Happy Birthday, Zach!

Yesterday was my fiance’s birthday!

Happy Birthday Honey!

Isn’t he handsome? I wanted to make his birthday special, but because we just got back from vacation, I wanted to stay close to home. So, on Friday night we went to dinner with some of his old friends from high school, then on Saturday we went to dinner with our friends in town. On Sunday, I hosted a football party for his Fantasy Football league (including a few others). We had lots of great food:

Looks awful, but it’s sooo good!

Buffalo chicken dip (made by Zach’s sister). This stuff is addictive, delicious and probably not health food. Ok, it’s definitely not health food. But oh is it good.

I had never made a meatball before yesterday, but it wasn’t that hard! Zach specifically requested “the meatballs in the crockpot”. After doing some research, I realized that meant meatballs in a crockpot with sauce made from grape jelly and chili sauce. Courtney said she usually buys frozen meatballs, but they didn’t have any at the store when I went so I decided to make my own. It wasn’t as hard as I thought, and the meatballs turned out great.

Football staple.

I also had never prepared chicken wings prior to yesterday. I made a copycat sauce of the Buffalo Wild Wings Spicy Garlic sauce (my favorite). I baked the wings in the sauce, but next time I’ll bake the wings separately and then toss them in the sauce. They were good, but the sauce did weird things when cooked.

You can’t have wings without raw veggies and creamy ranch dip. I cut up the veggies myself, which saved some money. I had  half a carton of plain yogurt in my fridge so I made my own yogurt ranch too. It was very good. Everyone made fun of my labels though. I think I spend too much time on Pinterest.

Of course, what is a birthday party without cake? I made this yellow cake from a box mix, and bought the frosting. This is the first time I’ve ever made a layer cake though. The presentation isn’t great (the frosting on the plate in this photo is driving me crazy, but I was holding hungry party-goers at bay while I took this picture), but it sure was good.

So, as you can see we had a very healthy day yesterday.

Just kidding! But it was delicious.

Today for lunch, I took some of the leftover raw veggies, steamed them, and tossed them with some whole-wheat pasta, olive oil and parmesan cheese. Much healthier! (Although I did follow it up with a slice of leftover cake).

I think Zach had a great birthday. His birthday present was two tickets to see our Alma Mater play next weekend, so the birthday festivities continue next weekend!