Just another perfect day...

Sunday was a really fun day for us. Julie started the day by browning a roast which made the entire house smell great. She put it in the crock pot and we all headed down to church.

The service went well—a nice turnout and good music and Kate preached a good sermon. There were visitors and some folks I hadn’t seen for a while, and even though it was a half-term week we had a lot of kids, which always livens the place up a bit. The kids played hard and loud during the coffee hour, and I loved it.

After church we went to lunch at one of our favorite places (Zizzi). Pasta, salad and a bottle of wine—just the right way to kick off the rest of a Sunday. The day was so beautiful that we decided to get on a bus and ride somewhere…anywhere. We boarded a 27 and rode past Ian’s school and Paddington Station, and headed toward the Kensington area. We saw the new Whole Foods and decided to get off the bus and go in for a while—Julie had been there but I hadn’t seen it yet.

We walked in through the bakery (which is really unfair placement), and I went straight to the infamous cheese room. There was a stand with samples of a good California Zinfandel and we, er, sampled it a bit. Moving past it toward the cheese I sampled a great cheddar and a sheep cheese and a stilton. Then I saw it: the prize item for any clergyman goofing off on a Sunday afternoon.

It was called The Stinking Bishop.

It certainly lived up to its name, but it was also delicious. Ian laughed after I told him what a bishop was, and he started calling it The Smelly Minister and cracking himself up. I bought 150 grams of it, along with some other cheeses, and added two bottles of Ravenswood and some warm loaves of bread. We got back on the bus and started the journey home.

Now the 27 was sort of crowded but we got some seats upstairs. Along the way three separate sets of people sat behind us, and I heard each one whisper to the other something like, ‘man, what stinks in here?’ I wanted to say that it was the Bishop, but I kept quiet. On the way home Julie and I remembered that we had a roast still cooking at home, and just as we were done laughing about that I got a text from our friend Tom Barlow asking what we were doing. He came with two of his daughters and we ended up having three kinds of cheese, two different loaves of bread, a roast with vegetables and some wine.

It was a great feast, a true blessing and a perfect end to a beautiful Sunday.