Great Grand Baby

Last night we had Bill's daughter Debbie's oldest son Scott to dinner. He brought his lovely wife Gisella and their 8 week old baby Joshua. What a wonderful time we had.

I roasted a six pound sirloin roast, mashed spuds, carrots and peas, green beans (so unbelievably yummy) and yorkshire puddings. For dessert I made a scrumptious apple crisp. I decided to do something new with the yorkshires. I always spray the pans with excessive amounts of pam instead of using hot fat. They turn out very well, but bland. So yesterday I clarified butter and mixed in a particularly delicious powdered beef bouillon, the only one I will use because it tastes like beef. So....I put the fat in the tins, heated them to spitting hot in the oven and added my batter and proceeded to bake. About ten minutes into the process, I glanced into the kitchen to see copious scary amounts of smoke coming out of the top of the stove, the cracks around the oven door (there actually aren't any cracks but smoke was coming out somehow, there was so much) filling up the kitchen and creeping into the rest of the house. I tore over to the kitchen, put on the fan on highest possible speed, opened the back door and hollered at Bill to open the rest of the doors and windows in this house. OH MY GOD!!!! The smoke, the little fire, and then more smoke and then a bigger fire......I needed to get these little suckers cooked just enough so I could shut the oven off. So, for the next ten minutes I alternately opened the oven door to let smoke out and flapped it towards the back door.

Then.....off went the smoke alarm. Since we have already burned one house down not so long ago the insurance people insist on heavy duty smoke alarms hooked into a monitored place somewhere that, if we don't plug in the right alarm or something, they send fire trucks. Talk about panic. I don't remember the friggin number. What the hell! I pick up the phone to call the 800 number on the alarm box to tell them not to send the trucks and....the line is dead. What??? Suddenly the phone rings right in my hand and upon answering in total confusion..a deep male voice at the other end asks what the heck is going on. So I tell him to not send trucks, I give him three options of codes that our number could possibly be (one of them must have been right) and hung up and went back to flapping and opening and flapping and opening. Long story short, the alarm went off forever and eventually I was able to turn off the oven. I left the puds in the oven and went to find the dog who had taken off at a hundred miles an hour when the alarm started.

BUT.....the puddings were the best I have ever made. They were worth all the smoke and panic and annoyed alarm people. They were absolutely delicious, crunchy on the outside, tender on the inside and more flavour than any yorkie I have ever eaten. I will have to try to figure out how to solve the problem of fat runnage.

Meanwhile, back to the baby. He was one of the most personable 8 week olds I have ever seen. He talked, gurgled, laughed, conversed back and forth with you, heavy duty eye contact...all amazing at 8 weeks. Scott was as funny as ever and Gisella was a complete sweetheart. We will be having them back over and over.

And Aryn...if you are reading this...can you email me the instructions on how to clean that oven? Thanks ever so much!