Yesterday was the boyfriend’s birthday. He didn’t want a party but I still wanted to make the day special for him. Maybe I also wanted an excuse to bake…

I had taken two hours of vacation time that morning so that we could have breakfast together since he wasn’t taking the day off of work but had a flexible schedule. I’d planned to get up a little early and make breakfast so that it would be ready when he woke up.

After work I’d planned to get to his place and cook so that dinner would be ready when he got home. He works later than me so it seemed like a perfect plan.

Of course, my plans never quite seem to work out the way I think they will (umm… like us being together in the first place…) and things got a little more hectic.

Breakfast

The Menu: French Toast made from The Pioneer Woman’s Cinnamon Bread with eggs and mimosas.

The Plan: Bake the bread the night before at my mom’s place (my kitchen is pitiful and I didn’t want to ruin the surprise by baking it at the boyfriend’s place) and then make the French toast and eggs the next morning.

What Actually Happened: I got out of work later than I expected the night before but headed straight to the grocery store to get the few ingredients I didn’t already have. After getting to my mom’s place, I re-read the recipe and realized that I had missed the second two hour period for letting the bread rise. After cleaning the kitchen, we got started and let the bread start rising around 8:00pm. Realizing that I was going to be up very late to finish this endeavor, I packed up the bread in a neat bundle to bring over to the boyfriend’s to finish.

On my way out the door, I received a text to meet the boyfriend and our friend for a drink before heading home. Since the bread seemed to be doing just fine in its little package, I went and asked for it to be put in a warm place. After hanging out for a little bit we headed home. I sent him to bed, unwrapped my perfectly rising bread, added the cinnamon layer, and then left it to rise again.

I set my alarm for two hours later and went to sleep for a bit. I was incredibly confused when my alarm went off later that night. I hit my cell phone to make it stop and went back to sleep. Five minutes late it went off again. Swearing at it, I tried to figure out why it kept going off. It took a minute for me to realize why I had set an alarm for so late at night.

When it finally dawned on me, I went to see to the bread.

The rising dough had not only overflowed the pan, globs of it had dropped down from the rack I had it sitting on in the oven. Panicked, I pulled it out and mashed it back into a load shape. It didn’t seem any worse for the wear but it had lost the perfect swirl of cinnamon. It was a bit lopsided now.

Too tired to think about the fact that it needed to bake now, I set it aside and went back to sleep.

A few hours later, I woke up and realized that I had needed to actually bake the bread so I put it in the oven, set an alarm, and went back to sleep again.

This time I remembered why my alarm was going off and got up immediately. The bread came out beautifully. I freed it from the pan so it could cool, threatened the dog so that he wouldn’t eat it off the counter, and went back to sleep.

By the time my actual alarm went off, I was too sleepy to get up. I set it for another hour ahead, seeing that the boyfriend didn’t look like he was going to stir anytime soon, and dozed off again.

I finally got up when it went off again and went out to cut the bread, he woke up too. He said that he wasn’t that hungry so I shouldn’t make the extra effort but we still had some of the bread and mimosas. The bread turned out really well and we lazed on the couch together for the morning.

I’m going to call that one a success.

Dinner

The Menu: Filet mignon and shrimp with mushrooms, spinach salad, and some classy ass wine.

The Plan: Go shopping the previous night for food, cook it that night. Simple enough, right?

What Actually Happened: May Day happened.

So, the shopping trip was easy enough. I already had all the things except for the filet mignon. Getting home last night was… less easy. I stood at the bus stop for over an hour waiting for one to get there. I started to think that busses had been rerouted due to the May Day shenanigans. It turned out I was right. When I bus did FINALLY come to our stop, we ended up following along directly behind another bus of the same number and OH MY GOD WHY DID IT NOT COME TO OUR STOP AND WHY WAS THERE NO RIDER ALERT YOU METRO DOUCHE BAGS?!?!?!?!?

I was a little frustrated…

By the time I got home, the boyfriend was already installed comfortably on his couch. He knew about my bus troubles so there were no hard feelings. I got to cooking right away. I seared and cooked the filet mignon and put them in the oven to keep warm. I turned up the heat slightly to start the shrimp and within a minute, they were black on one side. Panicking, I flipped them and turned down the heat. I added the mushrooms but there wasn’t enough juice left. I removed the shrimp and added some coconut oil to the pan.

Coconut oil saves everything, I swear.

The flavors mixed beautifully and when I had compiled the salads and sat down to eat, we said a collective ERMAGHERD. Yeah, it was that good. And yes, I am patting myself on the back.

Desert

The Menu: Angel Food Cake with strawberries and vanilla ice cream and some more classy ass wine

The Plan: Not what I made. Originally I was going to make a small ice cream cake and then I was going to make cupcake sized treats of some sort and then he told me that he like Superman Ice Cream and I had no idea what the fuck to do. Then I decided on the Angel Food Cake because it would be easy. I was already putting so much effort into everything else so I needed one thing to be easy.

What Actually Happened: I wandered around grocery stores searching for Superman Ice Cream. I Googled it and found out that it’s a Michigan thing but that there might be some places I can get it here in Seattle. I thought I might be able to find it in a specific grocery store so that was the one I went to after work the previous night.

There wasn’t any Superman Ice Cream.

My silicone cupcake cups hadn’t arrived on time either and I didn’t want to buy more. So I wandered around the ice cream aisle angsting over what in the world to do.

I walked over to the baked goods aisle to contemplating coping out of making something myself when I decided on the angel food cake and strawberries idea. Oh yeah, that’s why I started baking the bread so late…

When I got home to the boyfriend’s that night, we talked about the lack of Superman Ice Cream in Seattle and I suddenly realized that I had left the ice cream in my mother’s freezer. I made arrangements with her to meet her the next day so I could get it.

We made the exchange the next day as I got off the bus and I went home to cook.

I prepared dessert after we ate dinner and gave it a little time before we ate it too.

So, nothing really goes off without a hitch when I’m in the mix but I really enjoyed putting this all together. His appreciation of my efforts and cooking abilities warmed my heart so much. We had a really wonderful evening. When we realized how late it had gotten, he sent me to bed and finished cleaning up.

And now he’s old.

I have 45 days in which to obnoxiously milk that joke before we’re the same age again.