Recipe Reviews: Company Food Part II

I realize that I haven't posted the sequel to my "Loads of Company" post, but I wanted to go ahead and share the recipes that we tried while Shaun, Tiffany, and Gale were visiting the very next week. We also re-made some of the recipes that we had tried, and really liked, the week prior when my folks were here. So the quantity of recipes may be a bit smaller this week. The new recipes our guests willingly prepared, and ate, with us included....

Monkey Bread

Since we tended to stay up way too late playing board games (and going to bed as mortal enemies as a result), mornings were a bit rough sometimes.

My Blogging Silence

As most of you know, I started blogging regularly again early this spring. I un-earthed my old "A Journey Thru Pictures" blog that I had started in 2012 when my main focus was to use blogging as a way to share my life with family, and maybe some friends, too. (I think it was just my family that read my blog back then, though.) I blogged using a lot of photos of the adventures and trips that I went on, photos of everyday life such as going climbing, snow-boarding, food I made, my great hauls from the "Bountiful Baskets" produce co-op, and just life in general sometimes. One of the things I had been working on was documenting my photos and experience in Australia on the blog. After a few years, though, I started slacking on the blog. I went back to college to get my bachelor's degree and I did not maintain blogging as a high priority. So it was pretty close to silent for a while, although I did manage a random blog post here and there.

After I finished my online degree, I tried to resume the blog and kind of succeeded. For a little while. I think it was mostly blog posts about our new house that we had bought, remodeling it, painting it, discussing ideas for it, and not so much about travel or fun outing experiences. And then we had Little Pumpkin. That in itself seems like a good excuse for blog silence. And then we moved. And I did not do anything on my blog for over a year.

I'm not exactly sure what made me un-earth my old, silent, "A Journey Thru Pictures" blog earlier this year. Maybe I was looking for some purpose to my life. I think a part of it, though, was to start back into it and see if I could take it in a direction in which I could garner a part-time (or

Don't Flush the Toilet Paper!

"Don't forget to NOT flush the toilet paper!!" was a yelled reminder during the last half of the week that my family was visiting. (You can read about their visit here.) I think it was Thursday morning while we were all trying to get left for different destinations that Sam came upstairs and calmly told his mom (Gail), "Mom, the washer is flooding the basement." I think Gail questioned him, not quite believing it, and I ran down to look. And yes, the washer was definitely flooding the basement!! I had started the laundry earlier in the morning and it was trying to drain, but was instead gushing up and out of the wall box in which the washer hook-ups and drain are located. There was water once again running under the wall, out the door, and into the utility room. 

A similar event had just happened a week prior, except that time the water was coming up from the sewer line and out from under the toilet. Only slightly gross, right? After several phone calls for that specific incident, a plumber came out, augered out the sewer line, couldn't find any real cause, ran lots of water down the drains for a while, and we thought it was fixed. The plumber did admonish me to not flush anything more than toilet paper down the toilet. Flushable wipes, flushable toilet bowl cleaning wipes, and anything that is marketed as flushable really isn't flushable aside from toilet paper, he said. 

Unbeknownst to the plumber, I had gotten that speech before. The very first house that Jason and I rented had sewer issues and, after the landlord got it fixed, the rules were: don't flush anything but toilet paper. Nothing else. I mentioned to the plumber, at our current house and situation, that I just couldn't figure out what would have clogged it unless Little Miss Pumpkin had started flushing foreign objects down the toilet

Recipe Reviews: Company Food

I guess this week is all about things related to when we had company in August! When my family was here for a week (you can read about that here), they were willing guinea pigs to try some new recipes that I had picked out of my collection. It was fun to get more than just Jason's opinion on the food, and it was fun to cook a few somewhat-strange recipes! To start off the week, I made...

Banana Poppy Seed Dressing

This recipe was cut out of a Taste of Home magazine many years ago. I picked it out since there would be more dressing taste-testers here instead

Running with Sam

I forgot to include the story of my early morning run with my nephew, Sam, in my previous post, "Loads of Company! Part 1." As I had mentioned early in that post, during an evening walk Sam had said that he would rather be running. So I had told him that we would go running while he was visiting. I forget which morning we made plans for, but I had told him we'd go at 6:30am. That morning, when 6:15 rolled around, I highly contemplated not getting up. I figured Sam probably wouldn't be up, and would balk at getting up to go running. But, I had promised and I had to at least see if he still wanted to go. Much to my surprise, when I came out to the living room, Sam was awake and sitting on the stool waiting. Barefoot. I asked him if he had his shoes for running and he said he couldn't find them. We looked all over and couldn't find his shoes. I asked if they were under the cot he was sleeping on, or in the bathroom he'd used the night before. He said "no," but went to double check. That woke up Mom and Gail who came to join in the search for his shoes. Someone asked the question of, "Are they in Little Pumpkin's room?" I couldn't see why they'd be in her room, and we continued searching all over the house. Sneaky Sam, unbeknownst to the rest of us, went into Pumpkin's room and returned with his shoes!!! I guess she had been trying to walk in them the night before and, to her credit, had "put them away." Sam found his shoes on her shoe shelf! It was quite funny though we got a bit of a late start on our run.

We took Gunther with us, and I was fully expecting Sam to start with a full-on run that I wouldn't be able to keep up with. So, I told him I

Loads of Company! Part 1

If you are one of my faithful blog readers, you have probably noticed that I haven't written anything since the end of July. Part of that is because we had loads of company in August and we were really busy! Not to mention that we had some other excitement at the beginning of August that we probably could have lived without....but more on that in another post. Let me fill you in on all of our company!

Our first batch of company was my Mom, Gail (my sister), and Bob and Sam (my nephews). They were driving out from Virginia with a jam-packed car-load of stuff for us. The bulk of it was a quarter of beef that I had ordered from my sister back in the spring. (Back when the wagon-train had thought they were coming in the spring....but life happened and the wagon-train didn't come till late summer.) They were also bringing a half-bushel of peaches off of their own peach trees, some home-grown summer squash and zucchini, a few odds and ends I had garnered from my siblings "I'm getting rid of this, does anyone want it" personal yard-sales, and just random things people sent along. (By the way, Sally, Thank You for the new kitchen towels!!) Mom's car was stuffed full with four people, coolers, blankets to insulate the coolers, and all the rest of their travel needs and such. (I never really heard how comfortable the ride out really was....)

The wagon-train, stuffed to the gills, left on Sunday afternoon, stopped for the night in Kentucky, and arrived here late-afternoon on Monday. I was at work when they arrived, but Jason let them in and, in my family's typical style, they made themselves at home by unloading everything and