Happy Halloween!

Big Weekend

Once again, we over-booked our weekend, but we had a great time. Saturday morning we drove out to The Plains and did this corn maze. The weather was fantastic and it was great to spend the time outside. We were doing a good job, right up until we got to the last station. We couldn't find it for love or money and just wandered around in the same circle in the big chicken's wing for about 20 minutes until we figured out how to get out. All together, it took us an hour do to the maze.

From there, we went to the home of a high school friend of Jim's, whom he hadn't seen in a long time. We stayed and visited for about an hour and then headed off looking for wineries, since it would have been a shame to be out there and not go to at least one. We found The Winery at La Grange I did the whole tasting (about 16 wines) and Jim stopped after the whites. We bought two bottles, the pinot grigio and the cuvee.

Sunday night, we went to Ford's Theatre and saw a production of Sabrina Fair. I love the theater there. It's a small house and really every seat is good. We were in the third row, to the right and there was only one small bit where we had a bad sight line. The set made fantastic use of the stage, which has a very big thrust (the part that sticks out from the opening). There was no curtain for this show, either, which was interesting in terms of how the play opened and the "curtain" call. I was a little disappointed in the performance of the actor's playing Sabrina, who could have toned it down a bit, and Linus, who could have been more arrogant and aloof. I may have been spoiled by Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, but it was still a perfect lovely evening out.

August Cooks Week 8

Pizza Pot Pie is not for the faint of heart. There is a lot of meat and a lot of cheese. Even Jim, who has been known to put away some food, said, “Are you going to use all of that?”

I made very few changes to this recipe. I used 3 lbs of sweet Italian sausage and 1 lb. of hot sausage and I substituted dried herbs instead of fresh. Other than that, I followed it as written.

After a bit of trial and error, I discovered that kitchen shears are the perfect thing for cutting sausage. I browned it in batches, because my skillet is not big enough to hold it all at once.

I always get my pizza dough at Trader Joe’s. They have a plain white, whole wheat and garlic & herb dough and best of all, it’s only 99 cents!

My top shrunk up when it baked, but it didn't overflow. I waited until the very end of the week to make this recipe, but it was worth the wait.

Gettysburg, PA

We were invited to attend a birthday celebration for Jim's high school youth pastor today in Westminster, MD. It turns out that Westminster is only about 30 miles from Gettysburg and it would have been a shame to get that close and not see the battlefield.

We have gone to the battlefield in Manassas before and were able to see the park in a couple of hours. I figured that Gettysburg would be the same, but I was mistaken. We could have spent a couple of days there reading all the markers. There is a 24-mile auto tour through the park. We spent three hours and stop for four of the 16 markers. I am glad that we sat down with the map before we started and picked the few sites that we wanted to be sure to see, otherwise we never would have gotten to them.

This is stop five, the Virginia Memorial. The monument to Virginia's soldiers is behind you in this picture and the field is the site of Picket's Charge on July 3rd, 1863.

We also stopped at the last stop, Soldier's National Cemetery, where Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address during the dedication. This monument marks the spot of his address.

The weather today could not have been nicer and we had a great time. Since it's only 2 hours from Washington, we will definitely have to go again for an overnight trip so we can spend more time exploring Gettysburg.

Week Five - Artichoke and Sun-Dried Tomato Chicken

I love artichokes, in all their varieties. I like artichoke dip, fried artichokes, artichokes in my salad, marinated ones right from the jar. I even cooked my very own whole artichoke for the first time this year, so I did a little happy dance when I saw this recipe, even though I am totally incompetent at rolling things up in chicken and getting it to stay there.

Nevertheless, I made these last night and they turned out great, even if the stuffing leaked out the ends. My only caveat is that I would not want to make them on a week night again. We don't eat dinner until almost 10:00 p.m. because of J's work schedule, so this was just too much work for that late at night. However, my husband told me they were fantastic about four times during dinner and he ate two of them, so this one goes in the recipe box for sure.

End of Summer

You may not know this about me, but I love roller coasters. A lot. I love them so much that we went to Williamsburg on our honeymoon so that I could ride the coasters at Busch Gardens again.

You also may not know that I am the queen of the getting something for cheap, preferably free. I get reward points on my credit cards, gas points at the grocery, extra care bucks at CVS and my most favorite, Coke Rewards Points. We are single-handedly keeping the Coca-Cola company in business.

Earlier this year, the Coke rewards site had free tickets to Kings Dominion, so I promptly ordered one for me. Since they were one per person, I opened another account for Jim, trying to get a second free ticket. They showed up one more time, but I didn't have enough points, then they vanished from the site. No second free ticket for us.

Since I didn't want to let our one free ticket go to waste, I set out to get a deal on a second ticket. After much web searching, I found a discount code that would get us a ticket for $28.50 - that's half price.

On September 18th, I'll be riding this. I can't wait.

August Cooks Week 4

I will confess, this dinner absolutely terrified me and I have no one to blame but myself, because I am the one who posted it. I had grilled cheese and soup in the wings, just in case it was a culinary failure.

It started off great. I got a fantastic deal on the fish at B.J.’s warehouse. I got them for $4.49/pound when the grocery store had them on sale for $6.99/pound.

The stuffing came together beautifully and smelled delicious.

Then, I got ready to stuff them. And I got scared. They didn’t “open flat like a book” which flustered me. Then I tried to cut the tails off and they didn’t want to go and that made me more flustered. And they have bones. And I forgot the lemon juice. I eventually got them stuffed and into the oven.

Poke, poke. Is it done yet?

They actually came out pretty good, but I won’t be doing whole fish again for a very long time.