Kind-of lazy and sickly weekend

The couch got a lot of use this weekend, I was laid up there, with knitting in hand for quite a while. I developed a sore throat Friday afternoon and was scared I was getting a cold so I started taking an over-the-counter meds in hopes of warding off any more sickness. Truly the sore throat and a two day long headache were my only symptoms. Saturday morning I still woke up early and went to the farmer's market. I bought peaches, red potatoes, figs, black-eyed peas, a bar of soap, coffee and some zinnias. I think I may try to make peach sorbet and peach butter later this week if I can find the time.

The zinnias are so pretty, it's too bad they only lasted about 15 minutes after I snapped this shot before the cats decided to see how they tasted.

Later in the morning the generous and thoughtful macaron fairy stopped by and brought me some macarons from Pix, which I had missed while in Portland because of their ice cream social. A few were broken because of traveling across the country but that didn't affect the taste, the margarita one and the one with chocolate filling tied for my favorites. I still intend on attempting to make macarons, even after my failure earlier in the year.

Saturday afternoon I watched Welcome to the Dollhouse for the millionth time. Kind of the female precursor to Napoleon Dynamite, only a little um, edgier? I worked on Woodland Shawl I started on my trip. And I developed cast-on-itis and started a garter stitch shawl with Sunshine Yarn in the Forks colorway. It seems to be pretty mindless and simple, which I wanted since the yarn is really variegated.

Last Tuesday was Doug’s 40th birthday and he really didn’t want a lot of fuss, so we went out to dinner that night and I planned on making his favorite meal this past weekend. He loves lasagna and requested a coconut birthday cake. The lasagna recipe is from Epicurious and is delicious. I don't normally cook with sausage but this made the dish. The cake recipe is from Ina Garten aka Barefoot Contessa, it calls for a grand total of FIVE sticks of butter - FIVE. I was confused at first, was this really a Paula Deen recipe? In the interest of heart health I halved the recipe and only made one layer. And then I forgot the cream cheese for the original frosting recipe so I just made a plain-jane buttercream frosting but with almond extract. We didn’t have any candles so I decorated the top with woodland creatures from my Bake It Pretty stash. He loved it.