Random, long, overdue

Wow! So, I haven't yet blogged in the month of August and it's already the 16th! Oops! I have a lot to catch up on. Unfortunately, as usual, I am seriously lacking in documentation of all of the fun I have had in the past couple weeks!

Here is a lunch that I felt blog-worthy. I had roasted some veggies (onions, bell peppers, zucchini, squash) under the broiler to put on a sandwich along with some Sabra's Supremely Spicy Hummus to take with us on our trip. What trip, you may ask? My family, Chris' family, and the two of us went to the Lake of the Ozarks a week ago to chillax and hang out in a friend of a friend's condo. Unfortunately, the condo was occupied Friday night until Saturday around 5, so we had to come up with something fun to do with 5 dogs as we mosied our way over to the Lake. So, we decided to take the dogs to Meramec Spring State Park for a swim and a picnic. Strangely enough, non of our water-breed dogs like the water. The only one who, very surprisingly, got into the whole swimming thing was Ollie. We were such proud parents of our doggy paddlin' poodle. After that, the dogs were exhausted so we had our picnic and then made the drive the rest of the way to the condo. We did the typical Lake of the Ozarks things: dinner, mini golf, saltwater taffy, skee ball, board games with the lake as the backdrop . . .

Oh yeah, anyway, now that my tangent is over . . . these wraps are from Aldi, and they are great! They are only $1.99 for a pack of 6 or 8. The amount of fiber they pack into one 90-calorie wrap is pretty impressive! I would definitely recommend these.

Close up of nutritional info.

Update on "crazy dancing lady": We saw her again when we went to the last evening of jazz at the Botanical Gardens. Shawnee just had to have a picture taken with her, and this was the result.

A few nights ago I made this recipe for fish tostadas. They were DELICIOUS! I will for sure be making these again. We had my brother over for dinner, and he even liked them! He's a very picky (fast food eating) eater. The recipe says that 2 tostadas is a serving size, but each of us only ate 1 and were sufficiently full.

Last Christmas I started making a cookie/holiday cookbook on createmycookbook.com for my mother-in-law who loves to cook/bake. She and I make a shit load of cookies every Christmas together. Of course, typical me fashion I never completed the cookbook (I still have scarf in the works for her from a couple Christmases ago). Anyway, this time I am going to make sure that she gets this cookbook. It is pretty much finished, but I wanted to get some more photos of recipes contained in the book. So, that requires a lot of cookie-baking! I made three from the cookbook in one night:

butter mints

"Burt's Aunt Willie's" (recipe possibly from Sesame Street Magazine from when I was a little girl, my mom used to make them ALL the time).

And my personal favorite, lime crescents, which are supposed to have lime zest in the powdered sugar coating, but I ran out of zest. :(

Thursday night was Catty Kitchen night . . . at MY house this time! I made a trip to Randall's Wine and Spirits, which is this large warehouse of any wine/beer/liquor your heart could desire. I bought a bottle of Magic Hat #9, which Chris and I had tried in Queens and in Boston.

I also got a bottle of reisling, which ended up being mediocre in my opinion, even though it had a rating of 90+.

Finally, a creme brulee stout!! Holy Cow! (pun intended) This was amazing, but so hard to drink very much of. It was so sweet, and so true to its flavor -- very vanilla, creme brulee-y.

Faith brought this delicious zucchini "pie" called Kolokithopita, that she made from a recipe from this blog. I though it was delicious. The other girls thought it needed less fresh mint. I also made some jalapeno popper dip from a recipe from the same blog. And Katie brought a yummy salad! We had plenty to eat, as usual.

Here they all are (minus me) chowing down, which is what we all do very well! Octavia is showing just how much we ate that night by demonstrating her amazing ability to protrude her belly many many inches farther out than it really goes!

The next day it was time for me to do something I hadn't done in MONTHS! . . . work . . . yes folks, it's back to school/work time. Just like my mom always did growing up, I had Chris take a picture of me on my "first day back to school." I really hope this year is better than last year!