I guess this year is my second Mothers’ Day as a grandma, but somehow I did not feel quite as grandmotherly last year as I did this year. Maybe because last year Mothers’ Day I wasn’t even retired yet. And of course, I do have two grandkids now, Jasper who’s here and Rowan who’s out in Denver.
Jasper at a coffee place on the square – I bribed him to get back in the stroller with the promise of a cookie. This is actually a blueberry scone. I think he knows but he liked it anyways
Rowan at his 1st haircut
Anyways it was a pretty chill Mothers’ Day. I biked to Susan’s and we went to the gym and had a cup of coffee and chat, then I biked home and made my own Mothers’ Day. Asparagus quiche with some ramps in it too, that came out pretty good I thought. I got the ramps at the Farmers Market Saturday, there was one guy selling them for $10 a bunch. Later I went to the co-op and there they were on special at $5 something for non-members and $3 something for members. They were smaller bunches and less clean, still with roots on, but still. It was also definitely the end of the ramps.
Rhubarb scones, that I had never made before but Mark’s been talking about the rhubarb cardamom ones from Far Breton, so I thought I should try. Plus I had done my annual bike over to Meredith’s backyard to cut the rhubarb she doesn’t care for, so I had a lot. I used this recipe from Food52. At its suggestion I used the food processor to cut in the butter, and then pulsed in the rhubarb and I liked the size pieces of rhubarb that technique yielded. But they came out a little flat, even though I froze them for 15 mins before baking. There’s a lot more butter to flour in the Food52 recipe than I normally use for scones, and the liquid is all heavy cream, so it’s no wonder they spread. I’m going to tweak it a bit and then write it up when I like it. and like I said I do like the nice little pink bits of rhubarb throughout.
Little potatoes fried in turkey fat that I skimmed off the broth I made from our Passover turkey. And tried to render and really messed up the stove. But the potatoes tasted good. No pics of them, though.
Mark got flowers for me at the Farmers Market on Saturday. I brought them home on my bike so they weren’t a surprise. I put the flowers into water from the bathroom sink because while Mark was installing my best Mothers’ Day present – a new faucet that actually has some water pressure. Yay! No pics of that either.
I took a lot of pictures of Emma’s flowers.
Later I relaxed with the cats.
I made last Sunday’s Gâteau au yaourt into a trifle with homemade strawberry jam between layers of the cake and lots of rhubarb puree and pastry cream. I was afraid I’d lost my touch with pastry cream – I had a few lumpy batches – but I tried a Nigella recipe (that she uses to fill Boston cream pie) that’s kind of a small batch and it worked perfectly, silky smooth and so good with the rhubarb. I didn’t take any pictures of the trifle but here’s the pastry cream last week, when I also made a batch so we could spoon it over the yogurt cake. I had to make more for the trifle because of course I ate what was left of last week’s.
the best pastry cream
the cook’s dividend
All my kids checked in and I got to see Jasper for a few minutes when I took Emma’s flowers over so altogether a really nice Mothers Day.