Weekend Round-Up

I hope all of my American friends enjoyed their three-day weekend. 11/11/11 was of course Veterans Day, and in the Lovejoy family we are very proud of our two veterans: my dad, Mike, and my brother, Michael. As always, thanks for your service and thanks for everything else you do. We love you!

As for the Alliance, we enjoyed our long weekend just as we should: with lots of family time, plenty of relaxation, and some great (sometimes-decadent) meals.

On Friday, we got a good dose of some Washington rains, and so Miss LB finally got to wear her bumble bee raincoat, a gift from our SoCal friends Tomoko and Matt, who are being sorely missed here in WA.
And for Friday dinner . . . the first of many good weekend meals: tofurkey with brussel sprouts (sauteed in garlic) and some roasted organic veggies from the farmer's market (carrots, parsnips, beet root, and potatoes). Mushroom gravy to top it all off. Yummy! And hearty!
At lunchtime on Saturday, we had another little treat from the farmer's market: these pastries from a local organic bakery. Would you look at that buttery, flaky goodness?

This one's filled with wild mushroom and cream.

A chocolate croissant. So many delicious, mouth-watering layers.
Pumpkin and caramel.
It was chilly and gray all Saturday afternoon, which made it a great opportunity for some reading. I just finished reading Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I thought it was pretty good and I thought Tom might enjoy it. He did. He spent a good portion of Saturday reading it, and when he finished that, we bought the sequel, Catching Fire, and he spent most of Sunday reading it. He's quite the binge reader, but this was the rainy weekend for it!
Saturday night is take-out night in the Lovejoy-Fordham Alliance, and now that it's cold and we have this awesome wood stove, Saturday night is now eat-take-out-in-front-of-the-fire night. This week's take-out: Mexican!
Lilybeth had a quesadilla.
Tom had this massive veggie burrito.
As if we hadn't fed ourselves enough, we woke up on Sunday, and I cooked up our special Sunday breakie. This week's fare: biscuits in country gravy.
With filled bellies, we headed down to the pier for a little outdoors time after being holed up indoors for most of the weekend. One of LB's favorite PA activities is building sandcastles, so she was happy to find herself at the beach.
She was complaining that she couldn't see.
That's better, little blondie.
And finally, Sunday night was one more opportunity to have a big meal. On tonight's menu: potato pancakes. We had them savory with sour cream and salsa and also sweet with cranberry sauce and sour cream.

Everyone pitched in with the cooking, and it was LB's job to stir (and surreptitiously sample) the cranberry sauce.
Frying in the pan.
Crispy, golden fried goodness.
LB had hers sweet style. Mmmmm! A tasty end to a tasty weekend.