Our Weekend.

Lazy weekends are the best kind of weekends.  Since S is always working, when he gets home we try to take it easy so he can relax and unwind after a long day.  He has to get up so early too, poor lamb.

This past weekend was a really nice, easy couple of days, for me at least.  I lazed about on Saturday morning, watching 'The United States Of Tara' (Have you ever seen that show?  I'm completely hooked and have almost watched all three seasons available on Netflix.  It's weird and it's wonderful, if a little bit unbelievable but hey, escapism is where it's at.) before S getting home and us getting ready to go out for the evening.  We have a good friend who we go bowling with on Wednesdays (for S' league) and he invited us out for dinner to a delightful little Italian restaurant in Bayonne.

It was such a lovely place.  The lighting was just dim enough to hide all imperfections (perfect) and the service was impeccable.  Luckily, our friend was on good terms with the proprietor, being a regular, and we were seated after having to wait only about 15 minutes.  After perusing the menu and struggling with the Italian pronunciations, I decided on a scrumptious meal of chicken breast with prosciutto, fontina cheese and spinach stuffed inside it.  It came with a cute little portion of mashed potatoes and a side of perfectly cooked vegetables.

It was so handsome and so, so filling.  I was truly full after this portion, which was just enough without being too much.  They also provided us with garlic foccacia bread as a free appetiser and it was delicious.  I forced myself not to eat too much bread so I could enjoy my meal (something I am guilty of whenever we go to Olive Garden - oh those breadsticks.).

After our meal, we decided it was time to break in my bowling ball and we headed to the alley to play a few games.  For the first time ever, I hit almost 150 pins and was so proud of myself, I took a picture.

Look at that!  Two strikes!  Which just proves that when you have a ball that fits you perfectly plus an excellent teacher (thank you, S!), you can really smash it and hone your skills.  I think we're going to go back to the bowling alley this week so I can brush up on my game and I am beyond excited for it.

Sunday was another morning of S working, so I decided to bake some banana bread since our fruit was going a little brown.

This is all that went into my banana bread - One and a half cups of all purpose flour, a cup of sugar, half a cup of melted butter, one egg, one teaspoon of baking soda, a pinch of salt and three ripe bananas.  I mashed my bananas but not too thoroughly, as I thought it would be nice to have pieces of banana throughout the bread.  After I combined all the ingredients, I baked it in a loaf tin for an hour at about 350ºF and let my apartment fill with the gorgeous smell of cake and bananas.

Not only was I completely jazzed to see it had baked perfectly on top, but when I turned it out it hadn't burned on the bottom!  Woo!  I self high-fived when I saw it was just right all the way through.  S got in not long after and I served us up a slice each, still warm from the oven.

I love that there are little pieces of banana interspersed throughout the bread.  And I adore how it looks when it's sliced, with those pretty little purple-y pink threads.  I had no idea it was going to look like that when I cut it open but it's so lovely.  I'm excited to see if I can make it again in the same way, but I'd like to add some walnuts or pecans and maybe a little bit of vanilla too, just to spice it up.

We finished off our lazy weekend in the best way ever; Chinese food and beer.

Despite S having to work all weekend, we spent his time off being completely laid back and enjoying ourselves.  Which is really what weekends are all about!  What did you do this weekend?  I hope it was just as good as ours.

Love, K.