Desayuno Chapin y Cumpleaños Felices

I plan to make a series of posts this week: partly because I am rather unexpectedly in possession of more time than usual for blogging and the like, and partly because this last week has been incredibly full. To recap in brief, Steve, Jayne, Thomas and Paul (Daniel's oldest brother and family) came to visit for much of the week. That was a wonderful time, and I promise to cover it in more detail in future posts. However, I plan to work backwards a bit, starting with some of the most recent events.

This weekend, Erik and Robyn came over to observe two birthdays: Daniel's 39th on Friday and Erik's 32nd, which is today. One feature of the weekend was Guatemalan breakfast. Daniel called Guatemala home for 14 years, and so when we managed to find a Guatemalan brand (Ducal) of refried black beans (volteados) in a local store here, he bought them and introduced me to the wonder that is Guatemalan breakfast. I think it will become a favorite at our house. Our version featured volteados, tortillas de mais (corn), chirmol (a sort of roasted salsa that Dan made from scratch), queso (Mexican cheese, in this case, because Guatemalan cheese still evades us), huevos con cebolla (eggs with onion), Crema Guatemalteca (a mixture of sour cream, cream cheese and heavy cream), fruit and coffee. We would have added fried ripe platano (plantains) had we remembered to buy them.
As for the title of the post, Guatemalans refer to themselves as "chapin" and "desayuno" is, as you have probably guessed, breakfast. The second half of the title, of course, refers to happy birthdays, and so, with that, I proceed to part two of the post.

Robyn and I made birthday cakes this weekend. It was a collaborative effort in the kitchen, but I did most of Daniel's cake, and Robyn did most of Erik's. I, at least, had a lot of fun working on them.

Daniel's cake was a "giant ding dong", complete with devils food cake, cream filling and a chocolate glaze. I prefer, however, to think of it as a giant hockey puck. This puck featured something like the emblem of the team that still, in his heart of hearts, has the most pull for Daniel. I got the team emblem close enough that Dan said he recognized it immediately, which was all I aspired to, given that I was decorating free-hand. However, to Dan's great feigned sorrow, I was unable to put the official NHL logo on the underside of the cake. I'm just not that good.

Erik's cake was vanilla with a sort of chocolate chip crust on the bottom and whipped cream frosting and filling. It was very light and tasty (not death-by-sugar like the puck) and was decorated with the brightly-colored emblem of his favorite Swedish fotboll (soccer!) club: Djurgårdens I. F.; where the D. I. F. would ordinarily have been on the crest, Robyn put his name.
On Sunday, we each had a small slice of each cake, offset in part by some cheese and crackers. Robyn and Erik then returned home and Dan and I collapsed into a sugar coma for a couple of hours. It was a fitting end to a very long week.
So, allow me to end with wishes for a very happy birthday to my beloved husband Daniel, to our good friend Erik, and a very happy belated birthday to our darling niece, Talia, who celebrated her first birthday last weekend. I would invite you to visit her family blog for photos of that joyous event, which we, sadly, could not celebrate in person.

Many years!