Fridays

Friday is my absolute, without a doubt, favorite day of the week, with Thursday evenings running a close second.

Good things lay ahead for the weekend; most importantly, "sleeping in" past 8:00 am. It doesn't get much sweeter in life then to roll over at 5:14 am, glance at the glowing alarm clock, and realize that I have at LEAST another three hours to sleep.

The other regular highlight of most weekends would include the planning and cooking of a large meal, to be consumed Saturday night. Putting together a menu, shopping for the food, and getting it all to the table, hot and hopefully delicious, rank as some of my favorite things to do in life. For example, S's 31st birthday is coming up this month and I invited our parents over for a celebratory dinner. Is it strange that I already know what we'll be eating and where I'm buying the ingredients? I don't know, sometimes I feel alone in my obsessiveness. Tell me what you think of the menu:
~Houston's Hot Spinach Artichoke dip, served with El Milagro tortilla chips and pineapple salsa
~Marcella Hazan's Pasta e Fagioli (a delicious hearty italian pasta & bean dish, with tomatoes, ground beef and other veggies, eaten with a spoon)
~Caesar Salad
~Slow roasted garden tomatoes, drizzled with olive oil and red wine vinegar, garlic and thyme topped with Parmesan cheese and broiled
~Homemade crunchy garlic bread
~Birthday Cake (a buttermilk vanilla yellow cake with dark Valrhona chocolate frosting) and Hagaan Daz vanilla ice cream

I realize the spinach dip doesn't fit with the rest of menu, neither does the birthday cake for that matter....but frankly I don't care. Reading Frank Bruni's (New York Times Food Critic) of Houston's spinach dip made my mouth water, therefore we're having it. That's the beauty of being the cook, right?

Anyways, back to my love of Fridays. The sweetest time of the day is collapsing into bed with S, turning the light out, giggling and snuggling and realizing we have two whole days to be together before work approaches on Monday. Life is good.