Trae Magnifique

(After reading this blog post, raise your hand if you "get" its title!)

Do recall, Fair Reader, that last year, our family enjoyed hosting a sleepover for Susan's cousin Todd's son Trae, then just half-a-year old (remember?). Now he's almost two, and he's spending the night with us again! His mommy, Trista, brought him over this afternoon, and the girls were very busy into the evening keeping him entertained. They took out a tub of some of their own toys from a few years ago and showed him how to play with them. They spent a good part of the afternoon outdoors exploring the yard, taking him for wagon rides on the driveway, and eating popsicles. Back indoors, they watched some Wiggles movies with him, introduced him to Huckleberry Fin, walked him up and down the stairway repeatedly, and joined him in playing with the baby and blankie that he brought along.

After supper (more on that below), Susan gave him a bath and then tucked him into bed in Hillary's room. She put pillows on the floor on either side of the bed because Trista warned her that Trae sometimes falls out of bed in the middle of the night . . . and about an hours ago, Susan discovered him on the floor! But he was still asleep and didn't wake up when she put him back in bed. Cute!

Here's the freshly bathed lad playing with one of Hillary's toys, a pink stuffed baby bear that has its own blue pacifier. Isn't he doing a fine job pacifying the baby?

And here's Trae "caring for" Suzanna's baby doll Sophie. A real baby probably wouldn't appreciate a caregiver who lies directly atop it and sticks his fingers into its eyes, but Sophie didn't fuss.

See what a good-humored guy Trae is? Here he's playing with one of Hillary's stretchy toys.

And here's Trae in Hillary's bedroom at bedtime. I'm guessing that his house does not feature any rooms with as much pink in them as Hillary's bedroom has (but there's some token blue for him in the sheets on Hillary's bed).

Because it's Scandinavian Saturday in our home, Trae even got in on some exotic Nordic cuisine. It was Susan's turn to be my cooking partner, so I chose a dessert and assigned her the task of making it while I prepared other items from tonight's menu:

appetizer

lemon Stilton cheese

blueberry Stilton cheese

rye flatbread

The rye flatbread was the Scandinavian element. Stilton cheese is English, but it looked interesting to me when I spotted it while I browsed the cheese case at the grocery store. Fruit-infused cheese? It turned out to be delicious! Susan and I could easily have made a meal out of the appetizer tray with the addition of some green apples, summersausage, and wine. Trae sampled the cheese but had multiple portions of flatbread.

main course

garlic bâtard

Danish kale soup

grilled ocean perch

I saw a recipe for Danish kale soup in a Scandinavian recipe book, but it didn't look all that exciting (one of the steps in the recipe is to "add seasonings as necessary" . . . not a good sign). So I made it up. I sautéed onions and celery with salt and pepper in some olive oil and butter. I added diced carrots, potatoes, parsnips, and turnips and then got them boiling by adding chicken stock and turning up the heat. I added cubed ham and poured in some ham stock. Toward the end of the process, I wilted five stocks of fresh kale in the soup and then added powdered cream of spinach soup and milk. The result was a huge Dutch oven full of hot, creamy soup thick with vegetables and rich with flavor from the parsnips, ham, and kale. Susan baked the bâtard so that we would have hot, crusty bread to enjoy with the soup.

Meanwhile I fired up the grill and loaded several fish grilling baskets with fillets of ocean perch (just because seafood is a very Nordic menu item, even if I couldn't find any actually imported from a Scandinavian country). I rubbed each fillet with olive oil, salted and peppered it, laid fresh herbs upon it (rosemary, sage, and parsley), and topped it with slices of lemon. The fish was perfectly done and was a good match for the soup. I don't think any of the fish made it into Trae's stomach, but he enjoyed the bread and the soup.

dessert

Norwegian baked prune custard

We still had half-a-pound of prunes left over from a recipe that Hillary and I made for Scandinavian Saturday a while ago (remember?), so I found this recipe to use them up for tonight's dessert. Susan stewed the prunes in port, stuffed them with almonds, and arranged them in the bottom of a baking dish. She mixed up a custard and poured it over the prunes and then baked it, let it cool, and put it in the fridge to chill. After supper she made some whipped cream to serve over each portion of the custard. This is not a recipe that we will be making again. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't too thrilling, either. Trae politely sampled a prune, but I think he had the right idea in then ignoring the rest and instead using his fingers to scoop all the whipped cream directly into his mouth.

English cheese, Norwegian flatbrød, French bâtard, Danish soup, Canadian fish, and Norwegian fruit custard--it turned out to be quite an international menu for our Scandinavian Saturday. All in all, the meal was très magnifique (there--does that help you with the title?)!

P.S. To further globalize our food intake, I also bought peach kuchen for our breakfast tomorrow. Yep, may as well add some German food to the mix.