Yesterday we celebrated my husband’s thirtieth birthday. The children and I had a wonderful day planned for daddy; one that required lots of preparation. His gifts this year are going to be entirely homemade. Mostly because his gifts were some of his favorite foods but also because we recently put a price limit on gifts and food gets the most bang for the buck (my husband really enjoys certain kinds of food that I never make).
Two days before my husband birthday, our son and I made some beef stock using some beef bones that I had purchased from a local farmer. Our son did not quite understand how these weird looking things could be made into soup (his sister was too busy crawling to care) but he did like the idea of “cow bones.” After roasting the bones in the oven with some vegetables and seasonings, the bones went into a pot full of water for eight hours. In the midst of our stock making, we also made my husband’s favorite ice cream, something call Bangkok Peanut. This was an ice cream he had tried once in a small organic ice cream shop in Ohio. The taste stuck with him and he raved about it frequently. We cooked the ice cream ingredients (our son insisted on stirring), tempered the egg yolks, and cooked it some more. Then we put it in the refrigerator to chill overnight.
The day before my husband’s birthday, we went grocery shopping (because it was Wednesday) and also bought the ingredients for the French Onion Soup which is my husband’s favorite soup ( I have never cared for it so I have never made it … that is what makes it even more special). With the help of our very excited son, we selected seven very nearly perfect red onions. However, the french bread was not to be found (at least the kind that is made without mono and diglycerides)…
(To be continued …)