A Few of My Favorite Things 2013

One last addendum to the birthday festivities.  My friends know that I

1) love food (especially peanut butter eggs the size of my head)

2) love preparing food

3) love displaying food (especially food I've made)

2013 birthday mentions are officially over.

You Should All Be In DC Right Now

It took long enough but Spring finally arrived in DC. (And summer kind of considering tomorrow will be 90°F.)

Marcilyn and I went on a walk by the tidal basin to see some of the cherry blossoms.  They were on their way to being at full bloom.  I love walking around most parts of DC this time of the year because it smells like flowers - cherry, magnolia, hyacinths. 

The DC Celebration: Last of the 2013 Birthday

I feel like my birthday happened ages ago but it's just taking me a while to post about it.  This should be the last post but you can now tell that I like to spread out the good times as much as possible as it gives me good excuses to spend time with friends.

My favorite thing to do for my birthday is to throw a dinner party and spend time around the table laughing and telling stories.  This one did not disappoint. 

Apologies for the low light but that was the mood of the night. 

I made Mushroom Bourguignon with portobellos and it was perfect.  I didn't miss the beef at all.  The asparagus was a little soggy because I didn't judge the cooking times very well.  The water for the egg noodles took forever to boil.

I finished the meal with a grapefruit olive oil cake.  I love olive oil cakes and this one was delicious.  I served it with broken bits of good chocolate.

We all left very full and tired from laughing so hard.

An Afternoon at Gramercy Tavern

Trish and I celebrated our March birthdays with lunch at Gramercy which is one of our favorite places in NYC and somewhere we've been before.  It's one of those restaurants that is always  wonderful. 
 

We started off by eating lots of vegetables - kale above and brussels sprouts below.  We were balancing out the main course.

Which turned out to be one of the best cheeseburgers I've ever had.  Even the condiments were fancy.

I'm posting the menu so you can see how crazy difficult it was for us to decide on what desserts to order.  We always share which kind of helps but it was a struggle to pick just two.  We went with the banana cream tart and the lemon icebox pie.  

I really love our meals at Gramercy.

I was also super happy to see the hyacinths out at Union Square market.  This was one of those moments that I was really sad to no longer have a home in the city with a vase waiting for these beauties.