Say "cheese!"

Cheeeeese! 

Before I snapped this picture it was so crowded that I couldn't even SEE the cheese, much less pick out some to sample or purchase. That's when the friendly Brenda came to my rescue. She saw me looking sullen and asked if she could get me anything from the counter. Um, there's cheese involved -- OF COURSE you can get me something from the counter!

Brenda and I chatted for a minute and then she disappeared behind the wall of people. She emerged from behind the wall a few minutes later with a tray of cheese. MY cheese! *Squeeee!*

I said my thank you's and then, miraculously, the sea of people parted. It was then that I really and truly saw the holy grail: cheese. Stacks and wheels and packages of cheese. The soundtrack of life paused while the angels sang. I had to remind myself to breathe. It was a profound moment.

Four hunks of that cheese came home and are now camped out in my fridge, waiting for tonight:

Glass of Wine, meet Cheese.
Cheese, meet Glass of Wine.

I have a feeling you two will be fast friends. :-)

Apples, apples, and more apples

Those aren't leaves on the ground. Nope. Those are APPLES! 

The weekend brought some cooler weather so we decided to take advantage of it and headed north to the orchard. We weren't disappointed.

We wandered through the rows of trees, filling our bag with apples, tasting as we went. They had red delicious, golden delicious, staymen, ida red, and matsu. We adopted a few of each.

This was our transportation from the parking lot to the orchard. A tractor bed with old school bus seats, and a covering. Brilliant! Not comfortable by any means (shock absorbers, anyone?), but still brilliant.

It really was a pretty day and the apples were yummy. We even came away with some good pictures!

But I saved the best for last:  

See that guy behind the Turkey? Right there. Let's call him Big Grinner. Well, I have NO CLUE who he is, where he came from, or even recall him being on the bus-tractor contraption. But he has a cute grin and a great sense of humor! :-)

Thank you, Mr. Big Grinner, for being a part of our apple picking memories.

Weekend in Wally World

I spent the weekend with buddies from *gulp!* high school. Yep! Twenty five years after graduating and it felt like yesterday. We still ACTED like we were in high school, staying out after curfew, being rowdy, and then munching out on pizza at 3 a.m. at Frank's mom's house. Oh, yeah.

Well, maybe we were acting more like college kids. We were, after all, in the bar. 

I am working on stitching photos together to share with you. In the meantime, here's the alumni band video for your viewing pleasure:



Yes. Old people do indeed rock!

In addition to cheering my peeps and taking photos from the stands, we watched about 10 other bands perform on Saturday night before heading over to the bar to get warm and continue socializing. It was 3:41a.m. when I finally pulled into the garage at home. I might be rockin', but this old person just can't pull that off two nights in a row any more.

Yes, you read that right:  TWO nights in a row!

We had fun. :o) 

Ho, ho, h .... hmm?

September 23. It's the Autumnal Equinox. The 266th day of the year. A Thursday (this year, at least). It's the day Nintendo was founded, and the anniversary of the Concordat of Worms. (Who knew?)

September 23, with 99 days remaining in the year, is not the day I expected to find a fully stocked Christmas section at the hardware store.

Maybe they are celebrating the anniversary of the Concordat of Worms. Maybe?

Pickles

Speaking of food ... let's talk pickles.

Yes, pickles. Dill, midgets, gherkins, bread and butter, kosher, spears ... pickles.

Are pickles a vegetable? They are made from cucumbers after all. Cucumbers are a vegetable. But then the cukes are soaked in ... in ... pickling stuff to make them into pickles. Does the pickling stuff negate the powers of the vegetable? Are the nutrients from the cucumber still in the pickle? Or does the pickling stuff totally neuter the nutrients?

Then, to really add insult to injury, the pickles can be fried which turn them into all sorts of yumminess. Mmmm! If they were categorized as a vegetable before, are they even less of a vegetable after being fried? Do we get ANY of our daily serving of vegetables by eating fried pickles? 

I ask these questions because we ate some last night. And then a few more for good measure. And they were good. Yummy good. And the Turkey argued that it counted toward his daily veggie intake. Who am I to argue? (As I eat another one. Mmm!)

Photo courtesy of Google images. Thanks!

Just peachy

I did a lot of cooking this weekend. Well, "cooking" might be too technical a term. Let's just say I spent a lot of time in the kitchen, and other than tonight's scrumptious supper, it was more along the lines of "putting ingredients together" instead of "cooking."  Case in point:

It doesn't look like much all scrunched up in the dish like that, and my photographic equipment is less than ideal for this kind of shot, but trust me when I say these were super yummy. No oven, toaster, grill, or other kitchen-based heating device was ever used. It is simply fresh peach slices wrapped in prosciutto and fresh basil.

Here's the link to the original recipe and the photo that's so much better than what I could pull off.

As usual, I used the recipe only as a guide. Step 1 of slicing the peaches was a breeze and we definitely followed that one to the letter, but that's where the follow streak ended. The peaches were in a bowl when I realized there was no sherry in the house and cumin would be OK but, well, I just wasn't feeling the cumin love. So ... enter the liquor cabinet. A splash of Grand Marnier (maybe 2 tablespoons) and a quick shake of cayenne pepper, and we were off! I tossed the peaches to make sure they were all tinged with liquor and pepper, and then wrapped each with 1/3 of a slice of prosciutto and a fresh basil leaf. Voila!

And the taste? 

Ohmygoodness! YUMMY!

Super easy. Super yummy. Super fresh. Super fabulous.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

We are not morning people. No way, no how. 8:00am still seems brutally early, but somehow we manage to get the Turkey to school by 7:00am. Some mornings, though, we are greeted with a stunningly gorgeous sight that makes the early hour seem not so bad. Like today.

Lest you think these pictures were taken by the driver, please know that the Turkey picked up my cell phone and began snapping away while I drove. Those smudges on the photo are not from lens fingerprints but a dirty windshield. (Also known as a reminder to wash the car this weekend. Hear that, Turkey?)

Dirty car aside, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.