Happy Birthday Stacey!

My l'il sis (aka Cooper's mommy), all growed up, ha. Her birthday was actually yesterday, but we're celebrating it tonight with a deja vu dinner at Duplex Restaurant & Wine Bar with the whole fam. Gorgeous day out there, perhaps we can even eat outside on the porch! Oh, how I love almost-summer - sandals and dresses and warm sun and rosy sunsets. Dang, good times, good times.

So no cooking for me! Not last night either, since John and I snuck out for a romantic lunch at La La Lucia's. I had the farmer's salad - loads of lovely Lucia's vegetables, hard-cooked egg, tossed with herb vinaigrette. And John, oh boy, he got the open-faced burger, sitting on a thick slab of juice-drenched toast and topped with a pile of buttery, sauteed mushrooms, my goodness it was incredible. And since our rule is, If There's Chocolate Cake at Lucia's We Order It, we had to split a slice of yesterday's version - chocolate spongecake with homemade spumoni ice cream. Heavenly. (Other amazing choices - lemon layer cake, rhubarb pie, and almond custard - all looked equally fab.) And then. Of course. We had to head over to Lucia's To Go for more food, ack, so that we could have bites of wood-fired pizza and curried chicken-broccoli salad for dinner. Yeah, I Do Lurve Lucia's.