Birthday Dinner

The Mysterious Mister “M” and I are lucky that our mothers were born on the same day (a couple years a part; one is 39 years old and the other is 41-we will leave it that). I always like to have something special for them. This year, feeling in the mood for a smaller, peaceful gathering, I made dinner, and we celebrated a quiet evening. I cooked a rib roast with a delicious crunchy garlicky-peppery-salty crust and a porcini, bacon au jus for the main course. We had asparagus in puff pastry with a lemon-wine-butter sauce for a first course. Lastly, I attempted a Martha Stewart recipe for the birthday cake. It was a hummingbird cake with dried pineapple flowers on top. It did not look like the picture when I finished it. It looks okay here, but that is because I am not posting the real picture (sorry Martha, I wanted to save you the embarrassment!). Tasted okay though…
I made one mother a book of her gardens from BLURB (see last post for link). She loved it. I made the other mother a collage of sorts of pictures our kids (yes her grand-kids)-I used some scrapbook pages that I sized very small and printed out a Walgreens. That worked out well. I also gave some gift cards; she likes to shop. I wrapped the book in scrapbook paper and fashioned a flower on the top with matching paper. I used the other gift as a center piece to make the table look pretty. Here are some pictures of the gifts and the table.

I love to really dress it up and make it special. Sometimes that is much more work than having all the family over. I was exhausted at the end of the night, but they seemed as if they enjoyed it. I always make enough for leftovers, that is another benefit of doing the cooking.

Tonight, the weather forecast calls for 4-6 inches of snow!!!!! We shall see about that.

Until next week, have a blessed Holy Week. Mary