Saturday, October 18, 2008

Pumpkin coma

UPDATE: now with pics!

Is there a better kind of coma? Cause I wouldn't trade this one.

I met Irish* in the hospital on base - I was waiting for a prescription and she was waiting for a phone call, and she struck up a conversation about my knitting. Turned out she wanted to learn and I wanted to teach, et voila! A friendship was forged. Irish is strikingly good at knitting, having learned knit, purl, cast on, and CABLES in her first month or so. She is a PRO already.

Anyhow, Irish and her husband Steve had Josh and me over to dinner tonight. They went all out, those crazy kids - Irish made pumpkin soup IN A PUMPKIN, as pictured above. It was so beautiful and rich and tasty...mmm... Then for the main attraction we had cornish game hens and garlicky spinach canapes. We are spoiled.

I brought us a pumpkin cheesecake for dessert which was, to quote the character Mary Poppins (not my friend Nadine), quite satisfactory. America's Test Kitchen dessert recipes tend to be complex, but they are worth it. This one was a winner.


Irish and I managed to make it all the way through dinner before we started to discuss knitting**, even though we both knew that she had bought her first sock needles and Noro Kureyon sock yarn this very day! As we munched on dessert we got her all cast on, stitches divided on the needles, and she'd finished the first cuff round before I left.

What a lovely evening. We're headed to bed early now since we have a big day tomorrow - stay tuned!

*Thought you had me all figured out, didn't you? But Irish is her given name. Maybe I'll nickname her Scottish, just to shake things up.
**The men, I will add, did not even make it to the soup course before they started talking about Navy coin collecting. Nerdorama.

4 comments:

Bob said...

Yummm!! The pumpkin looks good! So what's so nerdy about coin collecting?

Melanie said...

Wow, what a night, yum yum. How fun. Now I want pumpkin cheesecake. I just got an email from Hang, he made a dark chocolate souffle for the challenge of it and had pictures, it looked so good too. It's the night of good deserts through the computer. I want one here. Oh well. Can't wait to hear about your day tomorrow. Love you. I loved the picture of you with the cheesecake.

cSquared said...

Let me know when you get the recipe for the pumpkin soup. I want to try! I'm jealous of Irish's ability to learn how to knit so quickly. I was such a horrible student but I think after the GRE it will once again be on the top of my hobbies to learn list. Miss you guys!! Take care :)

cSquared said...

P.S. Tell Josh I have a SecNav coin from Donald Winter!!