Does anybody else get the pre-birthday blues? I was hit hard by those this year for no apparent reason. Oh right, my birthday is tomorrow. The big.4…6. 😉 No, the blues had nothing to do with worrying about getting older (on the contrary, for obvious reasons, I am quite happy about that! 🙂 ), but Usually Cheerful Margaret was gone for the entire morning. In her place was a horrible Margaret Down in the Dumps. My parents tried to cheer me up and get me excited about my birthday, asking me what kind of cake I wanted to order (cake, even just the prospect of cake, has been known to have a cheery effect on me), but even that didn’t do the trick. Well, the gloom and doom didn’t last long. Not in my nature. By the time I had gone out on a few errands and had listened to some classical music, I was almost back to my regular self again. Then Mom and I stopped at our favourite local pastry shop (the best in the world!) and ordered my favourite dessert. In the Florentine dialect, it’s known as bongo. Bongo? It sounds exotic, but it’s simply a heap of profiteroles. Similar to a croquembouche, for those pâtissiers among you. Ah, but not just your usual boring pile of profiteroles. These are exquisite cream puffs filled with mouth-watering Chantilly cream and covered in rich dark melted chocolate. There is no dessert like a Florentine bongo. Anyway, as soon as we’d ordered that birthday bongo, my usual good humour returned. I’m baaaaack. And doing lots of research.

To all of those who are Cancers (ironic, ain’t it?) and have birthdays this month, buon compleanno! In fact, auguri a tutti quanti!