Monday was Curtis’ birthday. Here’s a shout out for my wonderful 41 year old husband of 15 years! Woo Woo! You da man! etc. etc. etc.

Yanni loves a celebration. She went into catering overdrive, taping up wrinkled, ugly pieces of crepe paper, and a fabulous happy birthday daddy banner she made on the computer.

Curtis’ cake request this year was carrot. After years of having perfected the German chocolate cake, we had to find a carrot cake recipe. We settled on an Emeril recipe with pecans in the frosting, and added pineapples, as per Curtis’ request.

Making the cake was a real family affair. Imani and Joy started out grating baby carrots for the required 3 cups, but were soon replaced by Yanni and Xay. I usually butt everyone out of the way to make cake, because I get so excited, but I needed to call Yanni in to work the mixer. I’m old school. It’s just spoons and spatulas for me, baby!

Yanni really outdid herself at lunch, though. She has been experimenting with brines lately, especially with a certain banned ingredient. er hum. . . garlic salt. So, after rinsing the offending ingredient from her chicken chunks, Yanni proceeded to fry homemade chicken nuggets.

She also soaked potatoes in a concoction of vinegar and chicken boullion, and produced some most excellent steak fries.

As a picture is worth a thousand words, I thought I’d include one here. I feel I must apologize for the weird haze around the food. Xay took the picture, and who knows what odd setting the camera was on. It was hard to get the picture taken before we inhaled the yummy food too. Don’t you wish you could eat here?

Yannis bistro