Back to Reality

Jo is out enjoying her first Sunday morning bike ride since last fall and I thought it would be a great time for me to write my weekly blog.  We continued to enjoy unseasonably warm temperatures this week which allowed me to get outside to trim back some trees and bushes, in shorts no less (for those who know the family tree will realize that it is a genetic predisposition, passed on from my father, to ruthlessly prune bushes every spring - we must have had a Neanderthal ancestors who had a passion for an orderly hedge outside their cave).  I got the backyard mostly completed but still need to tackle a few trees in the front and cut back some bushes for where we are planning to install our vegetable garden.  I also ordered some fruit bushes from Burpee this week so that felt like we are just around the corner from having fresh berries to eat.

The rest of the week was mostly adjusting to being back from vacation.  I tackled getting all the laundry from our trip done along with painting the master bedroom closets.  With this painting completed the entire first and second floors are now done.  I only have two more items to paint in the attice before I can declare victory and put away my paint brushes for a little bit (although, the outside of the house beckons!).  Jo had the vacation backlog to get through at work and her usual crush of meetings, but all things considered not too busy of a week. 

My sister, Cheryl, came up on Friday for the day and although the weather wasn't too cooperative we had a great visit mostly sitting around talking and solving all the family and world problems.  So everyone should rest easy that all those issues are behind us.  We headed out to dinner in the Third Ward, Cafe Benelux in case you where curious, where we had a great dinner but over-indulged during dessert.  Then it was hustling her to the train station for her trip back. 

Then came Saturday and our cooking adventure.  We were having Sandy and Scott over for dinner (Jo works with Sandy) and decided to try some new recipes (or as we like to refer to it, experimental food).  We started with making dessert, a caramel cake.  Unfortunately, the recipe failed to mention that the cake was actually the incredibly expanding cake batter.  Everything seemed fine untile we put the filled cake tins into the oven and went to take a shower.  We came down to our kitchen filled with smoke and cake batter flowing out of the cake pans all over the oven where it was promptly charring.  After doing some quick salvage work in the oven, we then spent the day trying to get rid of the smoke itself and the smoke smell (house still smells a little smoky today).  Then we forgot to marinate the chicken for the main course or get our ice cream maker into the freezer early enough.  It was a day of cooking challenges, but in the end everything turned out tasting fine, as you can see in the photo above, and we had a lovely evening with Sandy and Scott.

Today we are going to kick back and relax, try not to cook anything, and prepare for the following week.