Groovy Girl

I took a few quick pics of Caitie in this cute outfit after we got home from Thanksgiving dinner with family. I had to be fast about it, she was wanting to get out of her shoes and clothes as soon as we walked in the door; it doesn't matter where we've been or what she's wearing, she wants to be free of all clothing and shoes right away.

Caitie picked out the brown boots; she has good taste. She calls them snow boots; this girl loves snow!

Gotta love the hat.

Monster Movie

And I mean in every way. Not only is the movie Monster('s, inc.), but so is the movie projector. Look at the size of these babies; compared to my little baby(she's still my baby), they're pretty dang big, wouldn't you say?

We were using the one that's lit up. Michael got them from the hospital he used to work at. When he mentioned he could have three free movie projectors, I said go for it, but little did I know they were monster in size! ha

Look at the size of the picture, it goes up to 300 inches; the typical consumer home video projector size is around 100 inches. We had it displaying on the garage wall. I have no idea where else to put such a huge projector, so it may be movies in the garage from now on; I'm sure the neighbors will be happy 'bout that.



Life-size. Goin' by height, Michael matches the blue monster(i don't remember their names), Caitie matches the little green monster, and I, of course, match the weirdest looking one of them all, the two-headed, yellow somethin' or other.

Wanna come over and sit in our ol' garage and watch a movie? Admission is $7 a person, not bad considering what it costs to see a movie in the theater these days. Oh, and... bring your own lawn chair, or whatever suits your bottom. See ya at the movies!

The End.

Ear-Resistible

Sunday Salmon Special

Salmon Cakes, that is.

I don't know of any restaurant in the western hemisphere that makes these tasty treats, so homemade it is. Here is a quick and easy way to make 'em.




Ingredients:

1 can (15 1/2 ounces) salmon, drained and flaked(and deboned if necessary)

1/2 cup crushed buttery crackers (*quick tip: i put townhouse crackers into a ziplock baggie and then crush them with the blunt end of a spatula)

2 tbsps chopped fresh parsley, or a little less than 1 tbsp dried parsley

1/2 tsp finely shredded lemon peel

1 tbsp lemon juice

2 green onions, sliced (with tops)

1 egg

canola oil (put about a half inch of oil in the bottom of a cast-iron skillet)

Directions:

Mix salmon, crackers, parsley, lemon peel, lemon juice, onions and egg. Shape into five patties. Heat oil in 10" or 12" cast-iron skillet until hot. Cook patties in oil 4 to 5 minutes on each side or until golden brown. I made them last Sunday and served them with green beans and rice. So yummy!

Follow along in pics...

Ingredients:



Use the tip of the handle to crush the crackers. Try it, you'll like it; it's very therapeutic.



Flake salmon with a fork.



Mix all ingredients in a bowl.

Put about a half inch of oil in bottom of cast-iron skillet, then heat on bbq or on stovetop.

Put salmon cakes in heated skillet and cook for 4 or 5 minutes per side, or until golden brown.

Goes well with green beans and rice.

Caitie prefers Goldfish. Can't win 'em all, I guess.

Movie Night

So you had a fish fry on Friday night, and relaxed with a brewski, now it's late on Saturday night and everyone feels like a movie, but it's too late to hit the theater; now is the time to pull out a movie on DVD, but not just any movie, a movie in 3D! Gotta love 3D glasses. Here is the Hawk Review on the movie... ready for the title? Drumroll, please... "Journey to the Center of the Earth". This will be a short review. It was all right. Make that a very short review. We give it 3 soaring hawks(refer to 'legend')

She wants the movie prep to stop and the movie to start.



"So 3D means blue."



'LEGEND':

** = Translation

negative to 0 = hawk bites the dust. (**so bad, the movie's not worth mentioning)

1 soaring hawk = did i say soaring or snoring? (**most likely the movie put us to sleep)

2-3 soaring hawks = we're being carried on hawks' wings, but soon they're looking for prey, which is a distraction. (**the movie is OK, but it's a bit slow-goin')

4 soaring hawks = the same as the one above, but the hawks find their prey and feasts on them for a bit, then they take to soaring once more. (**it's an entertaining movie, but an intermission is needed, then it's time to get right back to it)

5 soaring hawks = hawks fly high above the earth, content and satisfied, feeling exhilarated and exuberant, never wanting to land again. (**the movie rocks!)

but don't go by us...

confused yet? i am.

Friday Night Fish Fry

What's better than fryin' up some catfish after a long, taxing work week... a nice cold brewski, that's what; according to Michael, that is. I can't think of anything better than throwin' some battered catfish into the cast-iron skillet and firin' up the ol' bbq; nope, there ain't nothin' better than that, nosireebobbydeboop, and here's how ya do it... it's so simple, it's downright silly...

Go and gather up the followin':

catfish fillets

buttermilk

salt

pepper

cajun seasoning

cornmeal

canola oil

Here's what ya do...

