BIRTHDAY DINNER PARTY

it was a special dinner celebrating a family visiting from half way around the other side of the world and my birthday.  As usual, and being from New York City, I decided to select dishes that look artful and delicious plus balance the menu between seafood, vegetables and meat.

I made this beet-herring-egg-layered salad which I created molded in a cake pan.

GUACAMOLE TWIST

I had left over crispy nitrite free bacon.  It was almost lunch time and I was hungry again.  So I decided to make a guacamole and crumbled the bacon into pieces into the mixture.

Ingredients for 1 serving:

1 avocado

4TB minced onion

6-7 grape size tomatoes  (squeeze off juice) or equivalent 

2-3TB minced cilantro 

2 squeeze fresh key lime juice (or regular lime equivalent) 

Season with salt

2 pieces of fried bacon torn to pieces or crumbled

Serve on toasted country or sour dough style bread or sea salt Lime Tortilla chips

#hors-d’oeuvres #lunch #healthy #breakfast #avocado #spread

PARTY SPREAD

This spread was dedicated to my son and his family who were visiting me to celebrate my birthday.  As he has not been back for about 2 years, I decided to celebrate both my birthday and their visit with a splurge of home-cooking plus some things I bought to help me make the spread.

The latest take I have is a dish I have had at a restaurant which I have my take on creating my own recipe which I think was very similar.  But instead of making individual servings using several molds, I decided to make it using a cake pan.

I line the cake pan in the bottom and sides with parchment paper or wax paper so when I unmold the misfire, I would get a perfect mold of the layers of beets, herring and eggs.