It's All About Hubby

Or at least his birthday dinner, which was yesterday.
I will not bore you with the details of how wonderful my Hubby is. Aiming low: he doesn't beat me, smoke, drink, gamble, or run around. Aiming high: he's cute, intelligent, educated, a good cook, a good Alpha to my puppies, and he gets along with my mom (sometimes better than me). And he smells good, too.
To celebrate we went to dinner at Le Petit Cafe in Branford. On Saturday's they have a price fix menu with two seatings, so we went to the 8:30 one. We'd been there a few years ago for my birthday so we knew what to expect.
It's a cute little place (street parking) with a black and white checker floor and eclectic posters and knick knacks on the wall.
For appetizers Hubby got the duck confit, which came with a slice of apple and homemade jam (but I don't think we ate the jam). I had the soup of the day, which was a French chestnut and mushroom. The texture was similar to pea soup, it had a slightly sweet taste, and was not overpowering on the mushroom flavor.
Oh, and they have good, homemade crusty bread. Far superior to the loaf of bread I made a few months ago. But it wouldn't have been hard to top that loaf.
Anyway.
The next course was a mixed green salad with a disk of warm goat cheese. The cheese went very well with the 2005 Chateauneuf du Pape Telegramme Hubby had orders.
For our main courses, Hubby got the rack of lamb with snow peas and "apple-celeriac gratinne." Yeah, I know. It was white and thin like potatoes, but had an odd sweet flavor. So we asked the waiter how the potatoes were prepared, and he said "Those are parsnips" and we felt like ninnies because we are usually pretty good about identifying food and that was a major swing and miss.
But then it tasted good since we weren't expecting it to taste like potatoes anymore.
I had a center cut pork chop with baby brussel sprouts and a ginger sauce. I looked at my plate and said "I don't have a starch" and Hubby said "So what? You won't eat it anyway." Which is true because I'm a notoriously small eater but, as I told Hubby, "It's the principle."
My pork was tasty and well prepared, and I ate maybe a quarter of it so we'll have a very yummy lunch today.
Usually we swap entrees halfway through, but I was happy with my pork. The lamb must have been good because Hubby only left part of one chop (which he tossed on my plate for the doggy bag).
I shouldn't call it a doggy bag because my doggies aren't getting anywhere near my yummy leftovers.
Dessert was vanilla creme brulee for Hubby (and it was good creme brulee). And flourless chocolate cake with raspberry sauce for me. Which was just the right consistency of creamy but somehow fluffy.
The picture at the top is of Hubby's creme brulee. When they know it is your birthday they put a spun sugar cage over your dessert. (There were three birthdays last night, including Hubby.) It is fun to watch the candles melt the sugar. They also give you a spare plate to put the cage on. We ate some of it, then Hubby had fun going Godzilla on it and smashing it. Bits of sugar were shooting all over the table.
Oh, didn't you realize we're children? We were quite about the destruction of the sugar cage. And that was nothing compared to when we were eating our entrees and Hubby decided to be silly, started gnawing on one of his lamb bones, shook it like a puppy, and growled a little—and a guy at another table caught him doing it. We were pissing ourselves laughing.
Speaking of guys at other tables, the one next to us had on this cool socks that were red, blue, yellow bands of stripes. When I first spotted them they were slouched down and just looked like flashy stripes, but later he pulled them up and they were actually a spiral design. Very interesting, although not handmade.
And the best part? Hubby pointed it out when they guy had pulled them up because he knew I was spying on them. :-)