Archive | May 2016

A Little Of This, A Little Of That!

May31

Last week was Graduation Week for my grandson, Connor Romanowski.  He graduated from Helena (AL) High School, with the ceremony being held at the BJCC in Birmingham.  Ray and I went down for the festivities.  Here is a picture of Connor and me after the ceremony:Connor and Grandma

And this one is of the family!  From left to right:  Connor’s brother, Drew; his mom, Beth; his dad, Brian; Graduate Connor; Beth’s dad, Charles; Ray (behind) and me.  It was a fine time, though pretty quick trip.  Teenagers are always so busy!

The Family

The garden is doing great!  Here are some shots of what I harvested on Saturday:

Today's Harvest Today's Harvest

There is kale, chard, arugula, beets, parsley, cilantro and oregano.  The oregano is the upper left.  There is SO much of it!  I have stripped it and it is all drying now.  We do use a lot of oregano, so it won’t go to waste.  I’ll also be sharing with friends.

We put a tomato cage around our squash plant!  Look at all the little squashes hanging around (you may have to enlarge the pic to see them, but they are there)!

Squash in a tomato cage!

Squash in a tomato cage!

The other thing we have is potatoes in a bucket!  Check out this little video!  (for some reason, I can’t seem to get the link to work – here is the full link:  http://www.treehugger.com/lawn-garden/learn-grow-potatoes-bucket-through-song-and-animation-video.html).  Here is what ours look like:

Potatoes in a bucket!

This is all from two potatoes that had gotten kind of old and wrinkly.  I cut them into pieces, and put them into the buckets and WOW have they ever grown!  We have added dirt as they have grown upward, and every time we do, they grow even taller and faster!  We’ll have to stop pretty soon, since the buckets will be completely full.  Thinking we’ll get quite a few potatoes from this!

We also went to a local dinner theater production on Thursday.  Near us is Chaffin’s Barn Dinner Theater.  They have buffet dinners and shows most evenings, but gladly, they also have Thursday Matinees.  These are much cheaper than the dinner buffet, and you can order a box lunch for an additional charge, or bring your own. We love being able to bring our own lunch.  This month the play was Neil Simon’s Rumors, and was a delight!  Very fast-paced and funny.

Rumors at The Barn

We see nearly every show that is not a musical.  The performers are great – such a nice treat. We’ll be going back on June 30 to see Take My Wife.

O.K., I’ve droned on long enough!  Thanks for looking and remember, I love comments!

 

 

It’s been a quiet week (or month) in Lake Wobegon!

May5

As Garrison Keillor would say on The Prairie Home Companion, it’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.  Actually, it’s been more like a month! So, I thought I’d try to catch up a bit.

Been doing a LOT of volunteering with TNFP this month.  They forged a new partnership with St. Luke’s Community Center to provide meals to folks in need (called Mobile Meals – like Meals on Wheels), and also to the pre-school they run at the same facility.  Several of the regular volunteers at TNFP  were asked to (and quickly agreed to) spend some extra scheduled time in that kitchen until the normal volunteer sign-up process has worked itself out.  So, I have been going there another day or two per week.  I now cook, with my special friend Marilyn, on Monday and Tuesday mornings at what is called South Hall (for Friends Life), and volunteer on Fridays with her at St. Luke’s doing prep, plating, cooking or whatever needs to be done.  In between, I cook a couple of Wednesdays and Thursdays each month.  Starting in May (now), on the second Wednesday of each month, I will be volunteering at St. Luke’s as part of a very great and special group of 4 fromTNFP – Marilyn, Caren and Meera.  We are a group that has been working together for a very long time, and love one another like sisters!  We are going to make it a “Ladies Who Lunch” deal, and go to various places for lunch after our shift. We need to get an “M” name for Caren, though – then we could be the MMMM’s!  Glad that the shifts are only two to three hours each.

This last month has not been very eventful, but we have had some really nice weather – which does wonders for our garden!  Look at these recent pics:

May 1, 2016

May 1, 2016

May 1, 2016

Compared to the ones earlier, you can see the amazing growth!  We have since harvested the lettuce and some arugula and had a wonderful salad one night for dinner.  You can see the netting we have over the plants to keep the critters out.  Working so well!

One other fun thing we did recently, is to get a real Connecticut Lobster Roll!  Yes, here in landlocked Nashville, and believe it or not, from a food truck!  Two cousins were on Shark Tank a while back with the idea of a lobster truck.  We don’t watch the show, so not sure how all that works, but apparently they were funded.  The upshot is that there is now a fleet of around 15 franchised Cousins Maine Lobster trucks all over the country.  We got one in Nashville, so I HAD to go.  A Connecticut Lobster Roll is probably my favorite guilty pleasure (not to be confused with a Maine Lobster Roll – it’s very different).  We went out and found them one rainy day and here is the result:

Connecticut Lobster Roll

The Story #1       The Story #2

If you can zoom in, you may be able to read their story.  Or you can check out Cousins Maine Lobster.  Not inexpensive, but so worth it!  We will definitely go back again when they are close enough to us to make it worthwhile.  Note in passing:  Nashville has a thriving food truck scene of over 70 food trucks!  Wow!

O.K., that is enough for now.  Hopefully I will have more to say soon.  Stay tuned!  Would love to hear any comments that you may have!