Yesterday was my birthday. I’m not telling how old I am but I like to say I’m in my dotage. I love that expression and it works pretty well as an excuse for just about everything.
My husband gave me these beautiful red roses, two dozen of them. The flower shop ladies always try to get him to buy other colors but he thinks roses should not be fluorescent green, bright purple or gaudy orange. Red, roses must be red. He always cuts the stems under water and then arranges them for me too. Sometimes I think he might be Martha Stewart’s twin brother, separated at birth.
We usually go out to dinner on special days but we’re postponing that this year. After being sick two weeks ago and my husband being sick last week, I now have a rotten cold. I’d probably get kicked out of the restaurant for being a coughing nuisance.
My mother and John are both recovering from a terrible stomach virus so I didn’t see them yesterday either. We don’t need to be passing our germs back and forth. I know a devil’s food cake with caramel icing is on the horizon though.
Caramel icing might be a specialty of this area. It isn’t traditional creamy caramel icing, the consistency of fudge. This icing sets up and gets hard so that you can whack it with the back of a spoon and it will shatter into pieces. My grandmother and some of the other older ladies from our church always made this for bake sales and church suppers. I don’t see it around much now and I’ve never made it myself.
When I was a kid, I got to pick the menu for my birthday dinner. It was always the same: stuffed pork chops, mashed potatoes, baked corn and a salad with hard-boiled eggs. And the cake, can’t forget the cake.
Did you have a special birthday meal? Please leave me a comment telling me about it!
