Jen XXVIII

What comes after May long weekend? Anyone…? Anyone…?
Bzzzzzt
It's my birthday!
Thank you for playing.

Let's get into a few details, shall we?

Birthday day #1 was Thursday, my actual birthday. I worked at Musicfolder that day which was not all bad in and of itself. You see, at Service Canada, nobody really knows or cares when it's anyone's birthday. What a grumpy place. But at Musicfolder… Musicfolder is where the lovely people work. I came in that morning to a shiny birthday banner, fresh baked muffins and coffee cake, not to mention a big gift bag full of summer presents; a beach towel, flip flops and a little cooler bag. You see? These people really do know me.

After work, one fabulous Haley came home with me and we started on dinner. I felt like making Tandoori on the grill, but alas the place we went for meat had closed down so we walked a ways further to the other store, only to end up with crappy salty tandoori legs, which we grilled and sadly chewed on for dinner. Oh well, that's what I get for buying pre-marinated stuff. Who wants to make a marinade on their birthday, though? Actually don’t answer that.

Oh. So a certain Schatz came home at some point in the evening. From work… on my birthday…

...empty handed.

Ouch, huh? Maybe I should have just stayed at work!

In his defence, he tried two flower shops on his way home but they were already closed :( I was like, not even a pack of gum, eh? But of course I also said it was the thought that counted ;) Oh well, he ended up coming through for me two days later with a pretty hefty gift card for Helly Hansen, though. After three years in Vancouver - decent raincoat here I come!

Birthday day #2 was Friday. The morning and afternoon are a complete void in my memory. It was my day off and it was gross weather, I know that much. I most likely watched TV or worked on my Portland blog. What I do remember is the evening, though. Specifically 4pm onwards. This is when Haley picked me up and we headed downtown for manicure-pedicures! She had researched all kinds of little places in the area and settled on this one. Oh, and was it cute!

After the pampering, we braved the outdoors once again with our pretty nails in our flip-flops and motored on over (in the bus) to my favourite sushi restaurant. As previously arranged, we were met there by Chris and Margery and Harmony and (her new hunny) Rob, making a total of six shoe-removing, floor-sitting, sushi-scarfing revellers. This was actually the first time we'd had our three vegetarian friends together in the same place. It was funny how excited they got about ordering food together.

After dinner we of course had to get dessert, and as is our custom when we're in that neighbourhood, we hit up the organic grocery store and bakery across the street from the sushi place. We cruised through the doors just as they were closing up and managed to pick out our sweets but then had to eat them outside in the courtyard like bunch of (well-dressed and pedicured) bums. After dessert the majority of us loaded into Harmony's car as she was gracious enough to give everyone a ride home. Oh yeah, and no sooner did we get to the car, than Harmony pulled out a potted herb garden, just for me!

(All the herbs in the pot promptly died over the course of the next two days, unfortunately. I don’t think they appreciated the car ride as much as I did. Oh, but I managed to salvage the basil. It teetered on the edge of existence for about a week but I put all the green-ness of my thumbs into that poor basil and brought it back. Now it’s taking up the whole darn pot :)

Birthday final day was Saturday. Worked the day away, nothing to speak of there. After work, however, I had a little friend waiting for me in the lobby. All the way from Victoria! Yes, Jessica in her all-ambitious celebratory manner had arranged months ago to take me to a gourmet cooking class for my birthday and today was the class.

Through yet more cold and misty rain, we walked the couple of blocks from my office to the Dirty Apron Cooking School where we were greeted by cute waitress-types who adorned us with (not-yet-dirty) aprons and recipe folders of our very own. We were then ushered into what looked like the set of a fancy cooking show and took our places with about 20 other hoity-toities with time and money on their hands who thought it might be fun to learn to make real Italian food.

The way it worked was thus: we would sit and watch the chef prepare the first stage of our meal, and then we would go off to our own work surfaces in the back of the room with our recipe papers in hand and emulate to the best of our ability what we’d seen the chef do. We made dessert first and set it aside to cool – lemon pana cotta. Then came another lesson in which we made course one – homemade goat cheese and arugula ravioli with a sage walnut butter sauce. We made the pasta dough and everything. When it was done we took and garnished our own plates and carried them over to the rustic little dining room where we sat all together and dug in. It was ridiculously good. And don’t even get me started on the wine.


Wow, Jen how did you get such a professional picture of your dish?? Hrm.

Next lesson was the main course – rosemary marinated lamb sirloin with herbed ricotta gnocchi and mushroom cream sauce. We watched the chef, went back to our stations and gave it another go. This time under the influence of cheese ravioli and white wine, mind you. But so what if my lamb was a little less precisely grilled as I would have liked and my careful pool of cream sauce ran all over the bottom of my plate, it was AMAZING!

The main course came with a lovely glass of red, and by the end of that I didn’t even care what the dessert tasted like, or what kind of special flour and gadgets they were trying to sell me in the kitchen store. In the end, I didn’t feel one pinch of cold either, as Jessica and I strolled back out into the drizzly darkness with more than 4 hours of cooking, eating and drinking under our belts, and our dirty recipe folders tucked under our arms.

So thanks everyone for a great transition to the ripe old age of 28!

Oh, and sorry for the general lack of photographs in this post. There are certainly more to come, but on the other hand, no waiting for images to load! I'm thinking of you Auntie Bev :)