Happy Birthday Dad!

A New Year's Eve baby from 1952... which, yes, makes him the Big Double-Nickel now.

The kids all made birthday signs, but Isaac's was especially humorous. It read "Happy 55th Birthday Senior Citizen."

Heh!

No, I did NOT put him up to it.

Dad's birthday-cake request wasn't even a birthday cake. He's not hugely fond of cake, anyway. Instead, he requested I make steamed Chinese dumplings for him.

They're a bit more labor-intensive and time-consuming than a typical meal around our house, so I don't always have time to make them, but when I do, they're quite popular with everyone in the family. Dad and the kids hang around like vultures until the next batch emerges from the steamer, and the dumplings disappear faster than I can produce them.

I made a special separate batch of them just for Dad, kicked-up a notch as it were. I added some chopped kimchi and several generous blobs of wasabi paste to the meat mixture before steaming. This sinus-clearing concoction garnered an enthusiastic thumbs-up.