2026, Family, Food, Gatherings, Uncategorized

Decadence

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This past weekend has been one of fun and simple excess. My birthday is February 1. Son’s is February 10. We decided to celebrate together this past weekend.

Son had arranged a Valentine’s Day treat for his wife in Sioux Falls including a live production of Moulin Rouge at the Washington Pavillion and dinner at a really exquisite Italian restaurant. We watched the 7 year old and the 6 month old while they were in Sioux Falls. We celebrated with birthday cake when they returned after dinner and the musical. They all spent Saturday night with us.

Son and I agreed that we wanted a German/Central European cake to celebrate, and he found a lovely recipe for Schwartzvald Kirschtorte. It was a fairly easy recipe for an experienced baker, and I baked the three cake layers on Friday. Grandson and I assembled the cake on Saturday afternoon after I had made the massive amounts of sweetened whipped cream, excessive chocolate ganache, chopped dark, sweet cherries, and kirsch syrup that completed it. Grandson loves to bake and cook. He really loved licking the spoons. It was a 9 inch cake that served 12 people. The header photo is all that is left after we all had second and third helpings on Sunday. It was a decadent cake..

It was also decadent to spend so much time with grandchildren. Granddaughter frequently fell asleep in our arms after her bottles. She smiled and blew raspberries and cuddled. Grandson was so excited to play basketball and Scrabble with his Opa. He also got to roast marshmallows in our fire pit on Sunday morning. How decadent is that?

What is the most decadent thing you’ve eaten or done lately? When was the last time you took care of a baby?

23 thoughts on “Decadence”

  1. There’s a little place in Dundas called Martha’s Eats and Treats. It’s only open Fridays and Saturdays. I stopped in on Saturday morning and bought a couple of cardamom twists! I almost never indulge like that, but Maggie has been doing so well, and the sun was shining!

    The last time I took care of kids was about 23 years ago.

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  3. I’m sure I’ve blathered on in the past about my favorite desserts, all from foreign climes. Tiramisu, sticky toffee pudding, cannolis. I don’t think of any of those as decadent, however. I had a friend Tim (since deceased, unfortunately) who used to like to bake and he got Chocolatier magazine. We used to go through it together and then we would pick out some dessert that we wanted to make. His wife Susan (one of my besties) would make the main course and Tim and I would labor over some of these chocolate tots and cakes and truffles. I suppose those would be some of the decadent things I’ve eaten.

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    1. when you said you have favorite deserts i immediately thought of tiramisu and cannoli both ordered from the wonderful restaurant across the street from the michealangelo hotel in florence. i have others to compare and none compare

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  4. Confession time. I am one of those people who is not really crazy about babies except for my own. She was marvelous and relatively well behaved for a baby and of course so darn cute. Whenever someone brings a baby around, I do hold it for about 15 seconds so the people don’t think I’m extremely strange but then I pass it off to the next person who is usually drooling to hold the baby. I’ve always wondered if maybe I’m not crazy about babies because my baby sister was born when I was 17 and it was kind of a trauma point in my life.

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    1. One of my relatives had a baby when I was about 15 or 16, and I remember someone handing the baby to me. I had no experience with babies and when the baby’s head started to roll back and the adults sprang up to bark instructions at me, I quickly put her back into an upright position and handed her off. I didn’t really see the point of babies – they’re not furry and they don’t purr.

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  5. I am often hesitant to make anything with Kirsch, since Kirsch usually comes in such huge bottles, and then you are stuck with all this rather too sweet liquor. We found a fairly small bottle in Sioux Falls, though, which was helpful.

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    1. i use kirsch in my cheese fondue and i have a son who is a foodie who polishes off the bottle while im not looking. i made cheese fondue for valentines day and sure enough when it was time to add the kirsch the executive decision was made to proceed with no kirsch. im guessing i could just add some cherry juice from the cherries in the refrigerator door in the garage but it was wonderful without and i dont like sweets

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  6. At the Valentines concert on Saturday, people brought sweet treats, and a couple were rather decadent – a chocolate frosted mini-cupcake was slathered in a great frosting… And there has been something else recently if I can remember it.

