A Visit from a Friend, Off to a Good Start

Steph is here! Which also means I am on vacation! Woohoo! This happened to coincide with the first absolutely beautiful day in recent memory (so, of course, Steph assumes I'm exaggerating about how gross the weather this summer has been). I barely recognized my fair city without all that humidity...

To start things off, I picked up a couple new pets at the store. Their names (as usual) were Bob and Mr. Pinchy. We introduced them to Pedro and Rico, since it's important for all of your pets to get along.
(That's Mr. Pinchy on the left.) After introductions, it was time to get cleaned up for dinner. Bath time for Bob:
who was soon joined by Mr. Pinchy. Say what you will about the relatively small brains of crustaceans, but these guys were friends to the end:
Here they are waiting to meet their fate:
and (below) ready for the final cooking step. The Emily-style way of cooking lobster is one I picked up from an Alfred Portales book (before I got so irritated with him over the beet incident...). Because it's so hard to boil a lobster to the exact point of perfection, I usually pull them out of the water a little before I think they're done, then break down the bodies, dot the meat with (unsalted) butter, and finish under the broiler. This way you get perfectly cooked lobster every time, infused with a little extra buttery goodness.
Next we threw some steaks on the grill. (No, they don't have names. That would be ridiculous. And, yes. That is about twice as much steak as two people need. The meat guy came over when I was choosing between these two and we started chatting about how awesome rib-eyes are and what a great sale it was... so then I felt weird putting one of them back... Always better to have too much steak than too little, anyway...)
And plated up a kick-ass dinner
to enjoy in my "dining room."
Not a bad spread for a total of less than $30 in groceries... And not a bad start to vacation, if you ask me...