As an adult, I’ve always tried to minimize my birthday. Not celebrate it, not make an event of it, and most importantly not get stuff I don’t really want but have to be polite about and then figure out what to do with. I don’t really have a choice, though, because my in-laws like to celebrate, and for the last 5 years or so, April has involved a party for 3 birthdays. This year has been mostly awful so far, so it’s a nice distraction for once. My wife’s birthday just passed, and mine is a bit more than a week from now. The third is at the end of the month. We started our joint celebration with baking a cake on Thursday night so she could bring it to work. The Prairie Girl strawberry cupcake icing works very well on cake. I didn’t get to try it until Friday night, but we’ve slowly been eating leftovers all weekend.
Friday Morning we exchanged fancy teas. I got Melissa some Darjeeling, and I got a nice Earl Grey. The tins are lovely, and no clutter to make space for!
The main celebration was dinner Saturday night at Awai – a newish (?) higher-end vegan restaurant. The menu online was a bit out of date, somewhat limiting our choices, as we like to share, but the end result was some great eating.
We split a porcini mushroom soup and shishito pepper coca (flatbread, aka, fancy pizza) as openers, and the mains were artichoke barigoule ravioli, and a barley risotto.
The ravioli was amazing – some of the meatiest vegan food I’ve had, and very satisfying variety of flavors and textures while still being identifiable as artichoke. The risotto was less good – everything had the same smokey flavor, so it was a bit one-note. Still good, but it didn’t compare. Really the only issue is one we commonly have at restaurants – where we’re ready to pay and go but can’t get anyone’s attention, so we wait around for 30 minutes drinking water. You can find some photos here.
We’ve done lots of sleeping and cat-cuddling this weekend as well – and Mel read Dead Girls Don’t yesterday. She’s a much faster reader than I, if you hadn’t guessed already. The book is also highly recommended.
Next weekend we have a joint dinner with the in-laws, and during the following week there’s a Chi-Series event celebrating Canadian Horror, which I’m turning into an unofficial party. Finally things will wind up with a visit from my father.
Maybe next year I can figure out a way to attend some of The Toronto International Spring of Horror and Fantasy Film Festival.
fmalexander 