    It’s been a couple of decades since I was taking care of any small children, but I’ve held a baby recently after Fellowship on Sunday…

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  7. I spent my 34 year hospital nursing career taking care of babies – newborn to 12 months for the first 7 years, then 27 years on the NICU. And during that time I was “second mom” to my two youngest nieces. That all ended in 2009. Now one of those nieces has a daughter who just turned 2 yesterday. I spent a lot of time with her during her first year – some of that was actual babysitting, some was just visiting her for playtime.

    As to decadent food….the only ones I can think of were eaten on a trip to Australia/NewZealand about two decades ago – Pavlova and stick toffee pudding.

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        1. The smallest baby weighed just under one pound (think of a pound of butter for comparison) and was about as long as a dollar bill. I wasn’t a big fan of these fetuses. My favorite size was 3 to 4 pounds.

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    2. Our son was born in Winnipeg at 28 weeks and weighed 3.5 lbs. He had a fairly unremarkable course in the NICU. The nurses were wonderful, and since it was in Canada he didn’t cost us a penny.

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  8. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Interesting that this is the topic today. This morning I awoke having dreamt about a baby which I rarely do. Last Wednesday was baby day for me. I attended a family funeral in Northern Iowa and my two wonderful nieces had their babies there, a girl 10 mos old and a boy 7 weeks old. We got to hold and pet and coo. The 10 month old dumped lemonade all over me and my table neighbor during the “little lunch”. Due to the dearth of babies in Millenials and Genz, there are fewer babies to tend to these days, so it is a special thing. I did not care for the babes that day, I just held them and admired them.

    At the same funeral was a man who I knew as a boy, and who was my brother’s friend. My brother and I were explaining to him how I took over changing brother’s diapers from my dad (impaired by MS) whose hands were shaking so he could not pin on a cloth diaper without poking my brother.
    ***When caring for a baby boy and changing diapers, always remember to keep him covered or risk getting your face sprayed with baby pee. Don’t ask how I know this.

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  9. ive got the grandkids i see lots of aged 7 5 and 3 and the twins i dont see often age 1. the twins are a dark girl and a light boy that are very cocooned and dont like new stuff. when anyone holds one that kid cries which makes the other cry. after theyve acclimated its ok but until then its kind of unnerving to have stereophonic screaming for 5-10-15 minutes. each time one calms down the other starts up again.

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  11. People have varied notions of decadence and it isn’t necessarily desirable to be confronted with something that strikes you as decadent. I personally have little desire for sweets and especially gooey rich sweets. I would classify them as decadent but not appealing.

    When we were in Japan, we were taken out to dinner by members of a family Robin’s family had been close to. They chose a small tempura restaurant at the top of a fancy hotel. We sat at a counter. In front of each place was a little “stage”. A chef dedicated just to us would, one by one, prepare items of tempura and place each item on the little stage in front of us, whereupon we would consume it. The battered and deep fried items ranged from various vegetal things like gingko berries and Japanese sweet potato to various kinds of fish to things like shrimp heads and eel backbone. Because of the way the tempura was presented, it would be obvious if you demurred from consuming any of the delicacies. And they were delicacies, by Japanese reckoning, and none of it was inedible but, to a western palate neither was it memorably delicious. I’m certain the ingredients were considered very fancy and the context, in which we were attended to by our very own chef, qualified the occasion as decadent but I would be gratified to have it have been a once in a lifetime experience.

    Last time I was up close and personal with a baby was about eight years ago when my grandson was a baby. He has a number of allergies and as a baby he had eczema on his face that he would scratch raw and so had to wear socks on his hands. He also had difficulty going to sleep and I liked the opportunity to rock him, singing until he dropped off.

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  12. i have a friend who bought a residence hotel in livingston montana in the early 80’s. he turned it into a botique hotel and it became a popular spot at once in a town full of artists and free spirits
    there was a basement room i wanted to form a club in to be called decadence and bliss for smoking cigars and drinking cognac. i still like the idea. its a thing un china and in euripe where you have a small locker to keep your personal stash in

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