The weekend so far...

We agreed on the new name for the new Pug. Martini. As in: vodka, dirty, shaken not stirred, olive and a..., she walks like she has drank one. All of that work and asking around just to end up right back to my original idea. And she seems to be answering to us fairly well. She only had us up twice last night, once at 4am then again at 5:45am - which is why I'm writing this now. Martini and I have been playing games to get her tired so we can both go back to sleep.

Justin and I made a trek up to Walmart in Fallon yesterday - it is almost the same distance to Reno as it is to Fallon, but we had a better chance of not making it a 6 hour trip, as we do so frequently with Reno by getting sidetracked with stores (since there are so little here in Fernley). We bought some items we needed, some we didn't. Then puppy sat for the rest of the afternoon before we headed to a friends house for dinner.

That's right. We have now bumped up our couple friends by hopefully two couples. We would not be up to at least 5. Awesome! And we FINALLY came across a parent who was completely honest with us about having children. She has a 10 year old daughter...that is a terrible age, I remember from being a Big Sister from Big Brother's Big Sisters (not talking about my real sister here) and she was 10 and AWFUL. What a horrible experience it was for me. I digress, this parent advised us not to have children...they are more effort than they are worth. She said if we have the urge then to borrow other parent's children and that will stop the urge. Definitely food for thought.

After Mother Nature thought about it for about 4 days and threatened to rain...it finally has! Thank God! It is so nice to have rain. It so doesn't rain as often as I would like it to here, but after all this is the desert.

Oh and speaking of desert, well really dessert... I made the simplest and tastiest dessert I have ever made. I found the recipe on Epicurious.com and since I was asked to bring a desert to dinner for 11 last night I used this one. I made half with Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate and half with store bought lemon curd. The lemon curd was a bit trickier to roll and if they were overfilled the filling baked out of them and onto the baking pan. But you can do this with anything...say homemade jams (wink, wink...Carol). This is a reason for me to have Ghirardelli chocolate and puff pastry on hand AT ALL TIMES:

Petits Pains Au Chocolat

Makes 24.

2 sheets frozen puff pastry (one 17.3-ounce package), thawed, each sheet cut into 12 squares
1 large egg beaten to blend with 1 tablespoon water (for glaze)
4 3.5-ounce bars imported bittersweet or milk chocolate, each cut into six 2x3/4-inch pieces

Sugar

Line baking sheet with parchment paper. Brush top of each puff pastry square with egg glaze. Place 1 chocolate piece on edge of 1 pastry square. Roll up dough tightly, enclosing chocolate. Repeat with remaining pastry and chocolate. Place pastry rolls on baking sheet, seam side down. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover pastries with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Cover and refrigerate remaining egg glaze.) Preheat oven to 400°F. Brush tops of pastry rolls with remaining egg glaze. Sprinkle lightly with sugar. Bake until pastries are golden brown, about 15 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.