Birthday Adventures

Now, I don't wanna brag or nothing, but I have so many friends that I had to have two birthday parties. Seriously. Allow me to explain.

This past Saturday, September 29th, I turned 24 years old. Yeah, I know, I'm old. But I had to celebrate with as many of my friends as possible, so I ended up having two parties when all was said and done.

So, the festivities started Friday evening with a gathering featuring my college friends that live in the Dallas area. We went to a really cool restaurant that does pizza served Brazilian-steakhouse style. What does that mean? First of all, if you've never been to a Brazilian steakhouse, put it on your bucket list. It's expensive, but so worth it. The general format is that there are waiters wandering around with various cuts of meat, offering it to each person at the table, and if you say yes, they cut you off a bit of the meat. You can have as much as you want, and if you would like a particular one again, you can ask for it as many times as you like, all you can eat. It's a really fun dining experience, great for special occasions. This place used that serving concept for their pizza. 20 different gourmet topping combinations, 15 savory and 5 sweet, served up in small slices so you can try all of them if you so desire. I tried all of them. I was really, really stuffed, but it was my birthday, I wanted to be a pig. My personal favorites were a lamb one that was perfectly spiced, and the dessert blackberry mascarpone. If you live in the DFW area, I highly recommend this place for special occasions and gatherings, it's great. It's called Delucca Gaucho Pizza and Wine, price is $20/person for all the pizza your little heart desires. Our little group of seven gathered and ate and talked and generally had a great time. It was good to catch up with my Hillsdale friends. Some of them work in politics, so this is a busy season for them, but we do try to keep up. At the end of the dinner, we got a special treat since it was my birthday. It's a Nutella pizza with ice cream, and it was delicious.

The next day was party number two, with my anime convention buds. We knew we wanted to get together and watch some "so bad it's good" old anime and movies, but the trouble came in getting a location. We all live scattered over the metroplex, and some of us have small apartments, so finding a place that can accommodate all of us without forcing people to drive two hours. We found a solution: get a hotel room somewhere in the middle and split the cost. We did, and it was great. We played games, ate, and laughed at some pretty awful old anime. And because no one had to drive home, we could stay until everyone fell asleep and just go home in the morning.

So, this is a recipe blog, so you might be wondering if this week will be devoid of a recipe because I was so busy. HA! Not so. I like to bake and share too much for that. Last week, when I made a pile of pumpkin pancakes and posted them to Instagram, a cousin of mine gave me a challenge. She recently gave birth to twins, and due to some intolerances they have, cannot eat gluten or dairy for the time being. That poses a problem because most dessert foods contain one or the other of these things, and if anyone deserves a "treat yo self" dessert, it's her. So, I decided to make a gluten-free, dairy-free treat for my recipe this week. Just because I'm the one with a birthday doesn't mean I can't make a recipe for someone else. I like to make other people happy, let me. Thus, these pumpkin muffins.

They are dense, spicy, and sweet. And they make the kitchen smell like fall. You definitely wouldn't know there's no dairy or gluten. Oat flour and almond milk are your best friends when working around gluten and dairy allergies. Oat flour can be made cheaply and easily by grinding up oats in a food processor. This recipe uses both whole oats and oat flour to give it a nice texture. I recommend warming them up and eating them with some almond or peanut butter. The concept is good, but you know I had to spice things up. Literally. So, here's my starting recipe:

Allergy-Friendly Pumpkin Muffins

Sprinkles of Kim:
-Used regular eggs instead of flax eggs, so my version is not vegan.
-Brown sugar instead of coconut sugar because coconut sugar is expensive.
-For my dairy-free milk, I used unflavored, unsweetened almond milk.
-About 1/2 t extra cinnamon because cinnamon makes things better.
-about 1/2 t maple flavoring to amp up that maple flavor., and a couple extra tablespoons of syrup. These are supposed to be sweet, after all.
-A few dashes of each of the following: allspice, cloves, cardamom, ginger, and nutmeg. You could probably throw in a teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice and get a similar effect.

Needless to say, I immensely enjoyed my birthday weekend. I hope my readers also had a good weekend. Remember to treat yourself occasionally, it's good for the soul!