Happy Birthday to Me!

My birthday was last week! I am now twenty-three years old. My husband and daughter and I celebrated the day grandly. I did lots of things I love with the ones I love, so it was a very good day. I started out by making waffles with coconut flakes and coconut milk, and a sauce of strawberries, kiwi, and banana. That is a breakfast I've been wanting to create for a long while and though it didn't turn out quite as deliciously as I imagined, it was still pretty good and fun to make.

For lunch I made a Moroccan Chickpea Salad, wrapped it in tortillas (the pitas were moldy, oops) and packed them up and we three went on a hike near a local lake I'd finally found after hearing it mentioned here and there for a while. It has rained a lot here lately and everything has finally greened up after the blackberry frost we had. The creeks and streams were quite full and difficult to cross (the trails themselves were literally streams in some places and soggy everywhere else), but we managed all of them up until the last one, which would've required getting my shoes wet. I declined that and we went back along a different trail than we'd taken in and we saw lots of turtles, ducks, and a Great Blue Heron along the lake's shore.







Pearl decided to conk out just as we wrapped up our hike:



Later in the afternoon I baked a Flourless Chocolate Cake and we made a trip to a meat market... where I bought some shrimp. On the way home Pearl conked out again so while she slept I cooked dinner, Brown Rice with Peas and Caramelized Garlic ringed by Pesto Shrimp:



The pesto sauce was a gift from my husband... it's some fancy schmancy imported stuff I used to buy a jar of weekly to slather on toast, but my natural foods store stopped carrying it so I've been doing without, rather than pay an arm and a leg to have it shipped to me. I tried making my own and I tried many other brands... but none are so delicious. At any rate, this was my first time cooking shrimp. It was fun to see it pink and curl up... I first sauteed it with the butter and oil I'd cooked the garlic in, then tossed it with a few spoonfuls of pesto. It turned out so, so good. My husband says it's the best thing he's ever eaten and it was really quite delicious.

After an evening stroll in the park I made a raspberry sauce to go over the cake, which was also really really good... so good that when we'd eaten that one all up I made another one!





It was a perfect way to end the day!