A definition:

Stomach: a saclike distensible enlargement of the alimentary canal located between the esophagus and small intestine; it stores food, adds gastric juices, begins the breakdown of proteins and churns food into a liquid mass.

Um, ew. Liquid mass? Way to make eating seem
totally disgusting (ha). Perhaps I should read that (Webster's) definition every time I get hungry for things I shouldn't be eating. It's definitely way ruder to imagine pizza or a burger as a liquid mass in the middle of my body than say, strawberries, which just sounds like a smoothie. A semi-digested rather acidic stomach smoothie.

Sorry. I've been in a wicked sh*t of a mood the last few days, John too, we've written it off to prolonged lack of sunlight. The post-holidays, post-birthday, snow-sucks-after-Christmas blues. You know it, too, I know. Meh. I've even been trading emails with Suz bemoaning the idiocy of the masses and chatting over coffee this morning (Friday Morning Coffee with Suz!) about the Holocaust. Egads. But I'll admit, I'm not opposed to using the saclike distensible enlargement of my alimentary canal to cheer myself up, namely through the filling of it with lovely (at least before chewing into a bolus) foods and the occasional sip of wine and/or bubbly.

Like last night. Date Night! Movie followed by dinner with John at (Uptown) Campiello. I know it's not all about Campiello the way it was when the place opened, but it was still festively hopping on a Thursday night and the food - D'Amico knows what the heck they're doing - was delish. We particularly loved the king crab appetizer - pieces of butter-tender crab tossed with julienne carrots, jalapeños, and scallions, served alongside a horseradish panne cotta. Unusual and spectacularly delicious, with a cool-creamy, sweet-spicy-crunchy thing going on. Our entree was a bit more traditional - ziti tossed with lemon zest, dried peppers, garlic, olive oil, and Parm. Simple, chewy-spicy deliciousness. Nothing makes a cooler (smoother?) bolus than king crab and ziti. Rad.

And lunch today, yum. At Yum Bakery, my mom treated Stace, Cooper, and moi to a post-Stephanie-is-41-(sigh) celebration. Yum Bakery is the perfect girlie lunch spot - sunny and buzzy, with a long list of spot-on comfort food tasties. Mom and I chose the salad sampler - good ol' fashioned tuna, egg, and chicken salads (with modern twists all of them, top-notch) spread on fresh foccacia bread. Cream of mushroom soup. Stace and Coop shared beef stew. We all dived into frites (but of course). And Happy Birthday to me...coconut cake. YESSS! Sooo good, a real, buttery scratch white cake, filled with coconut custard and iced with white icing and showered with sweetened, flaked coconut. Just exactly how it's supposed to be, ridiculously sweet and rich. Love, love, LOVED it.

Tonight? Uh, I'm not very hungry? Funny thing, ha. What to eat on a not-hungry night? Well, there's always the option of nothing, but that's not very weekendy. Or moderate. So I'm leaning toward a simple quesadilla - two French Meadow (Fat Flush, worst product name evar) sprouted grain tortillas, sprinkle of cheese, toast in a pan until melty and dip in some spicy Salsa Lisa. Few hundred cals, five minutes to prepare, tasty (essential), done.

Happy Sunless Weekend! (Grumble.)

And oh! Another reason to eat monounsaturated fats (as in avocados, olives, and nuts.)

Happy 2nd Birthday Moderate Epicurean Blog!

And hey, it's a very Happy 41st Birthday for me as well - very happy. As I celebrate, I can't help but be incredibly grateful for a pretty awesome year. Oh, plenty of ups and downs of course, of the usual variety...but for now, the gratitude abounds. In leaps and bounds! Sniff. I'm living my life's current passion - cooking, sharing food with friends and family, and writing about it all. I'm making exactly zero money doing it, but hopefully that won't be true forever. Right here, right now, It's All Good. Thanks for sharing this little adventure with me!

My first official birthday present was this stunning portrait (above) from - who else? - my sister Stacey. A Stacified Stephanie, YESSS, I love it! I brought it home New Year's Eve and waited until today to post a pic. How many of us actually have our portrait painted? And so beautifully! It's so, so...WASP-y, which as Suz would point out, is totally metal! And of course it makes me look much more fabulous than I actually am, bless my sister's heart. I told Nathan that when he's an old man, and I'm long gone, he can point it out to his grandkids and say, that's your great-grandma Stephanie, back in the day. A little slice of immortality. Now that's a birthday gift!

As was brunch at Lucia's this morning, with Nathan, John, Cooper, and Stacey, a sunny, quiet celebration. Which, given this holiday season, is all I was up for, truly. Nathan and Coop played superheroes while I played poached eggs over sausage hash alongside salad greens. I do love warm eggs with crisp salad, delicious. Oh, and I scored more bling (YES!), and flowers from Nathan, and had just the loveliest time.

