Thanks to Jamie Oliver, a Happy Birthday... (or In Which I eat my way into the weekend.)

Yesterday was my birthday, and I could think of no better way to celebrate than to make a dinner. I decided on all Jamie Oliver food from the Jamie in Italy cookbook after such a success with the Julia Child menu. It's fun to make all one person's food; I think it gives a better sense of the overall cookbook and style of the writer.

I like to have 3 things for dinner. I've held for a long time that there should always be three things on the plate, even if one of them is bread. But I made mozzarella cheese baked into lemons, salad with seared tuna and anchovies, and spaghetti with a pesto of basil, garlic, almonds, pecorino and farm market cherry tomatoes (shown above).

I hollowed out the lemons, and buried a half a cherry tomato, a basil leaf, some dried chile and anchovies in a couple. Bake at 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes, and serve on bread or crostini. In the words of Jamie, Brilliant!

The beginning of the salad - new potatoes dressed when still hot with lemon juice, olive oil, red onion and s&p, and cooled to room temperature, then mixed with salad greens, the seared tuna and cooked eggs. If I would have cooked up more tuna, the salad alone would have been plenty for dinner, even considering the diners I had.

The tuna was gorgeous. Sushi Grade. Need I say more?

It would have been a shame to cook it any more than this. It melted in your mouth.

The pasta was terrific. I was glad it was my birthday and I splurged on the package of imported Italian spaghetti for $3.50... It was also really good. And fairly healthful, if you ask me...

Sasa said, "What's this?" when she saw the cupcakes in their storage container. For my birthday, of course I had to make cake of some sort. I used more of the Daring Failure buttercream stealthily in the centers of these moist chocolate ones... and a lean version of almond buttercream for the top.

I'll probably have to make these again next week when Gina visits. Anything for Cake!So today, we're off to Chicago. I hope I can walk up an appetite...since I finally get to go to Topolompampo tonight! I am covertly concealing a borrowed camera in my bag, due to my recent addiction to photographing my food. So hopefully, I will have some new stories to tell of amazing Mexican food when I return.

Not a bad way to start my 33rd year...my palindrome birthday as it is. All the cooking is resting my hands from the knitting a little, and I think by next week I'll be able to pick up the needles again if I'm careful not to be such a stressful knitter.

Jamie Oliver = Fantastic Lunch

Yesterday I had to make a pot of Jamie Oliver's Humble Home Cooked Beans from his new cookbook: Jamie at Home. The photography in this book is just great, and I'd challenge you to want to make these beans based solely on the photos of them alone. Jamie Oliver does have great asthetic, and even though his food seems to be a bit high-brow, it is always amazingly simple to prepare.

I never tried cranberry beans before, but found them easily at my food co-op. And his recipe is fantastic... only I had to refrain from making it into a pot of soup. I swear it tasted as if I added bacon, and they are completely vegetarian. I was planning to eat them on toast with tomatoes and basil like he suggests, but I never got that far because for lunch today, I saw the mango salsa from yesterday peering back at me with longing. (This particular mango salsa was raw, but extra good due to the red chile from my garden, and the plethora of herbs from my yard: cilantro, pineapple sage and Vietnamese coriander. And man were those chiles HOT!)

HOT chiles.

So as I often do with leftover mango salsa, I made tacos. The beans were delicious, and kind of remind me of super big pintos. Of course, I added cheese, and hot sauce, but still I could taste those wonderful beans. I don't think I've ever had a bean I didn't like, but these - especially with the rosemary and thyme Jamie Oliver style - I'll definately earmark to make again.

And I will go to sleep tonight thinking of the lunch I'll have tomorrow, to Mr. Oliver's recommendation: beans on toast, with tomatoes and basil. I'm sure a photo will be forthcoming...