Birthday Food.

We don't have a lot of traditions in my family. But it seems to me that we have food traditions. There are certain things we eat on certain holidays (turkey on Thanksgiving, ham on Christmas, lasagna or stuffed shells on Easter), but aside from that we tend to go a little crazy with side dishes. Yep. Apparently we like variety. This past weekend we celebrated that my husband and I both turned a year older (we share a February 4th birthday); this dinner was also in honor of my Dad whose birthday was just a week ago. Two of my sister's live out of town right now, so it's not quite the same anymore as it seems one of them is always missing.

As far as food though, this year certainly didn't disappoint. My mom always works so hard making food for our family, and my sister rounded out the menu quite nicely. My sister Bethany loves food, and manages to find time to put together some really delectable treats!

The main course was  chicken enchiladas and steak fajitas. For appetizers we had guacamole and salsa, spinach and artichoke humus, sliced mango, candied grapefruit peel, fig and goat cheese spread. Believe it or not, I feel like there are things missing from that list. You can find the recipe for the fig spread on my sister's blog. I'm telling you, that stuff is SO good I could eat it all day long. Seriously.

In lieu of cake, we had cookies and biscotti for dessert. The pink cookies on the top of the tray were new this year, and were definitely my favorite; they were kind of like a thumbprint cookie with rhubarb in them. My mom wasn't thrilled with the recipe so she added a black raspberry icing. I thought they were delicious, and could totally forgo the sweetness of the icing so that the tart rhubarb could come through a little more. Bethany made her yummy coconut chocolate chip biscotti. She also canned grapefruit in mint syrup. Oh my. I'm a grapefruit lover, but this brought grapefruit to a whole new level for me. I almost shed a tear when it was gone.