Walk in the Glow of Each Other's Majestic Presence

I decided to host my family for Easter dinner today--any excuse for new recipes!

( #34 Herb-Stuffed Boneless Leg of Lamb )

( #35 Leg of Lamb Stuffed with Wild Mushrooms and Greens )

( #36 Greek Style Potatoes )

( #37 Green Beans with Feta Cheese )

( #38 Baklava )

The latter was served with the Oatmeal Carrot Cookies from Friday night and deliciously creamy homemade vanilla ice cream, courtesy of muffyjo. She also showed up bright and early this morning to take the savory cheesecake over to her house for baking. For the many of you who've expressed interest, the recipe for that is here. She also did yeoman work cleaning up.

Anne & G. brought a huge salad (and another guest, Divia) and heliopsis brought biscuits and sartorial splendor to the occasion. bex77 brought beautiful blue hydrangeas and took Alice off for the morning while we were in last-minute prep frenzy.

Special mention also goes to my father, who sat and picked thyme off the stalks for about two hours yesterday. He picked more thyme than I needed--about a cupful--which was just amazing and luxurious!

And many thanks to bookly who dropped by yesterday, all unsuspecting, and ended up snapping all the beans for a meal she couldn't even stay to eat.

Lastly, Jason continues to be my hero--he helped so much all around the edges and listening to me talk out the various decisions and then entertained Alice all evening after our guests had left so that I could get a much-needed nap.

I love making big meals for the family, but it's especially nice for it to be such a joint effort.

Jason loves fajitas and I'd been thinking beef and we were having dpolicar and earthling177 over to meet our houseguest (Alex from Brazil) and hang out, so this seemed like a good thing to try.

( #25 Fajitas )

We washed it down with caipirinhas made with the cachaça and mix that Alex brought us. They were yummy, but I'm looking forward to making them from scratch sometime soon.

I'm also pleased to note that I'm back on pace after a poor showing in February and feeling more hopeful about actually completing the challenge this year.

My birthday present also included dinner with Susan & Daniel at Per Se, the New York venue of The French Laundry's Thomas Keller.

The dining room, looking out past Columbus Circle and the park to the downtown lights, is lovely. The service was, unsurprisingly, impeccable, although slow enough that you should not go without entertaining companions. Fortunately, we were well supplied with those!

( Menu and Comments )

Overall, while definitely excellent and a worthwhile experience, I can't say that Thomas Keller is my new favorite chef. Joël Robuchon really rocked my world and I'm still very loyal to Guy Savoy, my first meal at this level. It's hard to put a finger on the distinction--everything was very, very good and I would happily let Keller cook for me any day of the week if he felt charitable--but it just didn't grab me as intensely as others have. But I am extremely grateful to Jason for giving me an opportunity to have an opinion, to Susan & Daniel for joining us on the adventure and to muffyjo, my sisters and my parents who teamed up to let us have a weekend away.

gilana and I just had a lovely mid-winter getaway to Las Vegas! She brought her camera (mine was at home recording daily_alice, which I’ll update soon, for all the baby-junkies out there who are jonesin’) and you can check out the full gallery here or click on any of the thumbnails below for larger versions of specific images.

We did so much every day that I think I’ll do this by category instead of chronology.

( Transportation )

( Weather )


( Hotel(s) )

( Shows )

( Attractions )

( Shopping )

( Food )

Overall This was a really nice trip. Gilly and I turn out to be good travel partners—we have similar interests, both are willing to take the lead and make decisions and roll with whatever actually happens, and we communicate well about what we need.

This was my first time away from Alice and it was strange not to see someone I’ve spent time with every day for the past two years, but at the same time nice to have a break and to know that I can go away if I need or want to. She asked about me and missed me and seemed very glad to have me back today, but never got upset about my being gone, which is excellent. Poor Jason was sick as a dog the whole time I was gone—shades of his trip to Toronto last year, when I got summer flu—but the family and muffyjo were happy to help him through, as they do me.

Vegas is a great place for a short trip. After a few days the constant stimulus begins to be wearing—if I stayed longer, I’d definitely spend a day out at the Hoover Dam or the Grand Canyon, or just laze around the hotel pool for an afternoon—but it is a great place to be a tourist. There are so many nifty things and beautiful uses of glass and light and interesting architectural features and new uses of technology and outrageously tacky bits that just wandering around is an entertainment all by itself.

