Beach and Bake

Over the weekend, we hit the beautiful shores of Jersey for a lovely weekend with our Hoboken friends. And I'm not being sarcastic when I say beautiful--this particular section of the shore (Seaside Park) is quite picturesque and far away from any Situations. :-)

The girls we went with are super-planners and super-ambitious, so I wasn't suprised when they decided we'd do a seafood bake for our big dinner on Saturday night. I went along for the ride and helped where I could, but felt it best for them to take the helm and plan the feast, which entailed scallops, shrimp, clams, snow crab legs and lobster. We picked up the shellfish at a local fish market and grilled it all but the crab and lobster, which was steamed. Seasoned with a little lime, lemon, salt and pepper, paired with corn, potatoes and onions, and that was it. Simple and delicious--and so fun to eat.

I made my first trifle for desert. I opted to be a bit more ambitious myself, and went with a recipe calling for pastry creme. As my mom said, it's quite easy to mess up any kind of custard, and I learned that the hard way, with my corn startch separating from the egg yolk. I wound up blending it, and, considering I did this late on Friday night, I also wound up splattering a quarter of the mix allover our kitchen. Right after Mark had cleaned the counters and the stove top. Nice.

All ended well and the trifle (complete with buttery pound cake, fresh strawberries, and yes, the ill-fated pastry creme which actually turned out quite good) was a hit. As was the beach and ocean with Eamon--he loved swimming with us and playing in the sand with his two BFFs. The boys are SO cute together and really got along so well the entire time we were there.