For my stellar  manpartner’s 31st birthday, we had a few pals come over for wine, prohibition-y cocktails and ho-hum, garden-variety apps.

We laid out the usual suspects: cheese, crackers, veggies, curried deviled eggs. But we unleashed the addition of something a little more awesome-sounding—salmon profiteroles…

Also in our kitchen: cilantro-sesame-teriyaki meatballs.

Here’s the b-day boy shakin’ up a vodka-elderflower-lemon juice-pomegranate elixir. Clearly the lady’s cocktail, although the boys seemed to like it too!

So back to these salmon profiteroles. It’s just a puff pastry filled with herby cream cheese, sandwiched with salmon. Pretty cheesy, I gotta say. Next time I’d add just a smear of cream cheese, not a gargantuan dollop.

Overall, it was a B- appetizer. I was dying to suck the salmon off of each one and discard the rest of the pouf, which tells me I should probably just serve sashimi or smoked salmon with toast rounds at a party. But maybe other people liked their uber-cheesiness? Not sure.

Curried deviled eggs… perfecto.

Afterward, we walked to a restaurant a block away and stuffed ourselves with horseradish-crusted salmon, chicken-fried steak, green chile cheddar grits and apple cobbler in a skillet, from what we remember, that is! (Note to self: After seven cocktails, just eat a Big Mac, since you won’t remember the meal anyway.)

Ahh, such fun!

Happy birthday, husband.

Oceans of love, always.