Rick asked me to make a carrot cake for his birthday. Funny how each time I make something for the first time in my new kitchen, I feel like it's a baptism by fire. I am very spoiled and I admit it. I got my delivery from Fresh Direct in the morning. It contained many ingredients for the special birthday dinner :) I started by making the cake - I used my trusty Betty Crocker cookbook (my Barefoot Contessa cookbooks, all my dessert type cookbooks and the Cake Bible are all in storage in NH), and the smell was heavenly. The cream cheese frosting recipe was good too - though I could have done without the knowledge that 1/12th of the recipe (one serving) was 190 calories! Glad they didn't feel the need to tell me how many calories were in the cake part!
I made a crudite appetizer with cucumbers, radishes, celery, red and yellow peppers, and carrots. I figured it would be good to have lots of prepped veggies around this week. And a ranch dip with low fat sour cream - low fat tastes just as good to me, but the fat free is just yucky.I prepped the ingredients for dinner and then I was ready for Rick to come home.
When Rick got home, he got changed and had some crudite, and was pleased to open his present. I think he knew what it was when he saw it :) See below where he thinks about actually using it!
For dinner, I pan fried a couple of filets with fresh mushrooms, and finished it in the oven. I roasted some asparagus and vidalia onions in a little olive oil, and made some mashed potatoes as well. I finished the filets with a simple pan sauce which was a reduced red wine. I had forgotten just how tasty that pan sauce is :) We had a nice Sterling Cabernet that we had brought from the old wine cellar - it was absolutely wonderful with dinner if I do say so myself.
Rick's thinking about cutting the cake with his new Kintana Sword!
