DECEMBER 26
Food at Bamf & Bryn's. In the words of Dave "I don't eat bananas because I don't like how they taste, not because I think it's immoral" Modiano, dinner on this day consisted of: "um, pasta with red sauce. and a boundless cornucopia of biscuits. and three kinds of leftover desert. frank was mysteriously absent." sunspark and merrrr were doing the holiday thing on the east coast (of mars!)DECEMBER 19
Stuffed tomatoes and peppers at Dave's. Pumpkin raisin bars for dessert. Dave foolishly thought the recipe mer made up about stuffed tomatoes was a legit one. The dessert had cranberries, yum. Just Bamf, Bryn, sunspark & merrrr. And Braden.DECEMBER 12
Curry beef pastries yet again at sunspark & merrrrr's. They're probably going to be tasty (they usually are). Key lime pies will have been dessert. Random guest stars (Frank, etc) will have replaced Carol and Bryn, but not the male spice (plural of spouse) nor the age-challenged who came in spite of parties and singing. (Insert random other vaguely seditious or humorous rumors and commentary here.)DECEMBER 5
Some braised beef thingy with really yummy brown and maybe tomato sauce at Bamf & Bryn's. Over rice. With orange-honey carrots that were yummy too. No Carol & Peter, but Frank joined again. Chocolate fondue for dessert.NOVEMBER 28
Curry over rice at Peter and Carol's house, yum! Two spice levels. Special guest star Ron from Carol's work standing in for Bamf & Bryn who were still in LA. Chocolate cake for desert. Peter cooked all by himself. Sunspark had a partially built red flying wing for show and tell.NOVEMBER 21
Impromptu food at Bamf & Bryn's. Spaghetti was the rumor. Frank, sunspark, & dave. Chocolate mint-death brownies for dessert. photoshopping-mer stayed home.NOVEMBER 14
Tasty dun-dun-esque noodles by dave "the easily mindcontrolled" modiano, at peter & carol's new mountain home. Pretty tasty except merrr thought they were spicy. Jack ate cheerios instead of noodles. Two warm and yummy pumpkin pies for desert. People discussed ham radio options for people who don't want to get licenses (Jack and Emily.) Bamf may or may not be planning to build a 1 watt geo satellite in his copious free time. (mer from the future is trying to recall and decides that about now, Emily was studying big brother carefully and learning the secrets of standing hands-free.)NOVEMBER 7
A whole lot of veal with mushrooms in a sortof Italian style at sunspark and merrrrrr's. It was alright. Biscuits from a tube were yummy as usual. And the third or maybe fourth apple crisp in recent memory for desert. Peter and Carol stayed home due to rain.OCTOBER 31
Halloween rigatoni broccoli and chicken plus fresh bread at Bamf & Bryn's. The new "lite" pecan pie was pretty good. You could hardly tell there was only a tablespoon of butter in the entire crust except at the edges. Emily ate a lot of broccoli. Jack got a trick-or-treat stash. Braden did not like the hood on his pumpkin outfit.OCTOBER 23
Dave cooked saturday food (in lieu of sunday food) at Peter & Carol's new mountain house. (Names changed to protect the guilty. ;-) Fennel & sausage tomato sauce was tasty and tamed down by extra tomato sauce and chicken. Ghiradelli's brownies for desert, yummmmm. merrrrr ate a lot. People moved large and heavy things from the garage into the house. Jack had a way-cool bubbling fish-light. Bamf & Bryn were on the east coast.OCTOBER 17
Packing party and food at Peter & Carol's. Yummy store-bought rotisserie chicken and fixings. Chicken was very tender, even Jack liked it! Two kinds of warm yummy pie, yellow and red. (Apple and strawberry rhubarb.)OCTOBER 10
No official food so sunspark, zanzibar, and mer celebrated by going out. merrrr ate a lot of yummy bread. Then we went home and made a yummy pumpkin-raisin cake with cream cheese frosting. Mmmmm.OCTOBER 3
Chicken or beef fajitas and meringue topped chocolate pudding pie at Bamf & Bryn's. People talked about houses again, maybe. And being pre-frosh and deciding what college to go to. Davemodiano and sunspark and mer were there.SEPTEMBER 26
