See generally.

Pru’s first attempt at eating solid foods:

Sweet potatoes are nutritious, palatable and extremely unlikely to cause an allergic reaction. The same is true of bananas, but bananas are so delicious that there’s a concern that if you start a baby off on bananas she’ll reject less sweet veggies, like, for example, sweet potatoes. So, we started with the sweet potatoes.

Victory! The spoon is in, the food is in: we are go for eating!

Or, not.

Stiff arm!

The many faces of first-feeding Pru:

Intoxicated?

Pensive?

Happy!

Final disposition of steamed and pureed sweet potatoes from first feeding: 95% still on container, 4% on bib, 1% in mouth. I’d call that a very successful first feeding.

Let’s just hope this doesn’t lead to a lifetime of eating soil.

UPDATE:  See also.

We picked up our tickets to the Papal Mass in Yankee Stadium and have been busy trying to discourage Pru from putting them in her mouth. 

We made a very tasty classic Texan dinner:  chicken fried steak and Dr Pepper.

We did the laundry (and temporarily lost Cal in the process).

We cleaned the oven; it passed Cal’s inspection.

We saw the kneelerthat will be used when the Holy Father (Be-ne-dict X-V-I/Be-ne-dict, he’s our guy!) visits our neighborhood.

(I’ll give you a moment to stop laughing and pull yourself together.)

Needless to say, things did not go according to plan. Luckily, my parents were willing to bring us a pair of to-go plates from a diner in their neighborhood in exchange for some face time with their granddaughter, so we didn’t go hungry (or even turkeyless) that day. We did, however, have a rather ample supply of Thanksgiving-type foods occupying space in our chill chest and on our counter (to whit: a frozen turkey breast, several as-yet-to-be-mashed potatoes, a box of pre-fab stuffing, a can of cranberry sauce, green beans for our experimental* deep-fried green beans appetizer). And there it sat for almost two weeks as we tried to figure out what the heck to do with it.

The solution, of course, was to serve it as my birthday meal. So yesterday (my birthday, natch) that’s what we did:

We prepared the turkey using a variant of Alton Brown’s “Good Eats” recipe. Since it was just the breast, we cut the brine in half, and lacking certain ingredients in their ideal state we used fresh ground pepper, ground allspice and ground ginger rather than peppercorns, allspice berries and candied ginger. The absence of a body cavity also required us to monkey with the way the aromatics were used – they went into the bottom of the roasting pan (in a little water to prevent burning) rather than into the bird.

In spite of (or, perhaps, because of?**) our futzing with the recipe, the meal was a success. The turkey was moist and very flavorful (though I didn’t pick up as much of the apple flavor as Sarah did – I think I may be getting a little sick) and cooked in under an hour. Sarah did a great job with the stuffing – it’s amazing what you can achieve by following the directions on the box, rather than just boiling the hell out of the mix as I am wont to do. I made the gravy a bit thick, but it had a nice flavor, and I’ll hopefully learn from my mistakes next time.

So anyway, I had a very happy (and tasty) birthday, with my two favorite gals. My only regret: not getting a little Pilgrim hat for Cal. It would have been very cute, I think.

* read: ripped off from TGIFridays
** no, in spite of

In the meantime, we took in Noah Baumbach’s latest, Margot at the Wedding, at the Angelika. We thought it was well acted and the dialog was good, but that the plot was a little slack (if they’d jettisoned a couple scenes and at least one plot thread, it would have worked a lot better). It was nice and bleak, though.

Also, I’d like to retract all prior statements critical of the new Wendy’s Baconator. It’s actually a pretty tasty sandwich.