An SCD birthday

I decided to try to make Clark chicken salad for dinner, since we are both so sick of chicken soup. When I got home, I tossed two thawed chicken breasts that I'd forgotten about into my trusty nonstick skillet along with about a cup of water.

I then grabbed the recipe for mayo from the Pecan Bread web site. Yes, you have to make that too.

It was a "cooked" recipe which made me feel slightly better, since you heat the yolks up just until they start to cook and then blend it with oil until it does its magical turn-into-mayo thing. Unfortunately I cooked it a little too long, due to the pan not being quite on the burner, which resulted in a scorched corner of the pan. In a panic to cool the pan quickly, I tried to run the edge under water and succeeded in adding a bit more water to the egg mixture. Whoops. I then stirred and stirred and the egg kind of un-cooked somehow, so it was OK and I dumped the mixture into the blender when I was satisfied.

I started blending, and tried not to get hit with little pieces of egg yolk as I added the oil in a thin stream. Clark stimmed a bit as his coping mechanism to deal with the loud noise, so he was rocking and humming for a little while. I really couldn't see what was going on in the blender, so I just kept blending and hoped for the best.

And in the end, I had mayo! Well, kind of. I'd take a photo, but I ran out of time. I'm going to make more though and I'll add a photo then.

It ended up creamy, but a bit less firm than I'd imagine mayo should be, and it unfortunately tasted too much like olive oil for my taste. I will definitely have to get some safflower oil.

I stuck my new mayo in the freezer to chill a bit and then cut up one of the chicken breasts for Clark. I popped that in the freezer on a paper plate as well for a few minutes, but Clark was pretty impatient and all that cooking had taken way longer than I'd figured. *sigh*

So I dumped a bunch of chicken on his plate and mixed about half of it with the mayo, and added salt and pepper. He said, "I like this!" but he says that with pretty much everything until he's at least three bites in.

I was trying to clean up when Clark said, "You can eat with me." I think. I get fuzzy on the phraseology sometimes, but I think he said that.

I said, "Well, I don't know what to eat. I don't want the crock pot soup, and I want to save the chicken for you. So I'll just sit here with you if that's OK." I took my cup of water and sat down across from him at our kitchen table.

He said, "We can share!"

My mouth fell open. He's never said that before. And then he said, "You need to get a fork."

I blinked, and went into the kitchen. I got one of our metal forks. He said, "No, a colored one."

I reached into the drawer with his reusable Ikea plastic forks and he said, "The yellow one. OK."

And I sat down with him and ate chicken salad. I got some more of the mayo and mixed it with the other half of the chicken on his plate and we ate and chatted about...oh, I don't know. Lately he's been such a motor mouth, said my husband, Jeffrey. Autistic kid, motor mouth? Does not compute. But yeah. Halfway through he didn't want it any more and asked me to put honey on it (I did). He then proclaimed he was done without a single bite of the chicken with the honey. Haha.

While he was finishing, Jeffrey said, "Your birthday is coming!" and Clark said a few of his standard responses, like Thanksgiving is coming, since he's gotten a little confused about Thanksgiving and his birthday, and that his birthday is November 27. But then Jeffrey said, "What do you get on your birthday?" and Clark covered his eyes with his hands and said, "You say it."

Jeffrey didn't know what Clark wanted him to say, so we both looked at him, and he whispered, "Say cake! Say cake for my birthday!"

We were so surprised. Then Jeffrey looked at me all crestfallen, thinking he couldn't have cake, but I just kind of blurted out, "I can do it."

Jeffrey said, "How?"

I said, "I have a recipe. For like these peanut butter brownies, I can use almond butter, we can test it." We're almost to stage 2, so I think we could do that.

At first Jeffrey didn't want to since we are still working on a variety of food for Clark to bring to school but then I said, "He could still bring them to school too," so he was sold. Yay!

Then Jeffrey said, "What else do you get for your birthday?" Clark looked confused. We told him, "Presents!" and Clark looked awed. Then he said he needed a new police car and a new garbage truck and a new dumpster for his birthday. A green dumpster.

We just looked at each other again. It's the first time he's ever told us anything that he actually wanted for his birthday.

Almond butter brownies. That's what I'm gonna make for him. Next week. And the other stuff? Well, we're just gonna have to see what we can do about that.