Hubby’s birthday menu

So, my husband turned the big 30 a couple days ago.    After he got over the initial shock of feeling “old” (which is ridiculous because he looks younger than me for crying out loud) he really enjoyed the menu I put together for him.  Now, I’m not posting any recipes because I still wanna tweak them a bit before I officially post them.  It was good, but could’ve been better, know what I mean?  Anyways, my menu was:

• spicy chipotle flank steak tacos
• pico de gallo (spanish for “rooster’s beak”, it’s a fresh condiment that resembles salsa)
• grilled sliced avocado
• spiced carrot cake with vanilla cream cheese frosting

Now, the flank steak didn’t come out as spicy as I was hoping so that is why I’m not posting that recipe.  I put in too much sugar to cut the heat, and I ended up taking almost all the heat out of it!!!  >:(  Oh well, I’ll be making that marinade again very soon for steak so after I’ve perfected it you guys will savor it!

Pico de gallo is like salsa in that it is a tomato-based fresh condiment.  All it contains is chopped tomatoes, diced onion, diced hot chiles (jalapenos, serrano, whatever….I actually used poblanos which have no heat to them to keep the pico de gallo mild as the steak was SUPPOSED to be hot), lime juice and cilantro.  Done.

I cut an avocado in half, brushed it with olive oil, lemon juice (to keep it from oxidizing), salt and pepper and grilled it face side down for just a minute or two.  I then scooped out the avocado from the shell and sliced it thin to top on tacos……delicious!!!!

The carrot cake was a box mix that I added cloves and allspice to make it a “spice” carrot cake.  Yummy!

The vanilla cream cheese frosting was a cinch to make and totally delicious.  It wasn’t an overly sweet cream cheese frosting, but if you like a more savory cream cheese frosting, then leave out some of the sugar:

• 8 oz package of cream cheese room temperature (I used a 1/3 less fat version and my frosting came out fine)
• 1 stick of butter, room temperature
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

That’s it…..just blend all the ingredients together and you have a seriously scrumptious icing.