Our freezer is pleasantly full of things we did not buy.

I don't know whether it stems from pity (grad student poverty-lite) or fear (are we feeding the grandkids properly?), but every time they or we visit, my mom and my mother-in-law make contributions to our diet.  The most recent influx of foodie goodness was over the weekend of Theo's baptism.  Both grandmommies were there at the same time, so my freezer was bursting: shrimp, scallops, steak, scrapple, more steak, mussels, ground beef, ground chicken, and a little bit more steak.

(You can tell which food group they think we're most deficient in.)

Mom C makes fun of my propensity to ration these generous contributions.  ("Did you let Stephen have any meat this week?"  "Yes, we split one steak among the three of us.")  But I like how my judicious use of these dietary indulgences keeps us in Thanking-Mom mode for weeks at a time.  Since Theo's baptism, I've used something from one of the grandmothers at least a dozen times.  And every time, I say, "Hey, this is the _______ that Mimi (or Grandmom) left us!"  And the boys all say, "I love Mimi (or Grandmom)."

Mom C left us just a smidgen of shrimp, which became shrimp and artichoke pizza (for company even!), a full serving of scallops, which was asparagus-scallop stir-fry last night and will be spicy seafood pasta some time next week, two big London broils, half of one of which will be grilled tonight and the other half of which played a starring role in a stir-fry two weeks ago.  The organic chicken was particularly tasty as roast chicken one night ("No, you cannot have seconds on the chicken.  Have some more green beans."), barbecue chicken pizza the next, and chicken lo mein three days after that.

Mom S left us scrapple, which I cannot manage to stretch or ration no matter how I try (if anyone knows of a scrapple-eating contest, let me know, because Isaac could win it in his sleep), some steaks, one of which became beef-and-mushroom stroganoff, and some chili, on which Isaac commented at my failure to stretch into two meals.  ("C'mon, mom, why didn't you add more beans and stretch this over two nights?"  "Kid, do you really want to bring this up before you get seconds?")

Mom S also left us carcasses.  Stephen makes fun of my propensity to get excited about bones.  In fact, I believe he even tried to bar me from accepting or soliciting carcasses in the future, and he's threatened to refuse to transport them across state lines.  (We usually visit Mom S in Virginia.)  But with the two ham carcasses Mom S left us, I've made lentil soup, ham risotto, black beans and rice, and potato soup with ham broth and a wee bit of bacon on top.  AND I still have about ten cups of ham broth left.

I didn't notice him complaining any of those nights.

Progress on works in progress this week has been reasonable, but not impressive.

I have finished the bamboo baby blankie.



I'm really pleased with how it turned out.  It was a very simple pattern--stockinette, with regular increases every other round.  (You mathematicians can tell me why increasing ten stitches every other round creates a circle.  You can also tell me what shape it is when you accidentally increase twenty stitches every other round.  Some sort of three-dimensional something that looks like it should have a proper name.)  You could use it with any yarn, really--gauge doesn't matter one whit.  You just keep knitting until you feel like stopping.  (Or until you run out of yarn.)

When I felt like stopping (and when I was running out of yarn), I added a decorative border:



It looks pretty, but not feminine.  Which is good, because I don't know which baby this is going to yet.  I suddenly have lots to choose from!!!

I still have to wash and block it, though.  I think it'll get a little bigger, and I may even turn it into a decagon rather than a circle.  Having just looked up the mathematical formula for the area of a decagon, I hereby declare that you mathematicians can't tell me anything about decagons.  Holy frackazoid.  If you try, I'm going to start talking about the difference between substance and persona.

I also finished one Jitterbug sock.



It's an alternating rib-twisted stitch pattern.  Toe-up, with short-row toes and heels.  As I said before, I love, love, love the yarn.  My real camera isn't any better than my computer camera, evidently.  I'm telling you, it glows.  Like stained glass windows.

I'm keeping these socks for myself.  Just so's you don't get hopeful.

My veggie patch was feeling a little hurt by all the blog time going to the flowers last week. So I'm giving it all the love this week.

(What my veggies don't realize is that they're my real favorites. I know. Mamas shouldn't have favorites. But I do. I spend more time loving on my snap beans than on my snapdragons. So last week's flower showcase was just compensation. But now the veggies are hurt. You know, it just doesn't pay to play favorites!)

There've been a few late-ish frosts and chills, so things are a little wonky right now. But my veggies are handling the weirdness well.

My broccoli, cabbage and peas are very happy about the cool evenings.



I've gotten one very small head of broccoli from a somewhat deformed plant; otherwise, I've still got a few weeks to go on the broccoli, and several on the cabbage. The peas look like they're about to start flowering.

This patch is for old seeds. I just threw them all in there to see what would come up--parsley, cilantro, lettuce, arugula, basil, spinach, carrots.



So far, the only thing I haven't got at least one of is the carrots. The arugula is quite insistent. Everything else seems to have been past its prime, but not entirely dead.

I've put in most of my tomatoes and peppers, although with the recent chilly night, I don't know how they'll do.



The funny thing is the leeks.



These were a failure from last year that made it through the winter.  I tried sowing some seeds in August or September--plenty of time for baby leeks, at least, before the heavy frosts came.

They didn't sprout for the longest time.  And then they just didn't grow for the longest time after that.

I left them in, though, being too lazy to pull them out.  And come March, they started growing.  They're about half-size now.  I've added a few layers of compost, to lengthen the white parts a bit, and I hope they'll be ready to start using in a month or so.  It's totally messed up my crop rotation--that square was supposed to be beans this year--but I think I'll live through it.  I love leeks.

So there we are.  I'm hoping to put in a few more things next week--snap beans, cukes, maybe some squash if it's warm enough.  I'll wait awhile on the eggplants and limas.

What do you do for company dinner?

I'm struggling to remember the sorts of things I made for company while we were in Paris. 

"While we were in Paris," in case you were wondering, refers to that golden age when we had 1) an income, 2) free time, and 3) access to the world's tastiest ingredients.  So, I bought stuff for full price.  And it was really, really tasty.  And I had all day to get ready for company.

Obviously, things have changed since then.

But I'm still trying to remember.

I used to make crepes, spicy seafood pasta, chicken normandy, or moroccan tagine.  Salad or pumpkin soup was usually the appetizer.  I can't remember what desserts I used to serve.  Ice cream with homemade cookies?  Gingerbread sometimes?  Oh, dessert crepes sometimes, too.  Sometimes we just bought something from the local pastry shop.  Yummo!

I never made pizza, because pizza was what we made for Pizza Night.  Every other Tuesday, between 25 and 75 (we never knew which) college kids and young adults would come for Pizza Night.  We made ten pizzas--about double the size of your standard cookie sheet--from scratch.  Everything but the dough.  We bought the raw dough from the local boulanger, rolled it out, doused it with my secret recipe pizza sauce (which I actually got from the previous youth worker, who was trained as a fancy French chef), and then threw some toppings on.  Anywhere from two to ten kids showed up ahead of time to help us prepare.

So I know how to make pizza.

Pizza is mostly what we make for company, now, because it fits all our new restrictions: lack of money, lack of time, and lack of quality ingredients (even with an expanded budget, we couldn't get cherries that taste like cherries taste in July in Paris).

What do you make?  What are some of your "for-special" meals?