Happy Birthday, Julianna!

Birthdays come only once a year - so why limit the celebration? Julianna and I enjoy stretching out birthday activities over a week or more. They typically include: a date out to a fun breakfast place; a homemade meal, using all new recipes, by the non-birthday person, including dessert; yet another special dessert the following week; and anything else we can think of!

So this year we enjoyed breakfast at The Runcible Spoon, a famed Bloomington establishment, on Saturday morning, a few days after Jul's real bday. It was 17 degrees that morning, the coldest it has been all winter - and bbrrr, simply walking from the car to the cafe was enough winter for us, thank you very much. Breakfast was yummy, and it was fun to be out on a date (with G. too, of course)!




In accordance with our birthday ritual, for Julianna's birthday I made her a birthday meal, using all new recipes. This is a tradition that was begun early in our marriage (over 10 yrs ago now, wow!) and which has produced many great memories and palate-pleasing culinary delights.

My meal for Julianna was fairly basic (due to limited prep time on a weekday evening), so was limited to the following: bobotie-flavored lentil burgers (bobotie is a traditional South African dish), roasted veg (potato, sweet potato, carrots, parsnips) with honey and walnuts, and, for dessert, individual chocolate souffles. Yum! I think Jul thought so, too!

Happy birthday, JHG!