Forgot to say yesterday that I FINALLY pulled off Friday Morning Coffee with Suz this week - woo hoo! With vacations and deaths and birthdays and what is generally known as life constantly intervening, we are far from our weekly groove lately. I was sooooo needing to laugh, and laugh we did, whew it was great. We had so much to talk about I had to send her a pre-coffee, warm-up email, ha. Next time I'll have to update her on...

...Cooper's birthday party today! My little red-haired nephew celebrated turning the Big 01 today, in his new home, in the presence of all five of his grandparents, a couple of aunts and uncles (including Mary & Bruce), his one and only cousin (Nathan!), lots and lots of friends, and his proud mommy and daddy. Stace and Bowen brought in a buffet of tasties from D'Amico & Sons - spaghetti with meatballs, ravioli, pizza, salads. Susanna made a lovely pot of Potage St. Germain soup (pureed peas, lettuces, and leeks, spring-in-a bowl, yum). Of course there was the must-have, butter-cream-iced cake from Wuollet Bakery. The Coopster was a Super-Star, the most chill one-year old birthday boy I've ever seen. As in, he actually calmly played with his gifts as he opened them, instead of frantically tossing them aside and playing with the boxes. He squished some birthday cake, happily let everyone hold him, talked on cue, and had a nice little mid-afternoon birthday nap. Turning 1 in style, that's our boy - Happy Birthday Cooper Cuteness!

Wouldn't you know, a damn snowstorm did us in yet again?! Unbelievable. This time on the east coast, preventing my brother David and sister Etta from coming out from NYC for the weekend, as well as Bowen's sister Sara and her husband Romero coming from Vermont. Damn! Boo! Damn! Luckily Bowen's parents Hal and Suzanne were able to make it from Palm Beach or we would have had a a bust of a dinner party tonight. As it was, we lucked into very nice, with Bowen's parents, my dad and Susanna, Stace, Bowen, and Coop, and the Best Helper Evar, aka Nathan. I borrowed a page from my father-in-law John and made Veal Scallops a la Danoise (with cucumbers), a lovely dish, made lovelier by the fact that you can prepare it ahead a bit and finish it off right before dinner; Deluxe Do-Ahead Sour Cream Mashed Potatoes, to which I added a generous amount of minced chives; and blanched asparagus with gremolata (minced lemon rind, parsely, shallots, and olive oil) to cut the richness of the veal and potatoes. A hearty-and-yet-almost-springy menu, it worked quite nicely, I think. Cheeses, cardamom bread from Turtle Bread, and sips of Sauterne and coffee for dessert. And now? Bedtime, fo sho!

It's all for you, Cooper Doo, One-Whole-Year Old! Tomorrow is his big party day...

Happy. It was a Happy Birthday indeed! I'm still happy about it, ha. We opened with a Nathan basketball game, then made our way to Lucia's for brunch with Stacey, Bowen, and soft-n-sweet Baby Cooper. We didn't actually eat Cooper up - although it's tempting because he is insanely adorable, we're all complete idiots around him, laughing at his every smile, grimace, coo, and giggle. But we did share a feast of scrumptious Lucia's-style (aka top-notch) food...cherry scones, a sweet-potato waffle with cinnamon butter, eggs - scrambled, omelet-ed, and frittata-ed, oven-roasted potatoes with sour cream alongside, thick-cut bacon, salads, to-die-for cheese grits and yes, pear-streusel tart, chocolate chip cookies, and chocolate cake for post-brunch dessert! Washed down with lots of coffee and for me, a marvelously clammy, salty Birthday Bloody Mary, mmm...

After rolling out of the restaurant - and a post-brunch trip into Lucia's Bakery for, you know, more food for later (!) - we headed over to the Coop's new home to check out the estate sale of some of the previous owner's belongings. After tours of the new digs for John and Nathan, we made our way home...

...and here, more delights, because there were two - TWO! - gorgeous flower deliveries waiting for lucky me! And then presents, beautiful presents, from Nathan and John, my parents, and my in-laws Dot and John! Yay, presents! And lots of fun phone messages and calls, which put an even-bigger grin on my my already grinning face! And emails and cards to pry my goofy grin even wider! I'm so lucky - it really was THE BEST! I loved it all, in the purest way, I think I enjoyed this birthday particularly, for all my grumbling below. Or perhaps because of it. Like I said, I don't stay down for very long, it's really not my nature. Not to mention, I've never been one to shun a gool ol' weekend of celebrating and gifts, ha, also not my nature. Turns out, woo hoooooo for my 40th (gulp) birthday!?!