he's my favorite

he's my favorite,

and he will be,

even when he is old.

april 30th is matt's birthday.

he likes to gloat that he is younger than me (but only by 3 months and 2 weeks, my friends!)

since one of our favorite things to do is eat, we made a fancy birthday dinner.

that's right,

we didn't go out to eat, 

we made it at home,

and i even made a pretty little menu.

(the girls semi-cooperated with us. they have been a little squirrely at bedtime lately. 

luckily we spent most of the day (and friday night) prepping so that we could eat soon after they went down.)

matt got us started with some delicious (and very strong) drinks.

mixmaster at work:

creatures of the sea? not for me.

but hey, it wasn't my birthday, so he got to pick and execute much of the menu.

matt gets into these little rascals, 

so he went to town on some oysters for an appetizer.

i can't imagine eating one of these,

but matt can down them like they're candy.

i made up a little menu for our birthday meal.

(yum)

the most amazing green lasagna

from david tanis' platter of figs cookbook

 very labor intensive, but worth it!

(also equaled delicious leftovers!)

 and then, 

matt's duck confit with potatoes roasted in duck fat (don't knock it til you've tried it) 

and a simple green salad.

 i made two desserts. 

a rhurbarb sorbet (so easy)

 and an amazingly good chocolate cake, 

modeled after the version we had at the oyster bliss event a few weeks ago.

it was a little risky to make this brand new recipe for matt's birthday cake, 

but it was really rich and perfect.

i almost forgot to stop eating & take a picture!

as you can see, we kept cutting away little non-pieces over the next week

until none remained.

our birthday meal was finished off with some irish coffee!

happy birthday goodness to my favorite person!

{here is to another year of eating and drinking and sharing life together}