My sister and I celebrated our birthdays today (March 28).  We turned 54 years old.  It is just so strange, so foreign to verbalize (write) that I am that age.  It doesn’t fit.  It doesn’t feel right.  Yet, that’s how old I am.   

No matter what age I am, I will always gratefully celebrate the gift of life.  The gift of another day.  We didn’t do anything special, we are choosing to observe the quarantine and stay inside.  Being alive, healthy and safe is special enough. 

We spent the day cooking, baking, watching movies.  We did some yoga poses and answered the several phone calls we got.  

For breakfast my sister made bagels from scratch.  She loves bagels and eats them every weekend.  We didn’t have any and didn’t want to go out to buy it.  So she got a recipe online.  It came out pretty tasty.

Homemade Bagels

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh

I haven’t baked a cake in a long time, but wanted to make one for our birthday.  I made a chocolate cake with two fillings.  One filling was a coconut cream and the other was a chocolate cream.  I covered it with chocolate ganache. 

Chocolate Cake

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh

It was a combination of 2 of my favorite Brazilian cakes:  Bolo prestigio (with coconut filling) and Bolo Brigadeiro (with chocolate filling).  The pictures don’t do justice.  It was absolutely to die for.  I wish you guys could taste it. It was not overly sweet.

Slice of heave, I mean chocolate cake

“Around us, life bursts with miracles–a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops. If you live in awareness, it is easy to see miracles everywhere. Each human being is a multiplicity of miracles. Eyes that see thousands of colors, shapes, and forms; ears that hear a bee flying or a thunderclap; a brain that ponders a speck of dust as easily as the entire cosmos; a heart that beats in rhythm with the heartbeat of all beings. When we are tired and feel discouraged by life’s daily struggles, we may not notice these miracles, but they are always there.”― Thich Nhat Hahn