Monday, February 13, 2012

Happy Birthday, Geoff!!


Sunday was Geoff's birthday so we had a whole weekend of celebration beginning with a birthday dinner with the Holtzes on Saturday night.  Several years ago, Geoff mentioned the stuffed grape leaves (dolma) that his grandma made when he was younger.  I decided to surprise him for his birthday that year with the dolma, but I got it very wrong - his grandma's recipe was all rice and I added ground beef and raisins.  It was good, but not the food of his childhood.  Over the past several years, I have refined my recipe (very similar to this one) and added a second dish - mititei - a super-garlicky sausage that I made with all local lamb this year and formed into meatballs.


I rounded out Geoff's traditional birthday dinner with some home-made ginger ale-based cocktails (way easier to make than you would think) and a pumpkin cake with whiskey-caramel sauce.  The cake was good, but I'm never going to beat the three foot long guitar cake I made when he turned 30 (there was also less arm-wrestling than at that party).  Wanting some sort of festive decoration for the birthday boy, I also made bunting from craft felt.  Colorful and imminently reusable.


We had big plans on Sunday to go hiking in the Hill Country, but woke up to a rainy day with highs in the 30s and decided to watch movies on the couch instead.  An easy, relaxing birthday.

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