A Much Needed School Break

Since starting school on March 12th, we've made a lot of recipes. There is so much information we've absorbed and, I have to say, it's taxing. We've got a big, thick textbook in which we read our lessons each day and write out recipes for the following day plus we have Italian class three times a week which adds even more to our plate. My brain has been on overdrive since beginning the program so, when Bryan's Easter weekend visit finally rolled around, the brief respite couldn't have been more welcomed. Our first kitchen practical would be just a couple of days after Bryan's trip too so I was ecstatic that we had Good Friday off from school totally!

Quick side note. During the week leading up to Easter, we made an additional recipe called colombo pasquale which is a very traditional Italian Easter bread. It takes three days to do so we started it at the beginning of the week and I was excited to have it waiting on Bryan when he got in town. It's a lovely sweet bread studded with candied orange peel and topped with toasted almonds and pearl sugar. It's shaped before baking into a prepared mold that represents a dove:

It has an amazing flavor but, sadly, I'm not a candied fruit person. Neither is Bryan. Soooo, we appreciated the bread from afar for what it is but that's about it, heehee.

Anyway, we had a spectacular weekend. We took full advantage of my being off school on Friday and roamed all over the west village. We stopped into Bleecker Street Records where I think Bryan feels most at home. He didn't make fun of me at all for snapping a photo of him browsing:

He's so cute.

We walked on from there to get Italian treats (hello, pignoli cookies!) from Rocco's and then to Pearl Oyster Bar for lobster rolls. The weather was tremendous so we actually walked halfway back to my apartment after. That evening, we met Brian and Ivey for beers at Tempest before...wait for it...THE BOSS, yeeeeeah! I was so freaking excited for this show. Do these two fit the part or what:

Happy kids we are:

The show was fantastic. Ol' Bruce is one of the most fun entertainers I've seen in quite some time. Such a fun fun night.

The rest of the weekend was spent wandering around in the most perfect weather, ever. We took walks, sat outside, had our usual date at Flex, met friends, went to a great Easter service at church...just relaxed and spent time enjoying each other:

This visit definitely tops all the others so far, in my opinion. I needed this time to breathe and just 'be' so I'm very thankful I had the chance to do that and with Bryan, no less. I was able to clear my head and prepare as much as one can for the unknown that would be our first practical in the kitchen so it was a tremendous weekend. Much too short but aren't they always?