Spaghetti Dinner Party

Us cross country girls like to have parties.  Having a spaghetti eating contest has been a tradition for a long time.  It started way before I ever joined the team.  But, last year we missed a year.  So, this year, I just had to have a spaghetti dinner.  Yeah, it wasn't an eating contest, but there was spaghetti.

When we do it as a contest, we first way the plate, and  then take a helping of spaghetti, and then way the plate again.  Subtract the weight of the plate, and you will get the spaghetti weight.  Then, eat that helping of spaghetti, go back for more, and way the amount of spaghetti again.  Once we are done, we add up the amounts of spaghetti each person ate... and you have a winner.

But, we didn't want to do all the weighing, so we just made it a spaghetti dinner.  And, it was a fun night.

There was spaghetti... of course.

 Bread sticks.  I made some garlic and some plain.

My Mom was able to find flowers for ANOTHER bouquet of flowers.

Caesar salad.  I made homemade croutons from a recipe of the Pioneer Women.

At Trader Joe's, we got some Italina soda.  The choices were grapefruit and blood orange.  Everyone preferred the blood orange or to mix them.

Carrot cake cupcakes.

I wanted to get some Italian music to have on in the background to make the night feel more like we were in Italy.  So, my Mom and I went to the library to find some.  The closet music we could find to being Italian was, opera.  So, we had a little opera music playing.  We go some laughs out of that music.

We had dinner and had some good conversations.  Then we played apples to apples.  And, then we make charades out of apples to apples.

Potato Garden

The last two summers, I have grown potatoes for the food shelf, as a community service project.  Last year, the potato produce was excellent.  This year, I wasn't so sure if they were going to come out.

The master gardener, who has helped me get going on this project, thought that the potatoes wouldn't grow because the soil was too wet.  But, I went ahead and planted them.  My Mom helped me plant them, and now, of course, helped me dig them up.  We planted them kind of late, and only checked the garden once... to weed it (the garden is at the community garden in our town, not at our house).

The other day, we dug up our potatoes, and were surprised on how much we actually got.  So, with a little hope, we headed right out the the potato garden to see if there were any potatoes.  And, sure enough, there were!

Planting the potatoes in the spring.

We started with 6.5 pounds (we're pretty sure) of seed potatoes.

I do everything in my crocs.  I LOVE crocs!

"Harvesting" the potatoes in the fall (or I guess it is technically late summer).

We didn't start until sun set, so we didn't finish until it was pretty much dark out.

We grew 46.5 pounds of potatoes for the food shelf!

The next day, we brought them to the food shelf:)

Fresh Picks of the Day - October 1, 2013

Today, we picked all of the apples on our trees.  The bugs were starting to get them.  So, we just had to get them away.  There were some good ones, but there were also a lot of bad ones, and some really bad ones.  With the bad, ones we will just cut off the bad parts, peel and slice them, and use them for some deliciousness.  We threw the really bad ones away.  And, of course, with the good ones, we will eat!

I LOVE APPLES!

The empty tree...

I also picked pretty much all of the peppers... besides maybe a couple small hot peppers.  I diced them up and put them in the freezer.

Fresh Picks of the Day - September 30, 2013

Today, we, well mainly my Mom, got a lot out of the garden.  She pretty much picked all of the pumpkins, the rest of the rest of the onions, and the potatoes.

I LOVE digging up potatoes!  It's like a treasure hut.  Since, I am in a cast, I can't really use a shovel.  So, my Mom dug with the shovel, and then I was on my hands and knees collecting the potatoes.  We actually had more potatoes that we thought we would.

The potatoes before "harvesting".

 Digging them up!

The treasures!

We got this red basket and about a half of a paper bag full of POTATOES!

We still have lots of peppers and tomatoes coming!

From our Garden - September 28, 3013

My Mom was able to pick another bouquet of flowers from our yard.

A couple days ago, I picked the rest of the carrots from our garden.

I made a carrot cake with carrots from our garden today.  I love carrot cake!

The cake was delicious and I ate a really lot!

YUM!

Our pumpkin patch.

This is a funny pumpkin... no, wait, it's a cucumber!

 

The apples on our trees are about ready to be picked!

 

 The pear.

On our pear trees this year, we only got to pears.  One of the pears mysteriously disappeared.  Then the second pear fell to the ground.  Luckily, my Mom and I were walking past the trees and spotted it.  It wasn't rotten or anything, so, we rescued the pear.  It needs to ripen a little, and then we will slice it up one night, so that everyone in the family can have some.

My Mom picked a ton more tomatoes.  So, today I made and canned more salsa and canned some tomatoes.  This time I added in some tomato paste with them, to thicken them up a little, and they look really nice now.

For supper tonight we had chili with tomatoes from our garden.  It turned out excellent!  Super delicious!  I would have never know that the tomatoes in the chili were from our garden... if I didn't know.

Dad's Birthday

Today is my Dad's birthday.  We didn't do as much celebrating as we would do for us kids, but this day was still made special for him.

For supper we had grilled steaks, twice baked potatoes, roasted asparagus, dinner rolls, and carrots for the people who don't like asparagus.

Since we didn't have too much for my Dad's birthday, I decided to put everything on nice platters, and make the table look nice.

Right after supper my Dad opened his presents.  Usually we do present opening a little later, but there weren't many presents and my sister wanted him to open them.  My sister, with her own money, bought him a music card and an almond joy candy bar.  He also got some roasting sticks for the campfire and a box of cereal... plus a card in the mail.

My Dad always requests a German Chocolate Cake.

There was a little arguing about who would light the candles.  My youngest brother first said he wanted to.  But my sister then said she wanted to light some too.  But, my brother said that since we were only doing 3 candles, that he was going to light them all.  Well, what ended up happening is that my brother lit them all, and then my sister blew one out and re-lit it.  

We ended up singing happy birthday twice to him because the first time only a couple people were singing.