A Nice Birthday Tradition

For many years now, Patricia has been kind enough to provide a home chef service to each birthday honoree at our house. Basically, you can order - and she will prepare - whatever dinner you want. Full menu. Within reason, of course.

This really enhances the birthday celebrations. And results in many, many hours of work.

While there have been some outliers over the years, the menus do tend to fall into a pattern. The kids have graduated from "corn flakes" chicken to more sophisticated (and difficult) dishes. Fettucini alfredo, pepperoni stuffed chicken, chocolate cheesecake, and beer/cheese soup are among the repeaters.

In my case, I've been ordering the same banana cream pie for many years. The kids didn't like it much way back when, but unfortunately their outlook has changed. This isn't any old banana cream pie - check out the ingredients (click to enlarge, from well-worn 1989 magazine), which include white chocolate, banana liqueur and creme de cacao. The crust is moreso a cookie than anything else. Best of all, leftovers from the pie, if there are any, taste even better the next morning with coffee.

As far as an entree, in the last few years I've been going with a marinated grilled pork loin. How can it be anything but awesome when the marinade includes Negro Modelo beer and serrano chiles? And it's served up with "nectarine and onion sauce" and grits! Our chef makes quite a few wonderful things but, trust me, this is #1.

So, thanks much to the chef for making all the birthdays special occasions. Six beneficiaries over 20+ years each adds up to a lot of birthday cooking. This is why you track down a good wife. (Among other things.)

P.S. By the way, this year's dinner beat all. And it was fun to have my sons around, with a few other distinguished visitors. As a bonus feature we were treated to a mighty entertaining 2-OT Suns victory over Dallas between dinner and dessert, described here.