2012 May

Whirlwind of a weekend

28 May 2012

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Where am I? What just happened? Who’d I see?

MY GOD! I can hardly believe I’m not crashed out or curled up in a ball somewhere…this was a total nonstop weekend, no doubt. Thursday Ellie and I headed to Oregon’s high desert to visit friends and family in Bend. I had ulterior motives as well – the Shins, then Tenacious D and then Beck were playing at the ampitheater, and I had tickets!

We checked at the Oxford Hotel in downtown Bend (great little boutique hotel that has amazing service, spacious rooms, and the perfect location), then headed over to Uncle Brian and Aunt Julie’s place (my best friend Renee’s brother and his wife…they may as well be my bro and sis). Ellie played with their two kids for a bit, then we headed over to Renee’s OTHER brother’s house for his daughter’s birthday celebration. Ellie was happy to discover a playmate there, and soon was running around like a maniac playing tag. Long story short, we had a great weekend in Bend, though due to a sore throat and cold, I ended up not making it to either the Shins or Beck…oh well. Jeffrey did join us for one night and brought Ellie back with him.

In a move totally out of character for him, Jeffrey decided to invite some friends over for a Memorial Day BBQ, which is one of the main reasons I ended up missing the Beck concert and coming home early. Nothing like some last minute preparations for company! It was definitely a bit chaotic, and while things weren’t perfect, I think we all had a good time.

My favorite moment of the whole weekend came when Ellie and I were out in the garden cutting flowers. I was cutting long stems since they would be going into arrangements, and she looked at me and said, “Mommy, can I please have lowercase flowers, please?” Yes, indeed, she wanted shorter stems. So darn cute how she puts concepts together!

Anyway, here are some highlights of the day……….and the flower arrangements

Little Lulu

I took photos after everything had been moved from its original spot, but whatever...it's still cute, I think

My sister Rose made this yummy banana chocolate cake for Grandpa Ed's birthday

Lulu chowing on a S'more

Peonies and Roses

Fiascos

25 May 2012

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So listen, I’m decent at a lot of things…I am super creative and if nothing else passionate about things I try. Reality is I guess at most everything I do……….especially baking. This week proved that.

On Wednesday night I had a few girlfriends over for dinner and, goodness gracious, it was just one fiasco after another. I overcooked the asparagus that I put in the risotto, did something odd to the spicy mango martinis, and the worst one of all miserably failed with the blackberry merengue tart that I had such high hopes for.

The night before, while making the curd, I dropped half of it on the floor….staining the hardwood AND my feet…you saw that picture in my last post…

I had recuperated from that by the next morning, and got moving on prepping the tart. The meringue was just about perfect, my kitchen aid mixer doing its thing…when I bumped the mixer and CRASH the entire thing fell to the floor. I had to start that process all over. Once I had finally finished the tart – all I had left to do was brown it in the oven.

I popped it into the oven that I had preheated according to the recipe and popped it in for the two minutes it called for. About 30 seconds later, the smell of charred meringue wafted through the house. I screamed when I opened the oven door and holy crap, it was just black char and smoke. I scraped off the burnt parts to reveal clean, white beautiful soft meringue. It went back in, but once again it burned, and quite frankly it sucked.

The SECOND burn

totally melted when I cut it. Nice.

Other than the disastrous dessert, I guess it wasn’t horrendous, but cant’ say anything really turned out as I had hoped. Nevertheless, it was really wonderful to have friends over – it reminded me so much of dinners with my friends in LA. I loved it! 🙂