Well, it’s my birthday, too! Or it was, yesterday. I had the day off from school and work, but had a lot of schoolwork to do, so I kept it low key. I requested grilled grassfed steaks (from our beef share in the freezer) and mashed potatoes. Baked kale chips and s sauteed mushrooms rounded out the meal (all the veggies came from Full Circle). We opened a nicer bottle of red wine than we usually have (a nice Pinot), and that was that.

What about a birthday cake? I already had my birthday dessert Friday, at Tutta Bella. This is my third year of having Tutta Bella’s tiramisu as my “birthday cake,” and it a tradition I plan to continue. (Please note…I didn’t eat this all myself…it’s meant to serve two fairly generously or four quite sparingly.)

  • The first year, I had barely scratched the surface of all the science prerequisites I had to take before applying to grad school. We stopped by Tutta to pick up a to-go order of tiramisu on our way home from our 6-hour Saturday biology class and lab (a heck of a way to spend a birthday, I tell ya). 
  • The second year, I was taking my second term of biochemistry and trying to finish up my graduate school application. 
  • This year, I’m staring down the barrel of a zillion papers, projects and presentations…in my second term of grad school. What a difference two years makes! Oh, and this year, my tiramisu was free, thanks to a birthday dessert coupon I received for being on Tutta’s e-mail list. The waiter even put a candle in it and sang “Happy Birthday.” So sweet!
Our singing waiter was about as “exciting” as my birthday weekend got. Which was no problem, because I’m fine with quiet birthdays. If the weather was nicer, I wanted to go to the zoo, but it was decidedly not nicer, so staying at home was just fine with me. Jeff gave me these:
Two books that I won’t have time to read for a while (but will fully appreciate once I do), and a ceramic produce basket (nabbed at a big discount from a high-end home store that’s going out of business in the trendy South Lake Union neighborhood). I’d idly been wanting one for a while, so it was a perfect gift!