Shweetie's Home-Cooked Birthday Feast

In addition to the lovely meal at Saison with Shweetie on Saturday and a yummy sushi dinner with Shweetie, the Hawks, Naan, and Curry on Sunday, Shweetie decided to host and cook a multi-course feast for our friends on Memorial Day in honor of me turning 31. He stated on the Evite, "This year, I'm feeling somewhat ambitious and will be attempting to do a 5-course dinner." I think "somewhat ambitious" was the understatement of the century. He decided to plate each of the five courses individually for the 12 of us. Thank goodness everyone pitched in and helped us the day of, or we'd never have survived! Our friends CJ and Hammer were especially helpful with plating, cleaning, lending us their dishes from home, and anything else we thought of for them to do during that evening. THANKS, EVERYONE!

Here are the five dishes Shweetie made, which all turned out amazingly.

Chilled Tomato Soup, Yogurt, Basil


Ratatouille (Confit Byaldi)


Salmon, Asparagus, Beurre Blanc


Osso Buco, Swiss Chard, Gremolata


Chocolate Velouté, Ice Cream, Chocolate Sauce

When Shweetie had originally told me what he was planning, I was certain there was no way he could pull this off. In fact, I think I told him on more than one occasion that he was nuts. He sure proved me wrong.

It turned out to be not as impossible as I'd thought. However, I was not prepared for how many trips to the grocery store this would involve between Friday and Monday (at least 12, to five different stores) and how much nonstop cooking would be happening between Friday and up through the dinner. Shweetie essentially spent the entire weekend shopping, prepping, or cooking, with the exception of the times we were at dinner on Saturday and Sunday. On Monday, the first time he sat down that entire day was when he was eating his third course. He'd been on his feet from the moment he got up that day and had even eaten his first two courses standing.

We encountered other challenges leading up to that evening, like the fact that we didn't have enough fridge space to accommodate all of the food Shweetie had prepared. Shweetie finished making the osso buco on Sunday and we had to bring it over to Sunshine's place to refrigerate (thankfully he had the space, and only lives two-and-a-half minutes away), since most of our fridge was taken up by ingredients and the 16 or so panna cottas and crème caramels Shweetie had made. (Yeah, he made two other desserts in addition to the chocolate velouté.) We also realized, as the RSVPs started coming in, that not only did we not have enough chairs and tables, we also did not have enough dishes! Thankfully, we were able to borrow stuff from Sunshine, the Hawks, and CJ and Hammer. During the meal itself, CJ and I were furiously washing dishes between courses so that Shweetie could plate the next course. Toward the end of the meal, Shweetie needed counter space more than anything else, so we put dirty dishes in the bathtub to make room. (Seriously, how ghetto is that?!)

In the end, though, the dinner was a huge success. Everyone seemed to enjoy Shweetie's cooking, Shweetie himself was pleased with how his food turned out (which is always the biggest challenge!), and it was so nice to see everyone again. I especially loved that Naan, Mooga, and Traveler got to meet or reconnect with a lot of the friends I talk about a lot, and that our friends got to chat with my closest family members.

It ended up taking us the whole week to recover from this party. Good thing we had such a good time!