Ok, well it's been a few days.  I apologize for the delay.  I'm sure you have all been at the edge of your seats waiting for me to post about my meatballs and further shenanigans, so without further ado, here goes. :)

Monday I made meatballs for dinner.  K has been asking for meatballs for 20some days now.  I asked her at the beginning of the month what she wanted me to make for dinners this month and all I got was meatballs.  Finally, I made her meatballs.  All day I simmered those meatballs only for K to ask for a hotdog for dinner.  A hotdog! Seriously, the one meal I thought I wouldn't have to barter with her to eat and she would rather have a hotdog.  To my dismay, not the dinner I hoped for, but super delicious none the less. 

Tuesday I decided that I was going to take it a bit easy for dinner and made chicken marsala.   Sounds complicated but I bought the Macaroni Grill meal helper kit (since I had an insane coupon for it!) instead of going the traditional route since the marsala wine at the liquor store is 11$!  Really, it's just a bag of flour, a packet of wine, a bit of seasoning, and a pouch of noodles but damn does it cut the price and effort in half! I steamed some fresh broccoli while J picked some tomatoes from the garden.  All plated it looked something like this....

Not bad, eh?? Well, to my delight, the dinner was a huge hit!  K actually asked for more broccoli and pretty much ate all the chicken I gave her.  J was pretty enamored by the chicken and tomatoes he picked as well.  As for me, I couldn't have asked for a much more!  Great thing is that it tastes just as good as it looks for a snack the next day. ;)

Today, Miss R (aka Mrs. T^20 aka Dr. C) dropped by with some lunch from Jason's Deli.  K has been asking for a dang turkey sandwich for days for some odd reason.  I thought how great would it be for Miss R to not only surprise K but bring her a turkey sandwich to top it off!  Well, Miss R was a hit... the turkey sandwich, not so much.  Miss R also thought it would be a good idea to order K the adult size turkey sandwich, good on her.  Mommy is used to the children's turkey sandwich coming with applesauce, bad for Miss R's salad dressing.  I don't know if I'm more upset by the fact that I have come to terms with flavored applesauce infiltrating my normalcy or that I thought Miss R's raspberry vinaigrette was indeed said flavored applesauce.  I am equally dismayed by both thoughts.  BUT! I redeemed myself later in the day.  I was helping J tend the garden and decided it best that I pull a tomato that was still green but began hitting the dirt.  The tomato was too big to fit through the lattice around the garden so I had to snake around the lattice to get the tomato.  Well, a nasty little spider apparently had the same idea at the very same moment causing moi to hastily force the green tomato through the lattice.  Well, it suffered a bit of damage on exit so I had to think something to do with it or toss it in the trash ( I didn't say my luck wouldn't get worse before it got better.) Well, I'm in the south, I have a green tomato that needs a purpose, and an itch to experiment, so fried green tomatoes it was!  I googled a bit, got a plan of action and went to work.  I used my handy dandy pampered chef mandolin slicer to make super even tomato slices and the results looked a little something like this....













Well, since it was just J and I eating said fried tomatoes and I went a little mandolin happy on a few too many tomatoes I was left with a whole heap of thinly sliced partly ripe tomatoes.  So, why not make some bisque while we're at it!  I was on a role with the experimenting and if I failed, at least I had one striking success to soften the blow.  So, I googled a bit more and came up with another POA.  The results looked a bit like this...
















I used my amazing little immersion blender to puree my soup after it cooked for a while and enjoyed some amazing fresh tomato bisque.  I tried to use 1% milk, but it just didn't give it the roundness cream would have.  Really, a minor tweak in hindsight.  I cannot describe the awesome feeling of using tomatoes from your garden to make such amazing delicious food! By far, the best tomato soup I have EVER had... besides the lobster tomato bisque from Morton's ( but had I had some cream and lobster lying around, they would have been in the dust as well ;) ) .  I also remembered to wear my pink paisley apron from pampered chef while  I cooked tonight!! My mom thought it would be great to call me Julia on skype and proceed to talk in a funny accent to me the entire convo.  She's just jealous, but honestly, I can't blame her... it's BA, feminine, and functional all at the same time.  Really, it doesn't get much better than that. 

