It was supposed to be date night last night, but after getting off to a late start after work, that quickly turned into an hour together at the gym, massive indecisiveness about what we wanted to eat, then me watching boyfriend eat two blue cheese wedges after realizing it was too late to be hungry. We made up for it today, though, starting with a two-scoop ice cream cone at Ben & Jerry’s: 1 scoop Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, 1 scoop Late Night Snack, in a chocolate-dipped sugar cone with sprinkles. (Many tasting spoons were sacrificed on Chocolate Therapy, Coconut Seven Layer Bar, What a Cluster [miraculously too peanut buttery even for me!] and the impressive new Bonarroo Buzz.)

Then we headed to a Hoboken sports bar we’d been wanting to check out, mostly because of a long-ignored wings craving. These were worth the wait: half buffalo and half root beer BBQ, with really excellent blue cheese. The root beer was too sweet for me; boyfriend ate all but one of them.

After debating main course choices for literally about half an hour, he settled on a classic burger (medium, no cheese, ew, BORING) with onion rings and I got the 1Republik special: sherry roquefort fondue, ale-battered thick-cut bacon, caramelized onions and mushrooms.

Their handcut fries are absolutely fantastic: salty and golden on the outside, fluffy and creamy on the inside, like the very best of fast-food french fries. The combination of the roquefort fondue and the caramelized onions and mushrooms was superb. It was an amazing burger. So, I did something I never, ever do at restaurants. 

I sent it back. I’d asked for medium rare, like actually, really, on the pink side of medium rare. I know it’s bad to order burgers that way. I know I’m being a jerk. I don’t care. I don’t see the point of eating them gray and flaccid all the way through, as this one was when it arrived.

Ten minutes and one apologetic waitress later, I had my burger just the way I wanted it. Having helped myself to the onion rings while I was waiting, I ditched the top bun, cut the burger in half, and made a giant double-stacked burger sandwich. Yum.

Last night we belatedly celebrated two birthdays. My friend Melissa, who lives in England most of the time and recently landed a fantastic new job (yay) specifically requested cookies and cream cake, and I’d found a bunny cake mold on sale for Easter. I tried making my own colored writing icing for the first time and used a ziploc as a pastry bag, which worked quite well and is not to blame for the fact that Melissa’s bunny cake looks kind of cranky and dour (which is how her real-life bunny tends to look as well, so at least it’s sort of accurate).

Pro tip: I actually just learned this yesterday. If you let a cake cool in the pan for too long (more than ten minutes), it’ll be much trickier to get it out. Run hot water over the bottom of the pan (um, try not to get it on the cake) and then it should pop out perfectly in one piece.

My boyfriend’s roommate isn’t particularly into desserts, but other than that we have eerily similar palates, and are both really into things like Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice tea, smoked fish of all sorts, fancy mushrooms, and bacon. Rather than make another birthday cake, I decided to create a meat construction in the vein of the infamous meat ship.  

The meat fish was composed of a body of ground buffalo, covered in pork belly scales with fins and facial features cut out of steak. 

The fins got a little disfigured in the cooking process.

Amazingly, the boys actually ate the meat fish. With barbecue sauce. Off of one plate. I mean, I don’t know what I expected. I was somewhere between very proud and totally disgusted.