We celebrated Skyler’s birthday yesterday—she’s turning five tomorrow! Her request for a princess party held fairly steady—there was a bit of Nutcracker-esque ballerina and alicorn-theme temptation along the way—but once she decided that she wanted to wear her Elsa dress from Halloween to the party, that was it. (Funny enough, she wore her Unicorn halloween costume for her 4th birthday party, so I guess we should be paying attention to her choice in October this year.)
We invited a few of her best preschool pals to come over for pizza, cake, and playtime—along with a special guest: the real Elsa. It was such a sweet little group for a Sunday morning celebration…
I thought about titling this “What Time is the Super Bowl?” after reading this Kottke article on Google searches, but I’d probably have to look it up myself first. In all honesty, I don’t watch football (and now can chalk it up to more than just a lack of understanding of the rules), but I do enjoy all that comes with this one particular gathering—like the recipes for new takes on 7-layer-dips and other party fare.
Case in point, Smitten Kitchen just published this recipe for Baked Buffalo Wings and we tried it ourselves (with a ginger-soy sauce instead) on Monday night and it was declared an instant classic. Basically, you just have to prep the night ahead by tossing the chicken in salt and baking powder and then do some flipping throughout the 50-minute roasting and you get tastes-like-fried chicken! We made the mistake of not using a rack between the aluminum foil and the chicken, which made for some sticking—but I just should have taken better note of the picture (see above) and used one. Highly recommended!
Of course, the Superbowl is actually the last thing on my mind… This weekend we’re hosting a group of friends for a charity dinner on Saturday night, and then throwing Skyler a birthday party (with Elsa!) on Sunday morning. And this afternoon, I’m going back to school to hear an old friend from college give a lecture in the Classics department—I’m excited to revisit my old haunts and listen in.
Finally, thank you so much for all of the kind words since my post about blogging for 10 years! It really did my heart some good, and the positive feedback was so encouraging. Thank you.
When Hudson was 3-1/2, I wrote: “He’s a very picky eater right now. He’ll turn his nose up at the silliest things. Just last week he totally lost it at a restaurant where he was given a peanut butter, banana, and jelly crepe for dinner. Basically someone took all of his favorite things and wrapped them up in a pancake! How could we go wrong? But there was a decorative line of jelly on the outside, and he didn’t want it cut, and when we rolled it up he couldn’t tell where the peanut butter was, and… Oh for goodness sake!”
I smiled in recognition last week, when I read Kristen Mulrooney’s piece for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, “Top Dinner Suggestions According to a Three-Year-Old’s Eating Habits,” which includes specific items such as “Cheerios and milk eaten from the Lightning McQueen cereal bowl, and if you can’t find the Lightning McQueen cereal bowl you might as well go kill yourself.”
Among the items on her list, my preschooler’s menu would definitely include:
