birthday dinner
September 4, 2011 at 7:38 pmFood, birthday
Growing up, birthday dinners* were always a big deal in our house. You could order whatever you wanted to have and mom would make it. So, for 2 siblings plus myself, all with summer birthdays at home for approximately 18 years.. if you do the math, that’s about 54 unique birthday dinners we could have had. Yet, we all always chose the same thing — steamed, spiced shrimp and a side of cantaloupe! And sometimes corn-on-the-cob. It was a pretty big faux pas the year (I think?) I tried to order roast beef for my birthday dinner. The family was secretly pissed off at me for the shrimp-deprival that July. There was another time that Jill tried to switch things up and do a bushel of crabs, and I don’t think that went over well either. Even though we’re all old now and moved out of the house, we still carry the shrimp tradition on whenever possible.
SO ANYWAYS! When Matt turned 28 this past week, I offered to make him a birthday dinner of whatever he wanted. He had class that day until 9pm, so we figured it would be better to stay in and have a special meal. He had a pretty simple request — grilled cheese and rice pudding. That would definitely have gotten the major thumbs down in our household as kids, but I was pretty glad to make him those things because the birthday person gets to choose!! And also, it didn’t hurt that they are some of my favorites too. 
For the grilled cheese, I went with a combination of Sourdough bread, fontina and mozzarella cheese, prosciutto, and bartlett pear. Yeah, it was as good as it sounds like it would be. Yummy melty goodness. For dessert, the rice pudding turned out pretty good too, for something I had never made before. Instead of putting raisins in it, we sprinkled a little cinnamon on top and voila! Much easier than making a cake!
*Somewhere recently this started turning into somewhat of a foodie blog. I’m not sure how it happened. I hope you don’t mind.
2 Responses
Leave a Comment
September 5th, 2011 at 7:56 pm
Don’t mind at all! Wish my rice pudding would turn out as well. What’s your secret?
September 6th, 2011 at 1:28 pm
I’m not sure I have a secret! Beginner’s luck maybe
Here’s the recipe I used: Creamy Rice Pudding . I used 2% milk, though I’m sure it would have been even better with whole milk.