Backtracking

Is it really Tuesday? What happened to Monday? All I know is that the week seems to be going by entirely too fast. I'm going to blame that silly holiday we had yesterday for throwing everything off.

For the most part, we spent our weekend shopping the Columbus Day sales. Oh, and eating an abnormally large amount of McDonald's. Curse that pesky Monopoly game!

Here's a look back at some of the other things that happened over the weekend.

On Friday when I came to pick up Tyler from school I found him playing on the playground, swooping this paper around. It's a robot airplane, just in case it wasn't perfectly obvious. The one-dimensionality of it, made the flying part kind of difficult, but it didn't stop him from trying.

Then on Saturday morning we went to Lowe's for their Halloween craft.

It's a funhouse mirror! Funniest craft ever.

We had been planning to go to a drive in movie on Saturday night, but when we pulled into the parking lot, this is what it looked like.

Empty. It had been raining during the day so they canceled the movie. Too bad, because they were going to show Cars and I'm sure Tyler would have loved it. Oh well, maybe next time.

Since the movie had been scheduled to start around 6:30p, we had brought dinner with us and planned on eating it while we watched the movie. It didn't make sense to drive all the way home and eat, nor did we really want to eat in the car without the fun of watching a movie, so we decided to get out and eat at the park next door.

So there we were eating burritos and popcorn in the park on a cold and drizzly evening. The best part of the whole evening was that we discovered the coolest playground that we'd never been to before. Too bad it's kind of far from the house or I'm sure we'd be back often.

On Sunday, we found ourselves in the Tri-Cities. I was looking for some new clothes at the mall, but really didn't find much. I can't say that Tyler was an angel while I shopped but he did endure several hours of pure boredom, so Rick rewarded him with a trip to Chuck E. Cheese.

And guess what? Tyler hit the jackpot with his last token! 100 tickets.

Add that to the rest of the tickets he'd already accumulated and he had just under 1000.....just enough to get a battleship express game. Wow! It's the best prize he's ever won. What luck!

Recipe Review

Not to play favorites or anything, but all my recipes this week came from Taste of Home. I recently added the Country Cooking 2010 annual to my collection, so maybe that's what influenced my choices this week.

First we had Chicken Fiesta Salad, a recipe from the aforementioned annual.

This was a nice twist on your average tex-mex style salad. The chicken was seasoned with a mixture of chili powder, lemon pepper, and basil....an odd combination, but it worked. Our chili powder is kind of spicy though, so I probably should cut back on it next time.

We also tried Tortellini and Ham.


This recipe was from a Healthy Cooking Annual, but it was still very rich.....or at least it seemed that way to me. The cream sauce is made from an honest to goodness roux (1/4 cup butter plus 1/4 cup flour), a half a package of cream cheese, skim milk, and some grated parmesan cheese. The boys ate it right up, but I'm not sure it's worth making again.

To finish off the week, we had Mostaccioli Casserole.

This is the recipe on the cover of the Country Cooking 2007 annual and I love the fact that it came out looking just like the picture and I thought it tasted pretty good. My only problem with the recipe is that is calls for a can of tomato soup and even though I used a 'healthy choice' variety, it still had a lot of sugar per serving. 10 grams of sugar in tomato soup!? I still can't get over it. Who needs that much added sugar in a dinner recipe?

For our morning bread, I made some Chocolate Chip Cherry Bread.

You can't tell from the name of the recipe, but this is another variation of banana bread...and a yummy one at that! It has mini chocolate chips, maraschino cherries and walnuts, which are all tasty additions, but next time maybe I'll leave out the nuts. I think it makes it harder to slice with nuts.

Clearing Out The Garden

With all the warm weather we've been having for the last few weeks, it's hard to believe it's October and already time to clear out the garden. But confirmation came in the mail today...the city will be turning off the irrigation water next week, marking the end of the season.

At this point, the only thing left in the garden are the tomatoes, carrots, bell peppers, and basil. I already pulled out the corn and the green beans. They were done.

I didn't have much luck with the roma tomatoes this year, but I'll see if they can hang on for 1 more week before I pull them out.

I also pulled up 1 out of my 3 rows of carrots.

These are the good ones.

But I also had a ton of overgrown carrots that were split open and acting as worm food and/or slug habitats. Gross.

Next year I'll have to do a better job with spacing them out. They were still too close together, which I think prevented them from reaching their full potential. Oh well, I'll figure it out sooner or later.

