High Five for Friday!

#1

We made it!  Whoop Whoop!  I am so glad it's here!!!  I see fun in the sun, pool time, and good food in my very near future.  It's supposed to be sunny and warm.....the PERFECT summer weekend!

via

#2

Little brother love. 

How stinkin' cute are these 2?!  Eric said he found them like this when he got home yesterday.  I know I say this all the time, but our dogs crack me up on a daily basis.  I can't imagine how boring my life would be without our fur-babies.

#3

I am happy to report that these 2 are BOTH officially Memphis residents again!  I haven't said too much about it on here, but the past year my parents have been in the process of moving back to Memphis.  Dad moved down in August to start a new job, while Mom stayed behind in Michigan while they sold the house. The house ended up selling much quicker than they thought and by Thanksgiving they were moving out of the MI house into a new house in Memphis.  The only problem was Mom was 6 months away from being vested in her retirement.  The obvious decision was for her to stay up in MI to finish out the school year and move down officially when school got out.  Well school FINALLY ended this week (the crazies up north like to start school after Labor Day and finish in June- a foreign concept down south)  and she's now back down south for good with Dad!  I am super excited to have them closer!  They're 5 hours from us, but that sure beats 14 hours!

#4

We barely survived our softball game last night.  We won, but it was one of those games that as you go over and over in your head on the way home (Anyone else besides me do this? Yeah it's just church league softball but old habits die hard, I guess.) you wonder what the heck happened.  The team we were playing made some spectacular plays and we had some tough breaks and miss-communication that cost us several runs.  Thankfully we had some people step up with some big plays and big hits when we needed them.  I am not a fan of being up only by 3 with the tying run and #2 batter at the plate, but I guess when you're the only undefeated team left everyone brings their A game.  

#5

TRUTH

Happy Weekend!

I Made Another Succotash...and it was GOOOOD!

I would be lying if I said this week was taking as long as I thought it would.  I was pleasantly surprised to realize that it's already Thursday.  I have a little tid bit of deliciousness to share today.

I posted this succotash recipe a couple of weeks ago. It was my first succotash recipe to ever cook (or try if I am not mistaken).  I was that kid that didn't like any of my food to mix or touch, so in all likelihood I had not had one before this (not willingly anyway). For this reason I surprised myself salivating over another succotash recipe in a recent Redbook issue. I made it for dinnner earlier this week and it was a hit.  Eric and I agreed that this one was better than the first one was had.

Recipe adapted from Redbook Magazine

What you need:

2 TBSP butter

1 large zucchini, diced

1-15oz can corn, drained (or 2 cups fresh corn kernels)

1 TBSP fresh thyme leaves

2 tsp chopped garlic

1 medium tomato, deeded and diced (1/2 to 1 cup)

4 scallions, thinly sliced (about 1/2 cup)

3/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1/4 cup reduced fat sour cream

How to make it:

Melt butter in a skillet over med-high heat.  Saute zucchini, corn, thyme, and garlic for 4-6 minutes, tossing frequently.

Stir in tomatoes, scallions, salt, and pepper.  Toss mixture until zucchini is tender (should take just a couple of minutes).

Remove from heat and transfer to serving bowl.  Stir in sour cream. Serve warm, or at room temperature.
*Makes about 4 cups, and according to the recipe, each serving is sub-100 calories.  Double win!

I never realized how easy recipes like this were.  Cut veggies, saute, serve.  Wham, Bam, Thank you, Ma'am. These are my favorite kinds of recipes!

We had it with some marinated chicken and mushroom kabobs.  I used this recipe for the chicken marinade, but forgot to have Eric brush them with the chili garlic sauce while they were cooking (he fixed them up with a little Southern Flavor seasoning).   The mushrooms I decided to add on the fly.  To marinate them, I put them in a ziploc bag with some olive oil, lime juice, garlic powder, and cumin.  They turned out absolutely delicious! It was the perfect summer night dinner.

And that little dab of BBQ sauce on the plate?  Eric's creation.....He combined our nearly empty bottles of our 2 favorite BBQ sauces: Sticky Fingers Memphis Origainal BBQ Sauce and Cattleman's Caroline Tangy Gold BBQ Sauce and created their love child.  We'll call it Cattleman's Sticky Memphis Gold BBQ Sauce aka a little slice of heaven.  =)

Try it.  You won't regret it, I promise. 

