Reflections on a weekend

I love long weekends, because you can accomplish a lot AND sleep in as much as you want, so you don’t have to feel either overworked or lazy. This past weekend was the perfect example, as we got saw a lot of friends and did a bunch of errands, but also did a lot of nothing. Translation: awesome weekend.

Here’s the rundown:

• MANY HAPPY RETURNS: We have been sort-of avoiding Cornwall's ever since we stumbled in there after the Beer Summit and stumbled out without paying. For the uninitiated, Cornwall's is [the best bar in Boston and] located a block from our house. Going a month without visiting there is like going a week without washing your hair – unexpected and slightly awkward because you feel like everyone’s noticing. So, in a conscious effort to re-normalize ourselves with the place, we stopped in for an early evening beer on our way out to Jessica’s house. Everything went fine.
  

• FEEDING FRENZY: We made our own pizza on Friday night with Jessica and Chris, and it turned out amazing. Toppings included: caramelized onion, spinach, fresh mozzarella and goat cheese. It was seriously life changing. (The consensus is that it was the fresh mozzarella; I’m leaning towards the caramelized onions). Yesterday, I tried out two new recipes: Boozy Apple Cake (with this name, it’s just demanding to be included in a themed menu!) and Goat Cheese Mushroom Tart with Potato Crust. Both went really well – and were pretty easy.
  
  The tart involved grating a potato (the recipe called for 1 russet potato, I used 4 new potatoes instead) as the crust, then mixing 2 cups of mushrooms, 1 ½ cups of goat cheese, some half-and-half and an egg as the filling. Next time, I’ll add an extra cup of mushrooms to make it a little less white (and a little healthier maybe?), but, let’s be honest, anything with this much goat cheese is going to be delicious.
  
  The cake was essentially a yellow cake with pureed apples mixed in, which, after baking, was soaked with a concoction of whiskey, vanilla and water. I think it could use an extra apple or 2 (only 2 were used) as well as a topping – I’ll probably make some whipped cream for it in the future, but it's pretty great, and an excellent use for the whiskey that's been sitting unused for the last year and a half.
  
  Other food highlights of the weekend included: the housemade black bean burger at Cambridge Common, a long-awaited visit to Mr. Sushi, and getting a Zipcar to go to Trader Joe’s yesterday so we could load up on essentials like wine and laundry detergent without having to deal with carrying these things on the T. See, productivity.
  

• MOVIE MANIA: In an attempt to balance out the money spent earlier in the week on 'He’s Just Not That Into You,' we went to see 'Waltz with Bashir' on Sunday. And, to round out our viewing of the Best Picture nominees in anticipation of this coming Sunday’s Oscar broadcast, we took in 'The Reader' yesterday. More on those later. In between it all, we also watched 'Before Sunrise' and 'Before Sunset' (I wonder if I will ever be able to watch only one of them again, without immediately wanting to watch the other.).

What’s kind of crazy about the weekend is that there are no photos. We didn’t take the camera out of my purse once. I kind of like that – this weekend only exists in memory. And, well, now here too.