Yummy Peanut Chicken sauce, minus the chicken, on rice and way too much Couscous Paella (not paella at all, just a couscous w/ chicken dish) at sunspark and merrrrr's! Sunspark wanted the peanut sauce, mer wanted chicken. Couscous was okay. Trader Joe's brand key lime pie, served frozen, for desert was tasty as usual. Peter & Carol described their new house in Los Altos. Emily ate pie between bouts of teething pain. Lots of people ate a lot which was good as there was merrrr-link quantities of food.SEPTEMBER 19
Chicken picata at DaveModiano's place. Just Dave, David, Dave, and Bryn. Oh, and Braden too. (Sorry Braden, couldn't resist. :-) Zanzibar also made carbonized carrots a la Han Solo. Brownies for desert, yum. Peter & Carol et al were chilling at home. merrrr was having yummy grilled chicken, grilled tomatoes, and pumpkin pie in SLC. Erika was sleeping.SEPTEMBER 12
Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, corn, and homemade biscuits at Bamf & Bryn's. Biscuits were better than the store-bought tube kind! Braden was not seen helping to knead the dough. Meatloaf was pretty good too. Lemon bars for desert were a little gooey but edible nonetheless. Special guest stars Birgit and Susie. We listened to the "How to fly a 747" comedy skit which tells you, among other useful things, that if upon takeoff, you hear a THWUMP, THWUMP, THWUMP sound from the back, that'd be the stairs that you forgot to retract. This was how sunspark and bamf knew during a Unified lecture (the aero astro class) that the approach angle of a commercial jet is 3 degrees.SEPTEMBER 6
BBQ shish kebab chicken at Peter and Carol's. Yummy. Corn on the cob, potatos, flan for desert. Monday instead of sunday due to labor day. Once again, special guest stars were Susie and Mikee. People talked about the usual stuff, school systems, overpriced houses, and space systems, until it was time to evaluate the tie dyes. Verdict: good colors but too much white.AUGUST 29
Beef burgundy at sunspark and merrrrrrr's! Real burgundy, came out tender and pretty good, but Jack didn't want any and wasn't allowed to have a snack bar either. Apple crisp for dessert with vanilla ice cream had a good reception. Guest stars Susie and Mikee. Emily wanted to pull Susie's earrings but was thwarted.AUGUST 22
Yummy bulgogi by Bamf with moral support from Bryn who had a cold. Guest stars TJ and Steven(?), more MIT alums. Also corn on the cob, bread maker bread, and rice pudding from TJ for dessert. The Oh residence is slightly more unpacked. Peter and Carol were rumored to have been snorkeling and surfing at DisneyLand. Jack was not seen taking over Florida.AUGUST 15
Davemodiano cooked food at Bamf & Bryn's brand new spiffy place. Spicy Vietnamese chicken, fish sauced garlic spinach, rice. The spice level in the chicken was a bit high for mer but the sweet potatos were a really yummy addition. The spinach got a rocky reception. Two yummy pumpkin pies for desert, plus a Cheerios variant for the leftover filling. merrrr got verrry full. Jack had a cool fire-dept car which had lights and said stuff. Braden sat in his high chair a lot.AUGUST 8
Chicken marsala at sunspark & merrr's. Standard pillsbury biscuits. Chicken was pretty good, but not quite what sunspark expected. Bamf & Bryn were kicked out of their house so were near enough to lend psychic support for the chicken pummeling. Dessert was rice crispy treats and bi-layer chocolate cheesecake brownies with chocolate stripes on top. Brownies were pretty cool looking. Emily ate about half of one of the rice crispy treats! Jack liked the striped topping. Braden didn't get any. DaveModiano didn't either, but that was more due to his being at SFO.AUGUST 1
White fettuccine and red by Bamf & Bryn at Peter & Carol's. Venue due to bamf & bryn's townhouse being open for an openhouse so they can move into a bigger place with better schools. Braden did NOT want to go to sleep. Jack once again demonstrated his school-induced maturity by going to sleep without a battle. Emily ate a lot. Lemon bars for desert. White sauce noodles were very yummy-rich and very bad for you. Bamf says, "add liquid fat, solid fat, and melted fat."JULY 26
