Hello April! She's a real peach, ain't she? April is one of my favorite months because it gifted me with one of my favorite people, Scott Bobleo. He was born on April 3, and this year while he was turning 33 years old, our little Babeleo was hitting 33 weeks. Twinsies!
To celebrate Bobleo's special day, we invited our most avid board game playing friends over for an epic twelve player game of Catan. Worlds collided, rules were shaken up and tradition was challenged. It was pretty awesome. The best moment of the game was when someone pulled the custom development card I'd snuck into the deck. Tornado! Everyone had to get up and move one seat down. This put everyone on a new team with a whole different set of resources and cards. There's nothing more hilarious than disrupting a bunch of geeks on the cusp of loss and triumph. Scott says he plans to remove my special cards from the deck, but I think they make things much more fun.
Since Bobleo couldn't decide what he wanted for a birthday treat I decided to give in to two of my latest cravings, peanut butter and banana. First, I baked an intensley sweet batch of Joy the Baker's Chocolate Bourbon-Spiked Banana Bread. It came out pretty well, but even after an extra half hour of baking the middle never really firmed up. I had a bit of a collapse on my hands when the bread cooled down, but no big deal. It was still quite tasty.
To go with the banana bread I made a batch of Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream's Buckeye State Ice Cream. This is my absolute favorite peanut butter ice cream, complete with crunchy flakes of chocolate. It's like licking a peanut butter cup, only better.
Speaking of cravings, I was attacked with a serious lust for sushi this weekend. I haven't encountered too many true cravings during this pregnancy, but this one may have made up for lost time. I felt like an addict! I haven't wanted something so badly since I was a cigarette smoker. That was a good ten years ago now, but I remember clearly what it was like to "jones for a smoke". It was like that, only I wanted sushi instead.
This wouldn't be such a big deal except that I'm currently suffering under a husband-enforced restaurant/takeout embargo. We need to cut down our expenses, so our food budget was the very first thing to get slashed. Sushi dinners just aren't in the cards right now. I quelled the worst of the craving with a roll from the grocery store. It was OK, and it certainly took the edge off, but I'm still dreaming about the real thing. I'm talking about freshly rolled room temperature rice, kewpie mayo, avocado and sweet potato tempura dipped in soy sauce.
This is definitely going to happen soon. I'm fully prepared to make it myself. My plan is to enlist a few hungry friends for a sushi making and eating party some night soon. I'm going to fill up a little boat with maki rolls then destroy it like Godzilla.
By the way, if you are also craving Japanese food, be sure and stop by Full and Content. Lisa graciously hosted me for a guest post there where I shared a roundup of my favorite easy Japanese recipes. Veggie Sushi and Vegan Tempura are both on the list! See where I'm going with this? You can have a sushi party too.
P.S. Check out these adorable Game of Thrones cupcakes that my friend, James, made! What?! They are so cool!