birthday senorita

Saori turned 32 this weekend, so we threw a small party at our apartment. It was a nice checkpoint- last year, I was living still in the house on the hill and we invited a bunch of friends out to a Mexican dinner at the only authentic Mexican restaurant in town. This year, I made the Mexican food. And it was good. But it did take up the entire weekend of shopping, cooking, and cleaning (although Saori did most of the cleaning since I was cooking all the time).

Friday after work, I went to the grocery store and picked up the main ingredients except for the special ones (although after a beer, I mistakenly picked up beef instead of pork for the carnitas). Saturday morning after a breakfast of fried eggs and salsa, we hit the markthalle and the farmers market on the main square in front of the city hall. Markthalle used to be an indoor tram station that was converted to a market hall for upscale produce and international foods. There are dozens of stalls selling direct imported and local very high quality foodstuffs. Also very expensive. But you can find what you are looking for. I was pleasantly surprised to find canned chipotles in adobo sauce (no more hauling cans back from the US), and I also picked up some cilantro, ripe avocados, and habanero chile peppers. In the market square, we picked up some sunflowers and some really exceptional macaroons.

In the afternoon, I cooked the sopa de lima in the pressure cooker, but the final stages I added too much of the habanero and too much lime- the end result was spicy, but worse, bitter. The chicken came out wonderful, of course, so I saved the chicken and a bit of the soup to combine with the second batch and tossed out the rest. Saori and I each made salsa fresh- Saori made a mild batch and I went wild with pineapple and habanero.

Sunday, I cooked the entire day from rolling out of bed at 8AM. I made eggs and salsa for breakfast, a new batch of sopa de lima, I prepared quesadillas with corn tortillas and a blend of cheeses, and also cooked up steak carnitas. Then there was garnishes of diced onion, cilantro, peppers, limes, etc.

In the end, the party ended up quite small with a few people coming now and then since we extended it out from basically 3pm to midnight. It was really quiet. Too quiet, actually, less of a party and more of a getting together for a beer kind of thing. The Mexican interns came by and they were really impressed with the food, actually. Lina and Anna came too, and we all ended up sitting on the roof enjoying the cool evening air.

Annnnnd way too soon it was monday again.