• 15 minute posts,  Family Matters,  the dogs,  the sticks,  Tis the Season

    Thanksgiving 2011 in photos

    Grandma's Hands

    Just some photos from our thanksgiving this year… So much to be thankful for.

    Grandma and Bug

    Waiting for dinner…

    Bug made her own mini-pies.

    We had made pies the morning of. Bug made her own mini pies.

    checking on her pies "They're puffy!"

    cooling

    Pumkin for us.

    cherry pie for Papa

    Cherry for my Dad. He loooooves cherry pie and will rave on and on about it even if you use store-bought pie crust and canned cherries.

    Dad's home!

    Everyone was so thankful he made it home for the holiday. It was a close call. The trucking industry can be brutal sometimes.

    cozy couchless living room

    My cozy couch-less living room.

    Bug reading her sight words to Auntie Keren

    Nobody seems to mind.

    watching a documentary on Russian Ballet

    It’s television-less too so we watch documentaries on Russian Ballet on Netflicks on my laptop instead. Football Schmootball.

    discussing the finer points of Russian ballet

    Both my Aunt Keren and Bug have studied ballet. They discuss the finer points.

    poor Holly has to stay outside

    Poor Holly had to stay outside. Not because we didn’t want her in but because my mom brought her hyper crazy herding dog, Spreckles, over and the hyper crazy dog needed company so she didn’t dig a thousand holes in my backyard. They dug five together instead and chewed up my red rubber boots. Stupid crazy hyper herding dogs. But you already know how I feel about Spreckles. She is NOT Holly.

    loveable ol' Holly

    We LOVE Holly. There really is nothing better than a chilled-out seven-year-old black labrador. I wish she would live forever.

    ready to sit down!

    Dinner finally ready! Everybody come sit down!

    all together via skype

    It’s so good to be together. My brother and his family even joined us via skype.

  • 15 minute posts,  gardening,  the dogs,  the sticks

    Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

    yellow pear tomatoes ripening...

    How does your garden grow? It grows very well, thank you. In fact it’s growing too well. My tomatoes grew faster than I could keep up with and now the branches are huge and heavy and not off the ground like they are supposed to be because I didn’t tie them up in time. I’ve been doing my best, climbing through the jungle of leaves and vines and green tomatoes and tying them up as tightly as I can before the branches themselves break from the weight but it’s not going so well. I may lose a lot of them.

    bumper crop

    Which won’t be the end of the world because I think I have about a thousand green tomatoes. If I lose 50 of them, I think I’ll still have more than I could ever eat, can and make salsa with.

    smashed up tomato patch

    An unfortunate thing happened this last weekend. I decided to leave my dog, Holly, out for the day and let the neighbor feed her that night instead of taking her to my mom’s like I usually do. I didn’t want to do this because the weather has been oppressively hot and my dog, who used to be an outdoor dog and stayed outside for five years of her life, is spoiled rotten now and likes to spend most of her time indoors, sleeping under the air vent. It was so sad. As I locked her out she looked at me with giant puppy dog eyes and her tongue hanging out.

    But sometimes dogs have to stay outside. The patio was cool and shaded and she had some nice cement to lie on, I thought. So I put it out of my mind and went onto our normal weekend activities in Orange County.

    hot dog

    Well, Holly got hot. Do you know what dogs do when they’re hot and bored? They dig into the nice cool dirt in the tomato patch. She dug to China and made all kinds of tunnels through the tomato branches on her way there. Broken branches, busted leaves, green tomatoes everywhere. It was not a happy sight to come home to. But I couldn’t be too mad at her. I probably would have done the same thing if I’d been left outside all day in one-hundred degree weather when I’m used to the five star resort that is the indoors.

    So I’ve forgiven her and promised I’ll never leave her out again.

    green tomatoes

    Anybody have any good fried green tomato recipes?