FIre PIt Fun

New Food Night ---- Fall Weather -- Fire pit --- Nice patio   Let's put it all together.

We had a Fire Pit Food New Food Night this week!  We all enjoyed it very much.  Let me share with you.

Fire Pit Food was Miss Annette's idea and we are all so glad she came up with it.  So let me try to share some of the food and fun we had last night.

Gary got a fire going.

Bud enjoyed the fire.

We had hot dogs on a stick - but wrapped in a crescent roll.  Now I've checked all my pictures and for some reason I don't seem to have a 'finished' one.  But they were good.  This was Gary's idea. He had two types of hot dogs - regular and cheese dogs. We roasted the hot dogs for a bit to cook them then just rolled crescent dough around them and held this over the fire to bake.  Some of us didn't bake ours as long as others and the roll was a little doughy.  We all agreed though that crescent rolls on a fire are awesome!

Miss Annette had been telling us about Pudgie Pies.  Now no one but her knew what they were.  She had one Pudgie Pie maker that we all used.  Basically, it's a sandwich with filling - your choice, cooked over the fire in the special device.  Miss Annette had a meat mixture.  So you put buttered bread in the Pudgie Pie Maker and just a couple of spoons of filling then top with second slice of butter bread.

Here she is showing us how to put the sandwich together.

Here's that device just sitting in the coals cooking - a couple of minutes on each side.

And here's the finished product.

We also had some corn niblet ears. We just put these on sticks and roasted on the firepit.

And check out the Fire Pit Pizza Roll that K.C. made!  This was really good!  She took the pizza dough and put the filling/toppings in then rolled it up and wrapped in foil. We put it on the fire pit for 15 minutes each side.

This dish was going to be our dessert.

Cake baked in an orange.  Man was this good!  I just took oranges and scooped out all the orange (again I didn't plan ahead as this was a chore  LOL and now I have lots of oranges left in a mushy, mashy mess.  They will be used in garbage disposal).  Filled the orange 2/3 full of cake batter, wrapped in foil and baked for 20 minutes.  The flavor was unbelievable!

There you have it - our New Food Night.

Here's a few pictures of us just hanging out.

Can you guess who likes on-fire marshmallows?

I forgot that we also had marshmallows to roast and chocolate chip cookies to put the marshmallow between.

We all agreed it was a very enjoyable evening and we very glad that Miss Annette had this idea. It put me in the mood to go camping.  How about you? What is your favorite fire pit food?

German Night

Last week we had New Food Night.

I know many of you are wondering why we haven't eaten in so long.  Well, trust me - we ate!  Just not together or as New Food Night.  It was a busy busy month in October. Several things going on - I had surgery, my mother-in-law was in the hospital - trips. But we got together last week and cooked up a storm.

We had decided that our theme would be German food.  So here you have it.

Gary made Rouladin. How good does this look?

It called for it to be made with round steak but he used cube steak instead. Don't you just love creamy sauces?  I do.

Miss Annette made some spaetzle and gravy.

Spaetlze is like fried noodles - kinda. The gravy was an onion gravy she made. It was really good.  Typically, spaetzle is served with whatever sauce comes with the meat dish. She did not know if Gary's meat dish would have a gravy or not so she made one. Nothing wrong with two types of gravy.

She also made some red cabbage.

I'm not a big cabbage person unless it's in coleslaw that is made the  RIGHT way - none of that vinegar stuff for me.  I want the mayo creamy saucy coleslaw.

K.C. made a Bacon Onion Pie.

This is kind of like a quiche but it doesn't have as many eggs.  I loved it. K.C. was not a big fan.

I made potato pancakes.

Now I make potato pancakes frequently but usually out of left-over mashed potatoes This was made with shredded potatoes not cooked.  They were good but I prefer my mashed tater ones better.  Have to thank Gary for shredding those potatoes for me - I was still recovering from surgery and not sure my shoulder could have handled it.

Here's what my full plate looked like.

Not bad.  I cleaned it up too. It was very filling.

Now as I was getting ready to make my potato pancakes I realized that we didn't have a dessert. I knew this for a fact because I had already checked with everyone to see what they were making.  I remembered one other time we didn't have a dessert at New Food Night and could not let that happen again. So, I Googled easy German dessert.  This is what I came up with.

German Honey Cookies.

These were very good!  You may notice the different color variations on the cookies. That's because I was doing to many things at one time and did not bake each batch the same amount of time. The ones that look really dark aren't burnt nor were they hard. They were still soft. The different baking times gave them each a different flavor - the darker ones the honey flavor was more intense.

There you have it - German food at it's best.  What do you think?  Which dish looks the best or maybe sounds the best to you

What Is A Veteran?

What is a veteran?

The dictionary lists this definition: 

     :a person who has served in a military force, especially one who has fought in a war.

But that doesn't define a veteran.  

A veteran is a young boy who leaves home and is on his own for the first time. He comes back with an air of maturity about him. You can see it in the way he carries himself. You see it in the respect he shows.

A veteran is some one's brother, sister, mother, father, aunt, uncle, friend. 

A veteran is someone who was not able to be there for a holiday, a birthday, their daughter/son's birth, first step, first word. 

A veteran is someone who may be in a foreign country missing family as he spends his first Christmas away from home. 

A veteran is someone who trained to give his all if it was needed. He may never have set foot on foreign soil but he was prepared if asked. 

A veteran will tell stories of places he has been and things he has seen. He and his buddies had the time of their lives when he recounts stories of their glory days. 

A veteran will not tell of the horrors he has seen. The wars he fought. He keeps these to himself. 

A veteran is someone who thought enough of their country to voluntarily give their time to defend it.

A veteran is someone who will stand when the national anthem is played - and he will stand proudly. 

A veteran is often forgotten, ignored, mistreated. 

A veteran is someone who deserves our thanks but seldom receives it. 

To all the veterans I know and those I don't THANK YOU