Happy Birthday Mack and Chocolate Cake

Tomorrow is my father-in-law, Mack’s, birthday. We won’t share how old he is going to be, only that we all know that you get better with age, just like a fine wine. 🙂 We met FIL and MIL out at Molly Woo’s Asian Bistro for dinner. It was really good. They have a nice size gluten-free menu, so Jon and I had a nice selection of choices. I chose the Black Pepper Steak (added in snow peas to the mushrooms & green beans) with brown rice and a couple of chicken lettuce wraps for an appetizer. Jon had Pineapple Chicken with brown rice. After we had a nice dinner, we came back to our house for coffee and dessert. I made an amazing Chocolate Cake that I found on Carrie’s, Ginger Lemon Girl, blog. It is called “Everyday Chocolate Cake” and it truly was amazing. The directions were super easy and the cake took no time to make at all. I frosted it with a chocolate frosting recipe from the back of the Hershey’s Cocoa can.

Hershey’s Chocolate Frosting
**From the Hershey’s Cocoa Can

1 stick of butter (1/2 cup), melted
2/3 cup cocoa
3 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup milk (I used 1%)

Melt butter and mix in with cocoa until smooth. Add vanilla and then alternately add the powdered sugar and milk until the frosting is the right consistency. I had to add a little more than 1/3 cup of milk. Just do it a little at a time. Frost cake. This made enough for 2 layers, so for this cake, you may want to cut the recipe in half.

Enjoy!

Serve cake with ice cream. I had Edy’s Slow-Churned Pumpkin with mine, Hannah had Edy’s Cookies & Cream (not GF) with hers.

Not really on the topic, but I was nominated for the Blogger’s Choice Awards! WOOHOO!! You can vote for me by going here. Then search “gluten-free” and I am on page 2 under “Gluten-Free is Life”. How exciting!

Sushi & A Sleepover

Anyone who knows me knows that my darling Hannah, who just turned 6, has not spent the night away from home yet. This is mostly due to me and my anxiety about her being away from me. O.K., it is all due to me. There, I admitted it. I am moving on. So yesterday on the way home from the store it dawned on me that Jon would be staying with my Mom and Step Dad this weekend and we only had Hannah. I thought that now would be as good a time as any for her to spend her first night away from home at Grandma Mary & Grandpa Mack’s house. I knew that G & G Mary & Mack would be thrilled, if they were available, and they were. I said that it needed to take place that night (Friday) before I changed my mind. So Aaron and I made plans to go out to eat and walk around the mall. We decided on Molly Woo’s, a Cameron Mitchell Restaurant here in Columbus. One thing I really like about Cameron Mitchell restaurants is their experience and willingness to accommodate gluten-free diets. I have always had great meals at all of their places.

I picked Hannah up at school, met my Mom & Step Dad at our house to pass off Jon and then packed up Hannah to go to Grandma’s. We dropped her off and I nearly had a heart attack, but nothing that a glass of wine or three couldn’t fix.

We arrived at Molly Woo’s and I decided to have sushi. This was pretty much the first time I was going to eat sushi. I did go with my Dad to Otani when I was a freshman in high school. I had to do a report for Social Studies on sushi, so Dad took me there. I don’t really remember being crazy about it at all. Recently my sister has found a new love in sushi and has begged me to give it a try again. I have been hesitant b/c it is hard enough to eat American food gluten-free, sushi & Japanese food sounded very intimidating. So, if there was any place for me to give sushi a try, a Cameron Mitchell restaurant is the one I felt most comfortable doing so in. There were 4 different kinds of sushi on the GF menu. Spicy Tuna Roll (togarushi & cucumber), California Roll (snow crab, avocado & cucumber), Veggie Roll (have no idea, no description) or Spicy Salmon Roll (cooked salmon, sriracha mayonnaise & cucumber). I chose the Spicy Salmon Roll. Aaron was having no part of the sushi, so I was on my own. I would have loved to try the Spicy Tuna roll too, but I was afraid that I wouldn’t like it and then it would go to waste. I am going to save that until I go have sushi with my Mom and we can share some dishes. Along with my Spicy Salmon roll I ordered the chicken lettuce wraps (these aren’t offered GF, but the server told me that they would be happy to make them GF for me ~ she brought it up, I didn’t even have to ask, very impressed). My Spicy Salmon Rolls were served with some fresh ginger on the side (to cleanse the palate ~ like I know what I am talking about!) and some wasabi. I can’t have the soy sauce there and they didn’t have a GF option. No biggie. Next time I can bring my La Choy soy sauce with me. Honestly, these rolls were amazing by themselves. No soy sauce was needed. I tried the ginger along with the rolls….OMG…I am SO in love. I see myself having to get carry-out sushi from Molly Woo’s on a semi-regular basis now.

After dinner we walked around the mall and bought Hannah a Camp Rock nightgown at The Disney Store. She loves it!! She had a blast at Grandma & Grandpa’s house! I only called 3 times; twice last night and once this AM on the way to the gym. So, I guess you can look at it this way, I had a glass of wine for each call I made. 😉 A good time was had by all.