Grandpa Gotta Cook: The Wife's Birthday Dinner

On This Week's Installment...

My wife's birthday was this week.

The plan, because she and I both would be working, was to celebrate it this past Saturday.

We've made a tradition over the years of celebrating a family member's birthday with lunch or dinner out, a movie of their choice, and in the case of the boys, $50 spending cash.

Lately, though, that tradition has taken a hit, mainly because the boys have their own families, the budget is a little tighter on the discretionary income side of things, and my wife just doesn't enjoy eating out.

Better said, she doesn't like eating restaurant food. Going out is fine.

In Oregon, though, there's been a moratorium on dining in throughout most of the state for months, so we've been bringing the food home on the infrequent occasions we've done so in the last twelve months (which, you guessed it, amounts to birthdays and our anniversary).

When we asked her the Sunday before last what she wanted to eat, in lead up to celebrating things this past Saturday, she said instead of buying already prepared food, we could cook her something. She didn't specify what. I decided that wasn't good enough, so along Wednesday or Thursday I got her to commit to what the food was—tacos. She would get the Al Pastor, Carnitas, Carne Asada and Chorizo, and then my son and I would get the tacos prepared.

Well, Saturday came, she and the daughter-in-law went to town and got the meat, and then, my wife promptly got to work making it.

Aside from salsa, there wasn't a whole lot to the preparation. Put the meat into frying pans on medium heat until the different meats were cooked through. Flip some tortillas and voila.

It was the idea of her making her own birthday meal more than what she actually had to do.

I ended up doing the dishes, so no, I didn't get out of much.

Even so, it didn't feel much like a celebration, which, as I've indicated, has been going on for a while.

Now, part of it could be my wife is feeling older and just isn't into celebrating her birthday much. Since a woman doesn't like to tell her age, I won't rat her out, but we'll just say she's older than dirt been around the block a few times ain't no spring chicken still fooling people into thinking she's younger than she really is, thanks to her youthful-ish energy.

So, on the day of her birthday, we were both working, and I was feeling like there needed to be more. The question was what? I thought I'd get home before she would that evening, but I probably wouldn't have more than half an hour, forty-five minutes tops, which ruled out quite a few things.

I was thinking dinner (potentially takeout from somewhere), and then something festive, like balloons. The problem was, I had to make the coast run, and not only was I filling ATMs, I was also collecting money from machines, which always takes longer. I just didn't know if I was going to get back into town in time.

Well, despite things not going according to plan, I did manage to get back with about 40 minutes to accomplish something. I stopped off at the party store, got the balloons, a couple of cards that have facts from her birth year (they didn't have much of anything else), and then, as I was looking around the store, I found some leis.

That triggered an aha! Why not get Hawaiian food and create a party theme? There was a place I could get some on my way back, and since they were supposed to be open until 6 pm, I'd have more than enough time. The party store people got the balloons and ribbons ready, I paid for everything, and then headed across town to get the food.

Except, it was closed. It was something like 5:20 pm, but the place was dark. Then, I realized there was fine print on their menu handout. Until 6pm or sold out.

Thanks for nothing, Grindz!

That got me to thinking, though. My wife recently bought some garlic butter shrimp. I don't know about you, but when I think garlic butter shrimp, I think of the awesome bucket of it that we each got our last trip to Oahu. That meant the Hawaii theme was still in, sort of—I just didn't have much of anything else Hawaiian to go with with it.

Time to improvise, then, which was pretty much what I was doing to begin with, since there wasn't really a concrete plan, other than doing something to actually celebrate my wife's birthday.

I thought about getting a cake at the local Safeway, but cakes are generally too big for just two people and my son and his family wouldn't be back around until the weekend. By then, the cake would probably be dry and stale. Plus, my wife isn't much into cake, doesn't like sweet frosting, chocolate isn't her favorite flavor in this case, so on and so on.

