Lindsay turned 24 yesterday, and we had a great time celebrating! I wanted to do something besides the standard listing of all the reasons she is great (which she actually took care of herself), so I thought I would list of all the great things we did to celebrate!
Lindsay won a Happy Hour at a dueling piano bar in Baltimore complete with free food, first two drinks being a dollar, and half price drinks after. Needless to say, we had a great time and started the party a week early with a group of good friends!
I skipped out on work (hey, I have 2 weeks left there.. I have leave to use!) and took Lindsay to lunch at one of her favorite places, Nando's Peri Peri. If you have never been there before, which is probably the case because they aren't very common, their menu basically consists of grilled chicken in a million (actual count) different ways with your choice of their home made sauces. Yum.
So I made Lindsay open her gifts because I got her some awesome new books! She is an avid reader and if you have read her blog you know she is a little bit of a self help groupie. I saw "The Heroine's Bookshelf: Life Lessons from Jane Austin to Laura Ingalls Wilder" on another blog and I knew that I would have to get it for her. When I looked it up another book "A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen" was recommended too so I bought the whole batch!
Toro, oh Toro. It holds such a special place in our hearts. Everytime we go there we always have a very interesting and fun time. Last night was no exception. They have huge margaritas there (bigger than your face!) and fast yummy mexican food, and it is actually located next door to my new office. Scary? Yes...
Anyways, as we were finishing up our meal, all of the lights in the restaurant went out. Silence. Not a word. Suddenly 6 shadows appeared next to our table. A light was lit, and we heard "Happy Birthday to You!!!!!!!!" being sung in the dark. While this is happening, one of the waiters decided to take a spoonful of whipped cream off the fried ice cream they had brought and smear it on Lindsay's face. Epic.
And now, the most amazing part of the night (if I do say so myself) was the cake that I made for Lindsay. Most of you probably don't know, but before Lindsay and I moved in together, I spent the day with her and her best friend Lauren. We went to a Navy Football game during the day, and then headed down to Joss for sushi. Being the garbage disposals that we are, we ordered enough sushi between the three of us to require an entire boat to be used to bring us our food. Embarrassed? Never. Proud? Always. So in honor of that day, I made Lindsay a sushi boat birthday cake. Yup that's right. Sushi.... Birthday... Cake...
The sushi was made of rice crispy treats made thin and rolled up with twizzlers and swedish fish inside. Green fruit rollups acted as the seaweed, orange sprinkles as he roe, and chocolate syrup as the soy sauce. The pictures are shown below. I used a chocolate devil's food cake with chocolate icing as the boat, which I had to shave flat and carve a bit. All in all it really was not that difficult, just time intensive. It was actually pretty fun to make!