Yes, I still cook sometimes

It’s been a while since I posted about food. This was Mother’s Day weekend, so that means we make some special things for Mommy that we hope know she’ll like. And it doesn’t count unless I feed her something I’ve never made before. If you’re going to make something awful, why not do it on Mom’s special day? But the boys helped me this time, so she had to say she liked it, even if she didn’t.

For months I’ve been dying to try what Alton Brown calls the world’s best banana ice cream. Since we just got an ice cream attachment for the stand mixer, I figured why not. So early Saturday morning I had Isaac go downstairs with me to help me freeze the bananas. After reading the reviews of the recipe I knew to peel them first. After they were frozen and thawed I assembled the ingredients and had Isaac and Jonathan put them in the food processor. After that it was just chill and run the ice cream maker.

That was pretty easy, but then I thought banana - chocolate swirl ice cream would be even better. I saw in one of Emeril’s cookbooks that he uses 6 ounces of chocolate and 2 tablespoons of oil to make vanilla - chocolate swirl ice cream, so that’s exactly what I do. It didn’t swirl. The ice cream froze the chocolate into rock hard ribbons dispersed throughout the dessert. Yummy, huh?

But then I thought “That was too easy, Karen will never let me get away with just that.” So I made this strawberry - almond cream tart to go with the ice cream. Desserts are a lot of fun to make. For this I also read the reviews so I knew to omit half the sugar from the strawberry topping and to add a little extra butter to the crust. It came out really well, thanks to our Carolina strawberries that were very sweet. We’ll have them locally in another month or so I think.

So the desserts went over well, and the everyone enjoyed them. Except for Isaac, who only ate the ice cream. The boys were very proud that they got to help make it. The biggest hit of the day, though, was a beverage made from cran-raspberry juice and soda water. Karen raved about it. Of course she did, it took no effort.

…and one more on the way

Life is very interesting when you have all boys. I have three, very soon to be four.

Life with boys includes, but is not limited to:

Farting noises

Uranus jokes

Superheroes

Video games

Toy dissection

Knights and battles

I have also made some observations along the way:

1. Never say “okay” if you weren’t paying attention to the question.

2. Fighting over the baby brother can quickly turn into fighting on the baby brother.

3. A single baby fart can entertain the older brothers for hours.

4. So can a baby booger.

5. Boys have the coolest section in the toy store and the Disney store.

6. But not the clothing store.

Ben is two today

Well technically his birthday was Wednesday. It took me a while to come up with something to write, though, because at first I was kind of sad. Remembering back to what was happening in the days after Ben was born can be tough. We were glad to have the little guy around, but sad that he’d have to deal with these disabilities his whole life. And Ben is developing very slowly. But then I started looking through the pictures we’ve taken throughout the last year and it made me feel better. It’s very cool to look at where we’ve been and see how far we’ve come. So that’s what I’m going to do.

This is how small Benjamin was when he was first born:

Here he was a year later, on his first birthday:

Isn’t Mommy pretty?  Since his last birthday he’s learned to do a few new things. He’s started rolling over onto his belly by himself consistently.

He’s even started rolling around the room to get to toys.

He’s learned to hold onto things, like toys,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

drumsticks (he also likes to play the drums),

and even his mic-key tube.

He’s even started bringing things to his mouth, which we think is very cool.

But the coolest of the cool is that he sits up by himself very well now, and he likes doing it.

I just need to work with him on his balance so that he can catch himself before listing over too far. There is a point of no return on that right side since he has no way to catch himself over there. In the past year we haven’t made a whole lot of progress with “mouth food,” but I like to attribute that to the fact that he’s been teething constantly since Thanksgiving.  Ben is interested in food, but it usually takes some convincing to get it near his mouth.

Happy Birthday Ben. We love you.