Scratch the cake idea, then. However, we did have three or four frozen pies, just sitting in the freezer. The first choice—what Marie Calendar likes to call Razzleberry, since it combines raspberries and blackberries. We've had it a time or two, and it's actually pretty good. The other options were apple, which I'm not really a fan of, and pumpkin, which my wife doesn't really like.

Razzleberry pie it is!

That just left something to go with the garlic butter shrimp. Since the Hawaiian food wasn't going to be a thing, I decided I'd go with an Italian slant instead and boil some spaghetti to go with the shrimp. Then, I needed something like a vegetable, to break it up. I remembered we had some frozen street corn, so it became the final part of the meal.

While I moved as fast as I could, time's simply was not on my side. My wife arrived just barely after the pie (the box said it needed 60-70 minutes to bake) and the garlic butter shrimp (it only needed 17) went into the oven. The plan was to get the water boiling then throw the spaghetti in (12-ish minutes), then start the corn (6-7 minutes).

She asked me what I was doing and I did my best to politely shoo her away, suggesting she could go take a shower while dinner was cooking. She's been taking one every evening after work as part of her COVID-19 abundance of caution regimen. Reluctantly, she did so, and I got the rest of the meal going.

Image from Target website.

Side note: I don't know if you've ever opened up a box of frozen garlic butter shrimp, but it's not the most appetizing thing in the world to look at. It instantly reminded me of these, iced animal crackers, which I used to eat as a kid until my grown up taste buds kicked in. Fortunately, the shrimp taste way better than the cookies, and looked much better once they cooked.

I kept expecting my wife to appear any minute while the food was cooking to find out what was up, but she never did. Instead, she busied herself upstairs cleaning or something. Everything cooked to its proscribed time, except I ended up pulling the pie out of the oven about five minutes short of an hour because the crust around the outside edge looked like it was starting to burn.

I scooped up some pasta, arranged some shrimp with plenty of garlic butter on top of it, and then added the street corn, which is basically blackened corn, some chile flavoring and Parmesan cheese. Street corn can have some mayonnaise mixed into it, but this stuff doesn't.

I then had to call her downstairs to eat. By then, I'd brought in the balloons, the birthday cards, and the leis, and laid them next to a small bag with a jar of honey in it a friend had left on the doorstep earlier in the day.

She didn't seem all that enthused about things, or surprised. Since I didn't even know what I was going to do until I did it, I was feeling a little let down. I guess I wasn't expecting her to jump up and down for joy or whatever, but I thought I might get a "You didn't have to do this," or something similar.

It was about then that her iPhone buzzed. It was the oldest son and the grandson Facetiming, apparently, to say happy birthday. That perked her up. She showed off the food and the balloons and the leis I'd put around her neck (until they go too itchy for her and she took them off).

By then, I was hungry, and just wanted to eat, but we had to wait another several minutes while she talked to the grandchild, who started to cry when he saw the balloons because he couldn't play with them over the phone (hey, get on that feature, wouldya Apple?), so she had to try to cheer him up by making funny faces and kissing the phone like she was kissing him.

Adorable under most circumstances, but not when it's already later than normal for dinner time and I'm hungry.

Finally, though, the conversation ended and we were able to eat.

The Verdict

It was pretty good. Considering all I really had to do was make sure nothing got burnt, it was even better. There was just enough shrimp, pasta and corn to fill us up, and there was some left over for her to take in her lunch the next day. Plus, there's still more of the frosted animal crackers frozen garlic butter shrimp left for another go around.

All in all, factoring in the uncertainty of whether or not I would have time to pull any of this off, then figuring out just what "it" would be, I think it turned out pretty well. And yes, my wife did thank me and tell me it was all very good and that she wasn't expecting me to do any of it.

She did say I could have saved money on the mylar balloons by going to the dollar store.

Always got to be something.

Okay. That's it for this special birthday edition of Grandpa Gotta Cook.

Until next time...

...Enjoy!
_{All images courtesy of Glen Anthony Albrethsen unless otherwise specified}