Mothering Day/ Simnel Cake

Happy Mothering Day! Yesterday morning, after we changed all our clocks forward an hour, we saw that the calendar said that it was Mothering Day in the UK. We're getting excited for our spring break trip to England so we're interested in all things UK. Thanks to Wikipedia, we learned that Mothering Day is the fourth Sunday of Lent and Mothering Day traditions are hard to separate from Lent/Easter prep. One tradition that started with Mothering Day and is now also an Easter tradition is the Simnel cake. Who can resist a recipe that calls for a pound of marzipan -- even if it means Mom has to be in the kitchen on Mothering Day?!

I used the recipe here, which even includes step by step pictorial directions! My Simnel cake didn't turn out quite as pretty as theirs, but tastes wonderful!!

Indonesian Rijsttafel

For dinner last night, we made an Indonesian meal, a rijsttafel (Dutch word meaning, literally, "rice table"). M said it was like a "rice bar" -- rice with lots of toppings! Indonesian food is usually very spicy. We toned down the heat on ours since M isn't used to eating very spicy foods.

M's interruption: (M is eating his lunch (he has the day off from school) so he is dictating his interruption to me.) My favorite four foods were the yellow rice, the cucumber, the banana fritters, and the tofu.

Did you know Indonesia is made up of 13,667 islands? Indonesia's flag is very simple, so I didn't have to do much to make it.

Back to Anne...
Rijsttafel traditionally has many more dishes than we could eat -- or cook! -- we followed the mini-rijsttafel suggestions at The Rijistafel Company. Our menu was:
gado gado (raw veggies with peanut sauce)
bean sprouts (lightly boiled with a little sesame oil drizzled)
Cucumber bean salad (recipe at the Rijsttafel Company)
stir-fried tofu (I took the time to drain the tofu for a couple hours and was reminded why recipes recommend it!)
banana fritters (recipe here)
and rice colored yellow with tumeric.

Steve and I added spicy peanut sauce and Vietamese chili paste to our dishes.

Another big hit! M listed his favorites above, but really everyone enjoyed the whole meal.