Yesterday was my birthday. It rarely falls on a weekend – it often falls on spring break and we are out of town. It’s just tragic that I’ve had to spend some of my birthdays in places like Costa Rica, Mexico, and Hawaii. All kidding aside (along with that spoiled brat comment), I was so excited that this year my birthday was on a Saturday and I could spend it with friends. On my actual birthday. But I wanted to really visit with them, and not have to pay so much attention to a fussy dinner, so I decided something easy would have to figure prominently in my plans. I spent most of the day cleaning my ridiculously messy house (well, messy for me…I have a problem ‘letting it go’), and resenting SQ for being sick on my birthday and not being able to help me out. I threw a bit of a tantrum around 4pm and almost just called the dinner party off. Yeah, moment of complete selfishness…but it was my birthday!
It rather oddly came together as kind of an Italian-theme dinner. I snagged some really pretty asparagus from Potomac Vegetable Farms on Friday evening, and a huge pork loin roast from Wegman’s. Perfect – that could roast in the oven with little for me to do other than grill some veggies. I made a salad out of the asparagus; tossed it with some lemon juice, extra-virgin olive oil, Parm-Reg cheese, salt, and pepper. I roasted 4 bulbs of garlic along with the pork, then made that into a vinaigrette sauce. I was really trying to work from memory of a presentation I saw Giada De Laurentiis give at a cooking show here in DC last November. It was easy and it made a knockout presentation.
Dinner was perfect, but the real fun of the evening for me was that it turned out to be more of a cooking lesson with my girlfriends. I also had a new TableTopics card set…absolutely helps to keep the conversation going, and you learn a LOT about people. I finally admitted to them what ‘The Plan’ is for us after a bunch of questions like ‘Would you ever live in another country?’ and ‘What is your dream job?’ Dream is really the operative word there. After all the questions it hit me that it still feels like a million years away. I get a bit verbose after I’ve had a drink – and the cocktail Shayne put together for me hit me like a freight train after not really eating anything all day but cake batter and frosting. I stumbled across some recipe called a Galliano Breeze, which seemed sort of like an Italian martini. I’d never had any drink made with Galliano, and it turns out that I don’t really care for it. We moved on through a couple of bottles of wine, which was a safer bet at that point, but just not as much fun. I did get the chance to use my ‘new’ martini glasses that I picked up in Mexico a couple of years ago. The wine glasses get a lot of use….cocktail glasses not so much. I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions, but I’m thinking that this year mine should have been ‘drink more cocktails’.
Oh, I almost forgot about my red velvet cake. The frosting was perfect – just like my Grandma’s. The cake was good, but should have been pulled out of the oven a couple minutes earlier. I’m working on that baking thing. I don’t like it, but I’m working at it.