May the Fourth Be With You: Bantha Burgers on Sourdough Blue Milk Buns

It's not every year that May the Fourth falls on a weekend. So when it does, you should probably round up your fellow Star Wars nerds and have a Galactic BBQ, right?  YES.  Even if it falls on the busiest Saturday of the entire year...seriously--why is the first Saturday in May so chaotic?  It's National Homebrew Day, the Kentucky Derby, ArtsFest, Kids Fishing Day...And this year, STAR WARS DAY.

There is no shortage of creative Star Wars food ideas on the interwebs, but of course, I had sourdough to use and needed to make bread.  I saw this recipe for "blue milk hamburger buns" and thought--yup, that's the one. But I hope it doesn't take too much food dye.

Wherein my fellow Star Wars nerd-friend who was hosting the party said, "oh, don't worry. I have an industrial-size food grade bottle of blue food dye. Take as much as you need." And he sent me on my way with about 2 Tablespoons of BLUE in one of those little 2-ounce plastic containers, like what you use for jello shots.  (You may be asking: "why does someone own a giant @$$ bottle of food dye?" And the answer is: I don't know. I've stopped asking questions at this point.)

Once home and baking, I started adding blue...got about halfway through what he'd given me, and said, "OK...that's about the color of the original recipe...but what do I do with the rest of this?"  ....Soooo....I just threw the rest of it in there as well. And we have VERY blue buns.

Note: since the "official" Star Wars blue milk buns were yeast only, not sourdough, I used that for inspiration only, and actually made these buns using The Pantry Mama's recipe (I SHOULD have reduced the liquid slightly to account for all the food dye, so I ended up having to add extra flour.  Learn from my mistakes.)

I really love the way the color ended up coming up. Yes, it's darker that intended, but with the blistering on the surface, it has a very deep space, galactic hue to it.  

The party went very well.  Our host had some "screen accurate cups" similar to those used in The Mandalorian filled with blue milk (for the kids) and Fuzzy Tauntaun cocktails (for the adults)...we also used them to serve the homebrew beer we'd brought.  

Other friends brought nerf kabobs, lightsaber pretzels, and blue milk milkshakes for dessert.  

We watched A New Hope on an outdoor screen after it got dark, while IG-88 and his pit droid stand guard:

I made 12 total buns; the recipe called to divvy it into 8 balls, but I wanted to make sure we had enough, so they were a little on the small side but worked well with the size of patties we made.  But the kids were a little weirded out by just HOW BLUE they were and decided to eat hot dogs and brats instead.  So we had a few left over to bring home.  I decided to make steak sliders the next night with sauteed onions, horseradish mustard, and melted pepperjack.  *chefs kiss*

A Super Nerdy Baby Shower!

My friend J is due to have a baby in November, so I hosted a baby shower for her at our house earlier this month.  J is a chemistry professor, and I'm a geologist, and we're both giant nerds, with a bunch of nerdy friends.  J is going to be having a beautiful baby girl, but since neither of us are girly-girls, I wanted to avoid the pink-plosion and keep things more fun and less gender-specific. And thus, the Super-Nerdy-Baby-Shower was born.

Mini Reese's "pies", Nerds in test tubes, "Sucrose" Candy, and a print of this book that doesn't exist but totally should, which went home with the mom-to-be.

I wanted to encompass a wide array of nerdy themes, because we are all-inclusive nerds.  It doesn't matter your particular brand of nerd--you are welcome here.  Star Wars, Trekkies, scientists, comic book hoarders, book lovers, and gamers unite!  ...but in a relatively laid-back, low-maintenance kind of way, because I'm still in the process of moving, and planning my own son's birthday party, on top of work and all that jazz.  Life is crazy, yo.  So let's have a fun gathering and play some fun games and eat some fun food that's got a nerdy spin to it.  

DECORATIONS:
I bought a large blank banner to create a high chair decoration for Lil' Man's birthday party, and saved the rest of it for this party.  After much ponderance of the periodic table of elements, I was able to spell a word that was *mostly* composed of periodic elements (alphabetic order cheat sheet if you need it).

New element #110: Gr ..."Growinapersonium"?

Then I borrowed a few labels from my office to give the house a touch of a "laboratory" feel.

