Happy Birthday to Lauren, Happy Birthday to Nick, Happy Birthday to Sylvia and Happy Birthday to Hana. July is our birthday month, as you can see. We've been celebrating since June 30th, actually, starting with Hana's first birthday in Japan. This year, the birthdays were especially exciting because we were in Japan for three of them.
We timed our Japan visit so we could celebrate Hana's first birthday, then Nick's birthday and then my birthday. We've had lots of cake and blowing out candles the past 30 days. It's the one thing that has always made our summers so special which is why I love summer. Last night, we celebrated Lauren's birthday.
Lauren wanted to go to La Rustica for her birthday so we happily obliged since it's one of our favorite neighborhood eateries.
It was busy last night and we had to wait for our table (they don't take reservations.) But it wasn't a problem since it gave us time to enjoy a bottle of one of their Italian wines in their small but quaint bar area.
By the time we were seated, the sun was setting over the Olympic mountains and our view looking out at Puget Sound and the mountains was simply gorgeous. The timing couldn't be more perfect. La Rustica is a place where you just want to stay as long as possible, a perfect birthday celebration. And, of course, the food is amazing. We all got salad with our meal to start off with their soft bread sticks.
We all got different entrees since their menu is huge. I got prawns wrapped in veal.
Each entree comes with a side of pasta and roasted vegetables, unless, of course you get a pasta entree like Lauren did. She got a pasta dish with halibut and salmon made with squid ink so her pasta was black.
They give you generous portions at La Rustica but we had no leftovers last night. We all had clean plates and everyone just loved their dish. But we had to leave room for dessert because I made Lauren's birthday cake that we had at home. She likes lemon cakes so I made my new favorite this year - lemon curd and white chocolate truffle cake.
If you remember, I made this cake for Easter this year and fell in love instantly.
There is so many things I love about this recipe. I love the cake batter, first of all. It's very light and airy because you whip 5 eggs whites and then fold them into the batter. I love the lemon curd on top of the cake. (Who doesn't love lemon curd!) And the white chocolate truffle filling is heavenly. My all time favorite icing is the simple whipped cream to top it off. I feel like it is such a privilege to even make this cake because I am the fortunate one who gets to lick the beater of all these delicious and decadent flavors. And it's fun to decorate, too. I used multi-colored sprinkles for Lauren's birthday cake that made it a fun, celebratory cake.
Lauren was thrilled with it so I was a happy mom.
Before we went to La Rustica, it was such a beautiful day that we had cocktails on our deck and Lauren opened her presents. We didn't mind that our dinner was a little later than usual which is another thing I love about summer - the long and lovely, drawn out evenings. A perfect way to spend your Friday after a long week.
Flash back now to July 8th on Nick's birthday in Japan where he and Sachiyo planned a birthday lunch at the beach at one of their favorite spots in Yokosuka called Wao Bakery.
Our table had a great view of the beach and all the water sports going on.
This is a beach where they've had the World Wind Surfing Championship so it was fun to watch all the activity on this typical summer day.
We never had a bad meal the whole time we were in Japan and the Wao Bakery was one of the best places we went. It was sort of a Japanese-French-Italian place. They had the French pastries like so many places in Japan. I know it's surprising but French bakeries are all over the place in Japan.
They don't give you bread with your meal, they give you bread as one of the courses. Our first course were three Italian-type appetizers including some mozzarella cheese and lettuce, a fish dish and a roasted vegetable dish. The sauce these dishes were made with was so good I bought a bottle of it to bring home.
Second course was a type of minestrone soup that was bursting with flavor even though it didn't look like much.
Third course was our bread and they brought some olive oil to dunk it in, very Italian-style.
I had a really delicious fish dish, can't really tell you what it was
and so did Bruce. His came with mashed daikon radish which is in a lot of dishes. We were in the part of Japan where daikon radishes are grown.
They were everywhere in the grocery stores, an abundant supply.
In general, the Japanese eat so many more vegetables than we do. There dishes are so much more vegetable oriented and in Nick and Sachiyo's house, their refrigerator had a HUGE vegetable drawer. In fact, it's a double-decker of vegetable space.
We ate a lot of vegetables while we were Japan and a lot of fish. Definitely not your typical American diet and definitely more nutritionally superior, for sure. Anyway, for Nick's birthday, he got a fettuccine Alfredo-type dish and he was very happy with it.
