More birthday observations

Anne has returned from one of her many trips to Europe only recently.  She sometimes starts what she has to say at the moment with:  "When I was in Budapest ..."  So it was that we had a birthday dinner together tonight.



She brought me a small chocolate cake from the famous Hotel Sacher in Vienna. An image of the box it came in above. The Sacher Torte is regarded by many as the pinnacle of chocolate cakes. Anne also brought me from her travels a one-litre bottle of Cointreau, which I quite like. I like all the orange-flavoured liquers, though I drink all liquers only rarely. My favourite is Van der Hum from South Africa but you can't get it in Brisbane.

I very much like  meatloaf but you can't often buy it in the supermarkets so when I saw one for sale about six months ago I promptly bought it and put it away in my trusty freezer to come out for a birthday dinner. And today was the day I took it out.  I was also going to help the celebration with my remaining bottle of Barossa Pearl but Anne had a cold so didn't feel like drinking.  Anyway the meatloaf was as good as expected and Anne did some vegies to go with it which went well.

In lieu of wine, I had a small dram of Laphroiag with my dinner, which went surprisingly well with the meatloaf.  I recommend it. I guess it's a bit shameful but I diluted my dram with some of my favourite bottled water.  I mentioned to Anne that single malts generally have a peaty taste -- to which she replied rather sharply:  "I don't know.  I've never eaten peat".  That gave me a laugh and I pointed out that it was the smell being referred to.

For desserts we had some good blueberries together with Street's Blue Ribbon, which went down very well indeed.  It's up there with trifle and Pavlova now as a favourite dessert. Blueberries are another great North American contribution to our diet.  They have been grown in Australia only recently.

And we ended with nips of Cointreau.