The bases of these last two children friendly hors d'oeuvres are cherry tomatoes and radishes. You could subsititue mushrooms, flat pieces of cheese, or colossal pitted ripe olives. Again, I will include the adult recipes so you will have those as well and just substitute your children's or grandchildren's favorite toppings. Now on to that first meal on Irish soil. It left much to be desired. Even though I had my trusty traveler's guide to Ireland with me, I was too preoccupied for that.

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The base of these hors d'oeuvres is celery, and kids just love to cut the celery barquettes and top them will all their favorites. Again I will offer the recipe from the hors d'oeuvres cookbook by Eric Treuille and Victoria Blashford-Snell so you will have adult appetizers as well. When we got off the plane in Shannon, I handed our passports to the agent. He just waved us on to the customs agent. When he heard I was with my two children, he too let us pass without opening a single suitcase.

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The base of these hors d'oeuvres is cucumber. Kids love to cut out the cucumber rounds and top them by themselves. I will include the toppings as presented in the appetizer book I like, but you could top them with all your children's favorites: peanut butter, marshmallow, fruits, jams, cheese, Nutella®, hard boiled eggs, egg salad, chicken, olive, nuts, etc. The possibilites are as limitess as your children's imaginations. Have some fun in the kitchen this weekend with your kids or grandkids.

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It was 1983. I was teaching English at a residential facility for troubled girls placed by NYS courts. I loved my job. I loved my home. I loved my friends. Life was good except for a couple of things. I was watching the creativity of my children erode. Whereas they were once curious and imaginative not only in their play but in the essence of their personalities, now I was seeing 9 and 13-year olds watching the 20th rerun of The Brady Bunch. They were sponges simply soaking up pop culture.

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For those of you just beginning to read this blog, my children Erin and Eli and I lived in Ireland during the mid-eighties. We traveled through all of the British Isles and holidayed in the Canary Islands for Christmas and toured Israel and Egypt before finally returning home to New York State. Many, but not all, of these recipes are from restaurant menus during that time. I have been posting many hors d'oeuvres recipes because we had such an incredible variety during our Egyptian cruise.

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I have always loved the taste of mushrooms whether raw, grilled, or sautéed. This hors d'oeuvres is called focaccine farcite with wild mushrooms. I am intrigued with true wild mushrooms and would love to forage through the forest and fields to find them. Reading some of the many books published on the topic of safe retrieval of the fungi is on my retirement to-do-list. Until then, conveniently many mushrooms that are considered wild are also cultivated like the morel, chanterelle, and porcini.

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My cousin from Long Island and my sister from Annapolis came for an end of the summer visit. We drove through the Adirondack mountains visiting many of the small lake towns and stopping for lunch in Saranac Lake. Then on to Lake Placid and Whiteface. We took the gondola ride up the mountain to view Lake Placid and the surrounding area. It is a beautiful trek. My cousin Ellen was a little apprehensive about the ride up the face of the mountain, and I was encouraging her with brave comments.

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Before I leave my reminiscences of our holiday in Israel and Egypt, I have some memories of Bethlehem. When we stayed in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, we did not take any tours. In the mid-eighties it was safe and easy enough--even for a foreign woman alone with children--to visit the sites via local transit, mainly buses. In one day we floated in the Dead Sea, toured Masada and Bethlehem, and had lunch in Jericho. Bethlehem is in a section under Palestinian authority so has a high Muslim population.

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After sleeping 13 hours, we got up and looked forward to a restful day at the beach. Mediterranean beaches are not like our Florida or California beaches. Besides the sun being so much hotter, beach etiquette is nonexistent. You risk getting stepped on constantly by bathers walking to the water, by frisbee players jumping, or by kids tossing a beach ball. Sand is flying everywhere. Israeli children throw sand at bathers for sport. The parents say nothing.

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We said goodbye to Cairo at 4 in the morning. We took a tour bus back to Tel Aviv. It is a beautiful, restful trip across the Sanai to Israel. You view the Suez Canal, cross the desert, and see the resorts that have sprung up on the Mediterranean. I remember the colors were so vivid: the sky, the water, even the sand. Everything seemed to sparkle. After 10 days in Egypt, it was nice to get back to a more Western culture. The end of our Israel/Egyptian holiday was a few days in Tel Aviv.

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I felt very sad when we left Aswan. Since we were the only ones on an American Express tour booked from London, Erin, Eli, and I were put in with other groups throughout our Egyptian holiday. So we left the people we had been with since Cairo and assigned a new tour guide named Bill and a new group. I remember feeling like I was going to cry and that I was leaving old friends knowing I would never see them again. When we got to Luxor, we were taken by horse-drawn carriage to our hotel--a dump.

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After we got off the Cairo to Aswan overnight train, we were taken to our hotel. There was a meet and greet in the lobby where we were offered beet juice for refreshment. After a rest from the heat of the day, we started out to explore the city of Aswan. We visited the markets, the quarry, the unfinished obelisk, and the botanical gardens. Before dinner we watched an Egyptian wedding from our hotel window. The reception was lively and filled with dance and song and laughter even in the heat.

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To get to Aswan to start the Nile cruise, we took the train from Cairo. I had always wanted to take an overnight train and was very much looking forward to it. The last site we toured before leaving for the station was the statue of Ramses II. The tour guide told us he had 62 wives and over 200 children. There was a smile on the statue’s face. Sometimes I wonder why. We were looking forward to the air conditioning of the train. It was 130°. [Remember to never visit Egypt in the summer.

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We met some wonderful people on the Nile cruise. Most were Australian or English. My children and I were the only Americans because we booked the tour from a London travel agency. There was a father and son on the Israeli leg of the tour though. We compared notes on the cost of the tour booking in the States vs. booking the same tour with the same company in London. I paid half what they did. I've learned now to book online from a London travel agency and just get a cheap flight to London.

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This post features croustades: the basic recipe and directions for making the mold or croustade and the fillings of salmon dill mayo and Caesar salad. They are wonderful little hors d'oeuvres made of filled buttery toasts baked in muffin pans to form the cup. You can really fill them with any ingredients you like, but the fillings found in my favorite hors d'oeuvres cookbook are especially delicious. Again we had many wonderful butlered hors d'oeuvres on a felucca cruise down the Nile in Egypt.

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