A Fine Meal

Last night we had a low key belated Mother's Day/Birthday dinner. My parents and my Uncle Bill came over for a little family time. Mom and I didn't get to celebrate Mother's Day since my parents went to Disney World that weekend. Then we delayed celebrating my uncle's birthday because that day occurred on the weekend that they returned from Disney.

We had a Scotch-English-Irish meal, inspired by a throw-away request from Uncle Bill for colcannon sometime. I had to do the research on colcannon - I had heard of it, but wasn't sure what it was. Turns out is is a delicious mashed potato, cabbage, ham/bacon (I used bacon) dish of Irish tradition. Here's the recipe I used. Of course, with Beau's milk intolerance and my weight loss work, I tweaked the recipe. I used Smart Balance instead of butter (and I reduced the quantity by half!) and I used rice milk. Also, I used bacon instead of ham since it was a side dish. Using ham would make this a lovely one pot meal.

The main dish was this Steak and Guiness Pie. Oh. My. Goodness. This is so good. I pretty much followed the recipe exactly except that I did use beef stock instead of chicken stock. Next time I may add more radishes. I'm not a fan of radishes, but these turned out tender and almost sweet. Delicious. Also, this will be how I make a basic beef stew, with radishes and Guinness.

Since our meal was on the heavy side, I wanted a lighter dessert and opted not to do a birthday cake. Instead, we had Pavlovas with Custard and Berries. I've made these before, when we had dinner with the Sleepy Family. I made the meringues last weekend and stored them in the freezer. Last time, we all decided they were a bit too sweet, so I cut 1/2 cup of the sugar. They were perfect - not too sweet at all. We had both vanilla-coconut pudding and also a chocolate-coconut pudding. And a mixed berry combination of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries that macerated for several hours with a teaspoon of sugar and lemon juice.

I had a blast planning and preparing the evening. It was fun to be in the kitchen again. Not as much fun to clean the house, but Beau did the motherload of cleaning so mega-props go to him for that. Thank you, Beau! It was a good meal. It was a good time with beloved family. The kids loved seeing their Marmie and Pop and Uncle Bill, too.

Until the next time...