Monopoly Breakfast

McDonalds started their Monopoly game yesterday, much to Tyler's delight. In the past, I've talked about taking him there for breakfast before school, but we've never actually done it. But now with the added fun of the game tokens, we decided to make today the day.

So with our big plan to eat out this morning, we were up nice and early and out of the house before 8:00.

We didn't have much of a choice as to what we were going to eat. The only breakfast items that include game pieces are the hash browns and the McGriddle sandwich. And as luck would have it, I had a coupon for a Buy 1 Get 1 Free Griddle sandwich....so that's what we chose. I've never had one before and it actually wasn't that bad.

Tyler tore open the game pieces first and foremost. I'm not sure why....maybe it has something to do with reading so much Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but he's convinced that there are only 4 Park Place tokens in the whole world, and he's determined to have one. Kind of like those golden tickets.

Well, no Park Place for us. From our 2 McGriddle sandwiches, we got Pacific Avenue, Atlantic Avenue, Reading Railroad, and a ticket for a free McFlurry.

The game runs through the rest of the month and I still have a few coupons for smoothies and lattes, so we'll probably we back a time or two to try our luck again. We might just find our Park Place yet.

The Big Book Order

One of the things we've really enjoyed since Tyler started school is the access to Scholastic books and especially the discounted price at which they are offered. It's no secret that Tyler loves to read and so we've had no problem buying him new books each month from the various flyers he brings home.

The problem we encountered this year, is that he's outgrown the books that are offered in the See Saw and Firefly flyers, which are the ones provided to his school. So I talked with his teacher and she arranged for him to order out of the Lucky flyer, which is the one they offer to the 1-3rd graders at the other school.

Yesterday, his September order came in and I couldn't be more pleased.

These books are so much more appropriate for his reading level and some of them were as cheap as $1 each. You can't beat that!

And of course he started reading as soon as we got home from school. There were a lot of books to choose from, but he started out with The Adventures of Captain Underpants. Are you kidding me? He's such a boy!

Recipe Review

The new dinner recipes we tried this week included a little bit of everything. Some Asian style meatballs, an Italian soup, a Mexican style tamale bake, and a turkey burger with cranberry sauce. I forgot to take pictures of some of them, so here's a look at just a few of the items I made.

First we had Gingery Pork Meatballs with Edamame Fried Rice.

I thought the meatballs were good, but I had the same problem with them as I have with all meatballs.....cooking them all the way through took way longer than the recipe says. I don't know. They baked entirely in the oven, but maybe the temperature was a little high? And instead of serving them with noodles, I made a vegetable fried rice that had edamame, red bell pepper, and corn. Yum!

Next we had Turkey Sausage Gnocchi Soup.

This recipe is one of those super quick 5 ingredient meals, but I found the flavor kind of lacking, so I bumped things up to make it taste more like a pasta e fagioli (minus the beans). I added oregano, salt, white pepper, green beans, and I added the grated parmesan cheese right into the soup instead of using it as a topping. With those slight alterations, I thought the soup came out great.

For our morning bread, I made Apple Muffins.

The recipe was actually for a loaf bread with a crumb topping, but I cut it in half and made muffins instead and I left off the topping. Apple muffins are always a huge hit around here and a nice change from our normal banana bread.

For dessert we had Cranberry Cheesecake Bars.

The whole purpose of making these was to use up the leftover cranberry sauce from the turkey burgers earlier in the week and I have to say.... it was a good choice. The crust is made from flour and oats instead of cookie or graham cracker crumbs, which makes it less sweet, but still enjoyable.

Fire Boat

After taking a small break from his monthly building projects, Tyler was back at it this morning, building a fire boat at the Home Depot. October is Fire Prevention month, so along with a themed kit, they had firemen on hand to give out safety tips, and they also had a fire truck on display for the kids.

Like most of the West coast we've been enjoying some unseasonably warm temperatures this week, so it was nice that the craft was outside.

Here's his finished boat. Once he picked up his completion pin and certificate, we headed over to the fire truck to take a look.

The fireman gave Tyler the grand tour, showing him all the secret tool compartments and even let him try out the driver's seat. He was super impressed with all the chainsaws and axes on board....who knew firetrucks were equipped with all that stuff.

After saying goodbye to the firemen, we made a quick stop at Cash & Carry since it's practically next door and I needed to pick up a few things.

I mainly went there to pick up a few giant bags of frozen mixed vegetables, but somehow managed to walk out the door with several new coffee syrups as well. Mmmmm, Cheesecake, Gingerbread, Chai Tea Spice, and Shortbread. The cheesecake and chai tea are a little iffy, so hopefully I end up liking them.