The one with the cumpleaños

I decided to try "Friends"-style naming for my post today...if you've never watched that series so as to see that each episode is named something with "The one with/about...", you should...I think I owe that knowledge to my freshman year roommate who purchased the entire series; I believe we got through it at least twice...good times...

Anyway, to the present...
So yesterday was Salud's birthday...it was so cute...we told her "happy birthday" (or rather, "feliz cumpleaños") in the morning and she was just loving it, and when I got back from school before lunch time, I found her in the kitchen, but she was all dolled up; she'd even straightened her hair! (she said at supper that it's the one time during the year that she will do it; just once during the year is all she's willing to do because it takes so much time...it was fairly amusing) She made us a HUGE lunch to celebrate, but she herself was going out to lunch with her daughter and son-in-law...We had a "pizza" each...(for real, she feeds us too much! it's a blessing and a curse) plus there was the salad (that neither of us touched); she bought "langostinas" which are, according to Salud, "expensive in my country; I don't know about in your country, but in my country, they're expensive"...They looked like giant shrimp, but did not taste shrimpy at all...I later looked it up in my little handy dandy phrase book and found that I had eaten two crayfish along with my pizza at lunch...they're pretty good and I would have to recommend them...AND besides this, she had a can of Coke for Karla (she loves the stuff) and a can of some sort of orange pop that had 8% fruit juice, so I guess it supposedly was "healthy" so supposedly I would drink it...112kCal of liquid? Thank you, I think not...But, she had taken the time to put little lime halves in some fancy glasses for us to go with our pop, so I went ahead and used the fancy cup (and both limes) with some water because I didn't want to waste all her efforts...Oh, and then there were two little mandarinas (aka tiny oranges)...so yeah, LOTS of food!
Then, as Salud was gone for most of the rest of the "afternoon", I tried to finish knitting a scarf for her, because I thought she might like it (we sit and knit and watch TV together fairly often; I feel like I'm an old lady or something...but at least it's nice that we have something fun in common like that...); I did not finish the scarf even though I spent plenty of time knitting yesterday, but it's definitely close and I think I can finish it up today...hopefully...THEN, when she finally got back at 9:30pm...we went out for dinner...we went to a cute restaurant/bar that was a couple of blocks away, and we got tapa-sized portions and beverages...there were olives as an appetizer, but they were the super salty kind like you can get in the states, and Salud didn't much care for them, and I was like, this is what olives usually taste like! (not that I'm a big fan of green olives back home either...) But yeah, it was a fun time...then when we got home, Salud made us eat fruit, but she had purchased what she called "caqui" or something to that effect...which I think was a persimmon, since I had seen some of them on the way to school and they looked about right...I'll have to do some Google-ing in a moment...Whatever it was, it was good...

Another random story, which actually does relate right here because after the mystery fruit we got a taste of the next batch of membrillo...Membrillo is evidently called "quince" in English, not that I'd ever seen one before...it's like a super hard, not that good, apple...So you cook it up and make it into a jelly type stuff called "dulce de membrillo"...Well, Salud likes to make at least one batch every year so her girls can try it...so she made her one batch and I tried some and I was like "yeah, it's good, I like it...I can't describe the taste because it's different from anything I've had before"...It was kind of akin to apple butter, which makes sense, but still it was a bit different...but good...So anyway, I would put that on my toast in the mornings every once in a while...So, this whole process of making the dulce de membrillo is a TON of work, so Salud only does it once a year, right? So, she's like, well, since my Sarah likes it so much, I'm making another batch since you can't get it at home! I wouldn't want you to run out!! So, she threw out what was left of the strawberry jam and was like "jam you can get in your country; membrillo, no"...so now I'm going to have lots of "dulce de membrillo", which, although I did indeed like, I would've been fine with one batch...Oh heavens...gotta love Salud...If she thinks you like it, you're going to end up eating LOTS of it!!