onemonkeyshow

We so rarely get weekends off together.  So we try to make the best of them when we do.  It started out simply enough – a big pot of potato soup for dinner on Friday night.  Changes to my soup recipe – instead of onions this time I used one massive leek.  Great start to the weekend…that, and a nice cocktail.

Saturday morning, we got up and headed out to meet Angel & Paul for brunch and a mini tour of Inwood.  Angel and I went to Otterbein together, and I haven’t seen either of them in at least 8 years.  Get this – they live about 5 miles from us…and they’ve lived about 5 miles from us for the last 3 years!  We walked them around Inwood (convincing them to move into the ‘hood wasn’t too hard with a walk through the park, then the farmers market).  And we had a great brunch at Garden Cafe – and we even managed to avoid the rainshowers.

After they headed home, the weather started looking even sketchier – so we opted for some indoor fun.  Keith wanted some Halloween Cookies, so I set up my big mixer and let him go at it while I sat and played Wii! I helped mix the frosting and decorate them once the baking was done. Max even got a bit of the frosting – of course, Keith made him work for it.

Sunday we had a nice late breakfast of duck eggs on toast.  We took Max on a long walk, and bought some pumpkins.  Then we spent the afternoon carving the pumpkins as the country-style ribs slowly braised in the oven.  Please note how absolutely fabulous the carving session was – cold beer in a frosted mug, pumpkins sitting atop pages of the latest Crate & Barrel catalog, and Disney Halloween cartoons playing on the TV.

Once the pumpkins were done, I sorted through the guts and pulled out a big handful of seeds.  Gave them a wash, splashed on some olive oil, salt & pepper and popped them in the oven for a lovely pre-dinner treat.

After dinner, we decided it was time for some more scary movies.  It was time for my favorite:  “28 Days Later”…damn that movie is fun.  And scary.  And AWESOME!  And to round out the evening (and because if I go to bed right after a movie like 28 Days Later I’ll dream of zombies) we watched the original, animated “Sleepy Hollow”.  I’d never seen it all the way through before…Ichabod Crane disappears???

So now the week is upon us.  Tattoos on Tuesday, Halloween mayhem on Friday.  3 weeks till Mexico!