The hard truth is [or at least has been for us] that the days following baby and Mom's return from the hospital require near total abandonment of the high-minded pursuits that give meaning to live in order to satisfy our most basic survival needs.
The baby lives only to eat and sleep, and generally is discontented when she's not doing either. Mommy lives only to feed and sleep, and usually has to find a way to still be functional when she's forced to do without the latter. Daddy exists only to serve, and whenever Mommy senses he's branched beyond servitude and is attempting to pursue other pleasures,* she threatens imminent bodily harm [if only with her eyes and tone of voice]. The other children exist only to thwart the others' survival efforts, either by smothering the little one or making sure that they're loud and rambunctuous enough that neither she nor Mommy ever sleeps [and that Daddy suffers the wrath for not having kept them from being loud and rambunctuous].
Every evenings is a potential marathon fraught with "the baby isn't sleeping" time or "the baby is sleeping, but she might not be soon" time. It's a bleak existence, and I cling only to the cuteness of our little one, the sweets we've got in the cupboard or freezer, and the hope that things will settle in to a manageable routine at some point in the near future.**
All this is to say that celebrating Michelle's birthday yesterday proved a bit more difficult than in previous years.
In place of a birthday cake [which she's no longer shy about claiming not to like], she asked for birthday brownies: good ones. I turned to the only place I could trust with such a perilous assignment: Costco. As it happened, they were still selling the 7 lb. Ghiradelli Triple Chocolate Brownie Mix, which I don't think we've had since our days in Cambridge.
Demonstrating that Michelle's culinary wiles are not entirely lost on me, I decided not only to add walnuts to the mix, but to toast the walnuts before adding them. I also cooked them hours ahead of time to ensure that they'd be sufficiently cooled when the time came to eat them.***
The baby lives only to eat and sleep, and generally is discontented when she's not doing either. Mommy lives only to feed and sleep, and usually has to find a way to still be functional when she's forced to do without the latter. Daddy exists only to serve, and whenever Mommy senses he's branched beyond servitude and is attempting to pursue other pleasures,* she threatens imminent bodily harm [if only with her eyes and tone of voice]. The other children exist only to thwart the others' survival efforts, either by smothering the little one or making sure that they're loud and rambunctuous enough that neither she nor Mommy ever sleeps [and that Daddy suffers the wrath for not having kept them from being loud and rambunctuous].
Every evenings is a potential marathon fraught with "the baby isn't sleeping" time or "the baby is sleeping, but she might not be soon" time. It's a bleak existence, and I cling only to the cuteness of our little one, the sweets we've got in the cupboard or freezer, and the hope that things will settle in to a manageable routine at some point in the near future.**
All this is to say that celebrating Michelle's birthday yesterday proved a bit more difficult than in previous years.
In place of a birthday cake [which she's no longer shy about claiming not to like], she asked for birthday brownies: good ones. I turned to the only place I could trust with such a perilous assignment: Costco. As it happened, they were still selling the 7 lb. Ghiradelli Triple Chocolate Brownie Mix, which I don't think we've had since our days in Cambridge.
Demonstrating that Michelle's culinary wiles are not entirely lost on me, I decided not only to add walnuts to the mix, but to toast the walnuts before adding them. I also cooked them hours ahead of time to ensure that they'd be sufficiently cooled when the time came to eat them.***
[The baking team]
The result was a triple chocolate triumph.
[Notice the carefully arranged candles]
We also followed our trip to Costco with a trip to Ralph's for some Breyer's vanilla ice cream -- the seemingly perfect compliment to such decadent brownies.
For dinner, we went with a cheese pizza from what we've found to be San Diego's best pizzeria: Bronx Pizza. It's good, though when you've had the best at Grimaldi's in Brooklyn, it's hard to be impressed. Indeed as we ate our Bronx cheese pizza, I mused that this pizza of pizza's here in San Diego is little more than a slightly inferior version of what I grew up eating at Sorrento's Pizza in small town Ilion, NY. How odd it seemed that pizza out of a town of 10,000 comparatively in the middle of nowhere Upstate New York could so easily match, if not outclass, the best San Diego, California -- with it's 1.3 million people -- has to offer. [I also got a $5 Little Caesar's pepperoni pizza for the kids, since slices of the the Bronx pepperoni pizza come at a hefty $2.50 a pop and my kids would not have appreciated the difference.]
