Our Munchies

Have you been concerned about how we are faring on New Food Night?  I'm kinda late on posting. Don't worry, though -- we didn't go hungry.  LOL  That's the last thing that is going to happen at our house.  

Last week we had decided that we were going to have an Appetizer Night.  This is always one of my favorites when we have it at home.  I love appetizers, don't you? 

Look!!  We have our sign on. That means it's time to chow down!  

Since we have a new house every gathering is considered trials on how we will work out Thanksgiving. We are used to having all the food on either the table or side tables in the dining room. Our current dining room size does not permit that so we are doing trial runs on how to set up the kitchen island and proceed to the dining room.  

Here we are having a trial run on filling our plates. 

Now, here is the food we enjoyed.

K.C. made some Jalapeno Poppers. 

These were really good. Jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped up in a crescent roll. What's not to like about this?

Gary made his favorite -- Fried Ravioli with sauce for dipping. 

Now he did not make his own ravioli he used frozen. He then proceeded, with the help of his able assistant Lily, to bread the ravioli and deep fry it.  What isn't good deep-fried? 

I made Spinach Cream Cheese Swirls.  Cream Cheese, Monterrey Jack Cheese, Garlic powder and frozen spinach. Spread this on puff pastry, roll up, slice,  and bake.  Man was this good!

Miss Annette made Pizza Strips.

These were really good.  I don't remember what she called them but I said Pizza Strips because they are cut in strips.  

So there you have it our Appetizer, 'Munchies' Night.  Now I'll confess that I wasn't sure how filling our Appetizer night would be so I doubled my recipe. Now look through our pictures and most everything had a form of bread with it (Jalapeno Poppers, Spinach Cheese Swirls, Pizza) and bread is very filling.  Don't worry, I didn't let those Spinach Cheese Swirls go to waste.  I froze them!  So when I need a little 'munchie' I can just pull 2-3 out of the freezer and pop them in the microwave!  Win Win for me. 

So, tell me, what is your favorite appetizer?  

Road Trip Day

I know I haven't posted anything for a while but work has been busy busy busy.  I didn't want you to forget about me so thought I would post something.

Well as I said it's been super busy at work. It's the start of the semester which always means we are busier than usual but this semester it started earlier and just kept on. UGGGGG - some of the calls I have gotten.

I'm sorry but there are only so many ways I can say 'you must choose a payment option plan within one hour of enrolling in a class or you will be dropped for non-payment'.  Yes, I hear  you tell me that you keep enrolling and for some reason you keep being dropped from your class. I know for a fact that you have to mark that you have read that if you do not choose a payment plan within the hour you will be dropped from your class.  You have to mark that page as I AGREE before you can continue on with the enrollment process.  If you have enrolled in the same class five times and have been dropped five times you have a problem.  Calling me isn't going to change anything. You still have to choose a payment plan to stay enrolled. Telling me you have just enrolled for the class for the sixth time isn't going to keep you in the class. Again, you must choose a payment plan.  Telling me you have no money to pay for anything isn't going to help you either.  I'm not going to pay for your class.

Likewise, telling me you only today filled out your FASFA for financial aid isn't going to help you. I'm not saying you are not going to get financial aid, I'm just telling you that at this time we do not recognize that you have any financial aid so you must choose a plan and make a payment to stay enrolled in the class.

Can you tell it's been a rough month?  Well, Gary started back to work as well having had June and July off. His work week this past week has not been the best.  So we decided to take a little road trip today.  We do this sometimes now that he has weekends off. We will soon be married 22 years and this past year is the first time we have been able to have weekends off without re-arranging work schedules. We are sure enjoying it.

No major plan for our trip. We decided to check out Perry, OK. A small town a little over an hour away. We enjoyed the scenery on the way over and on the way back. Also scored a win when we stopped at a little consignment antique store in Perry.

I have some carnival glass. One of my pieces is a butter dish. Now the lid to the butter dish got broken and thrown away.  Could have been broken from to many moves or could have been broken by a child who is known to break many things.  (Said child has broken the lid to my carnival glass candy dish and taped it together on the inside with Scotch tape thinking I would never know.)  The particular shop we stopped at today happened to have the exact same carnival glass butter dish with an intact lid but broken bottom piece.  Score for me even more when the item was half price.

Now on our road trips we usually take little two lane roads. It's always amazing to see some of the most beautiful hug homes in the middle of nowhere.  Our trip today showed us a few things that make you wonder.

