birthday and cake!

Wow, am I ever spoiled. It was my 32nd birthday on Saturday, and I'm still getting gifts! EEeeee! Opening packages (and mail of any sort, except for bills) is exciting, and I had a small molehill of parcels to open - there were gifts from near and far, and they were all fabulous: books, jewelry, shirts, bag, water bottle.... love it all! So, I'm spoiled. On Saturday morning while Steve got the job done in the gym, I roamed around the market and bought a bunch of delicious goodies from an Italian deli which set us up to have pretty much the best sandwiches ever: fresh Italian buns (big ones), fresh mozz, ham, salami, pepperoni, tomatoes... it was amazing! The picture, I think, speaks for itself.



And then, the cake. I tried a new recipe ("the perfect party cake") from a food blog, Honey & Jam; it looks amazing (if you check out the link, the photography is quite flattering) but hmm... maybe it was our doing, but the cake was a bit of a let down. We came home on Friday night from a dip/wade in Meech Lake and late-night baked, cooled and wrapped the cakes, and then Saturday we iced them (we followed another new recipe: I couldn't bring myself to make the suggested buttercream frosting which called for ooooh only 1 1/2 cups of butter). I was SO excited about cake, about eating cake... but whatever. It was dry, the frosting was sticky and marshmallowy - it is not a repeater. However, Steve, being the nicest best husband ever, brought me home mini two-bite sugar bomb cupcakes from IGA, and they made me forget alllll about the ick trial cake. The cake, the cupcakes AND the Sunday morning pancake all combined to cake-tide me over for two weeks until we can have cake again, on our anniversary. Sadly (but not that sadly), we don't have any actual wedding cake to eat (which isn't much of a surprise, considering that neither of us ate ANY of our wedding cake almost a year ago), but happily, we have a kitchen full of pans, bowls, spatulas and mixers that will assist me in whipping up something delicious, something tried and true. Yes, I already have something in mind, and yes I will post the recipe.

We went out for afternoon patio drinks on Sunday, and then to Sweetgrass Bistro for my birthday dins... it was delicious! I must point out the moustache on the man in this picture though - by FAR one of the most interesting bunches of facial hair I've ever seen!

Dinner...

... and dessert! YUM!

The weather here has been amazing - gorgeous, sunny, warm... so I'm going to get outside before I have to be back inside for a rendez-vous. Here is some food for thought that one of my Tokyo running friends passed on this morning; must we apply the same wisdom to our eating patterns? And, where does cake fit in?

"You should exercise unrelenting discipline over your thought patterns.
Cultivate only productive attitudes...you are the product of everything
you put into your body and mind" -I Ching