Tasty coriander chicken stew, marinated veggies, and rice and Carol & Peter's. Chicken took a long time to make. Berry galette and vanilla ice cream for desert. Bamf & Bryn signed a contract on a new house. Jack went to bed at a remarkably decent hour and with a lot less fuss. He also maybe learned about conditional clauses, "If you give me your fork, I will give you some ice cream." Growing up.JULY 19
Food at DaveModiano's place, by Dave. Thai basil cluck-clucks. Tumeric noodles&stuff. Lemon bars for desert. Bamf & Bryn were late so they could put a bid on a house. Jack learned to put juggling balls in his shirt. A big silence descended late in the evening as we decide that guns are much more cost effective than martial arts.JULY 11
Easy ravioli dinner by sunspark and mer at bamf & bryn's due to the toastiness of the day. Those Costco spinach and cheese ravs are pretty tasty for frozen food. Ice cream w/ fruit sauce for desert. Braden slept well. Bamf almost didn't make it due to his having to go to work. We'll see if the jury selection committee thinks that People With Strong Opinions And Who Are Unlikely To Change Them should be allowed to take time off from building rockets. Everyone except sunspark and mer had a pre-dinner swim.JULY 4
Bulgogi at Bamf & Bryn's. I'm sure it was yummy but pretty-fish-chasing-mer and tiger-ray-herder-spark weren't there to attest to it.JUNE 27
Chicken grilled outdoors at Carol & Peter's. Chicken marinated in apple juice and garlic, brushed with honey. Carol says, "Sounds good, but you really couldn't taste it." Corn on the cob too. The french strawberry cake was really good though - an improved version over its predecessor a few weeks earlier (not a sunday dinner). Zoom-spark and almost-jibing-mer were windsurfing in Lac Bay. Special guest star, Atilla the Hungarian, instigated a lot of talk about education and how you really should start your children on plastic or wooden blades and guns before you allow them to handle the real thing. Well, okay, maybe it was about other kinds of education... Jack had a new toy, a water canal with boats, but he waited for DaveModiano to come over to help him set it up.JUNE 20
Noodles with stuff, in two flavors, at DaveModiano's. Chicken and seafood flavors to be exact. Herbed parmesan makes a yummy salt alternative. Bamf & Bryn were in the city of angles. Or maybe angels. Hard to tell. Yummy brownies for desert were sort of chocomint but had some butterscotch replacing the mint.JUNE 13
Pesto on cheese raviolis and stuffed tomatoes at sunspark & merrrr's. Berry cake cups for desert. Special guest stars: Leo, Cristoph, Erika, and Toby. Special agent Davemodiano was on loan to the east coast team to help them battle the forces of evil. Record baby/adult density today, bringing the average age to an all time low of about 20 years old.JUNE 6
Two kinds of stir fried chicken at Bamf & Bryn's. Braden is a lot bigger now. He can almost turn over by himself. Yummy (raisin?) bread kneaded in the machine. merrrr has decided that hand vs machine kneading is not the crucial factor in yumminess. Pecan pie with whipped cream. The recipe includes sugar, sugar, and yet more sugar. Special secret entertainment of the week was a secret, but has to do with Peter's work deadline and buying negative numbers of gifts online.MAY 30
Yummy yummy onion soup dinner at Peter & Carol's. Well, there was lots more than just onion soup, but in merrr's opinion the onion soup was yummiest of the yum. Let's see, there was also bread by Bamf & Bryn (hand kneaded, and misidentified by merrrr), salad, corn on the cob. All of these barely left room for the main entree of (sausage and spinach?) lasagne. Our special guest star, Jeremy, was tall and did not hurt himself biking with us that afternoon. An amazingly rich desert, bocce negro?, was a fancy name for "really dense and rich dark chocolate fudge cake." It was topped with Saturday's yummy walnut moose. The combo promotes hardening of the arteries and in a pinch, can be used as a reasonable substitute for depleted uranium munitions.MAY 23
Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, steamed baby carrots for dinner at Dave Modiano's. The gravy didn't survive the burning at the stake. Not one, but two warm and yummy pumpkin pies for desert. We watched a made-for-TV version of "Independence Day". Emily seemed to like the fighter planes, spaceship battles, and explosions at the end. Jack was a little worried.MAY 16
A LOT of savory pastries at sunspark and merrrr!'s. Sunspark is starting to follow the mer-school of allocating portions. Two flavors, curry and spinach&cheese. In spite of a 5pm snack, merrr still had room for 4.5 pastries. Probably enough salad for 10. Chocolate moose pie for desert. Emily went wah-wah a lot - we suspect teeth. Davemodiano was "I'm not here". Bamf & Bryn were really "not here". (Update on quantities, we made 40 pastries and 5 of us (plus a jack) ate 19 of them. No big other dinner entrees (eg soup) so this is a pretty accurate count i think.)MAY 9
Esoteric chicken with pears and dried cherry sauce at Bamf & Bryn's. Recipe also from the GoodHousekeeping recipe site. Interesting and tasty sauce was on the sweet side without being cloying. Bread was same recipe as last week, same everything, except that kneading was done via breadhook. merrrr could taste the difference; she likes hand kneading more. Braden did NOT want to go to bed.MAY 2
Cow fajitas at Carol & Peter's place... Hand kneaded bread by Bamf & Bryn was noticeably tastier than the same recipe made in a bread machine. Is it the aeration? Is it the pressure? Is it differences in gluten developement (machine kneading basically chops)? Stealth broccoli from the garden. Carol's Birthday cake for desert, yummy light pudding filled fruit topped Chinese-bakery cake. The two smallest people had a scream-fest early on. Luckily Emily was distracted by the swing chair.APRIL 25
A long-noodle stand-in for spaetzle at Davemodiano's place. Entree recipe (aka "Whatever Safeway still stocks") courtesy of Dave, Safeway's flaky inventory department, and the letter "S". Mikee didn't make it on account of his being in Napa. Jack fetched Braden's caterpillar for him a lot. Brownies from the jar-o-brownie-mix that Bamf & Bryn perpetrated on lots of people this past Non Denominational Winter Holiday.APRIL 18
Yummy peanut chicken at sunspark and merrrr's. Jello parfaits for desert. This time we think we have the correct spice levels on the chicken. Jack counted seven moles on sunspark's arm. He said a lot of other things, most of them in Sanskrit, or was that Martian?APRIL 11
A new and improved dun dun noodles recipe at peter & carol's. sunspark and mer were invisible again.APRIL 7
Sloppy joes and corn at Bamf & Bryn's. sunspark and mer were invisible.MARCH 28
Lots of yummy Hungarian Chicken Paprikash at Dave's. Served on curly noodles with small steamed carrots on the side. merrrrr ate a lot. For some reason the salad seemeed extra good too. New table and table cloth. ooooh... ahhhh. Dave says the red juice usually washes out quite well. No one commented prematurely on the contents of the fridge. The Bryn-quarter century white desert confection was quite excessively large.MARCH 21
Tasty thick translucent noodles with chicken at Bamf & Bryn's. Rumor has it that the Korean style noodles were made of sweet potatoes. Experiments in soy sauce substitution worked out pretty well. Additional rice and potsticker sauce. Lemon bars for desert were sweet and yummy as usual. A plethora of wee ones as usual. Emily got a lot of shoulder time, Bryn got a new bear.MARCH 14
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Yummy creamy country-style chicken soup with dumplings and curry meat pastries at sunspark & merrrrr's! Pastries were tasty as usual, no surprises there. Sorbet and raspberry sauce for desert. Guest star Bryn's Mom, Linda, standing in for bamf. Bamf had Russian food of some sort. Jack learned that if you whack yourself in the mouth with a futon frame hard enough to leave marks, people will give you yogurt to smear on your chin. Emily and Braden opted not to follow suit.FEBRUARY 28
