Saturday was Stacy’s 30th birthday; after 11 days of detox she was excited to eat the birthday foods we’d been planning in celebration. She’d requested Aarti Paarti’s Pomegranate Sriracha Chicken Wings and Primal-Palate’s Carrot Cake as her dinner of choice. We all enjoyed a rare treat for the family, since the cake’s cream cheese frosting was the real thing.
My favorite part of these photos is that there is so clearly a “pecking” order that Cole has established. And by established, I mean used incredible negotiation skill and manipulation to set every situation up for himself as the winner. I find it endearing, mostly because it’s a quality that is so VERY his mother. You will see that Cole got the whisk when it when it had the most icing, then he let Finian share, and only once it was nearly cleaned did they pass it to poor Wessie.
Both recipes were amazingly delicious. The carrot cake had a ginger icing and the shredded carrots were soaked in maple syrup. The cake had a delicious, perfect cake-like texture and such a fresh flavor. In 24 hours, it disappeared; even non-Paleo guests looked longingly for 2nds. Please note, we only let cake-teasing-baby-torture last long enough for the happy birthday song to be sung. The baby was satiated with enough cake to have satisfied King Henry VIII.
And the wings… well… you’ve heard how we feel about chicken skin. No surprise, the perfectly crispy and flavorful wings were a hit with everyone in the house. Stacy and Finian, our spice lovers, especially loved the sweet and spicy sauce while Cole, Wes and I dug right in to the spice rubbed Polyface chicken “naked.”
Stacy enjoyed most, however, her birthday present of a Canon T3i SDLR camera. She’s been trying to improve the photo quality on the site with our old Canon point and shoot for quite some time and it was a last-minute surprise that I was able to pull off. It’s what she really wanted but didn’t think was in her future. I think I watched her take a thousand pictures this weekend, learning how to use her new toy.
Look forward to lots of better quality photos in the future as Stacy begins navigating the SDLR world in the confines of our kitchen.
