"More Mayonnaise!!"

I finished making my pasta salad for recipe swap tonight. I'm hosting the group and the theme is "sensational salads". What happens with the swap is RS sisters come with a prepared dish, in this case salads, and copies of their recipe. Then we get to try all the dishes and take the recipes home. The swap has been so great because you get to taste-test the recipes before you make them yourself AND of course you get to chat while you eat the yummy food. I must say I've gotten some fantastic recipes - Janae's Russian roast is sooo good!! :) I'm so excited to get some more tried and true salad recipes tonight!

I think salads are one of those pot-luck dishes that can become the stuff of family folklore. My family (family of origin) has a macaroni salad that has such great and funny memories attached to it. Every big holiday (Thanksgiving, Christmas, 4th of July...) my parents made this huge batch of macaroni salad together and with out fail every year you hear my Dad saying over and over "more mayonnaise!!". Sometimes there are arguments between the 2 of them - my Mom quite frequently doesn't agree with the amount of mayo, pepper, or pickle juice my Dad wants to put in it and vise versa. :) It's hilarious! They always make a special small bowl without shrimp for me and I think my sister Lori?? I love that macaroni salad... I need to take a picture of my parents making it sometime or better yet video it, it's that funny!! :)

For the swap tonight I made Adrian's favorite pasta salad. We call it "Manly Pasta Salad". It's really got a lot of stuff in it like salami and cheese cubes, but the things that make it hot are the cayenne and horseradish. It's definitely got a kick and that makes Adrian happy. I make it for him along with crockpot BBQ ribs almost every Father's day. Since I'm making it for a group of women who may or may not like the "kick" I made it with half the cayenne today. Here's Adrian digging in after recipe swap ended. :)

Below I published the recipes for my family's infamous Macaroni Salad and Manly Pasta Salad.

Pasta Salad Recipes

My Family's Macaroni Salad

1 lb. 6 oz. bag mini shell pasta
3 stalks celery diced
1 dozen eggs
1 onion finely chopped
Best Foods Mayo
pickle juice
mustard
celery seeds
paprika
garlic powder
salt & pepper
deveined broken shrimp (optional)

Boil eggs, celery, and pasta in separate pots. Combine chopped up boiled eggs with all of the rest of the ingredients to taste. That really is the recipe. I'm the only one who's ever written it down, but of course "to taste" is left up to interpretations by who ever makes it. After 40 some years it seems my parents still haven't agreed to what "to taste" means either. :)

Manly Pasta Salad

1 (16-ounce) package salad macaroni (or ditali pasta)

1 cup celery, diced

1 cup red onion, diced

1 cup yellow or white onion, diced

1 cup medium cheddar, diced

1 cup Swiss cheese, diced

1/2 cup Parmesan, grated

1 cup dill pickles, diced

1 cup salami, diced

1 (6-ounce) can large pitted black olives, drained + chopped up a little

1 to 2 tablespoons garlic salt

1 to 2 tablespoons fresh minced garlic

1 tablespoon prepared horseradish

1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper

1 to 2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/2 teaspoon dry mustard

1/2 teaspoon celery salt

1 (3-ounce) jar diced pimentos, drained

1 to 1 1/2 cups mayonnaise

Add 2 quarts of water to a medium stockpot and bring to a boil. Add macaroni and cook until it is al dente, approximately 9 minutes. Do not overcook the pasta or it will fall apart when the salad is tossed together. Rinse macaroni until cool. Drain well and let it dry out slightly.

Add pasta to a large bowl. Carefully fold in celery, onion, cheddar, Swiss cheese, Parmesan, dill pickles, salami, and black olives. Refrigerate the mixture, uncovered, overnight (or refrigerate for at least 2 hours).

Mix the garlic salt, minced garlic, white pepper, black pepper, cayenne pepper, dry mustard and celery salt together. Add to salad. Fold in the pimentos. Fold in 1 cup of mayonnaise to start. Add up to a 1/2 cup more of mayonnaise if needed. Refrigerate again for 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Mom Day

I had a really lovely Mother's day complete with a wonderful sleep-in (till 10am!!!) and breakfast in bed (whole wheat bagel with cream cheese and jam) made by Adrian and brought up by the kiddies. I got a Vera Bradley purse (yay- I've turned into a real handbag fan which is weird, but I love the VB style) and cards from Adrian and the kids. Sophie made me a very creative "I-Spy" card. At church they gave little goodie bags of Lindt Lindor truffles to all the women, so that was just wonderful and Ben made me a fun paper "Super Mommy" crown in Sunbeams, which I wore all the way home. I must add that Nina was well behaved all day - giving me her own little Mother's day gift since she had been fussy/teething yesterday and Fri. For dinner Adrian made yummy chicken club pasta salad (thanks for the recipe Melissa!), hot dogs on the grill, and fresh corn on the cob. It was all fabulous. And now I'm blogging... So it was a really great Mother's day! I'm feeling the love and basking. :) :)And I want to give a special shout-out to my Mom!! Happy Mother's day Mom!! I love you and thank you for all that you've done and do for me. Wish I could be with you to celebrate today!!

