I turned 60 yesterday, hard as it is for me to believe! Honestly, 20 years ago, I never thought I’d see it, in fact I was quite assured that I never would, that 40 might well be my last. (No, I’m not going into any more detail than that.) I spent my 40th in Rome, feeling sorry for myself, came back, and one of my best friends, Frank, had put together a backyard barbecue…

There were probably more photos from the event, but they’ve disappeared over the years. A dozen of my closest friends attended, and looking around, I was determined it wouldn’t be my last. Twenty years, good research, good doctors, exercise, good eating, good drinking, and all is well, and I’m still here.

Ten years ago I wrote about my history of milestone birthdays, and my 50th birthday party here in BA. This year, I decided rather than a party at home, I wanted to do, well, what I really enjoy doing. I didn’t want to spend the day cooking, and we don’t have space for more than just a few friends to join us anyway at home. I love going out to dinner with friends, and decided to invite every friend I’ve made here in BA over the last 13+ years to join me at one of my favorite restaurants, Caracol de Amor, for some real, authentic, Chinese cooking. [Closed during the pandemic.]

100+ electronic invitations went out a bit over a month ago. Now, one of the interesting things about electronic invites is the person who sent them gets notified when the person receiving them opens it. It surprised me that about 3/4 of the people simply never opened the invite (most sent via Facebook, some via email). I’m sure some of you will object to not having gotten an invite to the party – you did, you just didn’t look at it.

But hey, it meant a manageable number of folk (in the end, there were 21 of us, with 2 last minute cancellations due to a death in the family, and 1 no show) for a truly excellent dinner, and Min, the owner and head chef of the place, truly couldn’t have done better on the cooking, it was superb. And, a great time had by all! Henry took some videos, which you can find here and here. I was focused on having a good time so didn’t really take photos, Henry took a couple. I grabbed a couple of the cake.

Not having photographed the food, all I can do is let you imagine – we had four different kinds of dumplings, of course. Then we had sweet and sour chicken (not the gloopy overly sweet stuff, but the real thing), twice-cooked spicy pork belly, beef and pepper saute, szechuan beef, chicken fried rice, seafood rice noodles, chinese broccoli with garlic, spicy braised eggplant, and a little gift from the house of handmade, in the moment (Min was literally at the counter making them as we ate), sweet fried sesame and peanut dumplings for a little finisher before… the cake…

Happy Birthday to me!

And hey, there’s lots more to come as far as I’m concerned.