My husband is an excellent cook, however our taste preferences are quite different. So if he were to design a special dinner for my birthday it might well be a perfectly prepared dish - that I would never have chosen for myself 
. The solution was really simple - establish a tradition of lobster and champagne. Not much can go wrong there. And, in my opinion, when you have lobster you only pretend to eat other parts of the meal. 
(Somewhat off topic - The same thing frequently happens with fresh, local sweet corn. A problem in come of the lobster shacks I ate in when I lived in Maine that served both excellent local corn and wonderful lobster together.)
I have never been a big fan of birthday cakes. As a child, my daughter always wanted the works - a layer cake, frosted, with frosting roses and "Happy Birthday Micaela" and I produced one, every year. Actually she wanted one for each birthday - not only hers but also my husband's and mine. That tailed off around age 12 or so when she fell in love with pumpkin pie and that became the birthday ritual. I like that much better. (We did put candles in the pie.)