There was food and Peter & Carol's. merrr was battling emergencies at work. guest stars at dinner included former Sapient coworkers Kay and her husband. Jack thought Kay made decent pass at masquerading as merrrr. merrr had caesar salad from pluto's and it was yummy.FEBRUARY 21
Indian (cumin & tumeric) chicken on vast quantities of rice by zanzibar at zanzibar's. (Mr Z had previously been cooking at peter & carol's to facilitate the attendance of those with small munchkins.) Two key lime pies for desert and they were yummy. merrrr wouldn't let zanzibar throw out the last little bit of the chicken and sauce. For the Nth time, people talked about housing, mortgages, finances, and other extreeemly exciting topics... except for merrr and jack who didn't drink the mind-control drinks.FEBRUARY 14
Honey-orange sauce chicken on couscous at Bamf & Bryn's. Bamf verified that it is hard to burn asparagus when baked in the oven. Fudge brownie-cake captioned in red-hots for the sugar impaired.FEBRUARY 7
Coq au vin at sunspark & merrrrr's with impressive looking individual apple raspberry pastry cups for desert. The pastry cups were yummy too, largely due to liberal quantities of sugar. A little vanilla ice cream went well with the still-warm fruit from the desert. Chicken adventures made possible largely by sunspark, the new Big Cookbook with lotsa pictures, sunspark, and the letter J. Braden was a good boy. Jack did nothing to hinder the assembly of desert. Emily did nothing to hinder the alien invasion.JANUARY 31
A yummy Chinese dinner at Peter & Carol's. General Gau's chicken, Lieutenant finger-Lickin-good's savory stewed pork, and Corporal K-9's mini-tree brocolis. Tiramisu for desert (standard Chinese after-dinner sweets, ya know. :-) Twas Peter's birthday or sort of. The t-shirt was pretty cool. Guest star, Carol's Mom. Cindy didn't get any tiramisu. Neither did Emily or Braden.JANUARY 29
Yesterday, sunspark threw out the last of the frozen turkey bits in the freezer. Since 1998 was turkey by carol & peter, I can only assume that was from 1997. (or 1996? :-) However, some of the apricots laid low and missed the great purge. Wow, suddenly we have space in the freezer! Time for more apricots. ;-)JANUARY 24
Sausage tortellini with or without red sauce was yummy at Bamf & Bryn's. Braden was not seen baking the apple pie for desert. Codename Hazel (or is it Mara?) was simply not seen. She was taking lessons on invisibility from her commanding officers. Chocolate chip mint ice cream went well with the pie.JANUARY 17
In honor of Bamf & Bryn's new munchkin, Davemodiano made a seafood and cheese dish, Shrimp and Scallops Red Lasagne. Dave made lemon bars, mmmm! And we also had the twin Walnut Praline Mousse Roll of the the one Carol made for visiting Bryn in the hospital of much fuzziness. Very tasty and impresive looking too with the stripes and shiny caramelized walnuts on top.JANUARY 10
Smoked Salmon on fettuccini at sunspark & merrrr's. With mac-n-cheese with little pieces of cut up hotdogs pinch hitting for those wary of fish. Guest star Andy "Loud and Very Tall" Karanicolas. The amazing L-shaped table configuration. Yummy sweet fresh fruit salad for desert, supplemented by a random cherry liquer cake from Trader Joe's. Jack took a walk with Bamf and returned with a very big grin on his face. What were they up to? They had no official comments but rumor has that someone mindcontrolled someone else to remotely activate several highly classified photon emitting devices for a lark.JANUARY 3
Chicken stuff at Peter & carol's. It was probably tasty, but late-working-mer can't personally vouch for it. Fruitcake and yummy fudgy pudding brownies for desert. Rumor has it that the talk was of tiny munchkins or maybe the care thereof. Sunspark & mer showed up in time for desert, zanzibar didn't.