D’s 5th Birthday Party

My darling D turned 5 last month, and you know what that means to the Feisty Family, right?  Party time!!! 

I happily helped FeistySis with the appetizers by slicing up two kinds of cured meats, breaking a bit of Matzoh to put on the platter next to it and Triscuits.  I don’t know why the matzoh, you’d have to ask her, though she’ll likely tell you the same thing she told me: “it tastes good.”  (Which is completely subjective and I’m not sure I agree.) 

The bottom of the three-tiered platter held blue corn chips.  And apparently, I somehow forgot to take a picture of the center tier, which held various cheeses and dips.  Oops! 

Before anyone asks, FeistySis recently discovered that no one cares if you put everything out in tin foil trays and then clean up by throwing those away (well, the environment cares).  So though we all love her brightly colored dishes, that’s not what was used this time around.  Maybe if enough people protest, she’ll switch back (or ask you to come over and wash the dishes for her, since I’m not going to do it!) (and yes, she does read the site).  We had trays of raw veggies for crudite – celery sticks, cucumber coins, carrot sticks, bell pepper strips, grape tomatoes and olives. 

Salad for those who wanted to be healthful (or eat light so they’d have more room for what was to come later)…

…and an undressed pasta salad, with dressing for those of us who cared to add it.  FeistySis seemed half annoyed, half amused when I grilled her on its origins: “I made it myself,” she said.  “Did you use a recipe?” I responded, I suppose a bit incredulously.  My darling sister isn’t known to throw things together on the fly the way I do and prefers to follow recipes.  She said that she made it with whatever was in the freezer.  I actually really liked it, though my one comment was the edamame – I’ve tried using it in fried rice and find the texture a bit too ‘hard’ for my purposes, and found it the same here.  Otherwise, a splash of dressing and this pasta salad was great!  (Grape tomatoes, broccoli, frozen veggies, chopped up kielbasa, and wheel pasta.) 

FeistySis and CGL decided to have second Thanksgiving of sorts, and CGL’s mom made sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows… and lots and lots and lots of butter.  I’m not a sweet potato fan but these I will always eat a bite or two because ummm, it’s butter, dude.  Lots and lots of butter.  And quite tasty the way she makes it… 

She also made a huge corned beef, juicy, succulent, fatty… delicious. 

And what is second Thanksgiving without turkey?  She roasted a whole turkey and then took it apart for easy serving.  So good – moist and totally awesome.  I would even daresay… second only to my turkey 😉

One of FeistySis’s friends brought over green beans and roasted kabocha squash too.  I forgot which friend it was though (sorry!). 

There are a few dishes FeistySis now can make comfortably without consulting a recipe.  This is one of them: buttered carrots. 

To my delight, she also made a huge tray of mashed potatoes.  Not sure if you remember a few years ago when I got really upset because I wanted mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving – oh wait, that was this past Thanksgiving.  Well, two years before that, I wanted mashed potatoes and my darling sister made 5 pounds of mashed potatoes, then refused to make them again because I said that was too much.  Oops.  Well, here’s some mashed potatoes for meeeeee! 

Gravy for the turkey 

Cabbage with the corned beef, which CGL’s mother also made… and she used dried shrimp to flavor it.  Interesting.   

Here’s my first plate – yummmmmmmm. 

Hours upon hours later, it was time for dessert.  Here’s the cantaloupe that I cut, along with the strawberries.  You can tell I cut it because I am kind of anal retentive and each piece is roughly the same size. 

My sister has decided that the best way to keep the kids occupied at her parties is by making cupcakes and letting them decorate them (with a bit of adult supervision, because the kids aren’t all quite old enough to leave alone with sprinkles).  This is the cupcake stand I bought for her one year, filled with kids’ cupcakes. 

I’m always proud of FeistySis for coming up with new and interesting ways to do things – like the pasta salad!  I have trouble thinking outside the box, so I’m always impressed when she’s able to do so.  Here’s a sacher torte with a ‘homemade cake topper’ – I didn’t ask, but I am pretty sure she took some of the kids’ toys and taped them to a piece of cardboard (to keep their feet clean/keep the cake clean) and then stuck it on top of the cake.  D loves Star Wars passionately – maybe not quite the movies, I’m not sure how many he’s watched in entirety since he’s only 5 – but we play Star Wars Lego with him all the time, both the Wii game(s) and the playsets that BF and my brother put together for him.  Love.  (The blue tablecloth you see is actually Star Wars themed as well.)

*A note here: at one of the previous birthday parties, trying to find something to occupy the children that would also be suitably entertaining for the adults, I flipped on Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom.  I had to turn it off when one of the parents kept saying it was inappropriate for children, though I could NOT, for the life of me, think of what the parent meant.  It took me a long time to remember that towards the end is a scene where a man’s still-beating heart is ripped out of his chest.  Whoops.  But I contend that this parent’s children had certainly watched all of the Star Wars movies, including the one where a certain character is cut in half, burned practically completely to death… another character’s hand is cut off… come on!  Neither are very realistic!  Having said that, though, I’m not sure how I would react if I had children.  I grew up with parents who took me to see RoboCop in theaters.  Do you remember RoboCop?  I was 5 when it came out in theaters.  Of course, these same parents wouldn’t let me watch Poltergeist, Nightmare on Elm Street, or Friday…

Ahhh, doesn’t look like much, does it?  Well, this was made by FeistySis’s ever-talented friend, to whom I shall refer “JLL”.  JLL has made a number of desserts that I have been extremely privileged to have been able to share… and this, my friends, my readers, oh my.  Tiramisu, which you may know is one of my top desserts, and damnnnnnn this was excellent.  I really wanted to take the rest home with me, but I’m taught not to be greedy, and most of it was gone by the time we were through.  I hope she stops by and shares the recipe…. 😉

A plain cheesecake.  I think someone made this.  I’m not sure who?  I don’t really eat cheesecake… so I didn’t try it. 

More of the cupcakes that the children made. 

And here is my plate.  Tears of joy, that tiramisu was ridiculously good.  The fruti was good too… and that cake

was super moist, but had a stupid line of raspberry jam running down the middle.  Can’t eat that.  Wah.  So I ate around it.  I don’t normally eat this many sweets/desserts at these parties, but this time, I couldn’t help myself.  So good.

Another successful party, another successful birthday for my darling D.  Happy birthday, dearest!  Who knows if or when you’ll ever read this, but know that Yee-Yee loves you very much!  And maybe next year I’ll actually make you something as well.  😉

Love!