A quick post on the weekend’s festivities.
We had a great time down in my hometown. Tim and I were completely blown away by The Two Towers, and I was also enamored by the box of Milk Duds that accompanied said movie.
Saturday morning, my brother and his family arrived and we had a ton of fun watching them open gifts. Auggie cleaned up (as expected) with a new stuffed dog (quite large, actually), an inflatable ball pit dealie (he’s going to love this one, I know it), a rough-and-tough new outfit with a bulldozer on the front (very butch) and a cute little Blue’s Clues ornament too. The other kids seemed to like their presents too, with Olivia (just a little over 2 years old) squealing, ‘Mommy, look!’ when she opened her gift.
I always try to get my nieces and nephew good stuff for Christmas, but I know they will never top the gift I got for my nephew Nicholas when he was around 3 or 4 years old. It was this little race car ramp dealie called Adventure Mountain and it had all kinds of crazy loops and ramps and stuff. The thing was pretty big too, practically as tall as him. Anyway, when he got the huge box unwrapped and saw the picture on the outside, he exclaimed, ‘I’m rich! I’m rich!’ and it was just the most precious thing ever in the history of time.
We spent today over at my dad’s house, where my stepmother was cooking up a wonderful feast. We had smoked turkey (my father is the high rama-lama of outdoor cooking), stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans and this really interesting concoction called baked pineapple. Tim and I are both feeling rather portly this evening.
So the big news is that Tim and I are hosting his side of the family tomorrow evening for dinner and gift exchanging for the kids. This only came about a few days ago, so I didn’t have a lot of time to strategize what we’d serve. This is the beginning of my rationalizing the fact that I bought an 8 and a half pound, $53 crown rack of lamb at Whole Foods last Thursday. (After I shot down the idea of buying a fully-cooked, spiral sliced, ready to serve Honey Baked Ham because it was too expensive.)
It was so beautiful, I had to buy it. To tell you the truth, I felt like Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas morning, buying the biggest goose at the butcher shop for the Crachitts.
Once I walked out the door, reality started to seep in. Have I ever prepared a crown rack of lamb before? No. Have I ever prepared rack of lamb before? No. Have I ever prepared lamb in any form ever before? Still no.
At least I have actually eaten crown rack of lamb before. Once. At the Breeders Cup after-party four years ago in Louisville. Which we crashed (successfully, I might add). After I’d been drinking, probably.
Ah, well. It will be interesting, I hope. I’ll let you know how it goes.