Foto Friday: Oma’s 80th birthday 24 July 2009 8:33 am
Posted by Tracy in : Holland,Netherlands,cooking,eating,events,family,pictures,potatoes,salad,travel , trackbackAccording to my mother, the original plan for Oma’s 80th birthday was to keep things simple. Sure, we rescheduled a bit, since December 29 is a terrible time for family gatherings for reasons at least equal in number to the strong personalities involved in such a gathering, and June decreased the likelihood of lousy Dutch winter weather cramming us all indoors together. The date decided, Mom proposed a family meal at a nice restaurant, only then… well, neither she nor my aunt Ingrid are willing to take or give any blame about this development, but next thing anybody knew, a small family get-together had turned into Oma inviting everyone she knows and loves for drinks and munchies in Ingrid’s back yard. What can I say? My Oma loves being in the middle of a crowd, especially a crowd of family and friends, and celebrating someone turning an age with a zero in it kind of means doing whatever they want. (Have I mentioned that I turn 30 in August? But that I don’t know what I want?) Oma wanted a party, and a party she got.
The relevant pictures start on Saturday the 27th, Birthday Party Eve. 
For instance: Peter, nearly up to his elbows in potato salad. (We did one batch with peeled potatoes and another with skins left on in a feeble effort to give the dish a little more non-beige color). The recipe was a huge-scale version of the potato salad I made for Peter’s graduation party in Eugene: potatoes, vinegar, mustard, mayonnaise, celery, red onion, pickles, and eggs, like my memories of the classic American-style potato salad in The New Best Recipe. Pasta salad was tri-color spirals with cherry tomatoes, red onions, and basil, tossed in shallot-balsamic vinaigrette with a little Dutch twist: instead of the usual hint of sugar, I sweetened the dressing with stroop. It worked great.
So did the party itself, from my brother setting up decorations in the “it better not rain” tent, all the way through lots of food, on down to the kitties who took over the very choice seating down by the sloot:
I really like the shot of my mom in that last photo, by the way. But there’s more:
And I’ll end with Oma, right in the middle of her favorite thing:
Even Opa, who these days often likes nothing better than just being left alone, seems to be having a good time. We really couldn’t have asked for anything more, especially after unloading mass quantities of leftover potato salad on a neighbor. Yay party success!
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Betty
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mom
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Jeanie
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Marcy
