Happy Birthday Michelle

Where can I begin to describe the love I have for my beautiful wife. She had another birthday this weekend, a nice round one. We celebrated. She is quite simply the most generous and loving person I know. She is always looking out for our family and her friends surround her like plants orbitting the sun, always drawn to the light of her smile.

The birthday portrait this year is in our entry way. Samuel is getting pretty good at photography. We missed Joseph as he is at the Arctic Winter Games, but we did get to talk with all our children, and Michelle was serenaded by the grandsons from Nebraska on a video chat link. Technology is really great.

No party is complete without a birthday song and candles to wish on. I hope her wish comes true, because I know mine did.

To get ready for a feast, you have to prepare the goodies. This is the 22nd or 23rd year in a row that I have made German Chocolate Cake for Michelle. It is her favorite, and has been since she was just a little girl in El Paso. Family legend has it that she once spent a week's worth of grocery money on a German Chocolate Cake, and ate almost all of it before getting home from the bakery, only to be scolded for not buying the bread for dinner.

One must have buns for dinner too. (that is rolls for our American friends)

After finishing the cake, I made cup cakes for the children of freinds of ours that came over for dinner. The cup cakes were from a mix, but I did use the rest of the frosting on them. The cake itself is almost 6 inches high - 3 layers of culinary heaven with frosting!

Since man does not live by bread (or cake) alone, I also made a pork chop recipe I tried about 2 weeks back. It is from Cooks Illustrated, and is one of the best pork dishes we have ever had. After you spice the meat, you dredge it in flour, let it sit for 10 minutes and the dredge again. The chops are then fried in bacon grease and cooking oil at medium high heat. Crispy on the outside, and moist and tneder on the inside. Better than those bugs form the Disney movie The Lion King. Hakuna Matata!

The little pieces in the pic are bite sized morsels that got the same treatment as the chops. The children all said they loved the "chicken nuggets." The left overs were used by the Ghetto Gourmet (Samuel) in a stirfry he got from a snow boarder magazine. The sauce is quite tasty, but too high in sodium for me ( I am, after all, older than Methuselah - just ask my children)


The Ghetto Gourmet and one of our friends, Scott.