Birthday 2014

"Put a bird on it..." (or two)...

"Happy birthday...happy birthday..." by Altered Images...

"If they were me, if they were me and I was you, and I was you..."

I was so happy to have shared the day with my family and a few friends at a small dinner party at our house...

First up - the dessert table...

Lemon blueberry cheescake bars (made by me, recipe post to follow), meringues from Trader Joe's, pastillas de leche (in the covered butter dish), ube polvoron (wrapped in purple), jelly sticks, yellow mung bean hopia (made by my dad), ube cake, mango cream sandwich crackers, chocolate chip almond cookies (from Fresh & Easy) and in keeping with tradition, a cake from JennyWenny Cakes (banana chocolate chip with salted caramel filling.  Hey, what can I say...I like variety. Last year I only had a few things on the table and I wanted to change it up this year. The flowers were deep purple and burgundy ranunculus, yellow daffodils, and phalaenopsis orchids.

The whole side of my family was there (parents, bro/sis and their kids), Bert's middle bro and his mom, along with my neighbor, Tatonka, and KD and her family. I made several of the dishes while my parents brought in a few as well. Lumpia, spring mix and macaroni salad in the front, bacon mushroom pasta and pancit in the middle (I had to have a noodle dish for "long life")...

Another view of the spread - Orange Maple teriyaki salmon (made by me), shrimp and mock scallop dish with cabbage (my mom), and fried shrimp (my mom ordered this from a Chinese restaurant)...

The oranges on top of the salmon were one of many; a whole bag was give to me as a gift from a student's mother (along with avocados too, wow!)...

*The chick in the AC/DC "Highway to Hell" shirt is my sis...That's one of our favorite rock albums and Bon Scott's last before he died the classic rock star death of choking on his own vomit. 

Another view...

By special request, my mom made one of my favorite dishes, Chicken with bittermelon, eggplant and tomatoes...

Yay, I won't have to cook at all this week with all the leftovers!

Here's my Bacon Mushroom Pasta, this time using Farfalle instead of thin spaghetti...

This was a  hit since nothing was leftover at all!  For some reason, my recipe for this is the #1 viewed post, wth man.

I didn't include a photo of the chicken adobo I made for my party because it was in the crockpot and I thought it looked "ugly".

However, for the sake of "completeness", I'm going to "cheat" and use this older photo. It looked exactly like this...wings, my favorite chicken parts for adobo!

(from my "Merry New Year" post, Jan 1, 2014)

Back to that dessert spread...

The cake was by JennyWenny Cakes. Although Jenny was out of town, her assistant Jaki did the cake and the decorations.

It was a little more "pink" than I expected or wanted to be. My bro and sis made a sarcastic remark and said, "Hmmm, pink....it's so...YOU"! It was still a cute design (one I saw on Jenny's flickr; the bird design was originally a baby shower cake but in different colors).

Pink or not, as long as it tasted good, and it did (will update with a cross section tomorrow)...

Everyone loved the cake, which was served with butter pecan ice cream. Even Tatonka liked the cake and he's not one for sweets either.  I was happy to spend the evening with my siblings, TC had a blast with her cousins and KDD.

And here is the cross section:

This is upside down and on it's side. I know it doesn't look pretty because I mangled it. Just believe me when I say that this was really good! Mr. TJ said it reminded him of his favorite flavors of ice cream in one. La Ley also had a piece and loved it.

"Game of Thrones'" was on at 6 pm/East coast time but not in HD.  Everyone was kicked out before 8 pm, except Tatonka who left at 8:15 so he too could hurry home and watch GOT.  Bert and I just watched the 9 pm version in HD and holy $%#@, they finally did IT!!!! I won't say but yeah, that particular scene came earlier than expected!!!!!