For Those Who Love Food ...

Let's dig right in. My daddy's birthday cake (he turned 83!):

Our family calls this cake the Miss Alberta Cake, after a lady who worked at the seminary where my daddy used to work. It's a chocolate cake with seafoam icing, and dark chocolate dribbles on the top.

Julia did the dribbles:

Here's the recipe:
3 squ. unsweetened chocolate
1/2 cup butter
1 cup water
2 cups cake flour
1 1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 cup sour cream
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

Directions: Grease 2 round cake pans. combine chocolate and butter in double boiler, melt. Cool. Sift flour, soda, salt into large bowl. Beat eggs and sour cream until blended. Beat in sugar and vanilla. Stir in chocolate misture, then water, and beat into flour mixture. Bake at 350º for 40 minutes.

Seafoam icing:
2 egg whites, 3/4 cup sugar (my mom uses brown), 1/2 tsp. cream of tartar, 2 1/2 tsp. cold water, 1 tsp. vanilla.
Whip whites to peaks, add remaining ingredients.

Drizzle:
1 squ.unsweetened chocolate and 1 T. butter, melted.

NOW, IF YOU'RE STILL READING, I have another recipe for you. This is what Adam made for supper last night, and no, I DON'T have any photos of it, because I was busy EATING, thank you :)

He grilled large salmon steaks on our little wood grill. (Thank you, Mother and Daddy - I don't think we've ever bought salmon in our lives!) The wood and the smoke give the salmon (indeed, any meat) the best flavor, far superior to charcoal or gas. Just sayin'.

He made more of the Lemon Cream Sauce we had last week. Uh huh. He knew it would be stupendous on the fish. It was better on the fish than it was on the pasta!

Lastly, we topped the fish and sauce with a fresh garnish of chopped tomatoes, chopped onions and chopped garlic, salt and pepper.

OH MY!! I normally don't eat salmon because I don't like it. But this was superb. The combination of flavors gave me the I-don't-want-brush-my-teeth-all-evening syndrome. I highly recommend this combo, and I imagine it would work well with almost any fish. I must say though, that the wood-grilled flavor of the fish is essential, so choose a sturdy fish that you can grill.