Easter

Yesterday, Nick and I celebrated Easter on our own for the first time. In the past we have always gone to one of our parents' house, but this year due to geography and schedules we decided to stay in Cincinnati and celebrate on our own. Neither of us are particularly religious (Nick isn't at all and I'm seriously lapsed) but it was a beautiful day and we are always looking for a reason to celebrate something.

The day started out, as it usually does, with "waking up" our cockatiel, Penny. After I took her out of her cage I set up a few new Easter toys that I picked up during a trip to the Bird Shoppe last week. She's always freaked out by new toys at first, but she quickly took a liking to this one:


All it is is shredded, curled drinking straws, but she has since spent several hours on top of her cage chewing on the delicious plastic.

Once Penny settled in and started playing with her new toys, Nick and I had a tasty breakfast of blueberry pancakes that he was nice enough to make. Of course, Penny got her mini-pancake too, which was even more delicious than the new toy.



We relaxed in the apartment for a little while, then I suggested we go check out the Krohn Conservatory. It is one of those places that I keep reading about but haven't had a chance to go to yet, and it seemed like a good Easter-y activity. It was indeed a great idea, but one that many others also thought of. It was really crowded with families and couples, taking pictures, walking really slowly, doing what they do. Even though there were tons of people it was still really nice and we enjoyed ourselves.



In the flower room, with all the people.



Later in the evening we started dinner. We are by no means very fancy cooks, but I think we do OK. I only know how to make a few things, but have been trying to learn to cook more, but Nick is really quite good in the kitchen. We had lamb roast with an apple, mint, and shallot sauce, asparagus with hollandaise sauce, and garlic mashed potatoes with bleu cheese crumbles, and we washed it down with some cider.



It was sooooo good. I also made cinnamon cookies for dessert, which we enjoyed while watching Gilmore Girls.

Even though we couldn't make it home for Easter we still had a really nice day. It was very relaxing and tasty all around and was exactly the kind of break I needed from grad school decisions and funding issues and the like. But that is a story for another post.

I hope you all had a great Easter!

Crawfish Bake!!!

Tuesday night Nick and I decided to go down to the Knotty Pine on the Bayou, in Cold Springs, Kentucky for a crawfish bake. I'd never been to a crawfish bake before, but Nick had gone in past years. The Knotty Pine has a full cajun menu, complete with a selection of Abita beer to chose from. We ordered the shrimp and cream cheese stuffed jalapenos to start, which weren't exactly what they sound like, but were still delicious. Then I got a cup of gumbo which was WONDERFUL and Nick got a cup of red beans and rice, which, not liking beans very much, I didn't think sounded very good, but it was. Then we split an order of crawfish. One order of crawfish is 3 pounds and comes with two sides and a salad (which was also really delicious in the "yes it's salad, but in no way is this good for you" kind of way). The crawfish were soooooo good. They were seasoned really well, a little spicy, but not overly. Now, I make no claims to be any kind of restaurant reviewer, but I do love to go out to eat, and this was certainly and adventure and I'd definitely do it again, so I thought I'd make a little post about it. Now how about some images?



Our plate of crawfish. We only had one (which was more than enough for us, especially with the sides), but the waitress said that they had blown through 150 pounds of crawfish in three hours.



I took this on accident because my camera was on the wrong setting, but you can see some of the sides. The brown stuff in front of me is the gumbo, then you can see Nick sample is red beans and rice and the collared greens. There are also some smashed red potatoes on the table. I'm glad I took this video for two reasons: you can see everything, and you get to see Nick eat, which I think is one of the more amusing things I get to experience in my day-to-day life.



Unfortunately we waited until the end to take a video of how you actually eat a crawfish (pull off the tail and suck out the meat), so this is really dark, but hopefully you can make out the good parts.