Birthday Cheesecake and a Birthday Pear

Bow is now eleven years old! His birthday was yesterday. If you would like to read about the celebration, you should check today's entry on Notes from the Pens. But if you're just interested in the food part of the celebration, then stay tuned.

The birthday cake was a cheesecake sampler, each piece a little different. I highly recommend cheesecake as a good choice for  those avoiding wheat based foods and those who don't want something quite as sweet as an ice cream birthday cake.  Bow chose a chocolate and nut covered piece of cheesecake. He had a great time eating it, though it was a little hard to slice with a spoon, as it had not quite fully thawed out. But you can see in the video that he had no trouble biting into it.

Another special treat that Bow had on his birthday was a luscious pear from the gift basket his uncle sent him for the occasion.

All in all, it was a birthday to remember, full of special treats and rare delicacies to please the palate of the most discerning eleven year old!

Cauliflower Chicken Soup

Bow has always liked cauliflower in whatever form I prepare it. Sometimes I serve it raw. Sometimes I steam it. And sometimes I allow it to simmer in chicken soup. For today's lunch, I served it in two forms: raw in salad and steamed in chicken soup.

The salad  consisted of purple cabbage, snap peas in pod, cherry tomatoes and feta cheese. Bow chose the salad second, before his apples or his banana. But his first selection was the chicken cauliflower soup.

He ate it very carefully and finished it to the last drop.

Soup

One of our staple meals is a roasted Cornish hen with baked sweet potatoes for dinner. I've been making that ever since we moved here to Missouri in 2001, before Bow was born. Up till now the Cornish hens cost 1.98 a piece. I would feed the drippings to the dogs, in order to supplement their fat intake. But quite recently, after disappearing from the shelves for a couple of weeks altogether, the inexpensive Cornish hens came back -- priced at 2.75 a piece.

There are many different ways to deal with something like that when you are on a fixed income. One way is to go for a less expensive type of chicken. An older, tougher chicken that is pumped full of hormones. But I chose the Cornish hens we eat for two reasons: they taste really good, and they are natural. So I decided to try to make up the difference in price by having the same Cornish hen provide me with the fat intake for lunch, too. This means no more drippings for the dogs.

Instead, every night when I am washing up, I save the drippings in a container for use in the following day's lunch.

Here is how I used the drippings yesterday to make chicken soup.

The soup was not the only item on the menu for Bow or for me.

Bow's lunch consisted of two apples, two bananas and soup. The soup met with mixed reviews. Bow enjoyed fishing out each of the carrots, and he did slurp a bit if the soup, too. But it was not good to the last drop, as far as he was concerned. Next time, I'm adding onions!