Belated blog #1

This post is yes, a bit late, but I didn't want to leave it out. May is a busy time around here, with all of the birthdays in our family so packed together. Mine is the 12th, then Josephine's is the 22nd, and Maria's is the 29th (and Lou's is a week later on June 6th - yes, that's all four birthdays within 3 weeks, and yes, it is tiring).

Lou wanted to make me a special birthday dinner this year, and I requested a dish that I had previously had at Ruby Tuesdays, "shrimp diablo". Lou looked up the recipe online, and found it to be quite, um, complicated. Besides the weird ingredients - brandy and white wine, to name a few - it is quite a fussy recipe, involving flambéing and all of that...

I told him to skip it, since it sounded like way too much effort for my birthday dinner, but he insisted that what I wanted was what I was going to get - aint he sweet? :)




So here is a picture of my dinner. I don't really know that the picture does it justice, but oh my gosh, it was the best pasta dish I have EVER had, bar none. He flambeed the shrimp in olive oil, sea salt and brandy (this was the first time we've done this and he really loved the whole idea of setting food on fire on purpose), made the wine sauce from the freshest ingredients (don't any of you worry - all of the actual alcohol burns off in the cooking process - this dish is Mormon and pregnancy-safe), and served up the whole mess on linguini. It all ended up tasting nothing like the one I had at Ruby Tuesdays, and by that I mean that it put their dish to shame! Next to Lou's gourmet creation, the restaurants' tasted like a jar of Prego poured over some penne with a few puny shrimp sprinkled on top. I'm so glad he insisted on making it for me. I felt so special to be getting such a fancy dish on my birthday. :)


For dessert, my Mom made my favorite - homemade strawberry shortcake - ohhhh, so good.

After dessert, it was present time (I never get too old to get excited about this part!). My mom handed me this huge box wrapped in black paper, decorated with black, white and red ribbon with these forks tied on top. So I'm looking at these forks, knowing they are a hint of some sort, but really not getting it. Was it a picnic set? Why were there forks? Forks, forks, forks...
And then I got it. Do you?

Ah, but my mother is a clever one. Get it? Forks? As in Forks, Washington, where the Twlight series is set? Once I figured out what was inside, I tore that package open so fast!!

I thought it was really cute, and was soooo psyched to get the entire set, all in hardcover. Now if I could just find time to read them all again...

And my sister Dana got me the movie, because a true Twilight fan MUST have the books AND the movie, don't you think? :)

Josephine's was the other May birthday that I wanted to share. Okay, so I wanted to share Maria's, too, but my camera broke literally ON her birthday, and everyone in my family forgot to bring theirs, so alas, I have no pictures of her birthday. :( But suffice to say that she gots lots of cute clothes and dolls and LOTS of great dessert, between the cupcakes I sent to school, her friend birthday party and the one for her family. She was inundated with desserts, and loved every minute of it.

Anyhow, here is Josephine and Lou right before their first annual daddy-daughter fishing trip (he started doing these with Maria on her birthday when she was three, too). It's a fun tradition, and the girls look forward to it for months in advance. I don't have any pictures of her with the fish she caught, because Lou said they were all too small to legally keep. But she did catch a few, with Lou's help, of course - go Josephine!

Ahhh, and here is the dessert - a golden butter cake, filled with fresh buttercream and frosted with my own creation - a fresh strawberry-infused real whipped cream frosting (I hate Cool Whip). I had to make a special kind of whipped cream, since the normal stuff won't hold up for frosting a cake - it just melts down after a short while. It is one of my favorite cakes that I have ever made. You just can't go wrong with strawberries!

The blowing out of the candles - Happy Birthday, Josephine!

And that's it! Birthday season is over in our house, and THANK GOODNESS! I have to say, that although it kind of stinks being pregnant in the summer heat, at least this baby's birthday is far away from the May Madness! :)