Coooookies

I made a special trip to Wegman’s round about the middle of December. All of my cookie cutters, from the giant Christmas tree to the itty bitty candy cane are still in my father-in-law’s garage in CT. I had made homemade sugar cookie dough the night before and Aidan and I bought in excess of $40 worth of decorations. For some reason Wegmans carries bizarre non-holiday-related cookie cutter shapes like honey jar, cocker spaniel and ballpoint pen. I did manage to find festive cutters in some hidden clearance bin. I was in business. Except life kept marching on and before I knew it we’d been to see Santa, done some collective wrapping, covert shopping, light spotting, tree decorating, along with the regular demands on our schedule and then the boys were returning to school. I tossed the dough, figuring even if it hadn’t spoiled that it was only kept alive by some unholy means.

Vowing to squeeze in some festive cookie, I made dough over the weekend and while Sam and Scott went tubing Aidan and Noah and I cut out 11 giant hearts. Then it was bed time. They each decorated one in the morning. I did one for Sam. They ate them one their afternoon with Gramma. That night I told the boys that if we had time, they could each do one before bed. I’ve never seen Noah eat so fast. He hardly spoke and was all (polite) business.

We decorated three more before bed that night for lunch boxes. One fell on the floor and cracked. Finally they did three more the following night and I did sneak an innocuous pink one without a sprinkle, extra grain of sugar or sixlet for myself. They ate these mountains of sugary, rainbow goodness, brushed their teeth twice and somehow still managed to sleep.

There you have it five days, 11 sugar cookies, only one fit for adult consumption. Stroke of genius!

Viking Lobster Company

My big brother turned 39 yesterday. He decided that instead of a romantic outing with his wife that we should all come too. He chose the Viking Lobster Company.

Esther told me that the first time they went they ordered the "Seafood Feast for Two". At $75 each, it was a seafood bonanza the likes of which Buffalo doesn't see and pretty affordable for what you get. She describe that what they were served was a pizza platter of seafood. They gorged themselves and then met the bill, that showed the seafood tsumani was $75 for both of them!

Really though, a pizza pan of seafood. I was imagining maybe a personal pan pizza amount of seafood.
I was wrong!

We went to a Crusty Crab-like dive in Buffalo's Riverside District, parked in a dirt parking lot and I began to regret not leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. You would never never stumble upon this place and may not be able to find it if you were looking on purpose.

It is BYOB so we got to drink our own good wine and lots of it while starting with the best Clams Casino I've ever had, coupled with two orders of "The Pile", a seafood mountain appetizer. Then the pizza platter came out, each with 2 lobsters, crab piece, gargantuan crab legs, giant shrimp and huge pieces of haddock that may as well have been decorative kale. By the time we got down there it was just silly.

If all of the isn't enough, the VIKING LOBSTER COMPANY had a birthday hat for the birthday boy!


My only regret is that I didn't have a better camera. That is MY brother. Those are blond braids. He is NOT drunk.

My final thought is this: Should you ever find yourself near Buffalo with your appetite or know where Buffalo and have no reason to be here , GO TO THE VIKING LOBSTER COMPANY!

Sorry Mom, we really tried

I am one of 14 grandchildren on my mom's side. From about the time there were 5 of us my grandmother set out on a mission to "just get a picture of all my grandchildren". My mom made that plea last night. Here's how that went.