Crap Swap: The Sequel

By Saturday evening, the spare bedroom, a good part of the living room and most of the porch was completely full of, well, crap.

This weekend marked the second (hopefully annual) Crap Swap that we have hosted. Friends and neighbors bring over the clothing, toys, knickknacks and other items they no longer want and let each other take what they want. (Think of it as a garage sale where everything is free.) Afterward strangers are welcome to browse before everything that is left is donated to a thrift store.

The weekend started off badly.

The swap was scheduled for Saturday afternoon and evening, and rain had been in the forecast for days before. Finally Friday night the forecast for Saturday looked good, with maybe a 5 or 10 percent chance of rain. But when I awoke Saturday morning it again looked bleak. We postponed til noon Sunday and sure enough, it rained all afternoon.

Pretty sure more kids clothing came out after this photo!

Sunday, on the other hand, was cool but progressively warmer, with no rain in sight. We filled something like 10 tables -- mostly with crap, but also with yummy potluck dishes. A few dozen friends and neighbors showed up and took home their finds, and it barely looked like anything was gone. I posted it on some local Facebook groups, and many people took armloads -- bags and boxes filled with stuff -- and still it hardly looked like there was a dent. At the end of the day, there were 20 boxes, bags and large items at the curb, ready for the thrift store to pick up on Monday.

Curb alert!

By mid-afternoon Monday, it was all gone.

The swap was so much bigger than last year. I was outside at 7 a.m. Sunday to set up for the noon party and just barely got everything out, even though most people had delivered their items days or even weeks ahead of time and most of the kids clothes were already separated by size. Still, it was a fun afternoon, and everyone seemed to take home a few treasures.

Annual Block Party Review

The kids look forward to our street's annual block party just as much as we do. Biking and general mayhem in the street, crafts and games in the front yard and lots of food and drink -- what's not to like?

The daylong event was last Saturday, starting with a potluck breakfast at 9 a.m. and ending in the wee hours of the following day. For the third year in a row, we hosted an afternoon of kid activities in our front yard -- a table full of crafts and temporary tattoos, a pool and water table in one neighboring yard and a badminton court set up in another. There were water balloons and a pinata. There were hula hoops, chalk and cornhole with Beanie Babies. There were sundaes and cupcakes. And there was a wine table for the adults who needed it!

The day was hot, but everyone was in good spirits. The potluck supper was crowded. And as the sun went down and the kids went to bed, the crowd slowly, gradually dwindled. I like spending time with the neighbors I'm already friends with, and getting to know the ones I'd like to call new friends. Each year I'm sad when the block party is over, and this year is no different. I'm already looking forward to next year.

Photo Friday: Football Season!

Our neighbors have an annual kick-off party for the Ohio State football season, and members of the alumni band show up to play. Atticus was entranced.

Aug. 27, 2016

Saying So Long to New York Friends

As we're winding down our time in New York City, we wanted to say a goodbye -- I refuse to say "final goodbye" -- to the many friends we've made here.

So we put together an after-work get-together on the eve of Independence Day at the outdoor Shake Shack in Madison Square Park. It worked very well for my 30th birthday party, plus there is plenty of room for a stroller. Score!

It didn't work out quite as planned.

First, it was hot and humid. All week the temperature had been in the 80s and 90s, and last Wednesday was no exception.

And second, the day was littered with pop-up showers. We thought we had outsmarted the clouds, because the sky was blue when the party started. And even when it sprinkled a bit, the drops felt cool and refreshing.

What was not so refreshing was the torrential downpour that lasted a good 10 minutes. I now know the meaning of the phrase "sheets of rain." Those 10 minutes sitting on an outdoor chair with an umbrella in one hand would have been bad enough on its own, but it was even worse when my other hand was holding Edith and the diaper bag, trying to keep both of them dry.

We didn't get too wet, but we weren't taking any more chances. A few friends went home at the first sign of rain, but a couple more made a beeline to a bar across the street: Live Bait. The rest of us followed when the downpour shut down.

The bar area up front was crowded and not stroller-friendly at all, but there was plenty of room in the small restaurant section in the back. Our group of a dozen or so even got to sit together.

As more and more friends left, it was down to just six of us, one of whom was extremely sleepy and ready to nap in her stroller. So we again headed back to the Shake Shack. I ordered a burger and fries during the first round there. This time I got a concrete -- vanilla custard with Brooklyn's own Mast Brothers dark chocolate chunks mixed in.

Although the night didn't go exactly as planned, it was far from being a bust. The worst part wasn't the heat nor the rain. It was the so longs and farewells. Even though we're still in New York for a little while longer, it sort of felt like the beginning of the end.

