0 Petit LeMans Weekend

My husband Ian and I were at the Petit LeMans at Road Atlanta this past weekend.  It's our annual tradition, ever since he took me on our first date there 10 years ago this week!  Ella elected to stay the weekend with Nana, admitting that she'd rather go to Fall Festival than go to the PLM.  We camped overnight for the first time.  I absolutely hate camping.  "Hate" is actually an understatement.  I agreed because we had the travel minivan the whole family shares and the plan was to put all the seats down flat in the back and sleep.  We did that, and it wasn't totally horrible, but using porta-potties in 40 degree weather in pitch darkness is not my idea of a comfortable stay.  Yes, I'm unapologetically high-maintenance.  Next time we will be renting an RV.  Baby steps.  

Hanging out at Turn 3:

On Friday, this Aston Martin bit it right in front of us during practice.  You can always be certain that sitting at Turn 3 will be eventful.  No one was hurt, BTW.  

The rest of the days were spent between our [poorly] catered club tent, and with our new friends the off-duty corner marshalls at Turn 3.  I heard the Audi club tent had Richard Blais catering for them.  I was definitely in the wrong tent.  My husband, however, was totally in the right tent, as he yet again won a fabulous prize...a framed poster of the BMW Team RLL car, signed by all six drivers.  He's got a bunch of pictures on his own blog (which happens to be fantastically more popular and famous than this little one I write.)

Our friend Stefan joined us on Saturday.  He just happens to be an amazing photographer.  See?  I have a hard time getting this effect at just a walking pace, let alone at 160 mph.  

Anyway, the long preamble is leading up to me admitting that I haven't made a school lunch since last week.  We got in too late on Sunday night, and I am actually volunteering at school most of the day tomorrow, and I'll be eating lunch with her, so I figured we could just grab a hot meal.  Thus, I'm posting a selection of some of my favorite bentos.

0 Brighton

I wanted to post some of my other vacation pictures.  These are from our day in Brighton, England.  We met my cousin Katie who came down from London for the day.  I was so glad to see her!  What's funny is that she's not from my English family, she's actually from Laguna Beach, but been living in London as a student for the past year.

We stopped at a sidewalk cafe for lunch to sample the famed seafood.  I had a langoustine linguine, which was pretty good.

Check out the giganto fish and chips!  That green mound is mushy peas.  Normally I loathe mushy peas (and I'm a girl who will eat just about anything) ...but these were genuinely amazing.  They were fluffy and really flavorful and I could have eaten it all, and I would have if they had been on my plate!

Miss E having a lovely time!  There was a live jazz singer just to the right of us.

Obligatory Hello Kitty pose.

We spent a couple of hours on the fake sharp pebble beach. 

I wonder why they felt the need to re-name it??  I can't imagine that one letter change made a huge difference.

We stopped for tea and dessert.  This was the first real decadent dessert we'd had the entire trip.  It was an amazing, rich chocolate, REAL brownie!  Brits don't really do brownies, so I was so surprised to see this.  We all ordered it, in fact.  They gave each of us a little shot glass full of M&Ms, which was such a cute touch.  And I don't know about you, but I'm in LOVE with the tableware!

 Posing in front of the palace at the end of our day.

It was a short, but sweet day trip.  Afterward we all drove back to our cottage in Chichester and visited together for a while before driving Katie back to Brighton to catch her train.  While Brighton itself is kind of cliche, the weather was lovely and the company sublime.

0 Ham, Swiss & Chive Braid (and Iceland pictures)

Today for lunch I made a really simple dish that was just minutes to put together.  If I had had some spinach or broccoli, I would have also added some.

Ingredients:

sheet of croissant dough or puff pastry
2 Tbls snipped chives
1/4 cup cubed baked ham
handful shredded Swiss cheese
pepper to taste

Pre-heat oven to 375.

Take a sheet of croissant dough and lay it out on your baking sheet.  Going down the long side, make some perpendicular cuts for the "braids" all the way down, but leave a solid portion in the center so that your filling can be spooned on top.  Oh if there ever was a post that needed the step-by-step photos...sorry guys!

Toss the filling ingredients lightly (I just did this with my fingers right on the chopping board) and spoon it into the center of the dough.  Start at one end and "braid" the cut pieces by alternating one side to the other, slightly overlapping.

Bake for about 12-13 minutes at 375 or until the top is nice and golden brown.  (Please excuse the scuzzy-looking pan...I call it patina!)

Okay, now for some pictures from our short stay in Iceland.  We had a marvelous 8-hour tour of the Golden Circle with GTI Tours.  Amazing, that's all I can say.  See for yourself.

Running up an extinct volcano for a rock specimen for her rock collection.

Cracks in the continental plates.  We stood on three different continental plates that day.

Sampling the glacier water.

Yes, the water really WAS this color of blue.  Like nothing I'd ever seen before.

In front of a huge waterfall.  (The rainbow is 100% real.)

Icelandic ponies.

Quaint old church.

You may be wondering if we ate there.  Why yes, we did!  However, the food was terrible, and even though I took some pictures, I won't post them.  We should have just eaten the Icelandic specialty, which is lamb (also whale, but my conscience would never let me try it.)  We instead had Italian (I was out-voted.)  Not good, but we didn't visit Iceland for the food. ;)