In the event my boss reads this post--yes, I returned all of the labels unharmed for use on actual projects.

FOOD:
I probably had the most fun with this element.  There were so many great ideas out there, it was really hard to whittle things down. But ultimately, I went with a lot of pre-made foods, because I knew I was going to be limited on time.  Then I added fun nerdy themes to those food trays.

Cake truffles from AmyCakes in a nod to Star Trek.

Technically, it was a 5 Leia dip, but whatevs.  Also, pita chips for "KRUNCH!", DNA pasta helixes, and Element #111: Ch (cheese).

Lemon Oreo "Coins" and Super Star suckers.  Templates for the cubes here.

The "POP" station, and some "PUNCH" (ginger ale, orange juice, Orange Crush, and pomegranate juice). Free printables for comic book word bubbles here. 

Since J is of Jewish heritage, I also decided to make hamentashen cookies.  Not inherently "nerdy", but I thought it would be cool to throw some culture up in this party, too. I was a little nervous about making this recipe, since it's not my heritage, but the mom-to-be told me they turned out great, so apparently this Gentile can cook some decent cookies (with the help of a recipe provided by the mom-to-be).  (Note: recipe at the bottom of this post.)

GAMES:
I've been to a lot of baby showers in my day.  And I've played a lot of baby shower games.  Most of which were either: 
a) gross ("Guess This Melted Candy Bar in a Diaper" or "Taste this Baby Food", for example), 
b) involved way too much physical activity ("Chug this Beverage from a Baby Bottle", "Lick This Ice Cube & Yell 'My Water Broke'", "Toilet Paper Diaper Race", etc.), or 
c) were potentially insulting to the mom-to-be (i.e. the "Guess Mom's Waist Circumference" game, which seems totally inappropriate in ANY situation, let alone around an uncomfortable, hormonal woman).  

We'll have none of that, thank you very much. Rather, how about a skill that might actually *help* the mom-to-be, and that other moms at a baby shower might have some experience with?  Like...say...

THE PRICE IS RIGHT: BABY EDITION!

I'll say right now: I totally stole this idea of Pinterest.  But come on--Price Is Right has a good ol' nostalgic feel--who hasn't stayed home sick from school and yelled "ONE DOLLAR!!!" at their TV screen?  The mom-to-be and all the other attendees get to try to assign the prices to each baby-related item.  The guest who gets the most right wins a door prize, and the mom-to-be gets...A NEW CAR!!!  Okay, no.  But she does get to keep ALL of the items on the table.  So there's that!

And of course, because J is one of my friends from our old Wednesday night trivia team (TheBomb.com), a round of baby-related trivia seems appropriate.

I also appropriated baby photos from each of the guests who attended ahead of time, and put together a "guess who's who" game.

Here's a hint---this one is me.

If you're interested in throwing a similar party, I got all of my fonts from FontSpace.com (In Particular: Star Jedi, Montalban, Trek Arrowcaps, Chemistry, BPMolecules, and Super Plumber Brothers.)

Now...I promised you a recipe, didn't I?

Hamentashen Cookies 

(makes about 2 dozen)

Ingredients:

2/3 cup margarine (or light butter)

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

2 Tbsp orange juice (no pulp)

1.25 cups white flour

1.25 cups wheat pastry flour

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp cinnamon

jam for filling (I used raspberry jam since it was the mom-to-be's favorite, but you could do just about anything)

Directions:
Combine the butter and sugar, then add the egg & orange juice and mix well.  Mix in the baking powder & cinnamon.  Now start adding in the flour, about 1/2 cup at a time, alternating between the white and wheat. 

Refrigerate for about an hour, or up to overnight.  When ready to bake, heat the oven to 350F.  Then roll out on a well floured surface and cut into 3-4 inch circles (I used a small glass).  Place the circles on a greased or silpat-ted cookie sheet.  

Place a small dollop (about a teaspoon) of jam in the middle, and then fold into a triangle, using a "pinwheel" type pattern (think of folding a box so that the flaps keep the top shut rather than having to tape it), so that one end of the flap is on top of the previous, but the other end of the flap is tucked under the next flap.  Then pinch the corners a bit so there's a good seal.  This will help keep the cookies from opening up while baking so the filling doesn't leak out.

