Birthday Meal

I love birthdays. I love remembering someone on their birthday (though we all have seasons of life that make that harder some years than others), and I love celebrating someone's presence in our lives. My husband's family of origin didn't do much for birthdays. My family always went out to eat (birthday person's choice!) for birthdays. As a young family, we don't have a lot of birthday traditions (yet!), but we're leaning toward the birthday person choosing whatever they want at home.

I love to cook, and it is fun to create a special meal. If I start to despise cooking, we'll start getting take-out. LOL

Mike loves Mexican food. I used to work at a Hispanic clinic, and everyone there teased me that I cooked more Mexican food than Mexican people. They were almost right. We do love the spicy, flavorful food of Mexico. Yum!

So, for this birthday meal, I broke out my trusty Rick Bayless cookbook, Mexico, One Plate at a Time.

I chose a favorite recipe to repeat.

I dragged my husband shopping, to the Buford Highway Farmers' Market. I had heard that they were recently remodeled, and that it held all sorts of treats. Mike dearly loves the "treat" part of grocery shopping. He got two new kinds of coke.

Discovered two new kinds of hot sauce after a brief meeting of the minds with a fellow hot sauce lover in the aisle.

Because it was a birthday, I splurged on out of season tomatoes (shocking!). Roasted, they are pretty good in salsa. Nothing like August, but it'll do.

Salsa, all ready for eating.

The true highlight of the Buford Highway Farmers' Market? Fresh masa. I've been looking for fresh masa for years. These tortillas? Soooo good. Soooo good. Like an El Milagro tortilla (which aren't bad in and of themselves), but a thousand times better. Masa is like crack. I'm already plotting my next trip to get some.

I roasted and peeled poblanos.

This is queso fundido. Melty, cheesy, and really good. It's roasted poblanos, homemade chorizo, and queso quesadilla all melted together to form this molten goodness that you can't stop eating.

We made it into tacos with the roasted tomato salsa and tortillas.

Happy Birthday Mike!