Highlight from Birthday Eating Extravaganza: Dad likes Indian Food!

older....wiser...more tired, and VERY full. that's pretty much what it's like to be 30. oh, 30. so much to eat, and so little space.

so it all started like this:

MMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWwwww.
mmeoooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW
meow?

"shut up Lola"
meow?
"LOLA!"
MMMMMMMMEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow

"Happy Birthday!"
"ugh"

then Jeff gets up to shut up the cat, since it was my birthday, which entitled me to be the one staying in bed and not feeding the cat. as Jeff went out to put the smack down on Lola (i.e. fill up her bowl with delicious tuna), I realized that we didn't have any milk. no, not for the cat, but for my birthday cappuccino that Jeff had promised to make me and I was SO looking forward to. I yelled into the kitchen that we had no milk followed by "this birthday already sucks." Jeff came back into the bedroom to console me, but I was inconsolable, no milk = no coffee (well until he went to the store and bought some). and then: KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK at the door. Jeff started scrambling around, whereas I knew it had to be birthday goodness (I was expecting a package or flowers or something). but EVEN BETTER! my sister and bro-in-law. I literally jumped up and down screaming for about 10 seconds. and then my b.i.l. offered to go get me milk too...what a day it was turning into! fast forward several more hours and my parents and aunt also showed up and surprised me.

the plan (before all the visitors!) for my birthday was a whole lot of eating...starting with Peter Luger for a steak birthday lunch. oh god. steak and burgers. it's really as good as people say it is. you can order BACON as your APPETIZER. "I would like one piece of bacon before my huge piece of cow comes please." I was in heaven. I split the burger with my sister and got some of the famous porterhouse as well. all good, very very good. so very good. mmm....beef (and bacon)...mmmm....

so after PL, we were meeting some friends for dinner at a smallish italian "small plates" place. italian tapas in a way. it was family style and I picked it because they had all sorts of panini. the food was great, so was the wine and the friends and family, but the best part of the night came when they brought the cake out.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY LAUREN"
said the cake.

so, you may have noticed, my name is not spelled in the typical way. so Jeff was very very careful when he told them how to spell it. In fact (apparently), the guy on the phone at the bakery said "with a 'C', as in 'cat'" - to which Jeff answered in the affirmative. so, we were both kind of confused and made the waiter go back and make sure it was my cake (perhaps, we thought, someone else named Lauren was not going to get her cake). and the waiter went back and brought out the receipt "Jess Cox" ordered the cake. well, if I'm Lauren then I guess it makes sense that Jeff is Jess. my friend took some awesome pictures of my face and Jeff trying to explain to me what happened. If I can find the pics, I'll post them at the end of this entry.

overall, though it was a great day. but the weekend of eating was not over yet. Saturday we had reservations at Picholine. a "jacket required" restaurant. as we were getting dressed (correction, as I was getting dressed and everyone else was lying around, which was fine for everyone but Jeff cause they all had picked out what they were going to wear except him), and it got closer and closer until the time we had to leave, Jeff finally asked me what he should wear. Given that I was at t-5 minutes, I obviously couldn't think about his outfit. I said "a jacket" he said "jeans?" and I said "sure" - he totally didn't believe me, but my argument was that it didn't say you needed a suit, you just needed a jacket. so he got all fancified on the top half and wore jeans on the bottom half. I thought it was cool, in fact, later I said to Jeff that I loved his attitude towards the restaurant, I think what I actually said was that I loved that he went into the restaurant and "was like, whatever dudes, I'm wearing my jeans." of course, they didn't say anything to him. after all, he was still wearing a jacket.

the food, I thought, was really quite amazing. but what I really liked was that it was a fixed price menu, but priced by the number of courses you got. but you could order two appetizers or two main courses or three desserts or two entrees and one dessert or one appetizer and one dessert and so on and so forth. they would appropriately size your appetizer course as such...so I ended up ordering two entrees, but they made my appetizer "entree" small. I loved that. I ordered scallops as my appetizer, which were good, but not nearly as good as the mushroom risotto that I hijacked from my aunt. it was salty and creamy and delicious. so very delicious. but my main course was out of this world. chicken "kiev" - in quotes because instead of butter pouring out when you cut into it, molten foie gras came oozing out. pure heaven. I can't say I've ever had a better chicken dish. of course, the best part of the evening came when I ordered my dessert course and they brought me a 2nd dessert (for my birthday). and no, I didn't share, despite having two ENTIRE dessert courses in front of me (and they didn't make one of them smaller to be an "appetizer" dessert course). however, I didn't manage to finish both. I actually ended up liking the "bonus birthday" dessert better than the one I ordered. the bonus one was brioche thing, kind of like a mini loaf of brioche (very mini) battered and cooked, like french toast. I don't know exactly, but it was delicious. the dessert I actually ordered was a peanut butter souffle with banana ice cream. it needed chocolate...it was far to peanut buttery.

but really...the highlight of the food weekend came on Sunday. my parents were staying with us Sunday night, and everyone else had left in the early afternoon for their flights. I announced to Jeff and my parents that we would be ordering Indian for dinner. I then turned to my dad and told him he would be having leftover pizza or PL steak. he was cool with that...I was cool with that, but Jeff insisted that we order my dad some chicken tikka masala. everyone knows my dad is not the adventurous eater that I am (huge understatement). I mean, I guess I always thought he'd like it, but we could never get him to try it.

alas, the food arrived and Jeff prepared my dad's plate for him. some rice mixed in with his tikka masala, a somosa on the side and a huge hunk of nan. apparently, he'll try food that Jeff "prepares" for him. we all dug in to our dinners and kind of forgot about dad, until suddenly I realized that he was not complaining...and his food was half eaten. and right about then he announced "not bad...not bad at all. It's like tomato soup, but with chicken and rice." ha! I mean, the chicken tikka masala that we get from our takeout place is not spicy at all, so that helps a lot. Plus, I put a huge dollop of plain yogurt on his, which he loves, so that also helped. incredible. but now we know, we have to have Jeff convince dad to try things and make it all "dad-like" for him and familiar. the possibilities are now endless! it's totally going to be ethiopian the next time he comes.

so, who knew? I really CAN be surprised...PL really IS amazing (it's the aging!), no matter how many times you see you're name spelled wrong, there's always a new version, 2 desserts are better than one (and you don't need fancy pants when it's "jacket required") AND dad likes Indian food! what a birthday weekend!

PS - if my name was spelled wrong on my cake, does that mean it wasn't actually my birthday and I'm not really a year older? I think the answer to that question is most definitely, yes. :)