Beginning a new year, completing projects

Yesterday Game Fanatic and family celebrated his completion of 21 years as he begins the next one. I think it went rather well for him. He woke up early to find out the crowdfunding project he backed had reached its goal and that pleased him considerably. He made a large investment in this project, made larger due to very poor exchange rates. I am relieved it reached it’s goal because there was every chance the money would be returned but at an even worse rate than before.

Our patio paving was completed over the weekend and we bought a table and new chairs to put out there, along with new cushions for older chairs that have been sitting in the elements the past year or two. Unfortunately there’s been some rusting of the older chairs but they are still quite okay to use otherwise. The new cushions are bright and cheery. The new chairs are just mesh ones but we could theoretically add cushions for those at some point too. We still have to move some displaced sand out of the backyard and clean up some of the mess but it looks really lovely. I will see if I can get some photos up in the next few days.

The weather turned out to be quite pleasant so the plan to spend much of the day outside worked out well. This kept the house from being quite so crowded with people and allowed much more personal space for everyone than inside our fairly small living areas.

Game Fanatic had wanted to have Indian food from a favorite local place on his birthday but they aren’t open on Monday. His Indian feast is postponed to the weekend and there was the decision of what food to prepare for guests on the day. He wasn’t too keen to settle on anything so the Scientist and I decided to try out Mexican style foods. Over half our visitors were vegetarian so it was important to find foods that would be suitable for all. I went back and forth on many different options. I got ingredients for more foods than I could really have managed and eventually decided to stop while I was ahead for fear of too much food.

I only did one meat dish, which was the usual chicken that I do with tomatoes and spices. It’s really straightforward to put together once the chicken is cooked and is agreeable to all family members. I found a recipe for baked marinated tofu which had some mixed results. The recipe I used for the marinade was pretty wasted because nobody could taste the flavors at all. I would have preferred not to have spent money on limes and coriander (cilantro) since they didn’t work in this case. I do wonder if a longer marinating time might have worked better on that. I had four blocks of tofu and did two with that and decided to use just some jarred salsa for the rest. That tofu came out really nice and the flavors were just right there. That’s not to say the other tofu was terrible but it was mainly like eating plain baked tofu.

I had wanted to do something with sweet potatoes and black beans, having been inspired by a recipe from Valerie’s Recipes. Initially I was considering using this recipe but decided it was more suited to much cooler weather than we have right now. I plan to try this next winter on a damp and chilly night when I think it would be far more enjoyed by those who are willing to try it. I did find another recipe which is more suited to warm weather. That turned out beautifully and was really easy to make. which was really good so late on the previous night when my feet were in misery after hours of standing. It ended up that this works really well just as a salad too. I’m thinking of making this for our Christmas dinner since it’s so easy and would be something else my MIL could enjoy.

I also made homemade refried beans, which came out pretty well for a first try. They were a bit on the dry side but when heated tasted quite nice. Also, I got some jalapeño cheese(Monterrey Jack cheese with jalapeños that has only recently been found locally) to grate over it but couldn’t find out grater when it was time to use it. I had a second helping later in the evening and it was quite lovely with that creamy cheese on it. I used dried pinto beans this time and they came out nicely cooked. I think maybe I have got the hang of cooking dried beans finally. Means it’s a lot cheaper to prepare than having to buy canned beans and hope for decent quality.

I had intended to do some zucchini and corn in a tomatillo based salsa but gave up on the idea due to lack of time and insecurity about using the canned tomatillos instead of fresh (these aren’t usually available here so canned is the main way to go). I still have the ingredients for that so will make  it some other day this week.

We also had four types of Mission tortilla chips, mild salsa and chopped tomatoes and cucumber. We had gotten some lettuce to use but it had gone bad within just a few days and had to be dumped. :(

Anyway, the food was enjoyed by all then we had heaps of yummy brownies and cheesecake made by the Scientist. He’s done the brownies many times before but the cheesecake was a new recipe and it was well liked by almost everyone, but happily was pleasing for Game Fanatic. There is none of it left today.

I forgot I also made some potato salad for Game Lover but didn’t serve to all because it had bacon in it, which was his request.

There were various people coming and going from early afternoon to early evening. Afterwards, we hung out and watched Game Lover play his new Donkey Kong game on the Wii U and then we started the newest Danganrompa game, which was one of the presents. He had a pretty good day overall and seemed really pleased with a few things. He will complete the celebration with his curries on the weekend.