Birthday Weekend!

I celebrated my birthday this past weekend. It was a nice weekend of festivities. Matt always tries so hard to make every birthday the perfect one. We both put so much pressure on ourselves when it comes to the other's birthday, that it can be quite stressful. As we discussed this last weekend, we decided to perhaps take it down a notch for future birthdays or just be happy with a nice dinner together. Not that we aren't happy with a wonderful evening spent together, we just tend to try to always top the past birthday. Last year Matt found a way to ship me vegan doughnuts from Pennsylvania. We also celebrated with local friends with a party in the park, and celebrated with some good friends who are an hour away at there home, as well as surprising me with a weekend visit from a good friend who lives far away. So all that is obviously pretty hard to top -- hence the stress.

Anyway this years birthday was wonderful as well. First off I made my own birthday dinner, and had some dear friends over to share it with us. I made Black Bean and Corn Empanadas with a spicy tomato sauce. Here is the recipe I used for the dough and the sauce. For the sauce I didn't have any sesame oil, so I just omitted that from the recipe and it worked out fine. This sauce was also really spicy, so if really spicy isn't your thing, use less hot sauce. I highly recommend using Sriracha brand hot sauce. I love the stuff! For the black bean and corn filling, I used this recipe. The recipe calls for bananas, but I just used frozen corn instead. I also added salt to the mix.

For dessert, I made Vanilla-Coconut Flan from Viva Vegan! by Terry Hope Romero. This is some amazing flan! I actually don't think I have had traditional flan before, but this was amazing and has me daydreaming of creamy sugary goodness. First I made a carmel sauce and then coated the dishes I used with the carmel.

The flan was made of a mixture of canned coconut milk and almond milk thickened with Agar flakes. The recipe says that agar powder works out better as it will fully dissolve as opposed to the flakes which leave a few chewy spots in the flan. I did notice some of the chewy bits, but it was not to distracting. Lots of vanilla and coconut extract really made this flan. I am sorry I don't have any pictures of the flan out of it's molds. I had the flan setting in the fridge up until it was time to eat it, so we resorted to eating it from the dishes. If you get your hands on this cookbook, you must make this Flan.

Matt also threw me a little get together with friends at our home. I was very proud that matt made this apple crumble for me and gloated about him all night for it. I am the dessert maker in our house, so when Matt makes something sweet, it is really special. He also made me cherry pie ice cream for my birthday, which awards him a bunch of gold stars in my mind. This may not be the prettiest apple crumble, but it was very very tasty.

We also headed to Columbus for the weekend to celebrate some more. Friday we spent a nice day shopping and galavanting around the city. Well there wasn't as much galavanting as I would have liked as the weather was scorching hot. We did some shopping at my favorite store Anthropologie. I scored this gorgeous skirt on the sale racks.

I just adore the little details of this skirt. The buttons, the pleats, and the lovely underskirt.

We also went to this adorable sewing shop Sew to Speak, where I picked up these three fabrics. I am in love with that chair print. I'm not sure what I'm going to make yet, but I am contemplating a purse out of either the purple or teal blue fabric. I would like to make a skirt out of the center piece. I am still a beginner at sewing, but hope to someday be good enough at it to be able to make clothing. I think a skirt is a good place to start. My friend Aubrey told me about this shop, and I hope to visit again the next time I am in Columbus.

We also ate some great Indian food and a raw blueberry cheesecake from Pattycake Bakery. Delicious!