Christmas

I took some pics of my moms Christmas village on Christmas.

The big kids checking out their toys.

Snow from hell

Gosh! How much snow does one city/state need? It has been snowing alot this week. It snowed on Wednesday and again on Friday. All this snow doesnt make it very easy to drive around to restaurants and get work done.
Last night, Friday, I was required to be in Park City at 4pm for a new restaurant opening. It took me an hour to drive from Sugarhouse to Kimball Junction, and then another 30 min from Kimball Junction to Park City. Normally from my house to Park City it is a 40 min drive total.
Parleys Canyon was so messy I didnt think I was going to make it. UDOT had alerts out saying chains or four wheel drive was required. And what am I driving? My little Toyota Corolla with front wheel drive and semi bald tires.
I drove 20-25 miles an hour all the way up and I only slid sideways 2 or 3 times. I came close to hitting a couple of cars but did not. The steep parts where the scariest. I could feel my tires slipping and the car would jerk when the tires could not grab the road/ice/snow. That was when I was really regretting buying new glasses instead of new tires last month.
I have noticed when I am in a stressful driving situation like that one, I hold my breath and stop breathing. I dont do it on purpose. In fact if I do notice I am doing it, I try to make a point of breathing deeply, but then I forget again because I had to concentrate on the road. One of these times I will probably pass out from not breathing, that would be so STUPID! No wonder I had a headache by the time I arrived in Park City. It went away by the time I left the restaurant at 11:30pm, but then I had a worse headache from driving home, even though the drive was not as bad because I-80 had been plowed somewhat.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all. I hope everyone is safe and happy on this Thanksgiving day. I am grateful for all my wonderfully fabulous family and friends that I love so much.

Happy Birthday to Ellie

Happy Birthday to Ellie!!

Lots of SNOW!

Lots of pretty snow fell this past Wednesday Nov 5th. I love it. Snow is very pretty if you dont have to drive in it.

Arent we lucky to have such pretty mountains?

My honey-bunny made me a bunny shaped pancake. How clever and cute!

Giraffes

The funniest video I have seen ever.
Make sure when go to play this video you click on the PLAY button at the bottom of the picture of the video, not the big PLAY button in the middle (that one takes you to another window).

Hippy Helloween

I had a Hippy Helloween, did you?

Successful FGT

I have a successful attempt at making Fried Green Tomatoes. No applause necessary.
Good coating coverage.
Good browning and crisp coating.

I found that cutting the slices thinner than 1/2 inch worked much better because the tomato cooks better.

Too bad you couldnt have tasted these, they were pretty good.

Dont cook when hungover

If you cook when you are hung-over, your Fried Green Tomatoes could turn out looking like this.
It is the result of reading the recipe ingredients but not reading the instructions.
I read the list of ingredients and threw them all in a bowl and started mixing and I realized this isn't going to be like batter to dip the sliced green tomatoes into....hmmm....so i read more of the recipe instructions and realized all of the ingredients are supposed to be all in separate bowls, to dip the slices into and get a coating on them.
It was too late for that, so I just decided to fry up the 'dough' I had in the bowl because i thought they might be good just fried. Not really.
So then I decided they might stick to the tomato slices and I could still fry the tomato inside the 'dough'. See the pictures for the results.
Not too good.
I did find that the fried 'dough' was good with red tomatoes, so that is how I ate them.

Thanks for reading my silly blog.

Tomato Overload

Yesterday I was worried about losing alot of the tomatoes we have on the vine due to the pending snow storm, so I picked about 125-130 of the ones that are closest to being ripe and brought them in the house and put them on the window sills and in paper bags.

I covered the ones still outside on the plants, but I have a feeling alot of them may have gotten a little too cold.

If anyone would like some tomatoes or knows how to store them in jars, please let me know.

I think we are going to have WAY too many for us to consume. I am thinking about giving some to the food bank if I cant figure out a way to store them in jars (canning).

Quails

Here is the last of the Quails for this season. These pictures were taken the last week of Sept 2008. Arent they cute little guys?

Thanks Mom!

Is it too early for Thanksgiving?
I just want to tell everyone how lucky I am. I am so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends and I want everyone to know about them.

My mom is so helpful and concerned, she helps me with my doctor bills, visits, and health issues. She is also doing so much to help my sister who is going through a hard time right now.
She is also helping my other sister get through school.
My mom is the most awesome person I know!
Three cheers for MY MOM!!!

Also my nanna, she is such a great person. My sisters and I spent a lot of time at her house growing up, and I thank her for the things she taught us and how she made sure we always had lots of fun.

One of these days I hope to be just like my mom and nanna.
They are awesome and amazing women.

Fly-Juice-Air

I do not like it when people swing a used fly swatter near my face.
It could get fly-juice-air in my nose or mouth.
What is fly-juice-air you ask?
You know when you smack a fly and the fly's juices get squished out?
Those juices are on the fly swatter and when you swing it through the air it makes FLY-JUICE-AIR!

Super-Fun

We had a really fun time last night; Matt, Marci, Lori & I drank some beer, bbq'd some burgers, and played cards in the back yard.
We ate dinner then played Texas Hold-em, but we didnt have any poker chips, so I improvised with leaves from the tree. Everyone started with 20 leaves.

I didnt take any pictures, so you will just have to visualize the 4 of us sitting around our backyard table under the tree(the bank), under the stars and a full moon, playing cards and betting leaves worth $1000 each. It was hilarious.
I was laughing so hard, my face hurts today.

That is what I call Super-Fun Saturday night.

A good garden

I have been meaning to update my blog but I really didnt have much going on to talk about.
So my exciting news is my garden. Here are a couple of pics of my very first homemade cucumber and one of my homemade yellow squash. There were both grown from plants that started as seeds. I am excited to really be able to eat veges (other than tomatoes) I grew myself.

I have grown tomatoes before and I planted 10 regular tomato plants, plus one sweet 100 plant. My tomato plants are out of control. They are so big the tomato cages are tipping over from the weight of the plants. I love them, they are awesome.

The picture above is of all 10 tomato plants I have planted next to my driveway. It is a little blurry but you can see a few red ones in between those leaves. I just love them.

Cute little guys

This morning I was sitting in my living room drinking coffee and I could hear the little "chook-chook" noise that quails make when they are calling or warning their babies. So I went to the window and out in the drive way I saw 3 bigger quails with 3 babies. They are so cute I could not resist taking some pictures. Enjoy!