Grab a couple of catfish fillets and soak 'em in some buttermilk, enough to cover 'em, for about 20 minutes, flippin' once. Throw out the buttermilk, it has served its purpose.

Lay the catfish on wax paper or foil and season both sides of the catfish with salt, pepper, and cajun seasoning. There's no measuring, but I feel I should advise you to take it easy on the salt, there's salt in the cajun seasoning, at least there was in the one I used, so you might want to apply the salt sparingly.




Dredge the catfish in cornmeal.





Fill a 12-inch cast-iron skillet about a half inch deep with canola oil. Heat the oil over medium-high heat. Once heated, place catfish fillets in the skillet and brown both sides, about two minutes on each side, turning carefully with a spatula. If you have thick fillets, reduce heat to medium-low to finish cooking.

That's all there is to it, folks. I told ya it was easy. If you like things difficult, go make some hush puppies and cornbread from scratch and then go pull some green beans from your garden and prepare them to go along with the scrumptious fried catfish, and then be sure and invite me to dinner. Yum!

Slowly but surely...

we're gettin' there.

As you can see, she's not near the 'toilet of terror'. I moved her potty chair from the downstairs guest bathroom to the family room so she's more comfortable sitting on it, and not wondering if she's going to be eaten by the plunger-hungry toilet. Yes, I'm still having problems with that darn toilet getting stopped up(remember this post?). It's become normal routine to use the plunger after every flush; I don't even think about it anymore, I just do it. HELP! ahem... I just had to get that out of my system, now back to Caitie's potty training progress... When I change her diaper in the morning, I ask her if she wants to sit on her potty chair for a bit, of which she usually does, I then ask her if she wants to wear underwear, which is a pull-up, instead of a diaper, and she usually says yes; she even asks for toilet paper and pretends to wipe her bottom clean. At least we're starting to get somewhere.

Gotcha!

She isn't always able to keep me from getting a pic of her when she's smilin'.

The Indiana Jones hat is makin' a comeback; blame it on the new Indy movie that came out on DVD recently.

She loves any kind of top/jacket with a hood.

Mini Marshmallow Roast

Yes, I even roast marshmallows over an open flame on the BBQ. When the idea struck, which came about when Caitie saw the characters on the Little Bear cartoon roasting marshmallows over a campfire, we only had mini marshmallows on hand(the big marshmallows work better for this). I grabbed a small handful, which were sticking together anyway, and put them on a shishkebab skewer and headed for the BBQ. As you can see, I held them a little too close to the flame, but it was fun giving it a try.



Caitie thought it was fascinating.

Abstraction

Well, sorta.

Hooray for Hail!

The thunder and lightning came out of nowhere on Sunday afternoon, then came the rain, and then the hail. It was all so unexpected, but boy was it welcomed! We loved it! Caitie thought it was snow; that girl loves snow! She enjoyed playing in the hail. Yes, there was enough hail on the ground to play in.

The hail was hitting her on the head, but she didn't care, she was enjoying it.



By the time I got her to stand still for a few seconds, the hail had melted some, so this isn't the actual size of the hail.

Yes, her toes are hanging over her shoes a bit, but we're not neglectful parents, these are an old pair of sandals; I didn't want her getting her newer ones soaked.

Wishing it would last...

Having fun with Holly. She stayed out there no more than two seconds tops. ha

Will we ever place a bid?

We went to an auction again last Saturday. It's the same one we went to last month; they have this particular auction the second Saturday of every month. We hadn't made definite plans to go to this one on Saturday, so we got a late start. It was another beautiful, cool, brisk morning. Gotta love the fall season.

Here is what we missed due to being late. This is a '66 Mustang, it's a classic. It looks similar to my '67 Mustang, which is stored at our property up north. We don't know what it went for. If we had been there in time for the bidding, I most likely would have placed a bid. Maybe it was a good thing we didn't show up on time, I'm not sure I could have stopped bidding, no matter how high it went. This Mustang looked like it was in excellent condition, inside and out.



The auctioneer truck didn't need to be pulled along this time, the truck was up and running.

This is Caitie's favorite part; she loves sitting in all the tractors and big trucks. Some of the guys looking at the tractors and trucks make comments about 'the pretty little gal' pretending to drive them. She stands out at these auctions.

She's starting to pick up some bad habits at these auctions. Hopefully she doesn't start spitting. ha

We were thinking of bidding on this RV. It wasn't the nicest looking one, but if we could have gotten it cheap, we would have went for it. Little did we know at the time we were looking at it that it was already sold. Caitie enjoyed playing in it, and was hoping we would be driving it home. Oh well... that's the way these auctions have been going for us; either we're too late to bid on something, or we chicken out at the last minute, and end up leaving empty-handed. Maybe this is telling us something?

That's the trusty mini-laptop in the pic; we were looking up pricing on the year of this particular RV. That's me in the mirror; like my hat?

We didn't notice this big rig until we were leaving. That's probably a good thing, we would have thought about bidding on it had we seen it in time. Why do we do this to ourselves? Bidding on eBay is stressful enough. ha