Birthday Munchies

It's a little tough to have a birthday so soon after moving to a new city. I've been blessed and spoiled with a plethora of easily accessible and awesome friends, and now it's just me and a super busy law student, and a bunch of people who are very close to being friends, but aren't quite there yet.

Sigh.

So, as so many have done before, I have decided to replace friends with food.


We started the day with birthday pancakes, chocolate raspberry pancakes to be precise. They were even personalized. These have an M because they are for Matt!


And these have a backwards, lumpy R because Rs are harder to write with pancake batter and I wasn't really thinking about how the letters would transfer.


For dinner, we had some lovely fresh beets from the natural market up the street. It turned the water a beautiful ruby red and our counter top a light, permanent pink.

They made a delicious salad with goat cheese, arugula and pistachios, based somewhat on this recipe. Man, I love that the internet now has reliable recipes. Also, I love that putting beets, arugula, goat cheese, and nuts in a bowl counts as a recipe.

The crock pot was kind enough to handle the main course, a delicious pot roast with garlic, black pepper and red wine. It's awesome how a slab of meat covered in garlic and black pepper becomes actual food after sitting around in something warm.

These garlicky and delightful meats owe a debt of gratitude to psuedo-knit blogger Crazy Aunt Purl's
Perfect Pot Roast Recipe. It was quite good, although we may have used a bit too much black pepper. The juice from the pot was used to make gravy for garlic mashed potatoes, and kicked butt. Hooray for crock pots!

And finally, the piece de resistance: The Cake.

Cakes have always been very important. Again, I've been spoiled with spectacular and awesome cakes most of my life, and I really like making interesting and creative cakes, like this Stewie cake I made for my baby brother's birthday:

Or this peacemaking cake I made for last Easter - a Jesus-Bunny.


It just wouldn't be my birthday without an awesome cake.

And Matt delivered.


Why, yes, that is a Dalek cake.

A Dalek cake with M&M Dalek bumps and Good & Plenty Dalek ears.

The top says "CELEBRATE" (Because Daleks only use verbs that end in -ate), and Celebrate we did.

Not bad for a first novelty cake, huh?

Especially when you consider some of the crap professional decorators put out. And as a birthday gift from me to you, have some more terrible, terrible cakes. Cake Wrecks makes my day brighter and full of inappropriate frosting. The last cake here made me laugh until I cried. Enjoy.