It’s a Pandemic Birthday!

Laurie’s birthday celebrations are traditionally a big deal in our household… The celebration of her December birthday usually begins around the end of October and ends after the first of the New Year.  Not a bad arrangement if you can get it!

Usually we spread out some shopping for things she wants for herself or the house…and we eat out several times so she doesn’t have to cook.  We frequently throw in a little road trip too.  Finally, her actual birthday dinner usually features lobster tails with drawn butter. 

Then along came 2020 with the pandemic… The entire birthday scenario got bogged down in self-isolation and the surging infection rates.  This resulted in a new approach to this annual celebration.

At the beginning of December I took this photo of the birthday girl posing in front of the fireplace with her new casual jacket that D2, Amy & the grandson's gave her! She loves it! 

By this point, we’d made a couple of on-line purchases but such purchases don’t ever seem to be as satisfying as checking out prospective gifts in person.

We also ‘ate out’ several times during her weeks’ long celebration.  In the last post I’d mentioned dining in our car after securing food from fast food restaurants.  Our Freddy’s Steakburgers outing was also a birthday dinner ‘out’.

The other ‘dining out’ option during Laurie’s pandemic birthday was of course, ‘take out’.  In this case, she’d opted for BBQ ribs from a restaurant in Loudon Tennessee named Taste-O-Texas. 

We each ordered plate dinners…a half rack of ribs with sides.  For my sides, I chose seasoned tater tots and the cilantro-lime coleslaw.  Laurie chose the mustard-dill potato salad and the creamy mac and cheese.

Laurie held up one of the ribs from her half rack for this photo.  We really like Taste-O-Texas’ ribs.  They are better than any other commercial pork ribs that we’ve found in East Tennessee.  We would like them even better if they weren’t so ‘ready to fall off the bone’.  We would rather gnaw the meat from the bones!

The side dishes were nothing special.  I didn’t really detect much ‘seasoning’ on the tater tots and the slaw, while different, was just OK.  Laurie felt that the potato salad was OK as well but the creamy mac and cheese 1) wasn’t creamy, and 2) wasn’t worth eating.

So for her actual birthday, where should we get some takeout for the celebration?  The choices are somewhat limited as there aren’t that many restaurants within 15 – 20 minutes of our home.

She decided on Italian cuisine from Little Italy, a restaurant that’s convenient and close enough that the food we purchase there is always still hot when we get it back to our house. 

Laurie decided to have the Veal Marsala for her home bound ‘dining out’ birthday dinner.  In addition to veal, it included mushrooms, garlic and Marsala butter sauce over a bed of linguine.  She enjoyed her meal…but there is no doubt that she would have preferred lobster!

For my entrée I had a tried and true favorite, the Sausage Alfredo Skillet. (No ‘skillet’ with takeout) Penne pasta, grape tomatoes and Italian sausage are combined with Cajun seasoning with Alfredo sauce.  It was good but it seemed that the chef might have cut back on the Cajun seasoning…

So what did we do about a birthday cake for Laurie’s birthday?  

The answer was Tiramisu with a candle!  Little Italy does serve a very fine version of this Italian classic dessert.  Unfortunately for Laurie, she had to listen to me sing Happy Birthday to her before she could blow out the candle and actually enjoy this sweet treat…

I decided to try something different for my dessert.  This was Little Italy’s Grand Coconut Meringue Pie.  It was very good…but my favorite creamy type pie continues to be banana cream.

So…what about presents?  Laurie tends to buy things for the home for any gift receiving event in her life.  In this case she bought a new rug from “Ruggables” for the laundry room. (http://ruggable.com)

Other miscellaneous items over the past month or so included a new book, a replacement for her old wallet, a forehead thermometer, an invisible belt and some favored snacking items that she loves. (Comfort snacks for the pandemic!  She does share them with me too)

There are still another couple of weeks remaining for her normal 2 month plus birthday celebration, so other items may still be ordered… However, her most recent birthday related acquisitions included the large charcuterie board and the spoon rest pictured above.  They were purchased in a recent foray to Everhart Lumber in Tellico Plains Tennessee.  Even I enjoy browsing through this wood specialty and natural wood furniture store!  Check them out at http://everhart-lumber.com/.

That’s it for now.  Hopefully by the latter half of 2021 we’ll all be able to relax a bit and return to normal life…and special birthday celebrations!

Just click on any of the photo to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Stay Safe and Take Care, Big Daddy Dave