golden birthday

It's no secret, I love birthdays! Last week we got to celebrate J-rod's birthday. Typically we take the day off but this year it didn't work out with our crazy schedules so we extended the party throughout the week, here are some highlights:

Tuesday (his actual birthday) - He spent the day at the I-Cubs with his team from work and then we went to dinner at Jethro's. K2, J-rod and myself split 40 wings, they were 2-for-1, so we didn't mess around. We came close to finishing but only made it through 32 of them.

Thursday - I finally got around to making his favorite birthday cake, a lemon cake with white frosting with sprinkles. In years past I've tried to fancy it up with different recipes I've found but he wasn't interested.

Friday - Dinner at Sbrocco. It was fantastic. We had a Living Social deal that was hard to beat, 4 drinks and 4 small plates. To start things off we split the frites with truffle oil and parmesan. We've had these before and they didn't disappoint again, much better than any french fry I've ever had. Then we ordered the spicy ratatouille with goat cheese and toasted bread and the pork belly with bacon sautéed slaw. The ratatouille was perfectly cooked but I wanted some more goat cheese to mix in. The pork belly was fantastic but in my mind I was thinking it was going to be a lot more like bacon but instead it was a super tender and reminded me of pulled pork and the slaw was superb. We ended the evening with two more small plates, pan seared scallops with a cauliflower purée and caramelized onions with an apple cider syrup and swedish meatballs. The scallops were delightful, the cauliflower puree was outstanding. I don't really care for swedish meatballs but they are one of Jared's favorites. While I enjoyed the sauce that was on them, I thought the meatball was on the dry side.

As for the presents, J-rod insisted on no gifts other than a new phone. I'm not very good at following the rules and you have to have something to open on the special day so I picked up a new Raygun shirt and a road id bracelet. His new phone, the Sprint EVO 3D wasn't available for order until Monday. It arrived just in time for the weekend, so we had a great time trying it out. And we are now an EVO family.