner has their birthdays between mid-September and the end of November, and in October and November we ate our way through 3 cups of heavy cream, 2 lbs of chocolate (in assorted forms), a dozen eggs, 1 ½ lb of butter, 4 cups of sugar, and a quart of ice cream. And that’s just the ingredient list for dessert – I decided not to add in the tally for the main meal because I could feel my arteries hardening just thinking about it. I sometimes worry that our upstairs neighbors are going to come down through our ceiling (they have teenagers), possibly I should have been worried about Dinner sinking through the floor into the basement.

And, now we’ve hit the gluttony of the November/December holiday season. Possibly I should plan a series of Dinners for January that involve nothing more than plain bread and broth to help us all recover . . . . nah, let’s embrace the decadence, you only live once.

Dinner October 29th – Birthday Season Part III

Buttermilk Roasted Chicken
Corn Pudding
Green Beans
Fall Salad with Apple Cider Vinaigrette

Nutmeg Maple Cream Pie

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