Happy Birthday, Rose!

Last night, I cooked dinner for so many people that the last person in the door had to eat with a plastic fork. It made me so happy to have such a crowd gathered around my table(s) that I nearly popped. Rose made herself a mixed berry cobbler for her birthday, and I tried to make vanilla ice cream to go with it, but the ice cream machine simply would not work. Somewhere between summer and fall the magic smoke escaped from it, and it would turn no more. We contemplated various manual ice-cream-cranking schemes and even sent purchasing agents to look at nearby hardware and department stores, but alas there are no ice cream makers to be found in November. So Rose's birthday dessert was an awesome Mixed Berry Pandowdy with Slushy Vanilla Cream topping.

Everybody enjoyed dinner, and I got an excellent compliment on my Mexican Rice. Pace Picante Sauce cookbook for the win! Also, bacon grease makes everything taste good. Except maybe ice cream, but I followed my grandma's recipe for the ice cream and that leans heavily on Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk. If bacon grease won't make it taste good, Eagle Brand will. That's going to be my new kitchen version of the old handyman's adage: you only need two tools - Duct Tape and WD-40. If it moves and it shouldn't, use the tape. If it doesn't move and it should, use the WD-40. I might have to find a way to fit butter in there with bacon grease and Eagle Brand, because butter certainly makes everything taste good, too. I already have a saying for butter, though: All my favorite recipes start the same way - Melt a stick of butter and pour two ounces of wine in the cook.

We spent the bulk of the evening laughing, telling lies, and playing dominoes and Cranium. The Cranium game was very close and if Cranium allowed for ties, we probably would've declared the game a tie. The dominoes game was called early on account of increasing levels of violence. That's what you get for trying to teach rugby players a non-contact sport.