For the month of February Gabriel was gone doing a wilderness medicine rotation in the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee. We saw him two weekends up in Celo. The month apart wasn't quite as hard as I thought it would be but that is also because I was rescued by my mother who spent three weeks helping me to take care of Oliver and myself. We spent a week of that in Chapel Hill and the last two weeks up in Celo.
Poor Gabriel. He works so hard at work and I know he has so much to do for school when he gets home but between his own wishes and the maintenance of my own sanity and our marriage he spends most of his time at home playing with Oliver and helping me out. He has had some adorable little tokens of love which I have accepted as peace offerings for his time away. He has done a lot of cooking, bringing of flowers and letting me take off for yoga classes or other things on my own. One of the strange cooking streaks he has been on has been baking. Candied almonds, biscotti, and soft pretzels. The pretzels were kind of extraordinary. Real proper pretzels which were poached and then baked. So delicious. It was a recipe from the New York Times Sunday Magazine which my mom intended to make but she asked us to get them started for her because of all of the rising etc...but once Gabriel got started he became wildly possessive and possessed and wouldn't let anyone else near. Very sweet. Goes great with the family's secret mustard recipe! I keep trying to tell people how amazing these were and no one seems to get it so here are the photos to prove it.
