Pumpkin Carving

God bless him, Flamenco Dad spared me from the icky task of carving the pumpkins this year. Last year, he carved the pumkins with the kids. FD was SO good at it that I saw an opportunity to delegate: “Hey honey, why don’t we make YOU the official pumpkin decorator? You’re so great at it, and the kids really love when you did it last year?” Having sufficiently appealed to his ego, he agreed. Hooray!

What a job he did! The jack o’lanterns turned out wonderful. Well, except for the fact that they are already rotting. They are now sitting in my back yard, scaring the squirrels and birds away. Tomorrow we’ll cut up the pumkins and feed them to the critters living in the trees behind my house.

Date Night

I assisted my sweetie at a wedding this Saturday. Flamenco Dad was hired to play for the ceremony and coctail hour at this particular affair, and I was to help with moving equipment from the ceremony area to the cocktail hour area. I also got to help with cueing him on music changes during the course of the ceremony. It was lots of fun, and the venue was gorgeous! It was at a beautiful historic hotel in town, a lovely century-old building with a definite Spanish influence. The ceremony was very nice–thanks in no small part to the musical accompaniment; but also because it’s always so heartwarming to see a young, in-love couple about to embark on a lifelong journey. I heart weddings! Ah, romance…

Anyway, after our wedding business was done FD and I went out for dinner. We made arrangements with my mother-in-law to watch the kiddies, and we went out for tapas. Going out for tapas is so much fun! In the first place, what’s not to love about sangria? Also, since you order small plates of different bites of food, it’s a great social meal. Everyone picks out a few things they’d like to try, and the table just digs in. Now, doing a meal like this gfcf requires some careful planning; but it’s not impossible. One of the great things about Mediterranean cooking is that the foods that are the focus of this style off this cooking are gfcf-friendly; lots of fresh produce, lean proteins, some grains. The best advice I can give is to scour the menu ultra carefully and ask lots of questions to your waiter. The restaurant where we ate this time is one we’ve visited before, so we instantly gravitated towards certain items.

One of my favorite things to order for tapas is artichokes; roasted, marinated in olive oil, with a mix of herbs. Also, tortilla is very tasty–I occasionally make this at home. Basically it’s an omelet made with onions and potatoes that are very thinly sliced. On our latest trip to the tapas restaurant we shared some braised lamb shank that was served with a tomato sauce that had some vegetables and fava beans. Oh, and I almost forgot about paella. This place also serves several varieties of paella; some are vegetarian, some are not, some are even made with black rice (the kind with squid ink–okay, I’m not a fan of black rice, but my husband loves it). I did take a few bites of the dessert my husband ordered, but I diverted my eyes and focused on the berries that served as colorful garnish on the plate. It was a sweet finish to a sweet evening.

Tall, Grande, or Venti?

I’ve mentioned on more than one occasion that Flamenco Dad is a complete coffee snob. As a result, he has spoiled me to the point that coffee from most retail establishments now takes like what I suspect sewer water would taste like.

Bless his heart, my hubby orders his coffee beans online and grinds them every time he makes coffee. Swoon! Have I mentioned that in the twelve years we’ve been together, I can count the number of times I’ve made coffee on one hand?

For years we’ve been ordering from this coffee purveyor in New York (we found them while strolling through Greenwich Village while we were out on a date). Recently we decided to give the folks at Boca Java a try, and have been very pleased with the results.

Never one to rest on his laurels, the man been searching for even more ways to get his coffee on with even fresher-tasting results. And so, this arrived via UPS yesterday. Oh, and so did these. So last night my husband came home from work and, not unlike a kid in the proverbial candy store, proceeded to roast his first batch of coffee. I think I heard him squeal in delight once or twice.

My entire house smells like a coffee house–not a bad thing, right? I told my mother-in-law that I’m going to have to set up some tables on the front lawn, slap on my apron, and go around taking orders a la Flo from Alice. In the meantime, I’ll be in the kitchen baking scones, lemon squares and the like for the handsome, and somewhat obsessive, coffee elitist I married.