Happy Mother's Day To Me!

As I'm sure you are aware (at least, I hope for your mom's sake you are aware,) today is Mother's Day. In keeping with tradition, my three guys treated me like a queen.

First off, they showered me with gifts:




Daniel got me a food mill, which I have been wanting for a long time. Both the Barefoot Contessa and Anne Burrell (the female version of Guy Fieri) claim it as their favorite piece of kitchen equipment. I'm pretty jazzed about using it for mashed potatoes and apple sauce. Daniel and I experimented today using the smallest setting: we threw in three strawberries, hull and all. It smashed them all to pieces, letting none of the green through the mill and only allowing a few seeds. We got a very delicious, very thick kind of strawberry juice. Rock and roll.

Ben got me The Food You Crave by my new BFF on Facebook, Ellie Krieger. I put it on a list of gift ideas for me, only to be told that Ben had already suggested it as a gift. He knows me so well. I'm pretty jazzed about this one too.

Not pictured, Mark got me a rice cooker. He couldn't find the size that I wanted, and rather than get the wrong thing, he opted to get the late thing and he ordered it from Amazon. I'll post pictures when it gets here.

Also shown, I got several cool kitchen additions - a wooden spatula, a ginormous pancake turner, a can colander, and a tiny grater for grating tiny things. Mark also got me a book about the psychology behind how food is marketed to make us buy and eat too much of it. It's called Mindless Eating, and if the first chapter is a good gauge, it will be a very interesting read.

After the gift giving, they made me a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast with jam. Yummo.

Next up, a matinee of the new Star Trek movie. I hope to put a more detailed review out there in a future post, but for now, I'll just say that it rocked. Out loud. Literally.

For dinner, Mark smoked some salmon. I can't tell you how good it is. I won't even try. Just know that I eat a lot of salmon, and this is the best I've ever had. The best Jerry. The best.


For dessert, Ben baked cupcakes. All by himself. No help from anyone, except that I had to tell him where the cupcake papers were. He even got inspired and added chocolate chips to the batter. Did I mention he knows me well? Daniel came in from the bull pen and added the frosting. I showed him the technique on the first one, and he frosted the rest. The picture was taken after we had consumed two thirds of them. (They were baked last night - cut us some slack.)

And there you have it. Another Mother's Day in the books. This was the first Mother's Day ever that I didn't actually speak to my own mom. She's treating herself to a solo trip to the Big Apple and is unavailable for comment. I did text her though, so I got the "Happy Mother's Day" out there.

And Happy Mother's Day to all my mom friends out there. I hope you were honored in whatever way makes you happiest. I know I was.

Thank you Mark, Ben, and Daniel - you guys are the best!!