Birthday Dinner...before the birthday?

My 30th birthday is this Thursday. Gulp!

I have to admit, though, that I'm not really sad or scared, or anything really, about turning 30. I'm anticipating a whole new decade filled with new adventures for myself and my family. I'm looking forward to it.

I guess it helps that Travis already turned 30 and didn't implode. So there's that.

Since we're leaving very early Friday morning for St. Louis (so excited I cannot stand it!), we decided to celebrate early. We'll just have a quite dinner at home on my actual birthday, and then it's an early bed time for me!

Travis planned the menu, although I had a little say.

First off, he made these Black Bean Burgers. This is kind of a weirdo thing, but I totally love them. My favorite local restaurant had the best black bean burgers, and I literally mourned when they closed up shop. Side note about the recipe: we did not add the celery. That would be totally yuck.

To accompany the burgers, I made these Honey Roasted Sweet Potatoes. The cinnamon dip is the bomb and keeps forever. This is so, so good. I may have had two servings. Whatever, it's my birthday.

We also had a big salad loaded with sweet peppers, carrots, and tomatoes. That evens things up.

To round out this lovely meal, we had The Best Chocolate Cake Ever with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting from Add a Pinch.

Uhm, no lie. This cake is so good. Normally I do not discriminate when it comes to desserts, but chocolate is my jam. To say the least, I am a huge chocolate fan, so I like my chocolate cake to be decadent and rich and require a glass of milk. This recipe fits all those requirements. It is so good that I want to hole myself up somewhere private and devour this entire cake. Since I have little to no self restraint, one wonders how I do not weigh 500lbs.

The original recipe is a 2 layer cake. Travis makes it for me (bless his heart!) as a bundt cake, so we end up having 1/2 the frosting left over. As I sat there eating the left over frosting with the spatula, I realized this could be dangerous. Our conversation went like this:

A: "What should we do with all this frosting?"
T: "I don't know..." eyeballing me as I eat another spatula full of frosting...
A: Pausing - "Yea, you should probably take this away from me, and throw it away while I have my back turned or I am going to make myself sick."

Then the frosting magically disappeared when I wasn't looking.

We had some slight issues with the frosting, but it came out wonderful. It's very dark because Travis uses dark chocolate cocoa powder. Because he loves me.

Since we're leaving so soon, and I really need to be eating healthy this week prior to race day, I ended up bringing the rest of this cake to work this morning for my coworkers to get fat on enjoy. I kind of want to cry about that, but it's really for the best. I did save one more little piece for myself though.

Now that this entire post has been about cake, I think this is where I will end things.

Oh! Just kidding. I swear this is not becoming a food blog, but I have to share this really good recipe with you, too. 25 Minute Bacon Beer Cheese Soup. I omitted the chicken, but added broccoli and carrot shreds. Trust me, this is a recipe you will want to keep. I'm really impressed with all the good food we've been eating lately. Look at that, I've figured out how to do some real cooking!