Bake for about 15-20 minutes, so that the cookies are nice & golden, but before the filling bubbles out.

Adventures in Parenting: ONE YEAR!!!!

HOLY CRAP.  We survived.  We kept a small human alive for TWELVE MONTHS.

Not only that, but I'm relatively sure that we haven't physically or emotionally damaged him (yet).

This kiddo, all 23.5 pounds of him, is 90% of the time a happy, smiley, laughing little goober, who loves to cruise around furniture, crawl all over the house, and laugh mischievously when he manages to get into something he's not supposed to have (and then cry when we take it away).

90% of the time, he can sleep through the night.

90% of the time, he can eat whatever table food we're eating.

Noodle dishes are his fave.

NEW STUFF:
Blowing raspberries.  It's hilarious.  And he does it A LOT, because we laugh.  We try to discourage it at meal time so he's not blowing food at us, but just about any other time, it just makes me giggle.

New Car Seats:  We donated his infant carrier to a friend who's due in November, so we had to bust out the big boy car seats.  We were given one for the Hub's car (Safety 1st Complete Air), and bought one for my car (Graco MySize 65).  Personally, I like mine WAY better.  The Safety 1st is pretty basic, and doesn't recline for rear-facing--so if your seats aren't angled well, you have to use a rolled up towel under the base to get it to recline enough. It's also super-tall, so in a recline, you have to keep the seat in front of it scooted WAY forward to fit (and that's in a Jeep Cherokee).  The Graco also features a "rapid remove" cover for easy cleaning...which would have been really handy when Lil' Man projectile vomited all over the Safety 1st seat last week (which does NOT have a "rapid remove" ANYTHING and took about 15 minutes to disassemble to get the cover off of for cleaning).

Shoes:
When he moves into the 1 Year Room at day care, they start going outside for play, and to the gym, so they have to have shoes.  We NEVER bothered with shoes before that (I could say it was because we wanted his feet to develop properly, yada yada, but it's really because I'm lazy.  He barely keeps socks on--why bother with shoes?)  Thankfully, a friend loaned us a huge bag of shoes so now he has quite the assortment.

So matchy-matchy!

1st Birthday Party:
This of course means we survived planning and executing our first kid's birthday party!  Our friend B had her daughter the same day as us, so we decided it might be fun to have a dual party for them.  B found an indoor play place that would be able to keep the kiddos entertained, and her sister made cakes for both kids (and cupcakes for the adults and guests).  No big blowout event--the little ones loved the Under 18 Month play area, and the older kids loved the bigger play equipment.  

The birthday babes.

And I managed to NOT go Pinterest crazy:  Only bought him a special onesie, and made the banner for his high chair.  

(Used a blank banner from Hobby Lobby, and then just printed out the ball and letters on regular paper.  Got a bag of mixed ribbon and tied to the banner for extra "pop". Used double-sided tape to adhere to the high chair...with mixed results.)

Everything went pretty well--aside from both kids being kind of scared of their giant cakes.

"You're saying...this whole thing is for ME?"

Too. Much. Cake, MOM!!!

With a cupcake instead.  Much more his speed.

UPCOMING CHALLENGES:

• We haven't started him on whole milk yet...let alone cold milk. This lil' turkey still likes his formula nice and warm.  And we still need to fully transition to a sippy cup and get rid of the bottles.  
• Paci's have not been a big issue so far...at home, he only gets them at bed time or during naps, and we keep one in his car seat but he usually just plays with it.  But theoretically, we're supposed to wean him off of those soon.
• Same goes for the bedtime bottle.  
• Moving into the new house.  Renovations have been a big challenge--not that we have a ton of stuff to do to the new house to get it ready, but the list we have is enough--especially when we both work full time, and have to pick up the kiddo from day care by 6.  We usually leave work around 4:30p, get to the new house, work for about an hour, and then have to leave to go pick him up.  Sometimes one of us will stay at the house and continue working, while the other picks him up and then goes home to start dinner.  Weekends are pretty well full of more work at the house, but Lil' Man is kinda clingy, or into everything, so we can't let him roam free upstairs while we work (since it's a disaster right now).  Sometimes we can get a grandparent or friend to come over and play with him for a few hours while we work.  

