Pfoderie: DEFINITION OF A GREAT BIRTHDAY MONTH

My son Daniel's birthday is on the 26th of May, making May his birthday month. I thought I was doing pretty excessive celebrating during my birthday month last October having a couple of party's and a little get away to the Mountains, but in actuality Daniel blew me away this month, establishing guidelines and the definition of a great Birthday month.

He started off in the second week of May with a 8 day vacation in beautiful Cancun Mexico accompanied by his (soon to be mother) wife Gina and buddies Eric and Karla. It looks like they had a fabulous time, with great food and drinks, exploring the sites and learning how to scuba dive. I had to go in to Gina's archive to borrow a few pictures from their adventures.

First day on the beach

Always enjoying the Mexican food

Hes birthday cigar

Outside dinning, great atmosphere

getting ready for snorkeling

Shark bait

Daniel is looking for the motor on the wrong end

Cheers

Looks like they are ready for a dance

Scuba diving instructions

They ready to go into the deep

He looks relaxed before hes first dive

Already like a pro

He then came back and had to work for 6 days, before we had the birthday dinner in my house with all the family and friends.Beside all the regular we also had a new addition to our circle of friends. Sara and Joe had a boy only 2 weeks prior, they named him Nicolas. He looks so cute and of course had full attention from everybody that night. I am not sure but I don't think he ate the whole steak.

Daniel is happy with his Main course

Waiting for the candles to be lit

Hes favorite dessert

Preparation for the near future

Birthday hugs and a few licks from Nitro

Here we go, the almighty shots

Two fisted

For dinner we grilled Prime Black Angus New York Steak on my brand new grill

and wouldn't you know, as soon I threw the steaks on the nice hot grill I ran out of gas.

We had to react fast, I removed the steaks right away,

(they would lose all there Juice and would be dry and tough if you let them steam without heat)

Eric came to the rescue and connected a new gas tank.

After all that we still had some great medium rare steaks.

It is nice to work with quality like that

Oven roast new golden potatoes with fresh herbs and garlic butter

Corn, spinach fire roasted peppers and provolone cheese wrapped in puff pastry

Vanilla roulade filled with fresh raspberry and mascarpone cheese, vanilla cream

and topped with ganache

relaxing after dinner

Nicolas with his mother

Thank god, Grandma is supervising

Jacob gets his turn too

As always, after dinner drinks (lots of them)

So far a great month for Daniel but it just about to get better. Next morning we had chorrizo tacos for breakfast and bloody Marys, then he had to rush home and pack his bags again to go on a 10 day fishing trip with his buddy Todd Franz. On Sunday he flew out to Minnesota and from there they took a truck with a fishing boat on a trailer and drove 10 hours in to Canada. Again I have to borrow a few pictures from Daniel.