Happy Birthday Liz!

Friday was my cousin Liz’s 26th birthday!

Liz and I are very close! We grew up together. She’s my closest cousin in age, since all my other cousin’s are a lot older or younger.

Liz is also an artist! She illustrates children’s books. How awesome is that? Her birthday also happened to fall on Albany’s First Friday. First Friday is Albany’s art event, where tons of local places host local artwork. Liz was lucky enough to showcase some of her art at the Daily Grind on Lark Street.

Since we were at the Daily Grind and it was dinner time…I ordered something to eat. The Daily Grind is a cute but small coffee shop, with a menu of sandwiches and some breakfast items.

I ordered the bagel with smoked salmon.

It came with cream cheese, tomato, onions, lettuce and capers! I have never had capers until yesterday. They were salty. But the smoked salmon was delicious! I used less than half of that scoop of cream cheese.

I also ordered an iced strawberry green tea, which was really good.

Our dinner at Daily Grind was nice…but it was just a precursor to Liz’s real birthday celebration…a late dinner at Hana Japanese Steakhouse, a hibachi restaurant!

Since I wasn’t really hungry, I just ordered a Summer Roll: crab, shrimp, and spring mix in rice paper.

It came in a really spicy sauce! There was cucumber in the roll, which was kind of disappointing. I hate cucumber. 🙁 But I did try a piece of a dragon roll sushi, which was spicy tuna, and it was so good! I’m going back there for that sometime.

But I also ordered a tea called blueberry cheesecake.

It was very blueberry! 😉

We sat at the Hibachi table, and Liz ordered a meal off of the Hibachi menu, so the chef came right out to cook for us. This was so awesome!

Next time I definitely want to order Hibachi…so I can see the chef make my dinner! 🙂

Then it was time for CAKE! One of Liz’s friends got her a cake from Crisan, her (and my) favorite bakery! (My birthday cake also came from Crisan!)

The cake was layered–chocolate, and almond cake? I think..there was definitely almond slivers in the frosting too. It was amazing!!

Liz’s birthday was so much fun. I hope she has a great time, because she is an awesome cousin. 🙂 Love you Liz!

c