The Parents got a butter cake from the thirty-year old bakery at the shops near our house downstairs for the birthday this year.
We sang the song, we took the picture, and we put it back in the fridge to have it nice and firm and cold for Dessert.
There is always a Lunch at home when it comes to birthdays, and the menu varies year on year.
This year we had a plate of siew mais bought frozen from the supermarket downstairs which we steamed in the rice cooker.
I love these little dim sums.
In fact I love them so much they've been a constant favorite of mine during family celebrations.
We usually lay them over with lettuce and cherry tomatoes.
Today however we left out the tomatoes and had just the lettuce instead.
It wasn't just dim sum for lunch, of course.
On the table too we had food from the coffee shop that we arranged on cute little trays (because, hey, upcycling) and because we're lazy to do the washing. :)
It's not.
Others might think fried eggs, meat patties, brinjals and potatoes from the coffee shop might seem like an ordinary meal, but to us, it is part of a family lunch which all of us enjoy.
There was no problem splitting out the portions- there was enough for everyone- and then after that it was my turn to start work on the hardboiled quail eggs already cooled and sitting in their box on the table.
It's a tradition in The Family that we have quail eggs- sometimes with barley and bean curd skin dessert- on all our birthdays every year.
It's also a tradition that the task of peeling the shell off these babies falls to me every time, every year.
Quail eggs aren't the only tradition in our household.
Noodles at birthdays are a tradition as well.
WE had two kinds of noodles this year.
One was a hor fun with gravy that we got from the zichar stall downstairs.
The other was a specially prepared bowl of ramen in miso soup that had fish balls, cuttlefish balls, seafood wantons and hot dogs bobbing about together with lots of lettuce, lots of seaweed, big red tomatoes and sesame oil.
I ate up most of the ramen.
The Parents got more of the soup.
We were rather full by the time lunch was over, but hey, it is never a celebration without Sweets, so we cleared everything up, put everything back, and then settled down for dessert.
There was a bagful of Chupa Chups lollipops which they said were all for me.
There were little cups of warm vanilla ice cream- one for each of us.
And to top it all off, we took out the cake, cut a couple of slices up, and had it together with ice cream and cute, chubby little bananas too.