My 29th birthday started off awesome.
The day before, Eddie went to the grocery store and bought a ton of stuff. He told me that I had some surprises for my birthday, and asked me if I wanted to know what any of them were. I told him I didn’t. My surprises were something new and interesting for breakfast and 4 different snacks throughout the day.
I asked for a hint on the breakfast thing, and he said that it was something popular in New York, or at least it was when he was there when he was little. I thought about it for a minute and came up with bagels and lox. He said, “Hmm. That’s a good guess.” LEADING me to believe I was wrong.
I wake up on my birthday at, like, 7am and am so excited I can’t go back to sleep. So, before we get out of bed he asks me if I want to know what breakfast is, and I said yeah, since it was about to happen. He goes, “I gave too good of a hint. It’s bagels and lox.”
YES!
I was so excited that I got it right. lol
So, my loving, lovely boyfriend made me a bagel, made a cream cheese spread with capers and other things (can’t remember what herbs he used), and put salmon on the bagel because all of the lox at the grocery store was expired.
Oh, have I mentioned HE HATES SALMON? He really loves me.
After eating, I jumped in the shower (after getting a happy birthday call from my mom [dad was at work and really busy...they both called again later] and seeing a lot of well wishes on Facebook and MySpace, thanks everyone). I thought we were running errands (we have to get weed killer for the rock garden that is our yard)…but we went to Borders instead.
We can’t afford the magazine subscriptions to beading magazines I wanted for my birthday (would be like $60+), so Eddie thought that we could go to a bookstore, sit and have a coffee, and let me look at the mags and beading/chainmaille books. If there was something I wanted, I could spend like $20.
So I got ALL the beading mags I could find, Eddie grabbed up a bunch of sports and video gaming mags and we sat at a table in the coffee area and drank iced mochas. It was a BLAST. They didn’t have any good books, so I got the new issue of Bead & Button.
After leaving Borders, we ran into the Bed Bath & Beyond next door to look around for a bit. After that, we started talking about what I wanted for dinner. I decided seafood, but I wasn’t for sure what KIND I wanted.
Eddie mentioned maybe having a bunch of steamed mussels; maybe having a mini “shrimp boil”, like some shrimp, anduille sausage, corn, etc; or maybe going to Red Lobster.
Red Lobster would be too much money (easily $70+ for the two of us), so I decided we’d just go to the grocery store and look around.
They had HUGE crab legs on sale, lobster tails on sale, and shrimp. So we got $40 worth of seafood (too much money, but for the amount of stuff we got…).
Came home, and had my birthday snack.
It was an assortment of yummy stuff from the olive bar at the grocery store. Different olives, stuffed peppers, peppadews, mozzarella balls w/cherry tomatoes. Also had some cheese that Eddie got for Christmas and some pepper and olive oil Triscuits.
After the snack, Eddie started working on my cake. He made a German chocolate cake from scratch with ONLY A WHISK. No hand mixer. (last roommates broke it)
He made the cake from scratch, as well as the frosting. This cake was KILLER.
While he worked on the cake, we watched the Reds game. The bastards. I guess they didn’t know it was my birthday and LOST 15-3. Ugh. ONLY bad spot in my otherwise totally wonderful kick ass birthday.
After resting for a bit, we started getting hungry so Eddie started working on the food. He steamed the lobster tails on the stove in a pot, sauteed up the shrimp and steamed the crab legs in the microwave. (easy-peasy way to do it, we saw it on Good Eats.) While doing this, he made ghee (clarified butter) to dip the goodies in.
I laid out newspapers to eat off of, Eddie placed everything and we dug in. Well, after taking a photo, of course.
IT. WAS. SO. GOOD.
Eddie used a hammer to smash the crab legs into submission. Those things had more meat on them than any crab leg I’ve ever seen. It was so incredibly sweet and tender and SO FREAKIN GOOD.
Took another photo of the aftermath lol:
We were both so insanely full after this that it took a bit to have room for cake.
We were watching Poker After Dark and decided it was time for cake. He was behind the couch for awhile, then came around the corner singing Happy Birthday (his own version…instead of saying my name he said “you old bat” lol)…I didn’t know he got candles. :love:
It began awesome, and it ended awesome. Totally great 29th birthday.
Thank you, Eddie. You made it what it was.
