It's my birthday! I'm all Older! It's my birthday!

It's my birthday! And I am having a ball so far.

I started prep for the festivities on the weekend, picking up all of the extra cooking supplies I needed (like a cooking scale, and almond flour) for the orgy of tastee that is to make up my happiest of birthdays (and bleed over to co-workers over the next few days, as I'm cooking a LOT of food!). I also splurged on some books - one of my favorite series had two, not one but TWO books out, and I spent last night reading the first far too late into the evening (and it was hard to put down the second today). Yesterday, I made jello stained glass pudding so it would have overnight to harden - I mostly screwed it up, but it makes for a pretty picture! I'm going to have to do it again from scratch, though. The differences in solidity between the "panes" and the "mortar" is just too great for it to be anything but funny to look at. Luckily, jello isn't that expensive, because I want to do this again soon! It was pretty easy (I just need a bunch of 8x8 pans).

I was telling Tomoyuki about my gastronomical plans (later in the day - calzones. Also, macarons. Yes, life is awesome. Crap, I forgot cooling racks.) and he shared a recipe for English pancakes with me, and they just made up my very, very tasty breakfast. I used sugar and lemon to dress them and YUM! I can also see some future with adding flavorings to them; like making a chocolate pancake and serving it with sliced fruit. I will say the base recipe is too much for just a single person; I have several pancakes which will be going into a storage container for a snack tomorrow or the next day. Yum! They're very filling, and made of just flour, eggs, butter and milk with a little salt - very simple and easy.

The calzone was another triumph - but it was HUGE! I want to play more with the recipes and thinning things out, making smaller pies that could be a single meal instead of three in one. I'm also reminded of these wrapped snacks we got at a mall in New Jersey years ago - I think I might be able to duplicate them. The bread coating of that and what I had tonight seemed very similar - very crispy. I'm going to have to experiment, once I finally eat all this calzone!!

Finally, the macarons - a French cookie I became aware of via Japan; funny how our interlocked world works these days. I made a set with my family during the winter that came out very thin; these seem to be a little thick - instead of flattening out to a flat sandwich cookie, they have little caps - and I needed to refrigerate the ganache to get it thickened.

I know this has very little to do with Second Life (except I found out about macarons through second life) but it's the tail end of my birthday (the day doesn't end until I sleep, damnit) and I'm doing what I want! This was a delicious day, even if I mostly fail at cooking!