A Week in Food - Birthday Edition

Celebration food, then back to the ordinary everyday.

There was too much going on at work.  Planned quick getaway did not happen, would have caused more stress than it was worth.  But birthday days are sacrosanct.  That vacation day got used as planned.  And the day falls within the vegetarianism exception.

Oysters always make the list of "special occasion exceptions" to the predominantly veggie diet.  This day, avacado toast with crab made the list too.

Jeffrey's Grocery in the Village.

No cake.  Instead, celebratory Key lime pie.

Birthday dinner with the fam was at Vegetarian Dim Sum Restaurant in Chinatown.  Yup - they all ate veggie and they LIKED it, well, most of it; there were a few misses.  All good - Bro likes to impose steakhouse dinners for his birthday, so there's payback to come.

Returning to work, the office "restaurant" offered a pre-Passover classic.  Photo snapped to send to a friend, who had coincidentally recently posted about missing it in her adopted North Carolina home.  Also coincidentally, Sissy went down to help said friend with a photo shoot, so boxes of matzo ball mix were couriered down.  Along with gifts of babka and Brooklyn coffee. 

Yiddish granny classic comfort food.

The Sunday intended for housecleaning and guest prep went instead to accompanying Sissy to one of her beloved a capella concerts at Carnegie Hall.  A meal and shared dessert followed.

Moldings at Carnegie Hall.

Molten chocolate cake, chocolate gelato, salted caramel gelato over chocolate mousse at Rue 57.

And then back to the grind, to producing post-work dinners.  Cooking is an effort when one is away from home for 12 hours a day.  Oftentimes a multistage effort of morning prep, or partial prep, and evening cookery.  At least there are inspirational sources... ("Girl Meets Farm" on the Food Network with Molly Yeh).

Beige (and not close to Instagram worthy), but mighty tasty.  Inspired by Instagrammer, blogger, cook Molly Yeh's green beans with a sesame soy tahini sauce.  This was the cauliflower that sat for weeks and had started to go, in a sauce of leftover takeout food soy dipping sauce, with tahini, one clove of shriveled garlic, sweetened not with honey, but years old gifted pepper jam living in the fridge.  The sriracha nozzle was clogged, the sesame oil seemed much when there was so much oil sitting at the top of the tahini jar, so those did not make the cut.  But red pepper flakes were a must.  All over a bed of brown rice and quinoa.  A tablespoon of tahini only serves up 5% of daily protein, so, at most, this was worth 10%, quinoa adds a bit more ... but apparently protein backups to tahini are on the research list of the never ending To Do list.