happy birthday to you (& wgc #17)

last week mamago and dadgo drove up from my hometown and came to my fair borough to deliver a free coffee table and all my books and various other belongings to finally extricate their 28 year-old's belongings from their storage unit. if it wasn't so nice of them to do that and they weren't giving us a coffee table i'd be offended.

it also happened to be dadgo's birthday and we took it as an opportunity for my parents to meet rogray's mom, stepdad, sister, and the twins -- no, there are no pictures, and yes, it was lovely and a love-fest and his family loves me and my family loves him and and the families loves each other andpedro and gracie love elmo and blue's clues. so it went quite well and i was too sick to be nervous or pay attention to what was going on -- which was probably a good thing.


anyway, the first night we went to applewood -- a real live restaurant with a real live fireplace but no real live girls. . .it's a classy joint. this place is the real deal. . .go forth and eat. take your special lady friend out for a nice meal. make your parents take you there when they are in town. expense it.

each plate is beautiful and fragrant but each picture i took of our plates looked horrible so you'll just have to trust me on this one. for our appetizers i had salt cod brandade and rogray had parsnip soup. entrees: i had the loin of lamb in a fennel soup, dadgo had skate (the chef made it special for him! none of that pesky dairy) and rogray had duck with bacon dressing and soft polenta -- rogray was excited because duck and bacon are two of his favorite things and he never thought he's get to have them at the same time.mamgo got the venison -- it was good but not as good as the rest of ours -- she suffered from some intense entree envy.

at the end of the meal our plates looked like this:


we each joined the clean plate club that night!

when it was time for dessert (olive oil cake with fennel ice cream!) they had overheard that it was dadgo's birthday and they new that he was a no-dairy guy so they made him a plate with pears and pomegranate seeds with a candle for a birthday
cake! the place was pure class.



the next day while rogray and i toiled away at work and challenged each other to drink as much water as possible since the illness was beginning to situateitself into my nasal passages and chest -- mamago and dadgo went to ellis island. they said it was lovely and interesting and now i want to go.

we came home from our long day of drinking water and peeing every 5 minutes it was time to celebrate dadgo's actual birthday! we kicked off the night with a champagne toast and a kim-chi appetizer:



and rogray made dish #17. mongolian beef!!! dadgo said he wanted rogray to make him dinner and we had just gotten the 30 year old recipe for mongolian beef that he used to make back in the day from our long island people (the recipe card is actually 30 years old) so rogray decided that is what we should make as a surprise for dadgo. and he loved it. he was touched in the heart and full in the belly:



for cake we had no pudge brownies and ciao bella blood orange sorbet. this is my dad taking a moment to contemplate the joys and mysteries of life, a moment to contemplate how far he has come and what hewanted for the future:



and then he thought he might get burned with all the fire on that cake so he ended the moment:



saturday after brunch with rogray's family we went to long island to hang with the jews there. . .aka the klein family. marty and adrienne (i can't even try to come up with nicknames for them) are the ones who gave us the mongolian beef recipe which they had because they used to live in my parents' basement when i was a baby and were basically my second set of parents. my second set that always knew that i wanted a cookie when i would toddle into their basement kitchen and say in my sing-songy way "i want something." we went to sushi. the only pictures i have are ones rogray took of me and my mom -- i would say they pretty much sum up the entire mother daughter relationship and dynamic:



sunday, dadgo picked up 3 dozen bagels (that's not an exaggeration and usually he has me fed-ex the bagels to him) from his fave brooklyn bagel shop and drove the entire way home in one 13 hour day.

mamago took kugs, the hulk, rogray and myself to this yummy spot for dinner sunday night and then left first thing monday at which point the illness consumed my body.

it was a great trip and we had a lot of fun and i hope that dadgo had a great birthday. happy birthday you old coot!! i love you.