     1)  We were driving through a small small town - if you are from my hometown think New Hampton or Mount Moriah - that a sign posted stating; Sewage system monitored by surveillance cameras.  You have to wonder just what goes on around their sewage system.

     2) Another small town that likes for their public offices to really help out the town people all they can. Their tag agency also offered ear piercing.  How convenient.

     3) Now I have driven many many miles over many many different roads. There are areas in the country where it is not uncommon to see a sign saying WATCH FOR FALLING ROCKS.  This is typically to inform you that there may be rocks falling down the side and could roll in front of your car or perhaps even hit your car. The sign we saw today said WATCH FOR FALLEN ROCKS.  I guess the rocks in this area make sure there are no cars around before they roll down the hillside. Very convenient.



   

Comfort with Kraft

My regular readers know that this is New Food Night week.

This post is a hard one to write. For the past 3 years or so we have been doing new food night. Our little group consists of Miss Annette, Mr. Rick, K.C., Michael, Remington, Lily, Gary and myself with occasional guests. We enjoy the time we spend together and look forward to the company and fellowship as much as we do trying out new foods.

Yesterday morning we received a call that left us all in shock and grief. Our good friend Mr. Rick had passed away. We gathered at our usual time last night for our new food night with heavy hearts knowing that we would have an empty chair at our table and that it would remain empty.

We had decided to do a Kraft night. Just this past Saturday Rick had been at our house hooking up our ice maker. He sat and drank a cup of coffee and we visited while watching the rain. We discussed the new food night coming up and he said he was going to be making some potatoes. So in memory of Rick, Gary made a dish of cheesy Krafty potatoes.

Rick always used hash brown potatoes and added cheese or cream of chicken soup and always used a 'just a dash of cayene pepper'. The Kraft portion was of course the cheese. Rick had talked about adding a package of cream cheese to his dish this week but Gary didn't use it.

For his dish Gary made meatloaf.

This wasn't your typical meatloaf though. He used hamburger, a package of Kraft stuffing mix, and Kraft Bar-B-Q sauce.  It was different - not bad but we probably won't use the recipe again. The Bar-B-Q flavor was good.

Miss Annette made macaroni and cheese.

She used the Kraft mac and cheese mix with the package of creamy cheese. She added some ham chunks and some peas to the mixture and topped it with more cheese.  Good stuff

I opted to make an easy Shepherd's Pie.  Yes, I know I have made this before but this was a new recipe.

For the meat mixture I used hamburger, some Heinz gravy mix and frozen corn. The recipe called for mixed veggies but I'm not real fond of mixed veggies so chose to only use corn.  The top was mashed potatoes with cream cheese and cheddar cheese - put on top of meat mixture and top with more cheddar cheese.

Are you noticing a theme of cheese here? I tend to think of cheese when I think Kraft.

Here's what the plate of food looked like.

Lots of comfort food here and we were in need of comfort.

We have to have dessert as well.  K.C. provided that with Pineapple Cheesecake.

What a great light summer dessert.  I forgot to get a picture of the slice on my plate but it had angel food cake cubed up. You made a layer of cake then topped with pineapple cream cheese mix and then another layer of cake then another layer of cheesecake mixture.

So we had our new food night, we reminisced about our friend, we tried not to acknowledge the empty chair at our table. We felt the presence of the empty chair and while we are still trying to accept the fact that one of ours is gone we rejoice that he is singing with His Savior in Heaven.

Moving Adventures

Gary and I bought a house.  We are so excited!

We had never gone through the process of looking for a house, making an offer, and then paperwork, paperwork, paperwork!  And then more paperwork.

Seriously though - it wasn't to bad and the timing was right for us. We are so excited and cannot wait to get everything unpacked and in place. But here is some of what we have experienced in our process.

We started looking at houses in January. We have been renting since moving to Tulsa almost 13 years ago and decided the time was right we wanted to own our own place. So we looked and looked and looked. We came across this house in March while attending an open house and thought it fit our requirements:  large kitchen, separate dining, large living.  BUT - we weren't ready at that time.

While the house seemed just what we wanted we did not act. Believing that if it was meant to be then when we were ready it would be available.  The house was taken off the market after we looked at it as an offer was made. The house was put back on the market. The price was reduced.

We took a second look at the house. The pink tiled bathroom we first saw had been reglazed!  WOW what a difference that made.  We made an offer, counter offer, etc.  Accepted and started the loan process!

Then we started packing. I had a lot of stuff in my attic.  We also decided to take our annual vacation to Corpus Christie. So we had a month to get everything done. We accomplished it. We had our vacation - we took our trips - we packed - we moved - we shopped for furniture.

