6 course birthday dinner-homemade almost=restau.

Well, he amazed me with a 6-course birthday dinner that he prepared. My parnter is someone who cooks regularily, anyway. So that wasn't the surprise. Weeks ago he asked me to pick out some recipes I liked. So I ploughed through my Bon Appetite, Cooking Light, etc. magazines.

I had serious doubts..simply because he became quite sick for 8 days with flu.

But the surprise was:
*appetizer of basil, pine nut pesto on slices of baguette rounds.
*rice paper rolls with veggies inside, with a tomato vinegarette dip
*lettuce and arugula salad with light oil, sesame seed and coriander seed dressing
*pasta packets with baby shrimp and escargots in a butter sauce. (Wow. He had the escargots. It was a good fit)
*seafood Spanish paella with saffron jumbo shrimp, mussels, buffalo sausage (his creative touch), peas, etc. Amazingly the recipe also called for proscuitto in this melange. He threw in some white wine in at end. Very delish!
*bought raspberry mousse cake with passionfruit gelee filling.
*pear wine (which both of us bought at a vineyeard last summer. It was ok.)

I went to bed...with my stomach huring.

Oh yea, he did want to serve a fresh cactus pear and blood orange slices in between.

Believe me we enjoyed more paelle, cake and this fruit the next day. These were my suppers at home for 2 days.

My gosh...what a keeper. Will you send him here for my birthday? I love escargot

All the men I find either want to go out or have ME cook them dinner. The ones who want to go out are cheap creeps too, Dennys anyone?

Happy Belated orchid!

What an impressive menu. And an impressive mate too.

chick

thx chickadee. I remembered more of the dinner, than the passing of years. Must have been 4,000 calories that evening. Seriously.

id rember that dinner too sounds great and like you reallly enjoyed it. happy birthday and manny more good special dinners to boot....oh and of course the days in between...

do you cook special dinners too?

celtic_flame

Happy Belated Birthday Orchid.
Sounds to me like you had a great one!

Happy Birthday. Lucky you, a guy that is a good cook. And it sounds like he enjoys it too. Glad he got over his flu in time for the festivities.

Gosh, can I borrow him for my birthday? What a great guy you have!

What a finger-licking good menu! If I had eaten all that, I'd probably be dead...but what a way to gooo!
Happy belated birthday orchid. Sounds like you have a super sweet hubby.

orchid, how cool is that? You must have felt so loved. I love a man who can cook and delights in it.

Yes, well he does like to experiment with food when he feels like it. If a guy starts talking about in great, accurate detail HOW his mother prepared certain dishes and that he does certain dishes himself, you know he wasn't just a mama's boy, but a boy who watched and helped his mother when he was growing up.

His mother is from a family of pastry chef and inn-vineyard owner in Germany since 1700's. So my partner has a right to be a food /pastry snob. She is a wealth of old German fine pastry chef recipes...in her head. We cannot find English language cookbooks that cover this knowledge. It is a version of cooking that blends a bit of French cooking since his family is from near the French border.

And my partner is proud that his son an aspiring chef in a restaurant, who will carry on this family interest into the future. It is pleasure to watch a 90+ grandmother teaching her 25 yr. grandson how to make dumpfnudel, a german steamed white bun.....actually similiar to Chinese steamed buns.

Orchid...Might you gently suggest that your mother-in-law let you (or someone) write down the recipes that are in her head? I am so happy that I did just that with some of my mother's recipes...and still, there were others that she took with her when she passed. We always feel that they'll be "here forever".

What a MAN!

What an elegant dinner! Happy belated birthday, Orchid. P.S. -- if you want any cactus pears in July-August, I get 100s of them. Not sure where they're in season now.

Happy Birthday, Orchid!

He must be so proud of his son. That is so meat.

My oldest son loves to cook. I love talking food with him. I'm a family cook. He's a gourmet.