Lunch with Friends

Last Sunday, we had lunch at the house of our friends Travis and Tara. They also invited our friends Mont and Jessica and their son Gabe. That is Travis and Tara's son Alex in his toy wagon. He and Gabe played with his toys before lunch while Aaron slept.

Lunch was delicious! Tara was trying out some new recipes from a cooking magazine she likes (Cuisine at Home) and everything came out very good. There were some spicy jalapeño poppers for an appetizer with a crunchy topping of tortilla chip crumbs on top of a cheesy filling. For the main course, there was grilled beef, grilled bacon-wrapped pork, a cold chicken salad with, I think, a cilantro pesto sauce, a bean dish, and some kind of sweet vegetable dish involving yams. And for dessert, there were homemade cream horns and brownies! We were spoiled with all the good food.

Cream horns are a favorite of Thom's from Ohio and he hasn't been able to find good cream horns out here in CA. Tara's recipe involved wrapping puff pastry around molds made from sugar cones wrapped in aluminum foil. She filled some with vanilla cream and some with chocolate cream. As much work as they were, they sounded simpler to make than I would have thought, so we are going to try to make some of our own. (And just in time for our experiment, Trader Joe's has a new puff pastry product in their freezer section.)

After lunch, the older boys played some more. Gabe is recovering from some ongoing digestive problems and is doing so much better. He even let me hold him and play with him for awhile while his mom Jessica was in another room with Tara. Before, he wouldn't have let his mom out of his site and certainly wouldn't have tolerated me holding him.

Aaron woke up to eat and then was up for awhile. He seemed to enjoy watching Alex and Gabe while their dads held them upside down. In this picture of him on his blanket, he was staring over at Alex and Gabe in the air.

There are a few more pictures from lunch here.