This year for my birthday I had curry duck at a northwest suburban Thai restaurant. Or, as the menu put it: “Boneless roast duck simmered in Thai spices, red curry, coconut milk, red peppers, green peppers, onions, grapes and fresh basil leaves.” Excellent choice, it was. I didn’t do the modern thing and point a camera at the savory concoction. I did the old-fashioned thing and ate it.

The cake this year was German Chocolate Cake. According to this list, at least, June 11 – close enough – is German Chocolate Cake Day, which I never knew until I looked into the question of just where German Chocolate Cake was created.

As luck would have it, Snopes weighs in on that subject, asserting that it’s in fact an American creation, and popularized only since the 1950s. Something like chop suey not really being Chinese, but who eats chop suey anyway? Or chili con carne in fact being norteamericano.

We picked up the cake at a local bakery, and it proved as sweet and gooey as it needed to be. Note the candles. Lilly put them on, using all those we had handy. No one seriously suggested we load the thing with 53 little candles.

Good things to eat for your birthday, but still not as good as when I turned 21. My college friend Dan was taking a class that summer called Economy Botany, taught by one Dr. Channel, which I should have taken myself, but didn’t. Dr. Channel had invited Dan, and a girl named Rona, to his large house near campus for dinner. Dan asked me to come along, or maybe asked a number of us to come, but only I could. It was a coincidence that it was my birthday; I don’t think Dan knew till I mentioned it late in the evening.

“Dr. Channel served a multi-course, skillfully made meal,” I wrote. “We ate hors d’oeuvre – shrimp, vegetables, various dips – a special Georgia onion, baked, and a massive cheesy meaty spicy thick pizza, made from scratch by the professor, including herbs on top fresh from his sprawling garden, a part of his lush back yard that runs off in all directions. We ate under a bower near the garden, and finished off the meal with a wonderful pistachio pie.”

What did I do to deserve that meal? Right place, right time, I guess. The special Georgia onion, I know now, was a Vidalia. Dr. Channel had baked it in aluminum foil, I think. I never knew an onion could be so sweet.