I love when people visit us. We don’t have much of a guest room (as in we don’t have one) but as long as people are willing to sleep on an air mattress, we are happy to have them. We were very excited when time off for Matt and a free weekend for Kevin and Kelsey lined up. Kevin and I have been friends since I was in college because he is Sean’s (not the brother) best friend. We’ve gone camping together a couple of times and gone up to visit them as well.
They arrived with their munchkins (20 months and 11 weeks!) on Friday night. We started our culinary adventures early with make your own pizzas and really just caught up on the past couple of months while playing with the babies. We got to bed and woke up early the next morning because I knew Kevin was in need of coffee and I wanted to get eggs and show off a little bit of New London. We went to Bean and Leaf for some caffeinated beverages, which Kevin highly approved of, then we were off to Fiddleheads for eggs, quinoa and spinach for dinner and we took advantage of the bulk food section to get some veggie chips for Rayleigh. We made some eggs and bacon for breakfast, then convinced Rayleigh to go down for a nap so that when she woke up, we could go over to campus for Earth Day festivities. We were worried that the weather was going to remain rainy and drizzly, but it ended up being beautiful and sunny, so we walked over to campus after a quick lunch and stopped by Coffee Grounds and then walked towards the green to show off the view of the Sound.
We had invite Josh and Monica to dinner that night, but they had plans already so it was advantageous that we ran into them on our walk across the green because I wanted them to meet Kevin and Kels. As I expected, Josh and Kevin hit it off right away. We chatted with them for a little bit, then went to the Arbo to look for “quack quacks” and “froggies.” The Arbo is so beautiful at this time of year when things are just beginning to bloom.
After some discussion, we decided to go out for an appetizer and beers before coming back to tackle the lamb, so we headed out to the Commoner because they had the most decent beer selection in town. We attempted to sit outside but couldn’t brave the chilliness for very long and ended up inside. After a beer and an appetizer we headed back to the apartment where we did not make lamb. Watching Sherlock and hanging out on the couch sounded much more appealing.
We tackled lamb the next morning after waffles. It seemed pretty simple…lots of garlic and rosemary, put in pan, bake at a really high temp for 30 minutes, then turn it down for an hour. The first half, super easy. The timer went off for for the high temp and I took a look at the recipe to make sure nothing needed to be done when I turned it down. It mentioned to add some liquid to the pan if the vegetables seemed dry so when I noticed that the potatoes needed some help so I grabbed the chicken broth out of the refrigerator. The very. cold. chicken broth. Onto the very. hot. GLASS. pan.
*shatter*
*fireball*
*lots of screaming*
Oh yes, I blew up my glass pyrex pan with the lamb in it. Aftermath:
I am very, very lucky that I did not get a shard of glass in my legs or feet or burn myself. I don’t know how I moved back so quickly but my husband ran barefoot into the kitchen to save me pretty quickly. We did manage to save the lamb (Pyrex shatters into big ass pieces and not little ones) and ran upstairs to ask the neighbor if we could borrow her oven for awhile. Smoke alarm went off, Rayleigh slept through it all and Dillon didn’t make a peep.
The lamb was damn good and we had chipolte sweet potatoes and sauteed spinach with garlic to accompany it. After dinner and packing and 3 readings of “Hand, Hand, Fingers Thumb” we headed to Bean and Leaf for some coffee. I got in my last bit of baby snuggling and K&K hit the road. We headed to campus to set up for pasta making and ended up making pasta for 30 people! It was a great program and we came home to our last fireplace fire of the season. We made popcorn and roasted Peeps….we are ready for camping.
I could handle another couple of weekends like this…life is good!