Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Another year, another birthday

Hola peeps!

Today is my birthday and it was a nice one. Nothing spectacular or mind blowing but I felt covered in love and appreciation and those are two things that no one should be short on. Plus it was a vast improvement over last year. Those were not good times!

So the hubby bought me a beautiful foodie gift basket. See below!


In there I found camembert cheese - an acquired taste for me I have to say! Table water biscuits seasoned with black pepper to go with the cheese. A bar of Lindt white coconut chocolate, St. Dalfour's peach preserves, a box of mixed teas, roasted seaweed, bamboo rolling mat and paddle, sushi rice and white miso soup and to top it off pirouline chocolate hazelnut cookies. If you can't tell by now, I am a closet foodie. I love food mainly because I get so bored of the traditional fare we tend to cook here. Once I do my research I'll try my hand at the sushi. But since it takes years and years and more years to become a sushi master, I'll settle for just being able to make something that vaguely resembles what I get in the restaurants and hopefully taste just as good... or relatively close. LOL!

Last post I mentioned that I was going to make a white chocolate cheesecake for my birthday but it didn't happen. Went to the store and behold, no white chocolate. So I resolved to make this cake instead. Another no-bake cake. Here's evidence of my attempt:

As you can see, it's not quite like Martha's LOL! It did set up quite nicely as promised but after the minimum 6 hour leave alone requirement, it tasted like someone spilled chocolate in their ricotta. The tastes did not as they say on the cooking channel marry each other. However, a day and a spoon later revealed that this cake is really quite good! I used pulverized oreos instead of the wafers and that added even more fat, er, taste. The oreo crumbs didn't stand up to the top layer of the ricotta/chocolate mixture and kind of spread outwards to the sides. It's not a cake that can sit on the counter for a long time for obvious reasons and so it is not remembered that often by the rest of the family. But I guarantee you that once I pull out a saucer and put a slice on it, everyone wants piece. I don't think I'll make it again though. The ingredients are quite expensive (eg USD$14 for a litre of ultra pasteurized cream that I'm not using everyday...) and a pill to find.


Okay, so that's the cooking/ food section of the blog for the day. On to knitting. No pics (as it kind of looks almost the same as you last saw it) but Miralda is coming along beautifully as last indicated. I am now to the diamonds. Somewhere along the way, I neglected to decrease three stitches so now I have 284 instead of the required 281. I am going to fudge it and take off the extra stitches at the ends and hope that doesn't mess my knitting life up too badly.

So that's it for me today. Another year God has blessed me with good life and the ability to enjoy my family and that's the best birthday gift I can think of!

3 comments:

Sandra said...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LISA.
Hope that you had a good one

essjay said...

I hope you had a wonderful birthday! That gift basket has some wonderful stuff in it! I need to start thinking about a cake for my birthday - I want something chocolaty like what you made....I love searching for & trying new recipes.

Lora said...

I had this post bookmarked to come back to wish you happy birthday when I wasn't reading from my phone, and it has been such a crazy past two weeks that I haven't gotten to my Reader and when I saw your comment on my blog I was all "oh, crap!" I didn't forget, I promise.

Belated birthday love to you!