Our family has a somewhat unusual, even curious way of doing birthdays.
Far from the restaurant dinners and birthday cakes, which, at another point in time, we might have done, these days we tend to whittle it down to what we like and so get creative with what we want to do.
There've been times where we've had McDonalds.
There've also been times where we've gone for fried Hokkien mee and chye tow kuay from the famous coffee shop opposite the neighborhood park.
This year, however, we decided to 'not go so far' and do a supper at the coffee shop right downstairs our home instead
We've eaten quite a bit from this coffee shop this year.
But today we decided to switch things up a little, do things a little different.
From the Western food stall in the coffee shop we got an order of fried spring chicken, plus a side of fries, and garden salad.
Then, to zhng up the meal, we went to the 24 hour prata shop next door we got an order of nasi goreng pattaya takeaway, bringing it over.
It was a lovely meal.
The fries and salad we evenly split.
As we did the mountain of nasi goreng pattaya.
The fried chicken had already been (thoughtfully) halved for us, so, after a couple minutes of using the cutlery, we put it aside and dug into it with our hands.
I thought it rather fun.
The Parent liked the chicken.
The skin was crisp, the meat tasty, and most of the meat- with just a little bit of pulling- fell cleanly off the bone.
We dipped the crinkle cut fries into the salad sauce.
We also dipped them into the nasi goreng chili sauce.
I don't have a picture of the rice underneath all that egg.
But it was tasty, salty on some sides, and had a couple pieces of chicken hidden amongst all the rice.
Our celebration wasn't just a meal of nasi goreng and fried chicken.
I'd brought along a box of pastries too.
The Parent is someone who "is fine with anything" and who "eats anything" but from time to time, the savory palate overtakes the sweet, so, instead of sliced cake and nyonya kueh, we had pastries of Wife Biscuits, and Lotus with Salted Egg this year.
They were (I'm pretty glad to say) a winner.
The pastry was soft but not so crumbly that everything fell out, and the filling wasn't overwhelmingly sweet.
There were no complaints of the Wife Biscuit, nor the Lotus Pastry (which we split and shared) and we finished them with thick, delicious cups of kopi that we got from another late-night coffee shop situated somewhere down the road.