Daniel's Feast...

Daniel is 16. He's the coolest dude I know. Without even trying or caring. He loves to hunt- and is very good at it. If he's home, he's either studying or shooting hoops- Indiana has a basketball hoop in every yard, I'm pretty sure. He volunteers at Habitat For Humanity for more hours than they can admit, and is a real hard worker. He loves to eat- must have a tape worm 'cause he is just so skinny. But every time I make soup, he comes in and sniffs and says, "Oh Mom!! I knew you loved me!" What's not to love? Can I just get off-topic for a moment... See that hat? Daniel loves his hats. He has a camoflage Ted Nugent ball cap that he loves. It is tattered and torn and that's what he likes about it. Some of you may only know Ted Nugent as a rocker, but he is some kinda crazy hunting enthusiast, too. Well, a friend of Dan's "borrowed" his hat and took it to Alabama. Daniel didn't know where it had gone, but you should have seen the moping and the searching- he even secretly accused "Elder Carter and Elder Campbell" of lifting it! Those poor baby-faced Mormon volunteers... When Daniel found out that it had been "borrowed" -as a joke, he was so aggravated- stomping around the house, accusing his brothers of being disloyal, as they were in cahoots with the hat-napper- Dan was cahooted. All in good fun, mind you. So the friend sent this Alabama hat as a substitute- it's a very cool cap. He's been wearing it, but we all tease him about being unfaithful to his beloved "Nuge" hat. We're hopefully headed down to Alabama at the end of the month- Dan thinks for the primary purpose of retrieving his hat.

So, about Daniel's feast... he had a cheese theme. Only a 16 year old guy could think of that. He decorated his table with little white lights and Cheeze-its. We kept eating the decorations! His appetizer was cheese and crackers- several different kinds. His entree was what we call Cheesy-Burger buns. My friend, Kim, started that. You use your favorite roll recipe, let rise, and divide it into pieces- layer cheese then a meat mixture(hamburger seasoned with some tomato sauce, garlic, parsley, paprika...whatever, to make it tasty) and then another piece of cheese. Wrap it all up into a ball that is about the size of a tennis ball. Let rise, again and bake with the sealed-side down. The cheese gets all melty... mmmm. He also had chili-cheese fries. Two bucks for what he had for dessert...yep, cheescake with cherries. I could feel my arteries clogging as I ate. I probably don't have cheese even once a month, and here we were eating it by the bucketful. Wallace and Grommit would have been in cheese-heaven. Daniel had Coca-cola in little bottles for his drink. He gave everyone their own pack of bubble gum for their gift. He was annoyed that he couldn't find anything "cheesy" for a gift, but the kids are still chomping on the gum, so it was a big hit.