( Oh, right! Gambling )

So when the friend mentioned in this post went to the ER last night, the doctors found no sign that he'd actually had a seizure. Apparently there are markers usually present in the blood post-seizure that were entirely absent. They checked him out very thoroughly and found nothing. Their hypothesis is that he simply became overheated and de-hydrated at the club and passed out. The doctor declared him "healthy as a horse," albeit a horse that falls down for no reason. He is strongly advised to see his own doctor this week, but they were pretty confident it was unlikely to repeat.

Thanks for all the good wishes. Despite the reasonably happy ending to this episode of When Friends Collapse, I'm really sick of the show.

This week we've had some interesting and yummy food.

( Dinner on Wednesday at Pigalle )

( Lunch on Thursday at Jer-Ne )

( Dinner at home on Thursday )

( And I'm making an experiment )

We had a really lovely evening with about a dozen friends. We opened the twelve bottles of wine we needed to try and shared them around and people had really interesting and very different reactions to them (Quote of the Evening: "I'm going hmn, notes of honey...and she's going 'NASTY!'"). We had a reasonable amount of nosh (enough that there was a little bit left in the end and not so much that we'll be shoveling our way out from under it for the next week) and my first trifle ever was a success! Alice was a shameless beggar-child, but played nice with various folk and went to sleep right on time, without protest. Many stories were told and snuggling was had and clean-up was minimal.

So I'll definitely have to do that again!

Coming into the weekend Alice and I were getting pretty tired of being on our own, but fortunately the reinforcements arrived on Thursday in the form of my cousin, Ashley, and her boyfriend, Alex. We had a fun dinner at Mifune and I got to hear about some of Alex' adventures as a set designer for movies and television. Unfortunately, something Alex and Alice ate (we suspect the beef) did not go down well and they both had rough nights. Avert your eyes now if bodily effluvia is a squick factor.

( Gag Line )

On Friday A&A went off for a day of wandering Harvard Square and Newbury Street and dinner with bex77 and audioboy. Alice and I had a hard day--even before the previous night's adventures she had been off her feed for a few days and mealtimes have become major exercises in patience. But we survived and A&A came back about the time that muffyjo was arriving for pizza and laundry and we ended up playing Trivial Pursuit. I shamelessly won and when Alex wanted to play again I suggested that I just dump my pieces and we keep going...and I won again.

When I woke up on Saturday, Jason was home and in bed with me and all was right with the world. He looked after Alice all day, while A&A went off to spend the rest of their visit with Anne & George. I puttered around and finally managed to get some traction on a task I've started three times previously and then we joined dpolicar and earthling177 for dinner at Alfresco, which everyone had been praising to the skies. The food was reasonably good, but they were overrun and the service suffered to the point of Jason not only being served the wrong entree, but never being brought the correct one. The waitress was fairly nonchalant about the whole thing until I asked her to take the wrong entree off the bill and then the owner came and made sufficiently effusive apologies that we came out thinking we probably will go back, but maybe on a Tuesday. From there we went to celebrate hotpoint's birthday at his lovely home and I gorged myself on cannoli. Most exciting of all, Alice took her first unsupported step before realizing what she'd done and sitting down. Now the trouble really starts!

Today I did a big run to Whole Foods and then came home and cleared enough stuff out of the fridge to make room for the groceries and made lunch before setting to work on dinner. I made a quadruple batch of Hungarian mushroom soup. I think that's the largest I've ever done and chopping seventy mushrooms reminded me why I don't do that more often. I did remember to use my snorkel mask for the onions this time, which is a major win. I got a nap and then the hordes (Anne, George, Ashley, Alex, Mom and Dad) descended upon us and we had a very pleasant evening, dining on soup and bread and the wonderful salamis that Jason had brought home from Salumi. Unfortunately, something hit Jason really hard a few minutes into dinner (possibly the clam chowder he'd had for lunch) and he's spent the rest of the evening Very Unhappy™. After dessert (ice cream and brownies--I tried wattleseed for the first time!) everyone else left and I spent some time with Alice before getting her to bed right at ten. muffyjo called on her way home from NJ to say that her car's problems had piled up to the point that she'd like me to meet her at our dealership, so she could leave the car there without stopping again. So I got to see her for a few minutes and hear about her weekend adventures.

And tomorrow I get to have rehearsal again!