We were all very happy with our meals. I liked the French-Italian-Japanese-type restaurant. For dessert, they brought us these crushed ice desserts that were like snow cones only the ice was more fine and fluffy like cotton candy and you poured the fruit flavor over the ice. The fruit flavor was really distinct fruit flavor, too. Not the syrup-type sugary stuff you get in America. This was more like pureed fruit.
We got a strawberry and a mango.
They were fun to eat and so refreshing and flavorful because the Japanese summers are hot! They know how to make crushed ice desserts.
But then the real surprise came when they presented Nick with a birthday treat with sparkler candles on it.
It had a couple of little cakes, slices of apple and the most delicious fruit sorbets. It was so colorful and festive, we loved it.
But Nick's birthday celebration was not over yet. That night at their house, we barbecued steak (and some beef tongue which is popular in Japan - I'm not really a fan)
and I made my pasta coleslaw that is one of Nick's favorites. He had all his favorites for his birthday barbecue
including capreses and sushimi for appetizers.
And Hana helped him open his presents, of course. It was a full day of birthday celebrations, just the way we like it.
Hana helped me blow out my candles on my birthday at Nick and Sachiyo's house.
By this time, Hana was liking the whole candle and cake-thing going on since this was the third time we were doing this. She also liked the Happy Birthday song. Nick and Sachiyo made my favorite Japanese food for my birthday -curry. It was also our last night in Japan so it was a perfect last dinner.
Nick and Sachiyo also took me out to a special place for lunch for my birthday, of course. I actually requested to go to a place we went to in 2014 that is a favorite of Nick and Sachiyo's on the beach near their house. We just call it "the beach restaurant".
They have really good food and drinks here and it has a nice "hippie" vibe to the place.
It was fun being here in the summer because we could sit outside.
Nick ordered two pizzas for appetizers that were a lot like American pizza. They had thick crusts but less cheese.
And once again, the food was amazing with lots of vegetables and incredibly delicious sauces.
And once again, the food was amazing with lots of vegetables and incredibly delicious sauces.
Our dishes came with miso soup and rice and we all ordered fish of some sort because it is always so outstanding everywhere we go in Japan.
I had no complaints for my special birthday lunch.
After lunch, Nick took us to a special place for dessert called "the farm", one of the only places in the city that has farm animals.
They had dairy cows, goats, sheep and chickens. We got to see what a Japanese farm looked like, although I think this was mostly a tourist trap since it was extremely tiny but then maybe that's authentic in Japan.
They do use the cow's milk to make their ice cream which is why people come from near and far, including us.
They also sold milk and eggs here for retail.
You can see they don't refrigerate their eggs just like in Europe. I think the U.S. must be the only country that refrigerates eggs, the germaphobics that we are.
The ice cream tasted just like soft serve. However, we did get another soft serve ice cream cone called Cremia at the famous Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo that was the best I've ever had.
All the food at this place was incredible. There is an "outer" market where all the food places are and after we had this incredible lunch of tuna (fatty tuna which is the best, regular tuna and lean tuna - all which is the freshest you can get)
and salmon with roe, one of Nick's favorites (again, I'm not a fan of roe)
Nick took us to another place with these special ice cream cones. But this was after Nick had a couple more snacks along the way including sea urchin
right out of the shell.
Yes, Tsukiji fish market is a very unique place and I'd highly recommend experiencing it if you go to Tokyo.
Anyway, back to these ice cream cones...it was the best soft serve I've ever tasted.
If you look at the ingredients, you can see why; fresh cream, high milk fat content...
It tasted like it was made with sweetened condensed milk, sort of like those Vietnamese coffees. Even the cone was delicious, like a thin, delicate wafer. It was all just so good. You can probably figure out by now that the Japanese really have the most delicious frozen desserts. It's so hot and humid in the summer, they know how to cool you off with the best shaved ice desserts and ice cream/sorbets available. We got a nice sampling during this visit. I'm sad that July is ending and our celebrations are over. I remember when Nick and Lauren were little, I felt relieved when July came to a close and I'd take a big sigh of relief and say "I survived July!" Beside our birthdays, we also had our wedding anniversary and the Fourth of July. It was always an action packed month, for sure. It's not as exhausting as it use to be, thank goodness. Nick and Lauren have grown up! But July will always be that special month for us. Farewell to another July. And I survived.
Comments
Post a Comment