Flashback Friday

This is my very very favorite picture of Ben. It was taken a little over 2 years ago (Ben was 19 months old) by my brother in law, David, who is a photographer. I just love it!! I love how it captures my sparkling little boy!! He was actually being a little mischievous when this photo was snapped; we had been trying to keep him off those stairs he was climbing up and you can just see in his eyes the pleasure he was getting out of doing something a little naughty! :)

I'm hoping to learn how to use our scanner so I can do some older pics for flashbacks soon. Even though I blog I am still a little technically-challenged!! :)

Flashback Friday

I've been inspired by my friends Mendy and Lynette to do a "Flashback Friday" post!! It's such a fun idea!!This is a picture from this time 3 years ago at a Mother's day lunch that Sophie's preschool put on for the moms and kids. It was so much fun. Sophie was excited because she had helped spread the mayonnaise on the little ham sandwiches they served. She also (with the other kids) did a few musical numbers and she was the loudest child singing and most animated one dancing. It was adorable!! Just the other day Sophie came to me and asked if we could go on a mommy-daughter date so we could spend time just the 2 of us - which I completely agreed to. She is such a sweet daughter. Love ya Soph!!

Story-Time, Doctors and Speech (with a little guilt thrown in just for fun :))

This morning I actually braved story-time at the library with Ben and Nina and I'm so glad I did. In Ben's usual fashion he pretty much just sat and listened while all the other kids were jumping up and down and clapping their hands, but Nina loved it. She loves watching kids and other babies so story-time was wonderful for her. I'm really going to try to make it a habit since she enjoys it so much and if I keep it up maybe Ben will start liking it too. Its all about familiarity with Ben. We met my friend Kat and her 2 younger kids there and after story-time we all went to the park to play. We've been having gorgeous weather - in the 70's with hardly any humidity, yay!! I wish I would have taken my camera, because little Sarah and Ben are so cute together. When Sarah saw Ben at story-time she ran over and hugged him and yelled, "It's Benjamin!!" Sarah has been over to play a couple of times and she and Ben hardly ever fight over toys which is lovely.

Earlier this week I took Ben and Nina to the pediatrician for their 3 yr and 9mo well child visits. I think I was absolutely insane when I scheduled the appointments at the same time. I guess I was thinking to you know kill 2 birds with 1 stone... Yeah, never going to do that again. Just getting both kids stripped down to the diaper was a feat, but when the nurse tried to get Ben's blood pressure with the cuff thing he had a complete melt down and then Nina in response had her own mini-melt down which was not half as bad as Benjamin's, but I'm sure the patients in the rooms next door assumed the nurse and I were beating them or something from the volume of their screams. By the time the doctor came in I had managed to calm them both down (little Gerber puffs for Nina and promises of playing "I Spy Spooky Mansion" computer game when we got home for Ben).

I talked to the doctor about Ben's speech issues and she agreed that we should have his speech delay evaluated again. He was evaluated last year by the county Infants and Toddlers program, but was judged not to be delayed enough for services. I honestly think he kind of fell through the cracks last year. He was so incredibly stranger shy that he hid under the table from the Infants and Toddlers people for much of the testing. At the time I wasn't allowed to pick him up or carry him because of my crazy pregnancy with Nina, so I kept coaxing him out from under the table and as soon as they would try to talk to him he would run right back under the table... I wish I would have been blogging this time last year, my life was ripe with crazy pregnancy tales and 2 year old strife. I'm sure it would have been a release to blog about it. I digress... Anyways, I'm glad his doctor was understanding and non-judgemental about his speech which validated my choice for switching him to a pediatrician (we had all, except for Nina, been seeing a family practice doctor near us). I can't tell you how many times I was asked by his last doctor if I talked to him and read to him. She was always kind, but made me feel as if I was responsible for his speech delay when ever I brought it up. Of course I talk to him and read to him... But in the back of my mind I've always wondered what I could have done or could do differently to help him talk better and be more comfortable in social situations. Mommy guilt sucks!! Well, I just hope that the evaluation goes better this year. He's doing better with the stranger fear and at least this time I'll be able to physically pull him out if he hides under the table. :)

On the topic of Ben talking, I have to throw in what he said yesterday. A commercial came on TV for the musical Jesus Christ Superstar and Ben yelled, "Look Mom it's Jesus Christ Amen!". I hope that doesn't sound sacreligious to anyone, but I though it was cute. He has recently started ending his prayers with a very clear "in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen" and we're really happy about that. :)

May Art Pic

Probably my favorite piece of art ever (so far :)) is The Draper's Guild by Rembrandt. I don't know what exactly it is about this painting, but it just draws me in. I've been fascinated by it since I was a junior in high school when I read about it in a novel. In this novel (an Anne Rice novel, but I can't remember which one) a man is talking to another man about how he believes the men in the painting know some truth that we don't know. He hypothesizes that they know the meaning of life and are being kind of smug about it. That isn't exactly my take on it, but I can see how someone could feel that way about it. I absolutely love how the man on the left is getting up from his seat as if to welcome you into the space and all of the men are looking squarely at the viewer/you. That is really a neat thing and that's why I enjoy Rembrandt's works so much; he brings so much psychology into play. Another of my favorite Rembrandt works is Bathsheba right after she gets the letter from David. She has such a sober, contemplative look on her face... Rembrandt was an amazing guy. When I was at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam I sat in front of Draper's Guild on a black metal bench for about 10 minutes, which was about as long as I could convince my friend Nikki to wait for me, but I could have stayed and looked at it all day. Nikki had wanted to get on with it since it was such a huge museum full of wonderful stuff and we still had lots more in Amsterdam to see before nightfall. (Amsterdam is gorgeous during the day and a scary, crazy, red-light district sort of place at night.) As I sat in front of this painting I was in awe of the thick, rich, colors and the fact that I really was looking at such a masterful work of art. I went on to study Rembrandt in my Northern Baroque class in college with Dr. Peacock and was able to appreciate Rembrandt even more in the context of the place and time in which he lived. Lovely, lovely, Draper's Guild... oh, how I love thee... :)