Amanda’s Birthday Fish

Wow, it’s been a minute since I’ve been on here!  The farm is revving up and we ripped out the hospital ceiling in the living room.  I posted the Single Mom Chronicles a whole four days late.  And I didn’t get around to updating some dinners and whatnot!  But there has been tilling!  The chickens made it through snowpocalypse.  All is not lost.

And there was Amandas birthday!  I think she celebrated for like a week.  I cooked her dinner and she had a big party a couple days later.  Her favorite dish is salmon curry, so of course I  made it.  Thai curries are so amazing with just about any kind of seafood.  All you need is the right curry paste.

Amanda wanted a pretty complicated dessert for her birthday.  And we had just finished a three week long sugar fast.  But, being the low talented humble baker of simple desserts that I am, I had to just go with a cake instead.  I tried to get fancy with the filling.  I made a raspberry gel and then folded that into fresh whipped cream.  Disaster.

The cream kept oozing out of the sides.  I was frantically scraping and flicking the excess into the sink.  But it was oozing as fast as I could scrape it!  Finally, I just squished the whole thing down to force the cream out because I only had half an hour to get the dang thing frosted before people arrived.  I really don’t know how people enjoy baking.  For me, it’s just a study in futility.

The curry, on the other hand, was a breeze.  I made the curry.  I baked a whole salmon.  That made it super easy to just pull right off the bone.  Jasmine rice happened in the Instant Pot.  The cake was saved by chocolate raspberry frosting.  And I got to hang out with friends instead of being stuck in the kitchen.  Winning!