Flamingos and Oxtails

We're back from our Costa Rica honeymoon...from which Jason has come home tan and I've come home burnt! We had an absolutely wonderful and relaxing vacation. I think the best part was being pampered and spending all my time with Jason. I can see why parents decide to take a second honeymoon once their youngest child leaves for college...it is so nice to take a break and not have any responsibilities. We finally got home at 3:15am Tuesday morning. It took about an hour to get through Customs (due to a crush of people arriving at midnight and a severe shortage of staff) and then we got stuck in a 45 minute traffic jam as we went through L.A. (due to construction work that narrowed six lanes over into to the shoulder.) But, we were met at the front door by an ecstatic Lucy!


Two fun things have happened since our return. On Tuesday afternoon, our yard was "flocked" with a group of hotpink flamingos. The E-2 community on base is doing a fundraiser where you can pay to anonymously have a group of flamingos staked in a friend's yard for a few days. Our next door neighbor's 16-month-old son loves running over to our yard and yanking them out of the ground...the flamingos must be too pink for his taste!

And, since Jason has this week off as well, he's been giving me some extra vacation time by volunteering to cook for two nights :) Last night he made a superb dish featuring oxtail. He loves to cook from his Mario Batali cookbook and has wanted to try an oxtail recipe for a few months. When I threw out my back a few weeks ago and Jason had to do the grocery shopping, he discovered that the commissary carries oxtail, which is actually a nice cut of meat. It comes with a bit of bone, but after stewing for two hours, the juicy meat comes right off. Tomorrow night he'll be fixing Palette de Pure a la Biere. I have no idea what that means...I just buy the ingredients that he requests!

I'll be putting up some pictures and details about our Costa Rican adventures...so stay tuned for more!