Today's Eats

Today is Sean's birthday and I had much to do in preparation for his dinner tonight. This morning when I woke up, one of the first things I did was - no, not eat breakfast - make his birthday cake. Nigella Lawson has a recipe in her book, Feast, for a Chocolate Guinness Cake. One of the ingredients is Guinness beer. Yes, you read that right, the cake is made with beer! Here is what it looked like when it came out of the oven:



Doesn't that look good?

Once the cake had been baked, I fixed myself something to eat - leftover Zucchini Gratin. It was the last of it and it was quite tasty.



After lunch, the boys and I had to run some errands and during that time, I struggled to decide what to fix Sean for dinner. On the one hand, I had no idea what time he would be home so that caused me some concern. I wanted to fix Shrimp and Grits but we're having company over for dinner on Saturday and I plan to fix that for them. I settled on London Broil, which turned out all right.

The frosting for the cake was a Cream Cheese frosting, which was intended to emulate the frothy, creamy head of a Guinness beer. I mixed mine up and frosted the cake and, while mine was a tad bit lumpy it tasted just fine!



This is what the cake looked like in all its frosted glory!

Well, usually when I cook London Broil the preferred method is on the grill. I like being able to see it and touch it to check for doneness. As luck would have it, our grill is on the fritz and the last time I cooked London Broil, it didn't cook well. Tonight I decided to cook it under the broiler in my oven with, unfortunately similar results to the broken grill. Sean was a trooper and ate it but I was disappointed.

Here is my plate from dinner:



London Broil is best when thrown on a hot grill and cooked for 6-7 mins per side. My oven took way too long to cook it which makes the meat tougher. Oh well, the cake was good and I think Sean enjoyed it. He's taking the rest to work tomorrow because we're going out of town for a couple of days and won't be here to eat it.

I feel like I'm getting back on track which is good because, according to the scale I've put on the 3 lbs I had recently lost! Argh! I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I will focus that energy on staying on course. We'll be on the road tomorrow so I'm not sure how I'll update but hopefully the hotel will have internet access and I can post something tomorrow night.