Birthday with a French twist

Happy Birthday Jared!  Although today is his birthday, we celebrated last weekend in Charlotte.  We spent Saturday at the farmers market, shopping, lunch at Dean and Deluca, bocce ball outside and of course a French feast for dinner.  Here is Ryan, his dad and brother (Jared) having a birthday cigar.

The weather was beautiful and we enjoyed spending time on the screened in porch while Jared made dinner...yep he is a better cook than most of us and made most of his own birthday dinner.

Ryan and his dad played cribbage...

I tried to give Riley a little attention so she would stop winning!!!

Before the festivities began Ryan made a green juice and said it was a "pretox detox".  Basically something healthy before the booze:)  Ryan's dad made amazing Raspberry margaritas.  We had white bean dip and an antipasto platter for appetizers.

Jared chose a French theme for the dinner which included French Onion Soup and Coq au Vin.  Both were amazing!!!  I watched, took notes, and photographed the whole process for the soup and will be posting that recipe later.

For dessert I made a Triple Chocolate Fat Pants Cake from this cookbook.  Miriam gave me the cookbook for Christmas and once you have most of the gluten free items it is really easy and sooo good for you(it is gluten free, vegan free and sugar free).  There were three layers of this brownie cake goodness, with icing and broken up chocolate chip cookies in between each layer and on top.  It was one of the best cakes I have EVER made...I think Jared really enjoyed it too!

Don't you love the candle...can you tell we couldn't find any real candles haha!

Hope you had a great Birthday week Jared!!!