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Noah’s Bday

2011 August 11
by Thehousedaddy

Noah’s Bday fell on a Monday this year.  As I have written about before, we take our food seriously on birthdays.  The celebrator gets to pick a home dinner and a night out meal at the restaurant of his or her choice.  Noah wanted to see a professional soccer game for his birthday.  I personally am not much of a sport spectator.  I love sports.  I love to play sports and as a family we spend most of our leisure time participating in one sport or another, but I generally don’t like going to stadiums.  Going to any professional game takes so much time.  That being said we had a blast at the DC United professional soccer game.  It was super easy to get to the stadium, park and watch great soccer at the classic RFK.  On top of that, it was pouring rain which none of us seemed to mind. Being totally drenched and too full from dinner couldn’t stop our fun.  I could see myself going to another game.

We started the evening off with a pregame dinner at Restaurant Burma, Noah’s choice for his “out” meal.  I have talked about Burma before, and it continues to be the one place we absolutely crave going to.  It is generally the choice for Birthday dinners for everyone in the family.  The hard part about Burma is eating light.  Don’t get me wrong.  The food is very light, but we order way too much and have to every time.  There isn’t a single dish we could do with out and look forward to mixing all the flavors.  Green Tea Salad, Green Papaya Salad, Ginger Salad, Tofu Sour Mustard Greens, Tofu Tomato, Bean Thread Noodle, Potato Puree and Okra Salad are our mainstays.  There are other vegan dishes, but we always have to order all of these.  John and his mother who own and operate Burma are always so nice to us and we look forward to seeing them when we come in.

On Noah’s actual birthday on Monday he had birthday pancakes, went to camp Calleva, and we had his birthday dinner at home.  His choice this year was Pad Thai.  Some form of this dish is on the rotation often.  It is relatively quick and we all love Asian food for the most part.  Sasha has decided that he isn’t a fan of our version of Pad Thai.  The other night I made Singapore Noodles.  It was a little different as it always is since we never use recipes, but for the most part it was Pad Thai with a slightly different sauce.  Halfway through dinner he asked why it wasn’t called Pad Thai.  I admitted it was basically the same but I had made the sauce differently and he was ok with the answer, but at five he is way too smart to deceive and that isn’t what I would ever want to do.


Tonight’s Pad Thai had some newer ingredients.  We don’t have a standard recipe for anything, but Virginia always wants broccoli in her dish.  It has been way too hot for the local broccoli so I was forced to use some from the grocery store.  It isn’t like Twin Springs variety, but it was ok.  We were able to use the scapes which have kept well in the fridge for the last three weeks.  They still taste amazing and the only thing you need to do is trim them a little more than we did when they were just out of the ground.  We also switched from the spring onions to Twin Spring’s fantastic red and white onions.  I love onions and used four for the dish.  The okra and green beans were the real heroes of the dish and both were cooked on the grill.  Not only does it keep it cooler in the house, but they get good and crispy on the grill and you don’t have to use as much oil.  In the wok on the stove, I combined all the other ingredients from longest cooking to shortest so I can cook and prep vegetables at the same time.  Broccoli with stems, onions, firm tofu, red peppers and another first of the season addition, red peppers were put on the highest possible fire with a little grape seed oil.  I then added bi-color corn fresh off the cob and quickly added the grilled green beans and okra from outside.  I then mixed in the sauce of sesame oil, gluten free soy sauce, black vinegar and aged Asian black beans.  As soon as the sauce was in I turned over the addition of the brown rice noodles to Virginia who usually does this while I run up for a shower.  I like to shower before eating in the summer since I get so hot and sweaty cooking over the grill and stove.  Not that we dress for dinner, but something about all of us showering before dinner seems civilized to me.  We can linger as long as we want over a meal and don’t need to do much to get ready for bed after.


As I was cooking Virginia was making an amazing gluten free vegan cake.  It was coconut milk based with a coconut frosting.  It was awesome and huge.  It really looked like a wedding cake.  The late addition of my niece and sister to celebrate Noah’s birthday was awesome.  While they live in town we don’t get to see them as much as we would like and the cousins love when they get together.  It made the family birthday dinner even more special, and they also brought us the most amazing fresh figs from their downtown DC tree.  It made the perfect topping for the cake which we could hardly make a dent in.  It was an awesome birthday that we will continue this weekend at the pool with some of Noah’s friends.

 

4 Responses leave one →
  1. Seth permalink
    August 12, 2011

    Happy birthday Noah from Denver. You lucky I ain’t there or you would be getting the birthday tickle fingers of a life time! Have fun old man. Later.

  2. sherry pyle permalink
    August 15, 2011

    happy birthday noah! your birthday dinner looked absolutely delicious – yummm! xoxoxoxo

  3. Udo permalink
    August 15, 2011

    can`t believe I missed your birthday, Noah…..all the best from St Pauli, Germany…
    your friend Udo

  4. August 30, 2011

    keep blogging, I need more! Are these dishes FDA approved?

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