Birthday Love

The Missus made me a special birthday dinner. We started the meal with salad of crab and avocado-



Fresh dungeness crab, avocado, sour cream, tomatoes and spices.



This is a Culinary Institute of America recipe and she followed it almost to the letter. The only thing she didn't include were the jalapeño peppers. The dish could've used them, but it is a flawed dish in design, because all of the tomatoes and peppers are on the bottom. Everything would be better off placed in alternating layers. Giving it a chance for smoother blending of the flavors (if you mix it too much, it tends to make things mushy).



Mind you, I'm not criticizing her cooking, but the recipe itself. The crab and avocado were wonderfully fresh and flavorful. It's hard though when someone puts that kind of effort into a first-time dish and the creators of said dish, let that cook down.

Then came the ginger-marinated pork.



Outf*ckin' standing! If you're going to try this recipe at home, I'd cut the soy sauce down and split the 1/4 cup of it in half with water, as it was a tad salty.

Quin's "The Adventures of Margaret and Neville" are sight to read, I mean, see. Comedies involving manners are harder than you think to write, there has to be a certain level of nuance or you go right over the top and it loses direction to become something altogether wrong. Quin knows that and for her, the little tightrope of nuance may as well be an eight-lane freeway, as crosses that chasm with ease like a writing Wallenda.

Quin relented to my badgering for my birthday and wrote a chapter where Margaret's life took an unexpected turn, check it out.

Tanya sent me a wonderful E-Card, that was worth the download wait for dial-up.

So, a big thanks to everyone who made my birthday special!

P.S. The highlight of the morning was a phone call with the every-busy Katie, as we bagged on Coco and caught up with the dishing.