Our youngest passed his orals for his Ph.D at Yale! YAY!!!!

So we wanted to celebrate with everyone, both boys and their girls. I wanted to make a special meal, filled with Zach’s favorites for last night (Sunday dinner) – starting with crab cakes with a chipotle mayo and then an herb crusted rack of lamb, farro with olive oil, sherry vinegar and parsley, and roasted asparagus.

Well, I had a salt problem. I followed a new recipe for the lamb that had me salting the meat and adding salt to the breadcrumb mixture too. As I was doing it, I was like, uh, (in my mind) this is too much salt, but with all the commotion of everyone being home and in the kitchen with me, I soldiered on, talking and following the recipe instructions. WRONG!!! And at such expense with the meat ($68.00), to screw it up with too much salt! I should have known better, as I was questioning myself while doing it. One should always trust your intuition, right? And as all you cooks out there know, with a meal like this, if people aren’t ooing and ahhing, there’s something wrong. My husband was sweet and said it was cooked perfectly. My boys were honest and the girls liked it, but one was sick so taste buds were off. I felt SO bad! I ruined what could have been a spectacular meal! Made me weepy and sad. I hate salt problems!!!

So that’s the sad part – but always being the optimist – here’s the funny part of the weekend.

Take a look at my husband helping me cut open my pie pumpkin to roast. Yes, that’s right, after numerous knives, we tried the saw from his tool chest. When that didn’t work we went to a screwdriver with a hammer and worked our way around the pumpkin. After I roasted it and removed the pulp, you could have used the skin as a helmet, it was that hard. Maybe they did use these as head protectors for battle a long, long time ago. Meanwhile this pulp is flavorful and not at all watery. It actually has a little bit of the texture of spaghetti squash. I will puree it on Wednesday in order to bake the pumpkin pie on Thursday morning and let you know how it comes out. Have you all ever had a pie pumpkin like this? It’s a first for me!