Where am I?

Today I am traveling for work. Rominal and Bailey are traveling with me because we are driving somewhere. Tomorrow while I am working, they will get to play in the city while I visit with the warehouse in this city.

Just to amuse myself, I thought I'd play a little game with you.

Where in the world am I? Well, I'll narrow it down for you. Where in the United States am I?

Here's some hints. I live in Texas so I will let you know I started from there.

We drove for a little bit and then stopped here for some breakfast and fried pies. I had seen a newspaper article about this place and I wanted to try them.


The Fried Pie Company was across the street from this courthouse.


Here's my fried pie. It was coconut and it was wonderful.





Later in the day (remember, we drove all day today) we passed this place. It looked like it was closed.



We saw this sign, which I thought was kinda funny, since it was an actual truck.

And we drove by a ton of corn or whatever crop this is.

This state numbers their bridges. I was counting them as we went under them. This was number 11.105 in case that helps you determine where we are.

As soon as Rominal found out that we would be going where we are, he looked up this place on the internet and got directions. It was featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on FoodTV on Sunday.

I had the 1/2 chicken and it was wonderful.


Rominal had the slab of ribs.


I think he liked them - what do you think?


Let me know if you can guess where we are.

On the road to Silver

The Girl Scouts in our troop (Tiffany and Bailey are shown above) have been working really hard to earn their Silver Award. This award requires lots of work and preparation, and then they must complete 40 hours of work on their project to help the community.

The project our girls decided to do was to make blankets and donate them to assisted living facilities and children's homes in the area.

Last Sunday, Tiffany and Bailey delivered some of their blankets to an assisted living facility close by.

This was a wonderful experience and the girls talked with each person as they gave them a blanket.


This wonderful woman was 102 years old. She picked the leopard print blanket and she was as spunky as the blanket she chose.


Each person seemed to really appreciate the girls and the hard work that they had put into making the blankets.

I can't tell you how proud I was to be there with them.

Brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it.

It was so rewarding to see people's faces light up as the girls spoke to them. I certainly hope they enjoy the blanket.

Bailey and Tiffany's goal is to have their Silver Award project complete before we go to London in 2 weeks. (Oh my goodness - we leave in 2 weeks!)

Both of them are on track to complete this.

Way to go girls!

It's 2010 already!

Last Wednesday I had my very back bottom tooth, tooth number 31 if you are dentally inclined, extracted. I had it pulled to avoid the very expensive procedures it would have required if I had kept it.

However, I'm still in pain. Not just a little bit of pain, a lot of pain. I'm taking Advil every 4-6 hours kind of pain. This is "wake-me-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night" kind of pain and frankly I'm quite tired of it.

I just got back from the dentist and I have a dry socket, so my mouth is currently packed with medicine and gauze. So very attractive.

So, what I'm wondering is it's 2010 already! Why haven't we advanced more? As a kid I was promised (well, maybe not promised, but it was discussed) flying cars for everyone. I thought all dental work would involve shooting a lazer at your mouth and walking away pain free - or something like that.

Perhaps I watched too many shows of the Jetsons.

Almond Iced Tea

It's super hot here in Texas.

Shocker, I know. Who would have thought Texas in July would be hot?

Last Wednesday I had a tooth pulled.

Let me just say, right here and now

OWWWWWWW!!!! OWWWW!!!!

I'm still really hurting, so I've been eating things like cottage cheese and peaches or yogurt with bananas. It had been a long time since I had cottage cheese with peaches, and I had forgotten how much I liked them together.

Isn't it funny how you forget about certain foods?

But today I wanted something yummy to drink and I knew this tea would hit the spot.

Last weekend my mom, me, Rominal and Bailey went to an open house. They served the best iced tea. It was so good that I had to ask for the recipe. I modified it a bit (you know me - can't leave anything alone).

Here's the recipe - I think you will enjoy it too. It's the perfect drink for a hot day.

You need:
2-3 family size tea bags
1 1/2 cup sugar
6 cups water

Bring these to a boil and let the tea brew in the sugar water for a while.

Mix together
12 ounces of frozen lemonade
3 tsp of almond extract
3 tsp of vanilla extract
6 cups of cold water

Add the tea/sugar water in with the other and chill.

This would be the perfect drink to serve at a luncheon, or summer dinner.

Enjoy!

Watermelon Mojitos - YUM!

The other night we had dinner at my Mom's house. While we were there, we made the watermelon mojitos that were shown in July's Food Network Magazine. They were quite good.

I changed their recipe a bit - because you know me - I can't just leave anything alone.

Here's what you need to make these:


Watermelon
Juice of 1 lime
2 teaspoons of sugar
(this was a tad bit too much sugar - I'd suggest cutting this back. And for the record - I don't think I have ever said anything had too much sugar in it.)
Mint leaves
2 ounces of white rum
(My switch on it - I used coconut rum. Coconut rum = yummy!)
Ginger ale
Ice

Start by putting your watermelon, lime juice, sugar, and mint into your glass.


Then muddle everything together.


Don't stop until it's all muddled. If it isn't muddled good, the watermelon chunks will get stuck in your straw, so keep muddling away.

(I like to say muddle - can you tell?)


Once it's all muddled (sorry) then you add your rum

(coconut rum if you want to be like me - and you do want to be like me)

then you add your ice and top it off with ginger ale.

Here's the lovely finished drink. I might have to go make one now.


Enjoy!

Rosemary Ranch Chicken Kabobs

With the 4th of July being tomorrow, I thought I would share a great grilling recipe. We will be at a family member's house tomorrow, and I will spend today baking tons of cookies to take with us.

I made these Rosemary Ranch Chicken Kabobs the other day and they were quite good.

I originally made this recipe without cutting the chicken into kabob shapes - just leaving the chicken breasts whole and the marinade was good on that as well.


But for this post, I shall tell you about the kabobs.



Here's the recipe for the marinade. I got the original from here.

Ingredients
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup ranch dressing
3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon white vinegar (I used apple cidar vinegar)
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper, or to taste
1 tablespoon white sugar, or to taste (optional)
5 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cut into 1 inch cubes (for actual kabobs, I only used 3 chicken breasts, but there were only 3 of us eating)

Directions
1.In a medium bowl, stir together the olive oil, ranch dressing, Worcestershire sauce, rosemary, salt, lemon juice, white vinegar, pepper, and sugar. Let stand for 5 minutes. Place chicken in the bowl, and stir to coat with the marinade. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
2.Preheat the grill for medium-high heat. Thread chicken onto skewers and discard marinade.
3.Lightly oil the grill grate. Grill skewers for 8 to 12 minutes, or until the chicken is no longer pink in the center, and the juices run clear.

I reserved a bit of the marinade and Bailey liked to dip her kabobs into that as she was eating them.

Making the kabobs is a messy thing, with the marinade dripping all over your hands. Try not to let it bug you as it bugged me. Sorry, but chicken contaminated marinade all over my hands just really got to me after a bit. Gives me the heebie-jeebies. But I worked through it. However, I think I shall stick to just making whole chicken breasts from now on.

I used onion, tomatoes, orange and yellow bell peppers, and some yellow squash.



These will really drip on your grill, but they turned out great though.



Let me know if you make this - I think you will like it.

Enjoy!