Everything is fine!

Well I'm pretty much back on schedule.  I started out today making the "cornets" for one of our canapes, Here are the molds and the stencil,

Here is one of my favorite foods, which happens to be a main ingredient in the cornets: butter. 

Here is the first batch that I made.  They were too thick, so we just ate them.  They were like pancakes a little bit, and cracked when I tried to roll them around the molds.  Plus they were pretty hot, and so I was slow.  And the thickness made it so that they didn't brown properly.  Anyway, I tried again.

Eventually, we had these.  Not quite perfectly browned, but they're going to work.  And taste wonderful once I fill them with tuna.  These are going to be my shout out to Chef Heinz at La Maison, who makes fabulous Tuna Nachos, however mine are going to be Tuna Cornets instead of on a fried wonton.

So those took most of the morning believe it or not.  But in between opening the oven door, burning my finger tips, and waiting for the silpat to cool down, we cooked the lobster.  

Here they are, helping me measure how much water I need to cook them in.

 Yummy delicious, lobster.

My help, playing with the lobsters while waiting for the water to boil.

All the delicious meat, ready to be put in a filling to stuff the crepes for the main dish tomorrow (except for our friend who gets the halibut).  Incidentally after my initial panic attack, I did feel sorry for the guy.  He doesn't know what he's missing out on! 

I also made the lobster glaze, which is basically stock that cooked pretty much ALL day, until 2 cups had cooked down to about a tablespoon.  This concentrated stuff is going in the filling for the crepes.

And then, this afternoon, I made the majority of the dessert. Here are the meringues, right after they've come out of the oven in their water bath.

Here is a mostly finished one, filled with the chocolate mousse.  It's supposed to be a surprise in the middle.  I'll dump this out onto a paper towel, then after some of the moisture is absorbed put it on top of some creme anglais, and then a little chocolate cookie on top with some chocolate shavings and mint oil.  I'm pretty excited to eat it.  I just hope I can pull off the whole paper towel part.

The last two things I did, were to juice 3 lbs of these beautiful red carrots and and little bit of ginger, and then cook the 2 cups of juice down to about half a cup.  This is going to mixed with lots of cream and butter tomorrow and will be the base of the lobster "pancakes".  

Here, is my sous chef, washing the carrots before we juice them.

I then took some of the carrot pulp left in the juicer, and microwaved it for over 40 minutes.  I have honestly never in my life microwaved anything that long.  After reading Nourishing Traditions I am just a little afraid that we all have radioactive waves just flowing through our bodies right now, but I'm trying to put it out of my mind.  I'll just try to eat enough organic meat next week to counteract the damage.  

Here is the pulp in the microwave.  

So tomorrow, I still have a lot to do, but it's a whole lot of little stuff, and as long as we don't have any major disasters (like say, oh, I don't know, Ansley accidentally eating Miles's heartworm medicine instead of giving it to him), should be totally attainable.  I was actually done by dinner time tonight, almost.  And Mr. Bob brought us dinner so I didn't even have to worry about that.  His "thanks" was some of the extra dessert that I didn't need - it wasn't pretty, because it was the scooped out middles of the meringues, but it sure tasted good.