Great Friends, Great Food

This past weekend we celebrated the birthday of one of my favorite people, my great friend of 14 years, D. She turned 35 this year. We met during undergrad, many years ago and we instantly became friends. Friends that can go months without seeing one another, friends that can talk on the phone once every month or two, friends that only had one falling-out incident (which I still maintain was a misunderstanding and totally a result of our, or rather my, immaturity- we still laugh about those two weeks of no communication), friends that share laughs and tears, friends that no matter who, what, where, when, why and how, know that 24/7 we will find that shoulder to cry on, the ears to listen to us, the warm hug to comfort and greet us, and the words that make everything OK. D and I make up 1/2 of wonderful friendship. The other 1/2 are our friends J and L. Of course they were there as well. Other friends of ours rounded out the group of eight that met at Maggiano's for dinner. This is one of my favorite restaurants...but you can't eat here too often, which why you will soon discover. With this many people we opted for family style dinner. Basically, it's all you can eat, of each course of a typical meal. You select two appetizers, two salads, two pastas, two entrees, and two desserts. Everyone shares and if you want more of anything, or in our case more of everything, you just ask the server and it appears in no time. We ate like pigs, we ordered more food and continued to eat and drink. The dessert was unreal....cheesecake with strawberries and strawberry syrup and a decadent chocolate cake. These were so rich and creamy and disappeared in no time. We luckily didn't order more. I ate so much that I could barely get up at the end of dinner. The place closes too early in our opinion and we were one of a few tables remaining at 11 p.m. We then headed to D's house where her daughter and husband were waiting eagerly for us to bring home the leftovers. After some conversation and TV we all headed home.

This coming weekend we'll be celebrating me turn 34, and my choice is to go the casino. For dinner, I am not sure where I will pick to go. I will twist their arms and convince them to go for pizza. I am sure they will veto that, but I am the birthday boy after all and it will be my night!