Valentine/Birthday

I mentioned to a few of you that I had some plans with Steve for his birthday and Valentine's Day. You all asked me how they went, so here's the story:

On Valentine's Day, Steve and I both worked. Well, he worked. I worked and shopped for the perfect gift for him, which I had in my mind but couldn't find anywhere. I spent 3 hours Friday searching for it, and finally on Saturday I was directed to an Asian market that might have it, "because Asians have that kind of thing." Wow, did the lady on the phone really just say that? Yes, she did, but she was right. The Asians DID have it.

Sunday morning I went to the early service late, because I thought my church's early service started at 9:30 when actually they start at 9. Now I know. I think I did know that already I just got mixed up.

Anyway then I went down to New Brunswick for an Asian-themed birthday party, complete with Philippino pork rolls, miso soup, and home-made sushi rolls. Sushi rice takes FOREVER to make. First, it can't be any old rice. You have to get sushi rice. Then, you have to wash it 300 times. Then you let it dry for a half hour, then you let it soak for a half hour. Then you cook it like normal rice (40 minutes or so) and then you put sushi vinegar (not just any old vinegar) on it and stir it in front of a fan so it will cool rapidly. Then it is done, and stickier than peanut brittle in Florida.

Of course, we cannot forget the balut. Sheelah brought another Asian delicacy known as balut. It is basically, a fertilized, hard boiled duck egg.

There is a "right" way to crack the egg open.


Sheelah had to do it for him.


Once open, there is a broth inside that you sip. It tastes like omelette and chicken broth. I know because we passed it around and tried some. The adventurous ones anyway.


The interesting/scary thing about balut is that you don't know how developed the duck fetus will be. Some people get little ones, and some people open it up and discover fully developed feathers. We were lucky and didn't get feathers.


After Steve and Stu ate the fetus (birthday boy and birthday boy's brother) of which I have omitted pictures - thank me later- we passed around the yolk which was basically like a meaty version of a standard hard boiled egg yolk. Anissa was thoroughly disgusted.


James is not impressed either.


On to happier things, like the birthday cake. I made a green tea cake. I found the recipe on a website I love and thought, "How unique, I'll try that." So I made green tea cake with green tea frosting, and everyone seemed to like it.


I liked decorating it until I got out the green gel frosting. I was squeezing the tube with all my might, shaking a blob of green out, and then grabbing a toothpick to shape it into the script lettering I wanted. It was a pain.


At "Happy" I decided its just going to be a Happy cake and nothing else. But there was all this empty space so I hunkered down and finished it.


Oh well. Its one less letter I had to do. Happy Birthay Steve.


He didn't seem to mind. Plum wine and sake make every birthay greeting enjoyable.


After the guests left, I sent Steve and James to bed (Andrew had already retired for the night) and I stayed up and did dishes and cleaned the tables. Why? So I could set out some Valentine/birthday gifts for my salamander. Yes, that little lucky bamboo sculpted heart is the item I was looking for and found at the Asian market.


Sunday night was the birthday party, Monday night was the Valentine's date. We got dressed up and headed to a nice restaurant I knew of about a half hour from New Brunswick. We arrived in the parking lot and immediately wondered why there were no cars. As it turns out, they are closed Mondays. So quickly, it was Tom-tom to the rescue, where one can search nearby points of interest by category. Conveniently, local restaurants in the GPS have phone numbers listed. So we quickly called them all to determine which was take-out and which was a sit-in. We found a nice place called the Cranbury Inn and headed there. It was only 3 miles away.

We walked in and found a fancy, dress-uppy kind of place, that wasn't stuffy in its fanciness, but had a sort of quaint feeling to it. As it turns out, the place was established in 1780, and has been in operation ever since. Click here if you are interested in browsing the website. Although we didn't take any pictures, the food was arranged beautifully on the plates and tasted as great as it looked.

Afterwards, due to a slightly sticky part of the meal, we both went to the bathroom to wash the honey off our hands (since our pre-teen waiter kinda didn't notice anything was amiss). When I came out of the bathroom, Steve was there talking to the owner, who was so proud of the place I thought he was going to burst at the seams (that and the hearty food of the inn- there was more than pride filling his waistline). He gave us a grand tour of their new addition- a banquet hall, where they host over 50 weddings a year. You can view it here, if you didn't already stumble on it.

At the end of the night, our bellies were full and our hearts were happy for having discovered an ancient gem of a restaurant- one that may have hosted countless forefathers during its long lifetime.

It was a good Sunday and Monday.