Random Thoughts...Food, Firearms, and Fun

With Mac out hunting until Friday afternoon, I'm not cooking until then. On Friday, I'm going to prepare the Chicken and Pasta with Lemon and Artichoke Sauce. It should be a fairly easy meal to prepare, and since Mac has a contact lens fitting Friday and I have an evening appointment, it should fit in very nicely. On Saturday, I have the Dress for Success Professional Women's Group workshop that I'm facilitating, so I'm planning to prepare the Slow Cooked BBQ Beef with Baby Bakers, since it can be prepared in the crock pot. I'll probably get it ready in the crock pot Friday night, and will leave it in the fridge until Saturday morning. I'll ask Mac to start the crock pot around 9 AM or so, and then it should be ready when I get home from the workshop. That way, I can eat dinner, and then go to bed, since I'll have been awake since 5:00 or so that day, and it typically is very exhausting.

Mac and I packed up the dogs last Wednesday and headed off to visit my parents for the Thanksgiving holiday. Since I was cooking Thanksgiving dinner, I purchased most of the groceries here, and we hauled those out to their house as well. They picked up a few odds and ends, primarily things that I figured wouldn't travel well. Mac and I headed out around 4 AM on Thanksgiving to try to snag a TV at Kmart. We didn't make it more than an hour in line, before we found out that they'd run out of vouchers for the TV we wanted. We headed back to my parents' house, and napped. I got up around 8:30 and prepared the stuffing, then got the turkey into the oven around 9 AM, so we could eat around 1 or 1:30 PM. I then mixed everything for green bean casserole and cut the red-skinned potatoes so we could have mashed potatoes. My mother prepared the hash brown casserole, while I prepared a dill dip from a local small business. Once the potatoes were ready, Mac prepared the mashed...

We headed to Philadelphia on Monday afternoon for the Mark Knopfler/Bob Dylan concert. Since we have two dogs, our choices were: Drive out to Philadelphia and back immediately after the concert, leaving the dogs at home Board the dogs and stay at a hotel ($50-$75 to board the dogs for the night, plus a hotel room) Stay at the Hotel Palomar Philadelphia, and since Kimpton gives new meaning to pet-friendly, just pay for our room, no pet deposits. We opted to stay at the Hotel Palomar. The dogs LOVED it! When we arrived and walked into the lobby, one of the front desk clerks cooed all over both of them, and immediately knew their names. She kept them distracted while I checked into our room, a process that was complicated by a change in credit card, since I'd cancelled the card that I'd initially used to book the room. At check-in, we were given a sign to hang on the door that said, "Caution, pets at play" so everyone knew we had pets in the room. We were upgrade...

On Saturday, Tiff and I ran around Berks County, participating in the Berk's County Best Kept Secrets Tour. We had lots of fun, and when I got home, I decided to tackle the Dream Dinners Old Fashioned Meatloaf with Twice Baked Potatoes. I mixed in the oatmeal mixture with the ground meat, and then placed it into one of my meatloaf pans. It filled the entire pan, almost overflowing, so in the future, I'd use a rectangular baker pan. I then prepared the potatoes, filling the shells with the potato mixture. The meatloaf did not cook in an hour, like the directions said, so it went back in the oven for another 20 minutes. Not a big deal, since we had a late dinner anyway, and didn't have to be up for work the next day. I'm not sure if this was because it filled the entire meatloaf pan, but I was a bit grumpy about that. The meatloaf did have a very nice tangy flavor, and once it was cooked through, it was very enjoyable. The potatoes would have benefited from extra ch...

I've neglected to update my mileage log for all of the rescue transports I've completed since the beginning of October. I guess it's good that I save the emails, right? I first started doing this in April 2012. In the 6 months I've been driving rescue transports, I've driven over 3,400 miles, and have transported 37 dogs. A few have bunked with us for the night, but most have only spent an hour or so in my Jeep before being handed along down the road, or being given to their new parents. At times, with the number of dogs in shelters, I can't help but think that's just a drop in the bucket. I guess though that the more I do move, the better life is, at least for them.

Tonight, after work, I'm headed to get my hair cut to donate to Locks of Love , and colored. I'm trying Bernard's at Brighton, where we were last Sunday, for their Spa, Shop, Wine, and Chocolate event. We each received a $15 gift certificate, so I'll use that to offset the costs. I also won a door prize at the event, so I'll pick that up as well. After that tonight, I'm going to cook the Dream Dinners Chicken with Honey, Garlic, and Orange, along with rice and broccoli for dinner. After tonight, I'm not cooking again until Tuesday, for various reasons, in part that Mac will be at the Steelers game on Sunday. On Tuesday, I'm going to prepare the Chicken and White Bean Chili with Corn Fritters. That will leave me with 3 additional meals from November to prepare, and those will probably be prepared in December, since Mac will be hunting much of the last week of November. I'll only be hunting for a day, but he'll be out in the woods for much of...

I prepared the Dream Dinners Creamy Chicken Florentine Tortellini last night. Mac and I both really enjoyed it, although again, there were a few issues. The first was that I followed the baking instructions, but some of the tortellini wasn't quite hot. I'm guessing it was from the middle section of the pan, although the chicken, cheese, spinach, and sauce were all hot. The second was that liquid from the pan dripped down into the oven, and set off the smoke detector for a minute. The third was that I'd left the brownies that I'd cooked for Mac's homecoming in the oven to keep them away from hungry paws, and forgot they were in there when I preheated the oven. The brownies are fine. My Pampered Chef Mini Serving Spatula is not however! The meal had a very nice flavor, with a nice balance of spinach and cheese. The tortellini was very delicious, and I typically don't care for most tortellini. I enjoyed that the chicken was cut into pieces, as it saved us from ha...