Dinner, 16/11/19: The Annual (Nearly) Vegan Birthday Feast

Every year for my birthday I have some friends round - many of them are vegetarian and one is also allergic to dairy and gluten, so I tend to go for vegan food. With perhaps the occsional optional cheese sprinkle. And the salad above has a little honey in the dressing.  This year, we had Lentil and Butternut Salad (a regular feature), 

Herby Braised Carrots, 

Fennel, Chickpea and Aubergine Bake, 

Devilled Mushrooms, 

Giant Butterbean Stew, 

Green Bean and Kidney Bean Curry, 

and Burnt Aubergine Chili (by popular request - everyone loves this!)

Also rice, a loaf of bread and some dessert, which doesn't appear to have been photographed - pears poached in red wine, and Flourless Black Bean Brownies. 

The Almost Vegan Birthday Feast (18/11/17)

On a weekend near my birthday, it's been my tradition - I think for about 9 or 10 years now - to have a group of girlfriends around for a feast. Many of my friends are vegetarian, plus one of my friends who has been coming in the past few years is also allergic to gluten and dairy, which means that vegan food is a good starting place - and then of course, there's the gluten free addition. She's also allergic to most nuts, so that doesn't help either. These dishes are mostly vegan except for some honey in one salad dressing and the tortilla, which has egg in it. Also, dessert featured egg in a large way. But otherwise, pretty varied despite the restrictions (and yummy...) Sarah was home for the weekend, so helped me with the cooking.

This first dish (above) is titled "Surprisingly Delicious Moroccan Cauliflower Salad" - which made me laugh  - it uses cauliflower "rice", which was useful because the cauliflower steaks, which we've had before several times, generate lots of leftover bits of cauli. The tahini yogurt sauce was made with soya yogurt, so it was dairy free. Tahini has such a strong taste you couldn't tell it was soya yogurt at all... Recipe: BBC Good Food Magazine

This is a lentil and butternut squash salad; I've made it lots of times before. (BBC Good Food)

This is a new one, though - it's a parsnip and brussel sprout bubble and squeak cake. It was gorgeous - and very Christmassy seeming - I'm considering cooking it again for Christmas dinner. (BBC Good Food)

This is a simple tortilla recipe, cooked in the oven and cut into pieces - I've made it before for parties.(BBC Good Food)

Here we have a Caribbean Vegetable Curry (with coconut cream on top) which I'd been planning to make for dinner a couple of weeks ago and never quite got around to - we'll definitely have it again, though as it was really nice. Spicy. (Sainsbury's Magazine)

This was perhaps the star of the evening, despite looking so ordinary -it was a "Burnt Aubergine Vegetable Chili" - and had a really brilliant smoky flavour, due to the aubergine.  I made some rice to go with both of those dishes. (BBC Good Food Magazine)

This was a Spanish Vegetable casserole and was nice, though not nearly as interesting as some of the other things. (Tesco Vegetarian Magazine)

This one you may recognise from other postings - it's Niomi Smart's Cauliflower Steaks with Chimichurri Sauce, which we think is an excellent dish. (Eat Smart by Niomi Smart).

It occurs to me now that I should have cooked Yotam Ottolenghi's recipe "Tamara's Ratatouille", but then again, you can't have everything. Maybe next year.

Dessert was meringues, with lots of fresh fruit and some cream (or soya cream). I put cocoa in some of the meringues, so they had a kind of marble effect. I say "I" - it was actually Sarah who made the meringues - ironic really, as she doesn't even like them...

A week in Florida

So, I had a week in Florida over Easter, to help celebrate my uncle's 90th birthday. It was a lovely visit once I got there (tornadoes in Georgia grounded all flights in and out of Atlanta, which was where I was connecting, for a while - I did finally get to Orlando, but it took a long time and took my bag even longer). 

On Saturday, we had a picnic in the park with some of my aunt & uncle's friends. 

I visited McKee Botanical Gardens, where I'd last been as a small child (when it was called McKee Jungle Gardens).

We did some manatee watching, 

walked on the beach (this is my cousin, Terry), 

and looked for shells (my brother).

We had another birthday dinner at Taffy's house (what we call the house that used to belong to my grandparents - my aunt and uncle don't live there, they live in a retirement community, but the family uses the house still) on Sunday, the actual birthday. My mom was missing, despite being my uncle's younger sister, because her flights were so badly affected by bad weather and the knock on effect that she just ended up cancelling her trip and getting a full refund.

My two cousins, Diane and Terry.

Terry took this one - a decent picture of me - almost never happens!

We had a final birthday celebratory meal on Monday at the Ocean Grill, a nice restaurant where we used to go for fancy meals over the course of many years visiting Florida.

Birthday Boy

One of the primary purposes of social media being to publish slightly embarrassing photos of your relatively grownup children when they were small(er) and cute(r), I offer this little birthday collage of my "baby". My baby who is now taller than all the female members of his immediate family and rapidly encroaching on his last remaining family member...  Happy 14th birthday, Alex!

Dinner, 19/11/16: Birthday feast

As usual, for my birthday, I had some friends around to dinner. Here's what we ate (above) - and some of the dishes closer up...

Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad (Moosewood Cookbook)

Tortilla (Good Food)

Potato Salad with Salsa Verde and Artichokes (no recipe)

Butternut Squash and Lentil Salad (Good Food)

Roasted Cauliflower and Chickepeas with Harissa (familystylefood.com)

Vegan Hotpot (Simon Rimmer)

I forgot to take a closeup of the Stir-Fried Mixed Greens (no recipe) or the dessert (Gin & Tonic Sorbet; Strawberry Daquiri Sorbet)

Birthday goodies

Goodies from friends and family - admittedly, it's not about the presents (I'd be happy to have my friends over with no presents at all), but the presents are a nice addition!

The Annual Birthday Feast

All kinds of goodies this year (all vegetarian, as two vegetarian friends were attending) - Yotam Ottolenghi's Quinoa Cakes, which I made recently for the family, a Butter Bean Stew, Halloumi Stuffed Peppers, a Lentil Shepherd's Pie, Broccoli Casserole and Roasted Squash with Pumpkin Seeds & Fenugreek (also Ottolenghi). 

and for pudding - a cherry and blueberry clafoutis and pumpkin pie. With homemade vanilla ice cream, of course.

Dinner, 18/10/15: Steak & Mushroom Pie, Beetroot tops, New Potatoes; Cheesecake

We aim to have the birthday boy (or girl) choose the meal, when at all possible (when birthdays fall in the week, it can't always happen). Geoff's birthday was today, and he wanted a steak & mushroom pie, so that's what he got. Yum, if I do say so myself! I use the Hairy Bikers' recipe for this pie (and indeed, most pies - they make excellent pies). The cheesecake is a Good Food magazine recipe, which is essentially a slight variation on my mother's classic - the main difference being the addition of a little sour cream to the body of the cheesecake as well as the topping.

(Official) Birthday dinner

Official dinner, that is, not official birthday - she's not the queen... We went out to Jamie's Kingston, which was very nice. Good, solid, Italian food at moderate prices. I've never eaten in this high-end chain before, and it was definitely an experience I'd repeat. Can't remember exactly what everyone had, though we shared a "plank" of antipasti... I had fritto misto (fried fresh seafood) as did Geoff and a polenta cake for pudding. Alex had some sort of savoury pancake thing with spinach, Olivia had gnocchi, Sarah had slow-cooked duck leg. Everyone else had pudding as well, but I don't remember them all. There was definitely tiramisu involved somewhere...  Still a bit freaky to have an 18 year old, even with a week to get used to it!

Happy 18th birthday, little (or not) girl

...and then there was cake

Airhopping

Good way to spend one's 18th birthday - with friends at Airhop, a giant trampoline park. This is Sarah's friend Katharine, doing a straddle jump or something like that (she & Sarah both did trampolining at school for a while).  The guys are friends as well, but I only caught Kath mid-jump...

This is Sarah doing a flip from the trampolines into the big pit of foam chunks. 

And here are some of the girls having a go at team dodgeball - on trampolines, of course.

(Post) Birthday Treat

Alex's birthday was earlier this week, but he didn't really want a party this year, so we decided to do some stuff together uptown. I suggested lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe, which seemed like a fun thing. I've never been to one, nor, of course, has Alex.  Here we are - the lines can be notoriously long (you can't book) but we got there around 12 and there was no queue at all - perhaps because it was February and cold...

The walls are covered in memorabilia, which was great fun to look around. And of course, there was good music playing (and videos).  The food was nice, too - solid American type cuisine, but well done. 

We had some chicken wings - spicy, but nice and then he had a burger (no photo)

while I had a pulled pork sandwich and the World's Largest Onion Rings.

There was Oreo Cheesecake for dessert (his, though I ate a few bites).

We had a good look around at all the rock memorabilia both where we were sitting and in the Vault - the little museum area below where the shop is.  They have a truly huge collection of stuff - guitars, outfits, other instruments, and all kinds of other bits and pieces - good fun for the rock fan.

This amused me - that Jon Anderson from Yes had donated a harp. Only Yes...

We were sitting right next to a display of Who stuff, so I got to see it all up close and personal.

This is downstairs in the Vault.

After the Hard Rock Cafe, we caught a bus up to Oxford Street, as we wanted to go to the big HMV shop. We had tickets to the London Dungeon later, but not until 4pm, so we had some time to kill. We were very full from lunch, too, so we needed a bit of a walk.   This seagull amused me - on top of a flag pole at Marble Arch...

Once in Oxford Street, Alex spotted a giant panda and of course had to go have his photo taken with it - there's still a fair amount of small boy in my little pre-teen...

Of course, there was at least one crane, though I had a hard time getting a photo of anything else with the crane until a bit later...

After Oxford Street (and a walk down the top of Regent Street, where we ran into our neighbours, also out for a day in town), we walked over past Liberty (I didn't drag him inside)

...and into Carnaby Street, which is always fun to walk through. 

(Carnaby Street selfie in progress - when asked if he was going to SnapChat it, I was promptly corrected - it was going on Instagram later. Excuse me!)

We then walked through Soho

And found a crane!

And down into Trafalgar Square - well, around the edge of it, then down past Charing Cross

 and over the bridge to the South Bank

...where we went to the Dungeons (no photos allowed inside past the entrance queue where I took this charming one - and anyway, it would have been too dark). 

Once we were done there, it was beginning to get dark, and the London Eye was all lit up - lovely!