Ben turned 24 on Monday, and he enjoyed a sustained four-day celebration. On Friday, we hosted a burrito bar in the park with his crew for a birthday lunch. His birthday dinner out was at DiSalvo’s and involved an enormous steak that I neglected to capture photographically. Saturday Ben attended a Luau dance, complete with…
Everybody’s Got a Hungry Heart
This week we made taco smash burgers, or at least that’s what we are calling them because they involve smashing a burger with a tortilla, and then flipping it over and folding it in half like a taco. When I saw it on a cooking show that I was watching when very hungry – dangerous…
Truth or Consequences
Unless there are extenuating circumstances, Ben is allowed to eat out for lunch once a week. Pizza with bowling doesn’t count, and he usually gets two lunches a week where he volunteers, so that takes him down to one day of packing a lunch per week, and one day of eating out. Sometimes, Ben decides…
Going on a Bear Hunt (and a game!)
This week I suggested to Ben that we make sausage rolls. If you haven’t been to the U.K., it is possible you don’t know about this staple of museum cafes and quick lunches on the fly in the British Isles. I have consumed many sausage rolls, but until I looked into recipes, I didn’t realize…
Performance!
Saturday Ben told someone that he was planning on crying the next day for the production of Finding Nemo Jr. because it was the last show. True to his word, when Phil dropped him off to prep for the matinee show on Sunday, he was weepy. We received a dispatch from his sister that he…
May Day!
No, not Mayday, the distress signal. I’m talking about the first day of May. Does anyone remember the May Basket tradition? When I was a kid, I remember making a decorative little paper cone on May Day, filling it with flowers I had picked, then hanging it on the doorknob of an elderly neighbor’s door,…
What Would You Change?
Friday we went to the Crooked Goose (hard to keep straight from the Crippled Bear – lots of wounded animal restaurants in these here parts) and it was perfect. We wouldn’t change a thing. Saturday I took Ben to a special prom in Lewisburg (the community where I teach) and we had a ball (A…
Waste Not, Want Not
This week, we have been all about using up the the last bits of foods that aren’t getting any fresher. We even managed to put away some in the freezer for an undisclosed date in the future (of course, in a container that has seen so many iterations that three dishes ago I Sharpied in…
Total Eclipse of the Tart
With all the hubbub surrounding Monday’s eclipse, I have been taking a stroll down memory lane. Stop number one: 1979. I was in seventh grade during that eclipse, and we made pinhole cameras to observe it. I didn’t really know what I was doing so I didn’t see much of anything, but we had been…
Benchiladas
Have you ever wondered, when you’re staring into the gaping maw that is your family’s ravenous hunger, what would Ben do? Well, wonder no more. This is what Ben would (and did) do. Benchiladas. If, like us these days, you aren’t quite up to doing all that, Benchiladas are the perfect solution when you need…