Last night we celebrated Ruckus Reginald Weaver's 5th Birthday. ( At 35 in dog years, he is now older than his handlers.) Tradition is one of our specialties, especially when that tradition involves wieners. Yep, we threw Ruckus a Hot Dog Birthday Party for the 5th year in a row. This year we invited our neighbors over, The Griffin clan. Mama Griffin chose mani/pedis with her pregnant sister over attending the party. (Big mistake.) The rest of the crew made it, with Papa Griffin arriving 30 minutes early, stating that he was currently in survival mode.
The kids played on the playground, chased the dogs, and then right before dinner they presented Ruckus with a giant gift bag of goodies. They even brought a bone for Mayhem. (Mama Griffin totally redeemed herself!) There was a frisbie, a squeak toy, and even a 2 ft. long hideous creature that looked like roadkill. The dogs were in heaven. After the barrage of toys and treats, the pups were served up their supper of hot dogs in the buns, extra ketchup. Ruckus took his time, downing it in about 20 seconds. Mayhem beat her old record and put Takeru Kobayashi to shame, swallowing dog and bun whole.
In addition to the wieners, tots were served as a side dish to the humans, accompanied by some ketchup containing NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP and NO SALT. I never realized all of the flavor benefits of high fructose corn syrup until last night. The stuff would have tasted better on a donut. The taste was so wrong. SO wrong.
After making the Griffin family suffer through the ketchup, I brought out the sugar cookies. I whipped this batch up right before they came over, using a recipe I found on AllRecipes.com claiming to be "The Best Sugar Cookies Ever". Pretty steep claim. I read the reviews, taking notes. I made sure to let the butter get to room temperature, baked them for less time than called for, as many suggested. The cookies looked like biscuits but tasted like OLD biscuits. I still don't know what went wrong. What I do know is that a can of spray frosting WITH high fructose corn syrup can make anything taste better. Throw on some sprinkles and the kids go nuts.
Nuts.
When all the biscuits were gone and all the toys had been played with, Papa Griffin gathered the kids and headed out...to Cracker Barrel...at 7:30pm. He had double booked the evening and was gearing up for his brother's birthday dinner. I'm sure survival mode carried him through the evening as I heard him telling the kids they could get some dessert at the restaurant. I hope that his kids had a sugar crash when he got home, cause our kid was rocking and rolling in her crib for 2 hours after bedtime. Every time we went back in to try to get her to go to sleep she would start giggling and trying to play. That sugar carried her all the way through today. No nap! If I had known the dangers of high fructose corn syrup included going to bed late and skipping a nap, I would have served her a plain old biscuit cookie and that would have been that.
I think everyone had a good time. I know Ruckus loved the attention, food, and toys, but he seems sad that it's all over. We got him a hot dog toy to keep him happy until next year, or at least until July when we celebrate Mayhem's birthday.
No comments:
Post a Comment