We had an interesting chat with an Island regular – Mr. MacNulty – a real Chicago Conservative Democrat – he hates everybody. I was kind of afraid to tell him my last name is Shapiro – but in fact, he wouldn’t have hated me simply for being Jewish. What he would’ve hated would be the rules like the Madison School District has, where you can’t send Christmas cookies to school with your kids ‘cuz it might offend the Jews. When I have better Internet, I’ll have to research him a bit.

But we’re getting kinda frozen, so we should probably head back to the cabin for breakfast.

This morning I remembered my parents’ anniversary as soon as the public radio guy said, “It’s August 19th”; they didn’t mention Bill until the next news break. I’d rather celebrate my parents. Even though Bill’s birthday has been quite handy for me as a memory device over the years, I kind of feel like he killed Ahmet Ertegun – or had a hand in his death anyways. Ahmet died as a result of head injuries sustained back stage at a Rolling Stones concert. Martin Scorsese filmed it for his documentary, Shine A Light – the Stones playing, not Ahmet falling. It was kind of a faux show, for the purposes of the movie, and a benefit for Bill’s Clinton Foundation. Limited admittance, star-studded attendees. I read someplace that the invites promoted it as Bill’s 60th birthday party, even though the concerts were in late October and Bill had been 60 since August. Still I don’t want to be down on Bill – just like I’m not saying word one against Obama – Bill was probably the best president the US has had in my life time, save JFK – and since Kennedy got shot after only two years in office, who knows how things really would have turned out had he served longer.

Art I made about my parents' wedding - screen prints of their wedding photos printed on cloth, patchworked and stuffed to stand up in a box

We also ate:

• baked Brie, wrapped in puff paste with a layer of American Spoon tomato jam
• goat cheese with sundried tomato pesto
• do-it-yourself smoked salmon canapes – cocktail rye, cucumbers, the smoked salmon (one hunk brought as a host gift by a visiting friend from Seattle; another hunk I let Costco bring from Seattle), and horseradish cream
• Aged Gouda to put on crackers with pickled onions and peppadews
• muskmelon from my CSA box cut in wedges
• $25 worth of chocolate from Trader Schmoes – Toblerone, chocolate covered ginger and chocolate covered cherries, and chocolate-raspberry sticks
• fresh corn salsa layered dip – the salsa, refried beans, and sour cream – I liked the corn salsa a lot more without the overly cumin-seasoned canned refried beans – good thing everyone ate up the layered dip, and there’s still a while bucket of plain salsa leftover.
• Little ham & jaarlsberg sandwiches on sliced pretzel rolls – ate my first pretzel roll at the State Fair Wednesday, with a Usinger’s sausage in it, and then voila, Sentry had the rolls by the box on Friday morning

I’d love to stick around, but gotta go fold all the napkins, before they get too wrinkled lying in the bottom of the dryer.

This year, I think I had an especially grown-up birthday.

We slept in, then debated whether to ride to the east side for breakfast or walk to a closer place. We opted for biking. We chose the route that goes behind Camp Randall Stadium, UW’s football arena, that is named after an actual Civil War camp, and under the stone “Camp Randall” arch that is one of the last 19th century remnants (there’s a canon and wooden hut, too). As we rode under the arch to stop at a traffic light, one of the brake cables on Mark’s bike snapped. No matter, it’s his clunker bike that has coaster brakes, too, so we pushed on. But then, a few blocks further, with a great hissing noise, I got a flat. Happily we were just a short way to walk our bikes to the repair place, and then just a little further to go – back into the shadows of he stadium – to get to Micky’s Dairy Bar. So we dropped our bikes and went and ate.

We went about the rest of our day, and got our bikes back later in the afternoon.

For dinner we went out to the summer camp where Mark’s son is working, and ate quesadilla’s from Pasqual’s and watched the kids perform. Camp Shalom is a day camp with three 3-week sessions every summer, and on the Wednesday of the last week, the kids invite the parents out for dinner, and see the show, then the older kids sleep over, have a short day Thursday, and no camp Friday. My first foster daughter, Kaylah, and her girlfriend Kendra, are also counselors there this summer. Kendra’s b-day is a few days after mine, so I got lots of birthday hugs. we cane home and ate peach-blueberry cobbler that I had made the night before – it was just as good as it had been warm. It was a Thomas Keller recipe – I just used peaches and blueberries instead of all berries.

The real birthday dinner came Friday night, when we drove down to Milwaukee to Bartolotta’s Lake Park Bistro to have dinner with John & Megan, and see their new apartment and kitties. Oh, and Mark got me a cookbook I already had – but John got me one that I didn’t.

My salad of shaved fennel & beets

My trout off the tomate menu - fried trout, with with a salad of argula & cherry tomatoes piled on top

one perfect arugula leaf that came with my trout

iPhone polaroid of John's beer

Regular iPhone shot of the beer

I splurged and ordered these two  cupcake books overnighted from Amazon: Hello, Cupcake &  What’s New Cupcake? (recommended by Dorrie Greenspan) – totally cute ideas, but almost all the decorations are candy, and I knew the kids would just eat it.

Hello, Cupcake has the cupcake garden idea – dip frosted cupcakes into crushed Oreo dirt and then decorate with lettuces, radishes, carrots and peas. Marzipan vegetables would be more traditional; instead, they use all kinds of candy ingeniously to make the veggies. Jolly Rancher, Starburst & Airhead fruit chews, M&Ms, green licorice laces (pea vines). I especially like the lettuce – cornflakes coated with green icing, arranged around a little ball of green Jolly Rancher on top of the dirt-covered cupcake. And of course, in the book, the cupcakes are arranged in neat rows. They even have plans for end of the row signs, the seed packs that say what vegetable is where – frosted graham crackers on pretzel sticks glued on with chocolate. Martha’s got a carrot cake with a marzipan vegetable garden on top – it was published back when my kids were about 8 & 9, and we were always going to make it – John and I both love marzipan – but we just never did. This candy version we might’ve accomplished.

I provided yogurt raisons, gummy worms, teddy grahams, dried papaya stick carrots, banana chips, coconut, and toasted pea crisps. I forgot to bring the mint I bought at the farmers’ market for leafs, but the birthday girl’s family brought a big bunch from home. The kids’ garden came out a little messier than the book – looking at the cupcakes the dad said, “That’s what I love about you kids – no holding back – whatever we’ve got goes on the cupcake”.

I was going to start by having us make Farm Cakes – they’d have baked while we decorated and the kids could’ve taken them home – but it seemed like too much for one party. We mixed up two flavors of icing: chocolate sour cream & strawberry drizzle – decorated, ate, and opened presents. There was maybe a 15 minutes span when we needed something to do, and the dad started a game of Twister. Oh, and the birthday girl was completely surprised!