Saturday, January 28, 2012

Birthday festivities

Last night, we celebrated Emily's birthday. Alice made her panang curry and I tried out a recipe for aloo gobi, which actually worked pretty well. This time we made rice to sop up the sauce in the curry, which was nice as it's very soupy. Alice used a different curry paste from the one at Josie's party, and the result was much milder. I kind of missed that sinus-clearing spiciness. At the last minute, a girl from my house showed up and gave us some bread sticks she had been planning to take to a dinner party that fell through. After dinner, Erika made her famous cardamom vanilla (possibly cinnamon) cocoa and Emily made gluten-free egg-free dairy-free cake. It was quite a feast!
The preparations went off without a hitch, more or less. There was a pot-juggling moment during which I had to raid the free box to find a trivet, and came up with a really hideous bulky knit scarf about six feet long. There were those who wanted to claim it afterwards, but I think it'll have a better life as a really ugly trivet rather than a really ugly article of clothing.
Speaking of clothing, because Emily is one of the most stylish people I know, we all dressed up for dinner (except for Alice. But she cooked, so that's a good excuse). I wish I had gotten a picture of the group because we did look pretty good. My new corset made its debut (yes, Caroline, I bought a corset. Just send disapproving vibes my way, you don't have to scold me) alongside Josie and Erika's corsets. Now Emily wants to get one for Conbust. It's a disease, I'm telling you.
We made quite a picture, all crammed into the kitchen, juggling cake and cocoa and trying to maneuver through the small space. I'm used to the kitchen being the place to socialize, but Baldwin's kitchen is really pretty small, and there were nine of us in there. It was like a more delicious version of sardines. We washed up the dishes, cleaned the kitchen (which was rather a business. Turmeric does not like to leave any surface, and the stove looked sort of like we had been brewing highlighter fluid), and repaired upstairs for Apples to Apples.
No pictures this time, but it was a great evening.

4 comments:

  1. Is the reason you refer to the cake as "egg-free dairy-free" instead of "vegan" that it's made out of beef?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yep. It was a solid block of meat.
    But seriously, I didn't think to call it vegan because I was just listing the sensitivities it accommodated and didn't think of the big picture.

    ReplyDelete
  3. *disapproving vibes*
    Actually, I don't care, but it sounds like a strange kind of dressing up if you were all wearing corsets. What would Sophia Smith say?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I mean, I was wearing a black strapless dress, a red satin corset, and a long silver locket, so I don't think my outfit was that unconventional, but my friend Josie had her goth gear on, and Emily had her old prom dress and really convincing costume jewelry. I guess we covered the spectrum of different styles of dress up.

    ReplyDelete