Bob's Half Birthday!

Chocolate Half Birthday Cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

Yes, another half birthday. It's been a busy summer! This time it was Bob's half birthday yesterday, August 29th. You may remember my post about his leap day birthday 6 months ago.

We celebrated in the usual way for us, a cake ceremony, presents and dinner. Above you see the chocolate half cake, this time with chocolate cream cheese frosting. It was a dark and moist cake with creamy chocolate frosting that had a wonderful taste and consistency if I do say so myself. Bob kept asking me what my secret ingredient was. There is no secret. I'll never tell. I just followed the recipe. Notice the rainbow of beeswax candles adorning the cake. I like to use natural wax candles when I can. Beeswax are my favorite.


Pile o' Presents

There were half birthday presents from Jack and me. The artwork on the yellow envelope is my doing. Since Bob is now 64 1/2 (he maintains that he is only 16), I drew a stick figure of him walking down the road passing a sign that says "this way to medicare". Just for fun. I am not sure if he liked it or not, but he did say that the stick figure looked like him.


Bob thinks of a wish while waiting for my camera to function

Then came the flaming half cake, the singing and the wish making.


Blow Bob, blow...

Followed closely by the candles being extinguished by a big puff of air. Good job, Bob!


Opening Gobs of Gifts

Onward to opening the gifts. He received useful stuff like underwear, lemon pepper seasoning and gallon sized zip lock baggies. (It's only a half birthday after all)


Bob finally got his pickles!

In keeping with our family food gift theme, Bob received the surprise gift to match the zucchini Jack received on his recent half birthday and the dry salami that I received last week for my birthday. Bob finally got his hands on my homemade sweet pickles! Handle them gently Bob.


Dinner: Roasted Stuffed Bell Pepper, Steamed Zucchini & Garden Tomato Salad

Of course after all that singing and gift opening, we were very hungry for dinner. We had green and purple bell peppers stuffed with a mixture of rice and ground turkey meat accented with fresh garden herbs, steamed zucchini (gotta use up that zuke!) and fresh from the garden chopped red and golden tomatoes with fresh parsley and basil.

Oh, that was just the main course. We also had a first course of pureed zucchini soup! We actually had some appetizers during the gift opening consisting of cheddar cheese and crackers with some slices of that good dried salami you saw me open on my birthday. I promised to share it, and I did. So we ate a lot of food and stuffed ourselves. No room for cake?


Chocolate Cake with Rocky Road ice cream

We always can find room for chocolate cake. This time we have rocky road ice cream topping the cake. Sort of a chocolate wipe out dessert when eaten all together. It was good. Bob got to take the rest of the cake and ice cream home with him. Good thing too, I have gained weight this summer! I love my sweets. Just a little too much I think.

Jack enjoys his cake and ice cream! (his wine too)

Here is Jack indulging in the cake and ice cream. He provided a nice bottle of red zinfandel wine for our celebration which you can see in the photo.

This was not a posed shot. Bob was just really into the cake...

So another excuse to get together, eat too much and drink wine! After all the eating, we retired to the living room and watched a good movie on DVD. We even managed to stay awake through the whole thing!

Happy Half Birthday Bob!

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