Happy Birthday!

Yesterday was Ryan's 27th birthday. We have been somewhat dieting so this was a special occasion where all dieting was put on hold for one day. Yippee. With that being the case we did not waste anytime before a juicy burger was in our mouth. We went to The Porch for breakfast/ lunch. The birthday boy scarfed down a Stodg Burger*- Aged Cheddar, Apple Wood Smoked Bacon & Fried Egg on Foie Buttered Bun, not at all diet friendly. For entertainment we went to the Magnolia Theater to see Che. A special feature showing part one and two back to back, for a total of four hours! wheew that was long. Good but long.

Ryan and I are faithful watchers of Top Chef. Tom Colicchio (the main bald headed judge) has a restaurant here in Dallas called Craft, we had to see if he merited the pretentious attitude. He does. His restaurant was very good, worth a recommendation. The worst part about it was at the end we looked over the dessert menu for fun, knowing that I had made a birthday cake and that would be our dessert. ( A little background on the cake I slaved hours over, literally. I got the recipe from our favorite San Fransisco bakery, Tartine. I have had it planed weeks before his birthday. It includes four layers of homemade chocolate cake, homemade caramel, and homemade chocolate ganache repeating. I made everything from scratch I was proud of my work. For me it was the most anticipated moment of the day.) OK back to the restaurant. We noticed a chocolate devils food cake layered with chocolate ganache, something very similar to what I had prepared. The waiter came back to see if we made a decisions, we declined letting him know we were having birthday cake at home....a few minutes later he sent over a mini chocolate cake with a candle, the one we had read on the menu. It was amazing, the ganache was perfectly silky and the cake was perfectly moist. It was Delicious! Needless to say I was no longer excited to go home and eat my cake. Thanks Tom for putting all my hard work to shame.
For Ryan's birthday present I got him an "athletic" watch the Garmin Forerunner 50 . It moniters your heart rate, keeps track of how far you have gone, he can sync it to his bike too... and it does lots of other cool stuff.