Love for Food

Mike's 30th Birthday

Last night, I prepared Mom's Christmas Eggs for the first time ever. I was planning on making them for Christmas morning, but, alas, ended up forgetting one of the main ingredients: cheddar cheese. So, I saved it for the next "holiday" of Mike's birthday a week later. After a few hours of sleep after the most fantastic midnight fireworks show we'd ever seen, I got up and stuck it in the oven after chilling all night in the fridge. I knew Mike wouldn't be able to sleep in very well and would wake up starving and it ended up being perfect timing. I even got another hour of sleep before we ate! The sausage I found wasn't really "breakfast sausage," but life is about substitutes here in Peru. Mike loved the sausage but it wasn't my favorite. Cheddar cheese also tastes differently here and is much more expensive than in the States so whenever you use it, you need to be careful and not spoil the dish! Overall, it tasted yummy and we had more homemade frozen crescent rolls with it, along with a banana and some apple juice. :) For lunch, I had 2 firsts. One, I prepared rice for the first time in my life. And then I felt silly, because it's ridiculously easy! I then made fried rice, my other rice. I included leftover chopped ham from Christmas (which I had frozen so it didn't go bad), chopped green onion, scrambled eggs, and of course soy sauce! It was simple, extremely easy, and very yummy! By the way, our main meal of the day has turned Peruvian: Lunch. We eat a big lunch and tiny, almost non-existent dinner. We don't go to bed stuffed and really feel a lot healthier. It's going to be tough if we ever move back to the States when all our friends want to go out to dinner while we prefer lunch, but we'll survive. :) I made a homemade yellow cake for his birthday cake. I've been a little "goodied" out these last few weeks that I actually gave in for the first time and bought the canned chocolate frosting from the U.S. But only because... ..I had this amazing idea... ... of splitting the cake with a curly colored frosting line - 1 half for "Happy Birthday!" and the other for "Go Ducks! Rose Bowl!!" or something like that... .Well, I started with green to write Go Ducks when I realized my frosting was way too liquid-y... .I still tried to write the word "Ducks" but it spread. So I added some dots and decorations around the rest of the cake and gave up. Not a great first picture to post, but it also means I can only go up! :) It was still really yummy with ice cream!