Avigayil Damm

I don’t really know what is the big deal about turning older. Lots of my friends dread their birthdays, saying, “Oh I am sooo old!”. For me, it’s a day to remember I have been blessed yet another year.

And that day is today. This day I turned 33 years old. Or maybe I should say. this day I will turn 33 years old, because I was actually born at 23.15 so I am not 33 years old yet. But anyway… today was quite special.

It started with my colleague arriving in the office, carrying a birthday cake for me, which we cut and shared with other colleagues later in the afternoon. Then I went out for lunch with my boss, as we had a lunch meeting to discuss my work and the future. The day ended with dinner with my hubby at Brasserie in Kemang.

The chocolate cake was really good. If I remember correctly, my colleague got it from Dapur Coklat, but let me check with her again and I will update this post. In the afternoon she actually put on a candle on the cake and forced me to make a wish and blow the candles. Good thing she only put one candle on, otherwise the cake would have been on fire.

The lunch with my boss was at Loewy’s went pretty well. We talked about the possibility of an earlier departure since my hubby and I didn’t know when and where his next posting will start. We also talked about many other things, but most importantly (at least in relevance to this blog), the food we (or at least I) ordered was good. Actually from a posh restaurant like that, I expected more but I guess I probably also chose a more down to earth menu: chicken pot pie. So although this time the food was not so impressive, I would give it another shot. Since the dish came covered with puff pastry I took a picture after I have gotten through some of the pastry.

In the evening, as I mentioned before, my hubby took me out to Brasserie, a restaurant we used to frequent quite often when we first met. There was something about this restaurant though, that made us stay away for quite a while (according to the floor manager, we haven’t been seen there for over two years). And come to think of it, the last time we came here I think was on 10 March 2007 which was the first day that I introduced my then boyfriend (my current hubby) to my parents. So yes it has been two years, even more. The reason is, there is always something about the food. Although it won’t ever taste bad, but then the meat would either be not so tender, or there will always be small hiccups that drags them down a notch from being perfect. We must admit though, that they are very good in making chocolate mousse, and so far we have never found any other restaurant serving anything that could beat them in this category.

Since we knew the floor manager a little, she came and chatted a while to us. Somehow our conversation led to my hubby’s birthday and then led to the question on when my birthday was. Being caught in the spot (and I have actually lost the ability to lie), I had to tell her it was today. She congratulated me, and then took our orders and left us in peace. Or so I thought for a while. My hubby ordered fillet mignon, which he said was ok but not special, and I had the lamb chops, which tasted ok but was not so tender. But we enjoyed it nevertheless, and of course we could not leave the place without ordering their delicious chocolate mousse.

Just in the middle of enjoying our dessert, the floor manager came out with the whole staff (even the kitchen and the parking staff) to sing ‘happy birthday’ to me and presented me with a small chocolate cake. Since we were already very full, they were more than happy to put the cake in the box for me to bring home. It was a very nice surprise and quite heart warming.

So that was how my birthday this year went, and I am quite happy with how it turned out to be. And to top it all off, my hubby presented me with a very nice present: a Canon EOS 450D, which I have been eyeing for a while. I will certainly now start to learn more about photography, and put an end to the miserable photos on this website.

Oh and in case you wanted to visit any of the restaurants mentioned here, here are their addresses:

As usual, Sunday is cake day. A few days ago, I set my heart on making brownies, but the easy way: Betty Crocker style. This morning, after breakfast, I thought since I was already busy cleaning up the kitchen after our meal, I may as well stay a while and make the brownies and have it done with. So that I did.

Of course, using Betty Crocker instant brownies package made it all easy. I only had to add one egg, half a cup of vegetable oil, and some water. It didn’t take more than 10 minutes to prepare, and before I could spell ‘chocolate fudge brownies and lamb with rosemary sauce’ backwards, the brownies mixture was ready for the oven.

Since it would take about 25 minutes to bake, I figured I would use that time to prepare the rosemary sauce for tonight’s lamb leg steak. Usually, we would use Gravox ‘lamb and rosemary’ instant sauce, but for some annoying reason, no supermarket in Jakarta (at least not the ones I frequent) sell them anymore. So I had to find myself a recipe and make it myself. For that, I did a lot of Google search, and decided to try this recipe from Epicurious. Originally that sauce recipe is for chicken but that was the only recipe I could find that I thought was easy to make and did not require ingredients that would be difficult to obtain.

The chocolate fudge brownies turned out to be very fudgy (well no surprises there), and since I felt like today I did something better than usual (by baking cake in the morning as opposed to later in the afternoon), I rewarded myself (and my hubby) with freshly baked brownies, served with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and a sprinkle of Hershey’s chocolate sauce. Yummy!

The rosemary sauce turned out to be a little bit too sour, even after I modified it by adding 100 ml more of cream than the recipe required. I guess I will continue to search for different rosemary sauce until I get the best one.