Meridian Magazine:: Around the Table: amily Dinners: How to Get Your Kids Talking at the Table: Birthday Dinners

Birthday Dinners
By Janet Peterson

Birthdays! Every one of us has one every year, and we all like to celebrate. And what’s a birthday celebration without favorite foods?

Many families have built birthday traditions accompanied by certain dinner menus or special desserts that are enjoyed by the celebrants each year. Other families try new ways of celebrating birthdays and find great fun in experiencing new ventures in activities and foods.

When the three Shimmin children were growing up, they each got to choose the menu for the whole day and could pick anything they wanted, even if it was ice cream at every meal. This tradition meant that all family members ate whatever the birthday child selected. Favorite dishes for dinner included their great-grandmother=s goulash, chicken dumplings, or hot dogs and homemade macaroni and cheese. A birthday also provided a day off from practicing and chores for Bob, Heidi, and Heather.

Pat Menlove, mother of 9 and grandmother of 29, writes:

We have been celebrating family birthdays with a Sunday dinner ever since we began having our family. For 40 years we have gathered loved ones around the dinner table for a favorite meal Sunday afternoons. Singing '”Happy Birthday” to the celebrated one with the festive cake and burning candles in front of him or her has been a constant followed by cheers, hugs, laughter, and gifts.

Forty years ago we all could sit down around the table to a roast beef and mashed potatoes and gravy dinner replete with hot rolls all served on Sunday best china. The one birthday person would choose a favorite dish, his favorite dessert (and sometimes it was banana cream pie) and the special Birthday Plate.

Now, as our numbers have multiplied, the dinner has become a large buffet with each family bringing a dish and the “one birthday person” has become a “birthday group” for all twelve months of the year. The Birthday Plate rotates around.

Singing 'Happy Birthday' to Grandpa, Uncle Corey, cousins Jade, Catarina and Devon in May, or to cousins Phillip and Miles in June (when we are often on a family reunion), or to Aunt Susan, Aunt Vanessa, and cousins Bobby, Katie, and William in September, helps to strengthen the family bonds. Grandchildren know their aunts and uncles and cousins with a personal relationship that stays with them all their days. We remember these dear loved ones and these good traditions and they bring us joy. We are looking forward to October Birthday Dinner, when we celebrate Uncles Bob, Marc, Aaron, and another Marc, and cousins Andrew and Paul. Six men! Now that's some kind of record!

Group celebrations can provide extra opportunities for family members to share love.

Memories of birthday dinners from childhood linger long into adulthood. Kim Orr remembers:

When my sister and I were younger, Mom would make us our favorite dinner on our birthdays. I always chose lasagna. I loved to watch her assemble this dish layer by layer. The aroma while it was baking in the oven was mouth-watering!

Each year, I requested Old-Fashioned Carrot Cake for my birthday dessert. Since it was my special day, I always asked for seconds of this yummy layer cake. Lucky for me, Mom never said no to the birthday girl.

I could not have been blessed with a more wonderful role model both in and out of the kitchen. Mom has taught me that bringing a family together for a meal is one of the most wonderful opportunities we have for sharing.^[i]

Rodney Brady enjoyed his chosen birthday meal so much that it was his favorite dish as an adult:

From the time I was a young child many years ago, my mother, Jessie Madsen Brady, would ask me as my birthday approached, “What would you like for your birthday dinner?” Always my answer was “maca-roni and cheese.” To this day, over sixty years later, there are few dishes I enjoy more than a plate full of my mother’s macaroni and cheese served from a large baking dish and seasoned with freshly ground pepper.”^[ii]

A favorite dessert, for many, is the centerpiece of their birthday celebrations. Kristen Lee shares the recipe for her familys favorite birthday cake and writes: “This is a Jackson family favorite. Everyone requests this for his or her birthday cake. Very simple, but good.^[iii]

Birthday cakes provide enjoyment for every participant in the celebration.

Demetria Davis learned that her husband likes a certain pie, not cake for his birthday. Oreo Ice Cream Pie Ais my husbands favorite dessert from childhood. I have to make it every year for his birthday.”^[iv]

Some families continue to celebrate a birthday, even if the celebrant is no longer with them. The Delany sisters, who celebrated more than 100 birthdays apiece, continued to have a party for their father: “We always find ways to celebrate our memories of family and friends. Why, we still have a birthday party for Papa, even though hes been gone since 1928. We cook his favorite birthday meal, just the way he liked it: cheese and gravy, rice and sweet potatoes, ham, macaroni and cheese, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, turnips and carrots. For dessert we’ll have a birthday cake — a pound cake — and ambrosia, with oranges and fresh coconuts.”^[v]

Happy Birthday to each of you. Be sure to enjoy your favorite foods on your special day.

Lemon Cake
Kristen Lee

1 package yellow cake mix
1 (3-ounce) package lemon Jell-o
4 eggs
1 cup water
One-half cup oil

With the above ingredients, mix cake according to package directions. Bake in a 9x13-inch pan at 350 degrees Farenheit for approximately 50 minutes. Remove from oven. Punch holes in cake with meat fork once baked.

Pour over cake:

1 cup powdered sugar
Grated rind of 1 lemon
Juice of 2 lemons
With heat turned off, let glaze set in oven for approximately 5 minutes.

Oreo Ice Cream Pie
Demetria Davis

One-half (1-pound 4-ounce) package double-stuffed Oreo cookies
One-half gallon mint chocolate chip ice cream, softened
Mrs. Richardson's fudge topping
Chopped nuts (optional)

Crush Oreos in a blender or food processor. Press into a greased or sprayed 10-inch glass pie pan. Microwave on high 90 seconds. Spread softened ice cream over cookies. Freeze until firm. Soften 10 minutes before serving. Pour fudge topping over ice cream. Sprinkle with Oreo crumbs or nuts, if desired.

[i] . Kim Orr, 2002 Taste of Home Annual Recipes (Greendale, WI: Reiman Publications, 2001), 195.

[ii] . Rodney Brady, quoted in Elaine Cannon, Five-Star Recipes from Well-known Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2002), 148.

[iii] . HBS LDS Cookbook, Spring 1999, pages not numbered.

[iv] . Janet Peterson, Remedies for the “I Don’t Cook” Syndrome (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 2001) 301.

[v] . Sarah L. and A. Elizabeth Delany, Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters First 100 Years (New York: Kodansha International, 1993) 25-26.