Additionally, I'm not sure I'm sold on the Ghirardelli brownies/Breyer's vanilla ice cream combo. The brownies are great, and the ice cream, of course, is great, and I would wholeheartedly recommend either as a stand alone dessert [provided you have some milk with the brownies.] But I didn't sense that they complimented each other well. Instead, it was as though these two dessert heavyweights were battling each other for tastebud supremacy and, because of the battle, ultimately cancelled out the delightful nuances that make them each stand out in their own right. [Granted, though, the pleasure of the Ghirardelli brownies isn't so much nuance as it is a chocolate assault on the senses.] I'm wondering if it's not a wasted effort coupling a really great brownie with a really great vanilla ice cream. Instead, the best course may be to decide which should be the "lead" dessert on any given evening, and then look for a mediocre compliment.
In any event, Michelle still turned 29 and seemed to appreciate the efforts to make special what surely was one of her more subdued birthday celebrations. Natalie would later make for a long evening, which Michelle bore with more patience than I was capable of. [Natalie may have been ticked we shared neither the pizza nor the dessert with her.]
Happy Birthday Love!
*Like blogging, for instance.
** Depending on the hour of the day, I may or may not be just kidding.
*** As some of you may be aware, unlike some other baked goods (cinammon rolls, apple crisp, and chocolate chip cookies, for instance) brownies are almost never better warm than they are cooled. The heat can easily mask the subtlety of the chocolate flavor that makes a good brownie so enjoyable. It also diminishes the appropriately famous brownie/vanilla ice cream combo by melting the vanilla ice cream, which is not desired for this particular dessert combo.
For dinner, we went with a cheese pizza from what we've found to be San Diego's best pizzeria: Bronx Pizza. It's good, though when you've had the best at Grimaldi's in Brooklyn, it's hard to be impressed. Indeed as we ate our Bronx cheese pizza, I mused that this pizza of pizza's here in San Diego is little more than a slightly inferior version of what I grew up eating at Sorrento's Pizza in small town Ilion, NY. How odd it seemed that pizza out of a town of 10,000 comparatively in the middle of nowhere Upstate New York could so easily match, if not outclass, the best San Diego, California -- with it's 1.3 million people -- has to offer. [I also got a $5 Little Caesar's pepperoni pizza for the kids, since slices of the the Bronx pepperoni pizza come at a hefty $2.50 a pop and my kids would not have appreciated the difference.]
Additionally, I'm not sure I'm sold on the Ghirardelli brownies/Breyer's vanilla ice cream combo. The brownies are great, and the ice cream, of course, is great, and I would wholeheartedly recommend either as a stand alone dessert [provided you have some milk with the brownies.] But I didn't sense that they complimented each other well. Instead, it was as though these two dessert heavyweights were battling each other for tastebud supremacy and, because of the battle, ultimately cancelled out the delightful nuances that make them each stand out in their own right. [Granted, though, the pleasure of the Ghirardelli brownies isn't so much nuance as it is a chocolate assault on the senses.] I'm wondering if it's not a wasted effort coupling a really great brownie with a really great vanilla ice cream. Instead, the best course may be to decide which should be the "lead" dessert on any given evening, and then look for a mediocre compliment.
In any event, Michelle still turned 29 and seemed to appreciate the efforts to make special what surely was one of her more subdued birthday celebrations. Natalie would later make for a long evening, which Michelle bore with more patience than I was capable of. [Natalie may have been ticked we shared neither the pizza nor the dessert with her.]
Happy Birthday Love!
*Like blogging, for instance.
** Depending on the hour of the day, I may or may not be just kidding.
*** As some of you may be aware, unlike some other baked goods (cinammon rolls, apple crisp, and chocolate chip cookies, for instance) brownies are almost never better warm than they are cooled. The heat can easily mask the subtlety of the chocolate flavor that makes a good brownie so enjoyable. It also diminishes the appropriately famous brownie/vanilla ice cream combo by melting the vanilla ice cream, which is not desired for this particular dessert combo.
[Can you sense how much I'm not looking forward to all the phone calls I have to make now?] 