Brunch Success

Our fourth annual February get-together was necessarily different. Edith made sure of that.

Nevertheless, the party went off without a hitch. I only wish we would have had more leftovers: Paul's cooking was as fantastic as usual.

The menu was a combination of old favorites from parties past, and some new dishes he made specifically for Sunday. The spread included salmon, sausage souffle, sweet potato-turkey hash, watercress soup, candied bacon, Caesar salad, sauteed mushrooms, fruit salad, and homemade bread with a salmon cream cheese spread or garlic butter.

The desserts, as usual, were my responsibility. chocolate chip mini muffins, Swedish apple pie and coffee cake. We started off with a selection of beer and wine, as well as all the fixin's for mimosas and bloody marys. The stash was quickly multiplied by the 16 guests who arrived in the early afternoon.

Edith couldn't have been better. It's like she knew we would need an extra-good girl! First of all, she only awoke once the night before, affording me some extra sleep. And she slept in Sunday morning, allowing me to get a little baking done before she awoke.

She started the party with a nap, letting us finish up the food and eat. Even when she was awake, she barely fussed. It couldn't have gone any more smoothly.

So of course we're glad we decided to hold our annual party. It wasn't quite the same as having it on Saturday night, but as one guest told me: no one minds Sunday afternoon drinks. Even if, in my case, those drinks were sparkling juices -- and not a bottle of the Mother's Milk beer someone brought specifically for the occasion!

The Party's On

Each year Paul and I have looked forward to our annual dinner party -- if you can call a get-together with too much food and too few chairs a dinner party. For each of the last three years, we've hosted it at the end of February. The anticipation gets me through the long, dreary winter.

With a brand spanking new baby, we weren't sure if we'd be up for hosting it this year. But a few weeks ago we took the plunge and sent out the invitations. The party's on!

But with a few changes. Instead of a Saturday night dinner party, we're holding a Sunday brunch -- think 2010's brinner party, but at a more traditional time for the food served.

At our previous parties, the last guests have left late into the night. It's not exactly conducive to putting a three-month-old to sleep. But with a brunch, we can have our (coffee) cake and eat it, too, maybe with a side of ice cream: we can host our get-together and keep Edith on her fuzzy schedule. And we get to introduce her to some of our closest friends in New York!

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to this Sunday. (Look for a wrap-up next week on how the party went.) Here's hoping Edith doesn't decide to wake me every two hours Saturday night. I've got coffee cake to make!

Revisiting the French Connection

We didn't have many leftovers

We had DVDs of "The French Connection" and "Amelie" sitting beside the TV, but we never got around to watching them at our French-themed dinner party last Saturday.

But we did have lots of food and lots of fun at a shindig that lasted nearly 10 hours.(Even I didn't realize it lasted that long until I just did the math.)

Paul began cooking Thursday night, continued all night Friday and got up early Saturday to finish it up. Our menu included:

• homemade bread and herb butter 
• mini quiches
• Caesar salad 
• french onion soup and gruyere-topped bread
• beef bourguignon
• cassoulet
• spinach souffle
• ratatouille
• chocolate truffles
• clafouti

Not to mention Paul's Belgian-style (but the French-speaking part of Belgium!) saison homebrew and some French wine. Although you can surmise that this year our crowd of 15 guests were mostly beer drinkers -- we nearly ran out of bottles before Paul grabbed some more drinks across the street. And yet somehow we ended up with about twice as much wine as when the party began.

Homemade bread and herb butter

The party started early -- 5 p.m. We were still putting the final touches on a few of the dishes (and the ones that were better warm, like the quiches and souffle, had yet to be made), when the buzzer first rang. The last guests were out the door at nearly 3 a.m.

Our apartment held a mixture of work friends, neighborhood friends and a few that don't fit into a category, including one of my college roommates who now lives in Maryland. As usual, it was fun to see them all mixed together in the same room.

Paul and I even dressed the part -- or tried. Paul borrowed a blue and white striped sweater he wore when he finally got out of the kitchen. I dug out a black skirt plastered with sketches of the Eiffel Tower and other French scenes.

My cooking responsibilities were even lighter than normal -- I made only the quiches, truffles and clafouti, a kind of cherry-filled cooked custard that went over well. But even though I didn't spend so much time in the kitchen, I had my hands full, generally with cleaners and a dust rag. Our apartment was probably the cleanest its been in years. Or at least since our party last year. I wonder how long it will last.

Preparing for a Dinner Party (or, a Party with Dinner)

February is generally my second least favorite month, beaten out only by the even colder and even gloomier January. But for the third year in a row Paul and I have tried to beat back the winter blues by hosting an annual themed dinner party.

