the birthday party

saturday was my father's birthday. birthday's are not usually huge events in the erdmann household. but maybe that's because i have only been home twice for my birthday in the past 9 years (one trip was for a funeral) and rarely for any other family member's big day. my dad, who loves loves loves to golf (i can't imagine anything i like to do as much as he likes to golf), spent the day on the green whacking the ball at 27 holes. me mum and i (it sounds british in my head) went to the farmer's market to get some veggies and saw two people we know there. fargo truly is a big small town. one of the guys we saw was our former landlord [side note: i'm putting music on my laptop while i write this and must comment on the picture on the inside of the christina aguilera (of course i'm latin, my last name IS aguilera) and i have to say - if i had her legs i would wear white and pink thigh highs all day every day with bright baby pink heels. i could take or leave the boa.] and the other guy was actually the farmer we were buying from. the farmer is from a big basketball family and so on the ride home my mom tried to explain how everyone was interconnected and we knew everyone. i'll say it again: fargo is a big small town. the one disappointment of the farmer's market was that there was no fruit. fruit jam (or jelly - who knows that the difference is????), but no fresh fruit. i dont know how fruit is made (grown?) but it must have something to do with consistent hot weather, which we don't typically have, and therefore it's hard to grow. or maybe north dakotans favor hearty veggies, i dont know. we have rhubarb in our backyard - is that a fruit? or a vegetable? does it matter?

anyway, after a kazillion other little errands, we began cooking. kind of. i only say this because nothing i do in the kitchen should be called cooking. while my mom showered, i began to make some delicious potatoes from a recipe i found online [easy for others, complicated for me potatoe recipe]. a few things about this recipe:

1) we didn't have the grill ready to go, so we had to cook in the oven. i realize this after cutting about half the potatoes into small triangle-type things. my triangle-type things would not sit on top of an oven rack, so we're kind of screwed there. luckily i left half of them bigger to fit across the metal bar thingies.

2) how much is a "sprig" of rosemary? well, first, let me say that i dont know anyone in these parts who buys fresh herbs. (is rosemary an herb??) so we were working with herbs from a spice rack. so how many dashs / shakes / pours from a jar equals one sprig? i just guessed, which is pretty much how i do all my cooking. that's what they do on iron chef so clearly it should work for me.

3) same thing with the sprigs of thyme. i put more in because i assumed a sprig of thyme is about the same size as a sprig of rosemary and the recipe calls for more thyme than rosemary.
0.5) back up - i forgot to mention something else, we didnt have enough olive oil. they dont use a lot of it here, so we only had a small bottle half full. so we were off to a rocky start before we started anything.

4) garlic. now, if you dont know - i LOVE garlic. too much is not an option for me. of course, i am single, so maybe that figures in to my limitless understanding of the use of garlic. anyway, i dont know if a clove is the whole thing of garlic or one of the pieces inside the big thing of garlic. so, to me, its one of the whole things. so i start peeling and mashing. kind of. first off, we had a regular white thing of garlic you get from the store and that went ok. i cut myself once or twice because i was trying to do the thing they do on iron chef where you put the garlic piece down and then lay your knife on top and smash your hand down on it to open it up (or i guess i'm not really sure what its for, but it looks cool). so i did this a few times and sometimes it worked and sometimes it just cut me. then i move on to the garlic we got at the farmers market. i really wish alton brown would stand over me explaining all the different types of garlic because they didnt look alike, so i am SURE they were different. anyway, those litlle sob's would NOT peel. the stem in the middle was soo stiff, i couldnt believe it. so, yes, more cutting of myself. after i had peeled all the garlic and had them laying on the table in front of me (its a lot harder to cook sitting down at a table. mental note: stand up next time), i looked into my bowl of oil and dashes of herbs and all the garlic from the supermarket garlic and realized that you almost couldn't see the oil there was so much garlic. i'm starting to question whether a whole thing of garlic is a clove or if the little pieces are. but then again, we didnt have as much oil as we should've, so i continue mashing garlic into the bowl. (btw, i do NOT like my mom's garlic thing - i should go dig through my boxes for mine which has nice pokey things to clean out the grate part.) after glancing down again, i think its time to stop with the garlic.

so i put the potatoes in and mix them around, but i can't tell if its coating them properly. i take some of the plastic stuff out that you put on top of bowls and press it down really well and then turn it upside down. the oil isnt really coating the potatoes, its just forming puddles around the sides of the bowls where the plastic is and i'm afraid it'll seep out, so i take that off and just spend a lot of time stirring the mixture.

at some point, my mom comes down and says "woah - a little strong on the rosemary, eh?" and i honestly can't smell it. i'm guessing good cooks should have a good sense of smell.
anyway, i forget what i was doing, but my mom starts cooking the potatoes and is very crafty - she put them all on a cookie sheet so they wouldn't fall through the metal bars in the oven. smart.

oh, i think i was on my way to hobby lobby where i went to pick up the gift we got for my father. it was an old picture collage of his that someone made back in 81 (so its as old as me) showing off my dad's amateur basketball team. over time, the mat had warped and discolored so me mum and me took it in to get finished. it turned out great! i dont think my dad was as impressed as we were. i'm sure he liked it, but men just dont seem to care about that sort of thing as much as women.

so when we had dinner. my brother, homie, and his gf, lindsay, came over so the five of us sat down for a really nice dinner. it was delish! and everyone really liked the potatoes. is it potatoes or potatos? i remember something about quayle screwing it up, but i just cant remember and spell check seems to accept them both.
anyway, we had some wine and beer (not mixed together, of course!) and salmon, talapia, steak, corn on the cob and then ice cream cake with candles for dessert.

fabulous evening thanks to my potatoes.