Lunch on July 25 - El Cholo leftovers

Juju's birthday was last Friday and I forgot to take photos of the dinner as I mentioned I would last week.  Everything kind of came together at the last minute.  But, I did take a photo of the cake!  It was a dark chocolate recipe from Donna Hay's book Off the Shelf that my friend Billy gave me many years ago.  I would post the recipe here but honestly, it wasn't that amazing.  However I do recommend the book because her other recipes are delicious, easy to make, and nothing is ever ordinary.

It was a great birthday indeed:

Last night we continued the celebration and ate dinner at El Cholo where Julian was serenaded in Spanish and given her first taste of flan.  (She preferred the whip cream and caramel sauce to the actual flan).  I am serving the leftover rice, beans, and taco meat for lunch along with strawberries and watermelon.

As I watched the family next to us at the restaurant feed their 10 month old drops of Coca-Cola from a straw I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if we implemented a plan I read about in the New York Times on Sunday morning proposing we tax soda and other junk food while subsidizing vegetables.  It's an extraordinary idea even if it does have a few flaws (for example it's all well and good to make whole grains cheap and widely available but in addition to price a lot of people prefer fast food because it's fast - waiting 20 or 30 minutes for your quinoa or millet to cook is a luxury a lot or people, especially poor people, don't always have) but still really encouraging.  I love the idea of subsidized vegetables and a plan to give cooking tools and lessons to those who need them.  I also especially liked the line that has us imagine being able to buy whole grains at the library for 50 cents a pound.  Now that would be convenient!