Disaster zone or living room?  (The exersaucer will keep him contained/entertained for about 15 minutes, tops, if we HAVE to have him upstairs.  Downstairs we have a couch, pack n play, and a wide array of toys to play with while someone is working upstairs.)

• Walking/Talking: While he loves to cruise holding on to furniture, and will let go sometimes to free-stand, he's not walking yet.  And while he loves to babble/jabber, no real "first" word yet.  He does say "mama" "dada" but they're not always directed at us.

• More teeth:  Ahead of schedule as usual, his upper first molars are starting to come in.  So we've got some fussy days & nights ahead of us.  Guess it's time to bust out the teething rings again!

Jalapeno Bacon Deviled Eggs

Our friends recently decided to host a throwback 50s style cocktail party, and it was SERIOUSLY fun.  We got a babysitter for the evening so we could live it up like some wild & crazy kids! 

As part of the plan, all attendees were required to dress in their 50s finery, bring an appetizer, and a bottle of booze so we could craft classic cocktails (more on that later...probably on a Thursday?) 

I'm so proud of my group of friends--we went all out with the period-appropriate appetizers.  There was a pineapple-shaped cheese ball, puffed pastries, a crock full of meatballs, even a seafood aspic terrine (aka "meat jello").  

One of the tastiest cheeseballs I've ever had.

We were all a bit intimidated by the terrine--myself because I'd sworn off aspic after working with them at Martin's in New Orleans.  However, I decided to be brave--and I'm glad I did because it was a truly tasty work of art.

Be brave, H & C!

For our part, I used my mom as inspiration--and deviled eggs are always her go-to.  But, we decided to mix it up a bit, and make jalapeno bacon deviled eggs.  NOTE: We have a few friends who are vegetarian, so I made half the batch sans bacon, and topped these with sliced pickled okra to separate them from the bacon-laden ones.

Seriously wish I had one of those old-skool deviled egg trays!  Might have to see if I can track one down at the thrift shop.

We got a ton of compliments on these, so I'm thinking it might now my MY go-to gathering fare.  Our recipe was "pinspired" by this recipe, but I tweaked it a fair bit so my recipe is below.

INGREDIENTS:
1 dozen large eggs, hard-boiled, cut in half
3/4 cup Light Miracle Whip
1/4 cup yellow mustard
8-10 pickled jalapeno rings, seeds removed, minced
1-2 tsp brine from pickled jalapeno jar
1/2 tsp sugar
6 pieces bacon, cooked (I used thick cut applewood smoked bacon) NOTE: If you decide to make half your batch vegetarian friendly, only use 3 slices of bacon.
1/2 tsp smoked paprika, plus more for decoration
1 thin/young green onion, minced for decoration (I used a young shoot from my windowsill green onion jar)
2 pickled okra, sliced (optional, use for decoration if you're making half the batch vegetarian)

DIRECTIONS:
Remove the yolks from the halved eggs, and place into a small bowl.  Then add the Miracle Whip, mustard, brine, sugar, and paprika, and whip until smooth. Tweak spices to taste--I like my deviled eggs to have a good "twang" from the mustard.  Now add in the minced jalapenos and stir until well combined.

Cook the bacon, pat off any excess grease, and then crumble, saving 12-24 larger crumbles for decoration (depending on whether you make the full batch with bacon or not).

If you're making only half with bacon, then at this point, scoop half of your mixture into a ziploc bag, and then snip off the end to use it as a piping bag.  Pipe the mix into half your egg halves.  If there's any leftover in the bag, place it back in the bowl.

Now add in the crumbled bacon (except what's reserved for decoration) and mix well.  Place all of the remaining mix into the piping bag, and finish filling the rest of the eggs.

Now top the bacony eggs with a piece of bacon (you could also add an extra slice of pickled jalapeno if you like), and top the non-bacon eggs with the slices of pickled okra.  Dust the entire tray with paprika and minced green onions.

If you don't have a fancy deviled egg tray, you can use a 8x8 or 9x11 pan and place paper towels in the bottom.  The towels will absorb any excess moisture and keep them from slipping around in the pan.

P.S. A bonus shot of that seafood aspic...because I know you wanted a close up. ;P

Crab, shrimp, corn, tomato, avocado and cilantro.  It tasted similar to ceviche so I actually loved it.