Gary's job means that he has the months of June and July off (with pay) so that was a big plus.

We signed our papers and became home owners!  Happy happy dance for us.

Then Gary went and picked the grand kids up for help. They spent a week with us.

The first item I had them working on was washing the inside of my cabinets.

Looks like Grampa hadn't taken a ladder over yet. Way to improvise.

We had a great friend who helped us change out some light fixtures. Remington made good use of the styrofoam packing.

Hoover boards!

Every day they helped Grampa move the boxes that we had been packing. They would take 2-3 van loads over every day. Did I mention that we happened to choose the hottest week of the year to move! Of course we did.  The kids were troopers and by the move in date almost every box that was packed was already sitting in our new garage waiting to be unpacked! We had another friend who brought his pickup over and moved 3 truckloads of boxes in it throughout the week.

We had rented a U-Haul and picked it up at 7:00 am.  Friends came to help and by 11:00 am all our furniture was over at the new house and the rental truck had been returned!  We have some wonderful friends and family.  Now I'm not ready to show the inside of the house yet as we are still unpacking and organizing but here's some pics from our move.

The kids were impressed with the big truck.  Wanted to get a 'selfie' of us together.  However, I was not able to climb up there, although I did try.  By the end of the week I felt like I was ready for all the surgeries my doctors are recommending.  I could barely walk!

We comprised on this selfie:

The new house has lots of gardens! They need lots of work at this point!  The kids and I were sitting outside on the patio one evening and they wanted to 'explore the Jungle Garden'. The back yard garden is full of tall tall plants and bushes. So we went exploring.  We found treasure!

Remington came across a wrought iron bench end.  I did some searching and found the other end! We are way excited about this and plan on restoring it and adding planks so we have a bench.  I will post pics of all that later along with other 'treasures' that were found.

In the meantime, Gary and I will be busy unpacking and storing, and unpacking and unpacking.

A Full Table

Well, I obviously missed posting anything last week.  Kinda busy getting ready for vacation and a move. But that's not what this post is about and I know that you know that. You know that it's time for NEW FOOD NIGHT!!

No centerpiece for you to look at today - I told you getting ready for a move. But we did have a full table.

It was kind of hard to get all of us in the picture :)  Can you see that we have a visitor this week? Sitting back there underneath the lamp is Grammy!  She traveled many many miles just to eat at our table.

Tonight was Mexican Night!  That is almost as popular for us as Italian.

Miss Annette brought a Mexican Salad.

She makes the prettiest salads.  This is just full of all kinds of goodies. You see the corn, tomatoes, avocado,  and black beans on top; but, you cannot see all the greens underneath.

Along with this she had a homemade lime, citrus vinagertte dressing.

I was not real certain abut this but always try anything new at new food night. That's the purpose of it.  Gotta tell you, this was a really good dressing and I don't usually like vinegarettes.

Mr. Rick made some refried beans.

Now these aren't the 'open the can and heat them up' kind of beans. These are the real thing. Pinto beans and seasonings cooked in crock pot then mashed up real good.  Who doesn't like refried beans?

K.C. made some pork carnitas.

She took pork and rubbed it with seasoning then let it cook in the crock pot nice and slow. She then shredded the pork and served it with corn tortillas.  Yummers!

Gary made Taco Pie

Crescent roll dough, taco seasoned meat cheese on top.  Two pie pans of deliciousness for us to scarf down.

Now it's my turn.  I went with a Pinterest recipe I had seen - Shrimp Bites.

Now this was pretty simple - my kind of dish.  Potato chips, guacamole, and shrimp.  The hardest part here was trying to find whole chips in the bag. I had to tell K.C. to not eat a chip unless she was going to eat broken ones.  LOL  Seriously though, this was good stuff. I just seasoned the shrimp with some chili powder and cooked it then layered on chip.  If you make this be sure not to make to much ahead of time as the chip will get soggy from the guacamole.

Her is what my full plate looked like.

The plate was as full as our table. That always makes us happy - full plates and full tables of friends and family.

Have any of you tried any of the recipes we have used on our New Food Night?  If so, what did you try and did you like it?  Let us know your thoughts.

Summer Picnic

It's summer time and it's also New Food Night week.  So what do we do?

Well, summer time makes you think of picnics doesn't it?  So we had a picnic.

Now, Lily thought since it was a picnic we should go outside. My thought was No! It's way to hot for me to be sweating out there.  Plus, I did not see myself sitting on the ground eating.  So we compromised.