I'm thinking some beef and broccoli for dinner tomorrow if my skillet doesn't crap out on me.  I guess if it comes down to it, I can make it stove top... but really, that's so non-BA... and I cannot have people thinking "oh, she's so non-BA" when they look at me!  I would just be so crushed to know that people thought anything less than "varsity" when I come to mind.  Oh well, if I don't stop ranting now I won't have time to lose any sleep over it. 

K, out.

P.S. thanks loyal readers for sticking with me through that last post... hubby may try, but I leave some large shoes to fill :P haha JK babe, I love you!!

But no really, like huge comedic clown size shoes... to the point that it's almost grotesque, but you just cannot look away!

.... Maybe the bisque has gone to my brain

Toy Story 3

So I took K to see Toy Story 3 yesterday ... This town is weird, the same guy owns all 3 movie theaters - who is also the same guy that owns all the movie theaters in Abilene.

So what would possess this moron to put the hottest movie of the summer in the shittiest movie theater in town is beyond me. OH and it was also 3D, you try and convince a 4yr old to keep GLASSES on during a movie. Why everyone is so hyped up about these stupid movies I don't know - but they are not worth it. Especially the extra 5$ it cost me to get those dang glasses ... the same ones they want me to "recycle" in their glasses recycle box, so they can clean them, repackage them and sell them to the next sucker - quiet a racket.

So we sit a down and start eating our "poppycorn" and right before the movie starts a huge dude sits right in front of K. REALLY?!?! Is your SA that low that you can't see the small kid behind you? The one that can not see the movie now because of your big ass head ? So K spent the entire movie on my lap, which wasn't so bad, except both my arms fell asleep and I was practically sweating in there. Some people are just morons.

The movie on the other hand was pretty good - a lot of "adult" references. Good moral at the end too - definitely go check it out - just don't sit in front of a kid!

- J

Starting to blog!

So I am trying to start blogging.  I have been trying to start blogging for a while now, but I could never seem to figure out a good theme.  I wanted to write about our lives these days but felt it may turn into a place for me to rant about my life instead.  So I waited for inspiration.  I watched Julie and Julia a while back and thought about how cool it would be to cook my way through a cookbook.  Remembering how many mouths I will be feeding in the coming months and the feasibility of my plan, I took it upon myself to shoot down that idea without further mention.  So today it hit me, I'll write about my own cooking adventures through these next few months since I think it will prove to be quite the humorous challenge.  Food makes people happy, so naturally a blog about my cooking would be the best of both worlds. 

Well, here it goes. 

Tonight we made steak.  My husband is a damn good grill tender.  He grilled up some fabulous steaks for his fathers day dinner.  K went to the neighbors house for pizza with her friend so we actually got some peace and quiet during dinner! I love her to death, but that girl can talk a deaf person's ear off.  ;) While J manned the grill, I made some cauliflower with cheddar cheese and one of those pasta sides that all seem to taste just a wee bit different.  I must say the cauliflower was a nice change of pace.  It is so hard to get good produce on base! The farmers market around here should be kicking into high gear here in the coming weeks so I will try to buy some fresh local produce here soon.  At least I got a relief from canned or frozen veggies for one night.   It seemed so much easier to get good produce back home.  I love the commissary with all my heart, but the produce just makes me sad.  I don't think I could give up the deals nor could I think about the amount of work it would be to drag 2 kids to 2 grocery stores by myself.  I need a glass of wine just thinking about it!  Anyways, I'm thinking about spaghetti and meatballs for dinner tomorrow.  Hopefully I can get a good jump on things in the morning so I can let them cook all day.  I really would like to get K to help but she tries to sneak tastes of cookie dough when I'm not looking, so I worry that she may be tempted to see what a little raw ground meat tastes like.  Really, salmonella is the last thing I need running its nasty little self through my house these days! I'll see if she wakes up with her diva face on and reassess in the morning. 

Hope it wasn't too much of a bomb for an opener! Thank you all for sticking with me :)  Hopefully I can keep the momentum going.  Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there and a big huge happy father's day to my wonderful husband, you're the best! Love you baby!!