Let's eat!

Last week was my real birthday which was quietly celebrated at home with Bert, TC, and the majority of both sides of our families. It was relatively stressfree as I had prepared most of the food either the night before or up until two hours before dinner.

These are Bacon Wrapped Smokies. Pretty easy. Wrap 1/3 of a bacon slice around a sausage. Jab it with a toothpick. One pound of bacon for 14 or 16 oz (depending on the brand) of mini cocktail wieners (heh heh, she said wieners). Dump in a crockpot. And do it like Def Leppard and Pour Some (brown) Sugar on them! About 1/2 cup worth. Mix it in good. Turn on that crock pot to high for four hours. Recipe courtesy of Jenn from JustJenn Recipes. She has so many cool "party food" recipes and this is one of them!  These were quite popular with the kids and were gone within less than an hour! If I ever make this again, I'm going to have to double the recipe. Also, it helps out to have a child who is more than willing to get her hands dirty to make this for me. Ha ha.

My mom made Lumpia so we didn't have to order any. Next to the lumpia is Orange Teriyaki Salmon that I made. The salmon went pretty quickly. Thank goodness because I don't like storing leftovers.

I also made Clam Pasta (recipe posted earlier this month). I went overboard with the garlic and I also threw in some capers.

My mom also made Macaroni Salad. (Here's a variation of her recipe from a really old post from my old recipe blog...

My sis brought what she called "Seafood Dynamite" and man, this was so damn good! I need to get the recipe from her but it was full of shrimp, scallops and bacon!!!!

Another one of the dishes my mom brought was Pancit Bihon. You can't see it but there's tons of sliced Chinese sausage, cubed fish cake, shrimp, and chicken. My mom does not skimp on the meat. Not of that cabbage filler crap in her pancit, I tell you.  We had to have a noodle dish since noodles = long life.

I also made "Ulang sa Gata" - Shrimp with Coconut Milk. I will have to do a separate recipe post for this but this is such a fragrant dish (especially if you like chilis, garlic, onions, and coconut milk!).

In between my shrimp and the the mac salad was the last dish my mom made, Sauteed pork and shrimp with Chinese long beans. Lastly, I also had some steamed asparagus. Not pictured is the green salad because I wanted to have some greenery here.

I made fruit salad too: cantelope, kiwis, mangoes, strawberries, lychees, jackfruit, palm seed, blueberries and maraschino cherries! I think I had almost every color represented!

Here's some of the desserts I bought from Seafood City earlier that week: Ube and Strawberry cakes plus mini fruit gels for the kids.

Clementines and Ube Suman (steamed banana wrapped glutinous rice):

Pinipig polvoron  and pecan tarts - both were bought from Lisa's Desserts in Eastlake. Pinipig is young rice that is pounded thin and crisped. Polvoron is a type of powdery milk powder/sugar/flour based confection. It's an acquired taste. Some people don't like the powderiness of it because it makes your mouth dry, but I love it! The pecan tarts weren't as good as my aunt's, but they would have to do!

I also had Thin Mints and Samoas on the two tiered displayed (a previous Xmas gift from TORC)...

That was my birthday dinner last week. It was great having both sides over (only two families on Bert's side couldn't make it). The kids had fun playing outside and we had fun watching the youngest nephew walk around more steadily. No more "drunken master" gait. He's up and running now!