Today is my birthday.  It’s a milestone year, and I’m spending the day in my kitchen.  I have been cooking my birthday dinner for the past few years.  I am even baking my own birthday cake – a big pink one with champagne in the batter and ridiculously sweet icing.  I don’t even remember where I found the recipe.  I’ve probably said this before, but I don’t really care for baking as it’s too precise and fussy.  If I had really gotten into cooking 10 or so years ago, I probably would have really loved baking.  Anyone remember ‘The Anal Retentive Carpenter’ from older episodes of Saturday Night Live?  That was me in the kitchen.  I’ve come a looonnnnggg way since then, and I love the loose measuring one can do in a lot of cooking.  Don’t get me wrong – I adore the whole ‘mise en place’ concept, and I will somewhat clean as I go, but I’m not obsessed with it like I used to be.

So, back to my birthday….I picked up some filets from What’s For Dinner Now? at the farmer’s market, and some really colorful fingerling potatoes.  I really surprised SQ with my meat-and-potatoes dinner, he thought I would go for something else since ‘steak’ isn’t really my thing.  I’ve really had everything but beef over the past couple of weeks, so I was really craving a nice seared filet.  And roasted potatoes with really rich cheese sauce.  The gorgonzola was a little over the top, I think I will do Asiago in that cheese sauce next time.

I started thinking about all my kitchen toys while I was preparing my little feast.  What would I keep if I were to pack up move out of the country tomorrow?  Well, definitely nothing with a plug…  I kept coming back to my chef’s knife, which is a gorgeous 10-inch European-Japanese hybrid made by Misono, and it cuts like a dream (have I mentioned that knife on here before??).  If someone robbed my house, THAT would be the thing that would piss me off the most if I found it missing.  What would you keep if you could only choose one thing in your kitchen?  Tough question, I know.

The day was a little anti-climatic, and I was more than a little pouty and whiny in the morning.  Withdrawal from lack of cooking for most of a month?  Maybe.  I was fine after I had spent some serious time with my kitchen toys.  I got a lot of ‘hope someone cooks for you’ or ‘hope you go out to a nice restaurant’ comments.  They just really don’t know me (well, except for you Gretchen :->).  I’m HAPPY in the kitchen.  Yep, it was MY party, and I wanted to cook.