Oh, look --- K.C. and Michael are able to join us again --- ball season is over!  We went with the picnic theme -- paper plates, cups, etc. We kind of have a tree in my centerpiece :)  Good compromise.

So what do you have to eat at a picnic that might be new?  Well, let me tell you.

We had some Caprese bites -- I think I spelled that correctly,  Mozarella cheese and cherry tomatoes with fresh basil - drizzle with vinagerette.  K.C. made these and they were very very good.

 

Miss Annette made some fried chicken because, well aren't you supposed to have fried chicken at a picnic?  She browned it up then finished it in the oven.  I don't think you can go wrong with fried chicken.

Mr. Rick brought some corn niblets in the crock pot.  If the picture looks a little blurry it's because of the steam coming out of the crock pot.  He used some Italian seasoning and let this cook in the crock pot for several hours.  We do love some good old corn on the cob.

Gary opted to make some slabs of ribs with a Dr. Pepper Chipotle sauce/glaze.  Gotta tell you, the sauce itself is pretty spicy. The container behind the plate of ribs is extra sauce if anyone was so inclined to torture their mouth.

I went for a Fresh Corn, Tomato and Mozarella salad.  Make a little dressing of lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper.  Pretty good stuff.

Do you see our theme here of corn and mozarella?  Amazing how we do this without even knowing what anyone else is bringing.

Now dessert.  Hmmmmm - seems no one thought of that this week but Gary saved the day.

Ice Cream!!   That's a perfect ending to a picnic meal.We have both chocolate and vanilla because Braum's was having a sale on ice cream.

Lily looks pretty happy with Grampa's choice of dessert.

How about you?  What do you like to take to a picnic?

Attic Treasures

The grand kids like to go up in the attic at our house. They call it Grandma's Store.  LOL

Kinda appropriate I guess. There is lots of stuff up there.  Old clocks, pictures, toys, records - you know the old 45's and LP's - all kinds of things to interest kids.

This is kind of how my attic looks.  One end of it has boards across it to make it easy to store things.  Half of this is taken up with my Christmas decorations.  The rest is a conglomeration of things.

We are in the process of buying a house.  We have lived here in the present location for 10 plus years. Lots of extras have gone up into the attic since we moved in.

Gary is on vacation for the summer. Yes that's right. THE SUMMER.  He gets the months of June and July off. He decided to go visit the girls in Arizona. This gave him the opportunity to take Tarinda's piano out to her. This is something we have been wanting to get to her but had not managed. yet. Gary is delighted to have it out of the house and not have to move it. I have mixed feelings. I don't play it anymore as it hurts my fingers and it is Tarinda's so I am glad for her have it. I will miss not having a piano though just because I have always had a piano.

We also used his visit as a chance to send some stuff out that way. Last year when I painted I offered all the girls a chance to have some of my dishes. Charlie and K.C. declined. K.C. thinks I am a hoarder and says I encourage her children to be also by letting them take stuff home from the house. I don't look at it that way. LOL  So I gathered some dishes for Tarinda, a box of sheet music (which I also hated to part with as it has sheet music of my mom's in it) - the old bed spreads the three girls used when they were growing up (matching). Get the idea?

Well, in my attic I was 'hoarding' this:

See that HUGE HUGE bag?  That is Charlie's. It was full of stuffed animals she left at home when she moved out oh so many many years ago.  That foot you see sticking out of the bottom?  That is a foot of a big hand-made stuffed rabbit.  Boy, did Remington and Lily have fun going through this bag when they found it!

The bag is full of bears as she collected bears and there was a Popple in the bag, which is still at my house as the kids moved it downstairs to the toy box, an assortment of stuffed rabbits from Easter baskets. You get the idea - some favorite childhood memories all in one big bag.  She said anything she didn't want she would hold as ransom for her sisters.  Good luck for them getting what they want.

Look at these gems.

Remington and Lily found them when they went through Aunt Charlie's bag of goodies.  Twink and the Snowman are Charlie's.  I made them.  All three of the older girls had snowmen but only Charlie's was found in the attic.  That Starlight pillow on the bottom is Tarinda's.  She took it into surgery with her when she had her tonsils out.  I cleaned these up - re-stuffed them and stitched them up fresh and new and gave them to Charlie and Tarinda as a 'bonus' Christmas present last year.

I think that Remington and Lily have gone through most of the boxes in my 'store' but who knows what we will find as we pull them down from the attic and prepare for our move.  How about you, what treasures are in your attic?