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?

Jimmy Takes On Golden Gloves

I love boxing. I always have for some reason. When I was little, I honestly wanted to be Rocky more than anything and I love those movies so much (except the fifth, booo). There's a scene in Rocky IV where he's training and he runs in the snow, throws logs, does abs hanging upside down...all things that I convinced myself I could and would do one day, ha!

My choice last year to hire the amazing boxer, Jimmy Clarke, as my personal trainer has been one of my best decisions, ever. He's totally driven and motivating and he crushes me weekly. The best part is I get to live out my boxing dream every Monday night, heehee. I'm definitely an aggressive person when it comes to working out so boxing has been an amazing fit for me. The addition of it to my workout routine has helped increase endurance and stamina for me like you wouldn't believe. Jimmy just knows what he's doing and he's freaking good at it. It sounds kinda sick but I also get a sort of odd satisfaction when my knuckles get busted up. It's like my battle scars or something. :P

I've been super excited for him this past month because he's been fighting in the Golden Gloves tournament and doing awesome. He won every fight leading up to the finals which took place last night at The Theater at Madison Square Garden. I have a bunch of friends that train with Jimmy too so a big group of us decided to get tickets and go support him. I've never been to a live fight so I was totally psyched up for it!

We met at Tempest Bar for a few beers beforehand which is where Camille proceeded to pull out her special surprise of the night - Jimmy heads on a stick. I almost peed my pants because there were nearly 20 of us going and she'd made enough for everyone to wave around. When we got settled in our seats, I couldn't wait to take a picture:

Hahahaha! Holy crap, were they funny. We definitely went crazy screaming for him though and I think everyone around us loved Jimmy as much as we do. With Golden Gloves, the fighters are only allotted three rounds so the fight itself was really quick. It was so great watching Jimmy do his thing:

Unfortunately, Jimmy lost the fight and it seemed really unfair. Scott sent around an article about it this morning with this blurb:

In the following fight, the crowd saw a standing-eight count in one round, then a fighter fall almost entirely out of the ring in the next.

James Clarke landed a right hook to Joseph Scalafani in the middle of the second round that sent him into the standing-eight in the 165-pound novice class.

As he stood waiting for the bout to resume, Scalafani became even more determined to win."I just said to myself I'm not losing these gloves," Scalafani said. "I worked too hard the last four months to come up short."

Scalafani landed a flurry of punches right after the eight count and continued his momentum into the third. Toward the end of the third round, the two became tangled up in the corner and Clarke refused to let go of Scalafani. Scalafani pushed his opponent off and Clarke fell into the ropes, sliding through and almost falling fully out of the ring.

The referee penalized Clarke for holding and minutes later, Scalafani was announced the winner by a 3-2 decision.

We all felt so sad for Jimmy. He'd worked so hard and it was tough seeing him lose. We took him out for a beer after to console him:

Hahahaha! I'll always giggle about this. It was an awesome evening overall and a true pleasure going to support our boy. You're a winner to all of us, Jimmy!