It's not a dinner party in the traditional sense. There's no long table with place settings and formal courses. It's more a dinner party in the sense that we have a party and make dinner. We barely have enough seats, but there's plenty of plastic silverware, foam plates and Paul's food for all.

The first year we didn't know what to expect, so we hosted a relatively simple "brinner party" for about a dozen people, serving up sausage souffle, a frittata, miniature quiches and more.

Last year we had about twice as many guests and a menu of some of our comfort-food favorites. Dubbed "A Feast of Midwestern Delicacies," we (mostly Paul) made food like deep-dish pizza, Cincinnati-style chili, green bean casserole and buckeyes.

And so this year, we decided to take things a step further with a French dinner party, which we hosted this past Saturday. No matter that neither of us had quite mastered the art of French cooking. Unless reading "Julie and Julia" counts.

After three years of hosting these parties, I've learned that the most stressful part isn't what you would expect. It's not the cleaning -- that gets done, and soon the place is so crowded I doubt anyone notices the spots I missed anyway. Paul always makes plenty of food, and since guests tend to bring drinks, there's always lots in the fridge. No, the most stressful part is booking the oven. This year we made a list of dishes, the temperatures they cook at and for how long, before deciding the order in which they would be cooked.

But inevitably everything turns out fine, and everybody walks away happy and full. At least I hope. And after the oven gets turned off, we even get to enjoy ourselves, surrounded by some of the best New York friends we've collected over the past 4+ years. On Wednesday: photos and highlights of Saturday's festivities.

A Feast of Midwestern Delicacies

Surveying the damages after everyone had left!

The second annual Erwin winter shindig was last Saturday, and the only casualty was a clear plastic platter.

At the party's peak, when about two dozen people were crammed into the kitchen scrambling for food, it felt like I might be a casualty, too. But of course everything went smoothly, with enough food and beer -- the essentials -- for everyone.

This year's theme: A Feast of Midwestern Delicacies. The menu:

• Cincinnati-style chili, with spaghetti, cheddar cheese and oyster crackers
• Chicago-style deep dish pizza
• Sausage gravy and biscuits
• Fried cheese curds
• Green bean casserole
• Cheesy potatoes
• Homemade bread with herb butter
• Spinach salad
• Popcorn
• Pretzels
• Buckeyes
• Graham crackers with vanilla frosting
• Freshly fried donuts

We didn't have too much left over -- enough sausage gravy for a couple of meals, some Buckeyes, a few spoonfuls of the casseroles. And a lot of salad. Our guests must have known that true Midwesterners will always go for the chili before the salad.

The two dozen friends who appeared traveled from three of New York's five boroughs and three states -- a co-worker came from New Jersey, and one of my college roommates, Sarah, even came from Philadelphia (more about that next week!).Surprisingly, quite a few had Midwest connections -- they either grew up there, went to college there, or both. I was happy to see how many people wore theme-appropriate shirts. I wore my "OH How I Love You" Ohio shirt, but my favorite was probably Sarah's-- a pink t-shirt that proclaimed "Ohio-licious." I wish I would have taken a photo.

Five hours after the party started, after a good half of the crowd had departed, I finally got out my photo and snapped a few shots. Oh well. I enjoyed the party nonetheless, and I guess I don't need pictures to prove it.

Last year's party was smaller, with just a few of my coworkers. This year we opened it up, and I'm glad we did. It was fun to see all of our friends all mixed up together -- my coworkers, Paul's coworkers, college friends, other friends and even friends of friends.

I'm already contemplating next year's theme.

Our First Brinner Party

It's cold outside, but what's cozier than breakfast for dinner?

So went the thinking behind our recent "brinner party." And so about a dozen people crowded into our apartment for mimosas, Bloody Mary's, sausage souffle, a vegetable frittata, turkey hash, mini quiches, donuts and way too much more.

I enjoy having guests, but I can't remember a time since we moved to Brooklyn when we've had more than two at once. In fact, this was the first time we'd ever even used the folding chairs we dragged here from Ohio and have stored under the spare bed ever since.

Paul and I both had a terrific time, but I must admit that hosting a party here was much more difficult than throwing one in Columbus. This was almost exclusively because of the amount of space.

We had seats for everyone here, but just barely. In Ohio, we had space in the living room to spare, a deck and a backyard.

And the kitchen. At least one person commented on the spaciousness of our kitchen, but it sure doesn't feel that way when two people are cooking nonstop for eight hours.

And despite the more obvious joys of having company, there was a more unexpected one-- a clean apartment. It hasn't looked this nice since ... oh, wait. It's never looked this nice.