Thursday, August 7, 2008

August 7, 2008


Well Gusty’s birthday is in three weeks but my partner’s birthday is on Saturday.

In his style we are keeping it simple. He invited his friend Tim, another artist and friend over for dinner and I am going to make something special. Daniel chose Italian. A universal crowd pleaser and I want to do something unusual and seasonal. Lord knows my son and partner would eat noodles until hell freezes over but… it is a birthday. So far I have grilled radicchio with Sicilian sea salt and balsamic vinegar and some kind of little fried shishito peppers. Then I am going to make pizzas with caramelized onions, smoked mozzarella and oil cured olives. That is a combination that we are really fond of. I’ll make one Margherita pizza for Gusty. There is also a dip I like to make that has:

One bag of frozen artichoke hearts
1/2 can of chickpeas
1 or 2 cloves of garlic
Some grated Parmesean cheese
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil

Put everything in the food processor except the oil and whiz. Drizzle the oil through the feed tube until the desired consistence is reached.

Yum.

As far as Gusty’s birthday is concerned I think I have settled on August 30 and he decided that we should have the party in the apartment. He wants a shark theme and our friend Peter Waldman to come and entertain the kiddies. Peter is a glass artist and in his spare-time a balloon manipulator extraordinnaire. I am posting some of his work here for you to see. His hats are whimsical, colorful and down-right fun.

Now the challenge is to come up with some creative ways to introduce sharks to the masses and spend very little money. I have the cookie idea I spoke about in my last entry but what else? The Scholastic store has those Klutz books. Maybe I can find one that will help with some aquatic themed crafts. I know they have a highly recommended face-painting book.

If I go there I’ll take Gusty with me. He loves sitting inside The Magic Schoolbus looking at the books and reading on the dinosaur’s tail. Unfortunately we always leave there with something we weren’t intending to buy,

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