60 Candles

Birthday queen!!

Before we got to celebrating Karen, I spent the afternoon doing a little nesting. I washed all the laundry in the house, cleaned the baseboard under my desk (which my dirty shoes scuff all the time), straightened up, reading some Ina May Gaskin and made some date balls!

Emily calls these Coconut Date Energy Bites but date balls is just easier to say I made her recipe except I swapped toasted sunflower seeds for pumpkin seeds. The recipe is AWESOME and they were so easy. Loved the addition of oats and sunflower seeds. Sadly I ran out of coconut so mine don’t have the pretty sprinkled donut hole look. I ate two for a snack, put 5 in the fridge and frozen the rest!

Cocktail hour:

Followed by a delicious dinner!

We had turbot filets that I picked up at Whole Foods in some blackening spice. This fish was delightful! Just covered in seasoning and then seared in a pan of hot safflower oil until crispy on both sides.

Caprese salad on the side

Can’t get more delicious than garden tomatoes and basil! With slices of fresh mozzarella and drizzles of aged balsamic, olive oil and sea salt.

And finally, we roasted up these quirky tiny potatoes I found at WF. 400* for 40 minutes after tossing in roasted minced garlic, salt, olive oil and pepper.

For something different, we made a yogurt-dill-lemon sauce to go with them. This was just about 2/3 a cup of plain yogurt with about 1 heaping tsp dried dill, 1 scant tsp lemon, 2 pinches salt, black pepper and red pepper flakes.

And of course, the birthday desserts. We enjoyed two amazing items from Paradox.

A Buttermilk Tart – loved the crunchy raw sugar on top!

And a classic NY Cheesecake – incredibly thick and rich!

Happy Birthday To You!