More Friends, More Eggplant

The last few days have been filled with excitement, intrigue, and exhaustion. Actually I'm not sure about the first two as they may have been caused by some sort of delirious fever dream caused by the exhaustion.

Every day begins with an ambitious list of activities and chores to perform but usually ends with the conceit that half the list will be left unaccomplished. That's fine, actually. We've been getting a lot of stuff done with the Wombats. It's just that some days the simplest of tasks, such as giving the babies a bath, just keep getting passed off from day to day until one morning you realize you cannot pass them off any longer when you touch child's head and it coats your hand in a shiny layer of scalp grease.


The guests continue to arrive at our doorstep, presumably following the star that now hangs in the sky high above New York for all to see. Most recently we had Megan visit. The babies turn us into liars by mostly sleeping when we have guests. Eventually Elliott woke up and spent some quality time with her.


Yesterday we had another friend visit, Danielle, who also got to hold Elliott while Martin slept. Martin is the more devious of the babies. Lately he has been the fussier of the two and the more restless sleeper.


However, during recent visits, he tends to just sleep most of the time. Sometimes he strikes an uncomfortable-looking pose like the one pictured above which he held for approximately twenty minutes.


While the guys slept we took them outside to enjoy some drinks and snacks. We had this raw milk Rupert cheese from Consider Bardwell Farm in Vermont. This was a really nice hard cheese which reminded me of Gruyere. I mostly got it because I thought the farm had the silliest name of any farm I've ever heard of. What a bonus that the cheese was really good!


For beer I had this Jersey Breakfast Ale from Cricket Hill Brewing Co. in New Jersey. I haven't been able to find this brewery in New York so I had to smuggle it across the border on a recent trip to New Jersey. I just got it to add to my summer ale collection but it turned out to be quite excellent. I didn't realize it was a Belgian style ale until I looked it up on their website. It had a nice citrus taste, rich flavor, and would be easy to enjoy two or three if you are the type of person that can drink that incredible volume of beer.

I've never met anyone that could put them down like that.



For the main course I took the farm eggplant, hollowed it out, and threw it on the grill. I filled it with a stuffing of garlic, onion, peppers, sausage, diced bread, basil, butter, and olive oil. It turned out better than I expected and was a great way to combat eggplant fatigue.


For dessert Jen had made a crisp with the aging stone fruit and some ginger. I served it up with the Ginger Snap flavor of Phin & Phebes Ice Cream on Jen's recommendation. The combination of the two was excellent. The only other flavor of the ice cream we have left is the banana flavor but given Jen's hatred of bananas I think I'm going to have to wait until Jen's next business trip to enjoy that by myself.

Just me, the Wombats, and a pint of banana ice cream. Thankfully I will have the guys with me, because otherwise that would sound like an evening of sadness.