The Ultimate Final Fantasy XIV Online Cookbook

Sweet Sixteen

Today is Ladybug’s 16th birthday!

We did things a little differently this year since Moose has a band concert tonight. So let’s start with a look at her birthday dinner, which we actually had on her Birthday Eve! She chose two recipes from Destiny: The Official Cookbook…tortilla chicken soup with all the toppings, and “Coldheart,” a green smoothie with kiwis, banana, mango, avocado, and spinach:

For dessert, she turned to The Ultimate Final Fantasy XIV Online Cookbook, where she found a recipe for “Princess Pudding,” which was a type of lava cake:

She waited until this morning to open her presents. It was a very Stitch themed birthday!

Is it even a birthday in our house if there aren’t Legos?

Happy Sweet Sixteen Ladybug!

Tasty Tuesday–A Day Inspired by Final Fantasy XIV

Ladybug has been wanting to prepare a meal (or two!) using recipes from The Ultimate Final Fantasy XIV Online Cookbook, and we decided that spring break was the perfect opportunity. So last Wednesday, we had a day of Final Fantasy XIV-themed foods, starting with a “Sandwich Basket” for lunch. It included egg salad, roast beef with horseradish sauce, and lettuce, tomato, and avocado varieties:

For dinner, she choose “Deep-Fried Okeanis,” which was pretty much a schnitzel that would also work well for pork katsu sandwiches. It was served with some herb roasted potatoes that were really good.

Every good themed meal needs a special drink, so we made “The Black Shroud Lemonade,” which had a simple syrup made of honey and sugar…that gave it a unique flavor that I really enjoyed!

And for dessert, we made a “Rolanberry Cheesecake,” which had a combination of cherries, strawberries, and raspberries in the sauce. It was really delicious, and it didn’t crack at all!

I’m not really familiar with the game itself, but it certainly did provide us with a lot of good food!

Fifteen!

Today is Ladybug’s 15th birthday! We did a lot of our celebrating yesterday, because it’s more fun to have a birthday on the weekend, but she waited until this morning to open presents:

I think she liked them!

Her birthday dinner came entirely from The Ultimate Final Fantasy XIV Online Cookbook…Pixieberry tea, cabbage rolls (her birthday dinner of choice for three years running!), and rye bread:

For her cake, I re-created (or tried to) a chocolate cake she had a few years ago, with white and milk chocolate mousse fillings and chocolate ganache. I wasn’t entirely thrilled with how it turned out (the mousses weren’t as stiff as they should have been, and I wanted the ganache to drizzle, not cover so well, so you could see the fillings), but she liked it, and it was delicious, which is all that really matters!

Happy Birthday Ladybug!

The First Birthday of 2022

How lucky are we that we have Ryan’s birthday to celebrate so early in the year every year?!? Since his birthday also falls on Epiphany, it’s always a double celebration, as we have our last holiday meal of the festive season, too!

He picked chili for his birthday dinner last night, with all the fixin’s, plus fry bread, which everybody loves.

For his birthday cake, Ladybug and I tried a new recipe from The Ultimate Final Fantasy XIV Cookbook for a “Chocobo Cake” which I can assure you was made with no actual chocobos. It was a vanilla-cardamom cake soaked in a lemon syrup and filled with strawberries and topped with vanilla whipped cream. It was very delicious!

I always feel like we’ve gotten the year off to a good start once we’ve had a birthday celebration!