Back when we had a place to live, Nora and Jen made butterfly cupcakes with peanut m&m spots. What with the chocolate cake & frosting & m&ms, though, you could barely taste the butterfly.
Posts in category food
Solid food is hard.
One of the more exciting changes in Colin’s life lately has been his expanding relationship with solid (though, admittedly, mostly smooshy) foods. Here’s a chompy tryptic for your viewing pleasure. [warning: graphic content]
Solid foods
Colin, who recently sprouted a pair of lovely new bottom teeth, has been enjoying the fruits (and vegetables) of his labors in the form of rice cereal (seen here), bananas, avocados, rice, cheerios, mushed up peas, etc. It’s a bold new world (and we need the number of a reputable carpet cleaner).
Happy Birthday to Me!
For my birthday, Kevin and Nora made me a beautiful (and delicious!) cake. It was a modified pound cake with fluffy chocolate frosting, decorated with some very fancy sprinkles.
Share the Cookie
We’ve noted the resemblance between Nora and Colin, but it goes deeper than mere looks — both eat their chocolate chip cookies so that the chocolate ends up all over their faces! To be fair, Colin didn’t really eat his (er. . .my) cookie, he just licked it. Not sure that an oatmeal walnut chocolate chip cookie is the ideal first solid food for the baby, though given his DNA it’s definitely within the realm of possibility.
Christmas Cookies!
We weren’t able to attend Kusnir cookiefest this year (breaking an important tradition) so we had to make our own. Nora, as you can see, assembled the perfect cookie-making ensemble.
Nora’s birthday (observed)
Nora had never had a “friend” birthday party before, but we thought that 5 is a pretty important milestone birthday and deserved to be treated as such. Way back in August, Nora decided that she wanted her party to be at Pump-It-Up (a giant inflatable bouncy house place), so that is what we did. 17 pre-schoolers ran and jumped and bounced for an hour, then we sugared them up with some delicious cake and sent them home.
Birthday in Room 5
We made chocolate cupcakes with pink frosting for Nora’s class on her birthday. This was a huge stretch for us and quite a far cry from last year’s chocolate cupcakes with pink frosting. Still, despite being adventurous, we pulled it off okay. Nora got to eat lunch with her pal Leah and then we all sang to her and the kids ate cupcakes while Jen, Colin and I looked on somewhat awkwardly from our table off to the side of the room. We looked and felt just the tiniest bit like the panel of judges in a classic “rehearsals” type scene in a hollywood movie about a plucky young actor/dancer/singer/whatever who has to face the stern disapproval of the establishment before a gruff mentor with a heart of gold believes in them just enough to open a path to stardom through some calculatedly unexpected show of grudging approbation. Also? we didn’t get cupcakes.
Barry’s Pizza
People know about Chicago-style pizza and New York style pizza –and rightly so. Sadly, far fewer people know about the amazingly delicious Detroit Style Pizza. Since moving to Houston we’ve learned to replicate Buddy’s pizza pretty accurately for ourselves (I can post the recipe if anyone is interested), but sometimes you don’t want to spend two days getting the crust and sauce ready. Sometimes you want to go, sit in an air conditioned restaurant, and let someone else do the work. Luckily, we’ve discovered Barry’s Pizza which, right down to the name, seems eerily similar to our favorite place back in the mitten. Barry’s isn’t the best pizza in town (that honor belongs to Collina’s Italian Café –we’re sure about this, we’ve tried everywhere), but it does have an amazing facsimile of a Buddy’s 8 piece square. Y’all should come down and try some.
p.s. there is no news about the baby.
Nora considers any restaurant with crayons a 4 star restaurant.
It’s *almost* sort of approximately just like Buddy’s.
Shuckin’ and Jivin’
It’s not easy to grill in Houston in the summer. On this particular day, it was so humid that our wet/dry blue kitchen matches wouldn’t light. We ended up having to light a birthday candle inside and carry that outside. On the bright side, genuine mesquite charcoal is ubiquitous. In fact, the main reason people lock their doors and put their cars in the garage here is because otherwise people will sneak up and fill your trunk or front hall with excess mesquite charcoal.
