Celebrating Andrew

 this special little boy arrived 19 years ago today.  I am such a lucky Mama to have 2 wonderful sons.  Happy Birthday Andrew-your affinity for food began at a very early age!

Halloween 1996 (approximately 15 months old)

I really miss having these extra hands in the kitchen, and the bonding time we had while cooking.

dialogue of a 17 year old chef.

i'm not a super big fan of facebook, but i couldn't help, but smile at this posting by andrew.  the chicken was really, really good. i'm gonna miss him when he goes to school in the fall. (i'm sorry about the formatting.)

 

Andrew Sheffield:  for a roasted chicken recipe, i had to put the chicken in a 500 degree oven for 15 minutes. it was a very stressful 15 minutes!

Marie Richardson to get it brown and crispy, my dear!

Andrew Sheffield i know, but i didnt want it to burn

• marie Richardson i bet it came out perfect!
•  
• Marie Richardson the more you cook, the bolder you get!

   
• Andrew Sheffield its still in the oven, at 425, i just cant deal with this nonsense!

   
• Adam Zeller Hey but that fried chicken was pretty legit

   
• Andrew Sheffield it was, im glad i didnt have to fabricate this chicken!

   
• Adam Zeller That crap sucked....

   
• Andrew Sheffield indeed, the should be the last of it. i think tomorrow will be southwest, so that should be simple and delicious.

   

conversation with andrew.

some people "poo-poo" about texting. i have grown to love it- case in point.

happy friday y'all, what's making you smile today.

thai.

andrew got a cooking lesson for a christmas gift and today we went to Thai Peppers/Mt. Fuji steakhouse in marietta to redeem it. i got to sit with a glass of wine and my knitting and observe. the teacher was very friendly and andrew's only classmate ida was delightful to talk to. i also got to sample the dishes and they were really good. there are plans to take another class at some point, maybe to make sushi-am thinking i probably won't be trying any of THAT. it was a great way to spend a sunday afternoon.

spring rolls with hoison/peanut dipping sauce

chicken coconut soup (very spicey, but tasty)

2 kinds of curry-just the right amount of spicy LOTS of flavor

photos is the greatest of the dish since we were inside, but it was very good.

culinary creativity

andrew and i splurged on a new cookbook crazy about cookies, we rationalize this purchase by deciding that it wasn't a cookbook cookbook (of which we have plenty), but a cookie cookbook of which we have none! so of course, andrew wanted to try a recipe immediately and decided on the peanut butter cookies. we were worried that we'd be short on the shortening (haha get it?), however the REAL crisis was when we realized we were about a full cup short of PEANUT BUTTER. we had a couple options 1) wait and make them sunday after we'd bought more peanut butter (we'd already measured the dry ingredients), 2) check with steve to see if the huge jar of peanut butter we sent to work with him during snowcropolis was still in his car (negative on that one), 3) see if we still had that jar of nutella in the pantry (a negative on that one too), however what we did have was a jar of dry roasted-lightly salted peanuts- well when life hands you peanuts-you make.....

peanut butter-throw in the nuts, put it on high speed, and once everything is really smushed, add just a drizzle of canola oil so that you don't lose the consistency needed for the cookies.  then you get some pretty awesome cookies, we also threw in a handful of chocolate chips just for kicks and giggles.