Late Nights and Sweet Tea

UGH....8:30pm softball games are going to be the death of me. Especially exciting, close 8:30pm softball games. We have not had a bunch of exciting games, but you better believe the ones that are exciting are the ones that are supposed to start at 8:30pm, but actually don't start until 9pm (or later since games never stay on time). We play with a 60 minute time limit, but unless one team run rules the other, we go the full time. Last night was a full 60 minute-er that got started at 9pm.  (you know it's ging to be a late night when you pull up to the field 25 minutes before your game and see 57 minutes left on the clock.  We got off to a rough start and had to come back from 4-0 after the top of the 1st.  We tied it up and FINALLY in the 4th inning we went up by 8, and we could relax a little.  By the time we were on our way home it was already 10:05pm.

I would love to say that we came right home and went to bed, but we were both still running on adrenaline from the game so we sat down to watch a little America's Got Talent.  That was mistake.  It was not a 1 hour show like I thought it was, but I didn't realize that until we were and hour and 30 minutes (minus the commercials) into it.  Plus they saved the underwater escape artist grandma and the sway pole handstand guy until the end and kept showing previews of them.  Let's just say that I may have made it to early Wednesday morning before my head hit the pillow.  Awesome, right?  This may call for an extra cup o' joe this morning.

Since the our game did not start until late I had plenty of time after work to pud around in the kitchen.  I had a recipe in mind that I wanted to try.......Southern Sweet Tea. Down here tea is served instead of water a lot of times.  I am the odd ball because I ask for water.  I don't drink the stuff.  It's kinda gross to me. If it were up to me (and it usually is) I would not worry about buying anything to drink.  I drink water and coffee (and the occasional bottle of wine, or 6pack of cider beer, or-you get the picture).  I am not a juice, milk, or tea drinker.  Eric usually goes along with it, but from time to time wants something different. He's been on a sweet tea (w/ Splenda) kick for a while now.  I finally got tired of spending nearly $4 on a gallon of tea each week, and decided to make some.  I mean it couldn't be THAT hard.

I know I could have called no less than 25 people for an easy recipe (but not my mom or grandma because they don't make it either!) , but I went with my trusty sidekick Pinterest. It didn't let me down!  I found a recipe pretty quick and got to work.  It's safe to say it took me a couple of tries to get it right.  I forgot to add the sugar to the hot water and did not account for the tea bags soaking up the hot water either. (apparently you are supposed to squeeze the water out of them before your throw them away....who knew?) After about 40 minutes I had my very first pitcher of tea!  It didn't make as much as I had hoped (or initially measured because of those pesky bags soaking up the water), but it was something.   Since I don't drink it and have no idea what good tea should taste like, I could not taste test it to see if it tasted right.  However I am happy to report that my taste tester approved when he got home and said it was actually pretty good--I think HE was surprised that I nailed it.

That is my "full" pitcher on the right.  It's not a large pitcher at all. 

There it is, my feeble attempt to be a proper southern wife or my attempt to save a few bucks a week, which ever you'd like to classify that under. =)

Where Have all of the Responsible Pet Owners Gone?

Our handsome boys ready for a walk.

The other day Eric's grandmother told me she was talking to a friend who lives in our neighborhood.  The lady told her that she sees me walking my dogs every day and of course commented on how funny I look walking all 3 dogs.  I don't doubt I look a little absolutely ridiculous trying to walk all 3 of them at once, but it makes for much calmer inside dogs so I don't mind.  Plus I love just getting outside for some fresh air and exercise, as do they.

In the same conversation, the lady also told his grandmother how much she appreciated that I "clean up" after my dogs.  She said I am the only dog owner in the neighborhood who does that.  There was a part of me that was shocked at that, but at the same time not exactly surprised. I guess I just figured it was common decency to clean up after your pets when they relieve themselves in someone else's yard.  My mom always cleaned up after our dogs when we walked them, so I guess I was just brought up knowing it was the right thing to do.  It's obvious that we have some neighbors who don't, which you can tell if you walk along the street in our neighborhood.  After seeing the edge of my front yard the other day I seriously thought about putting up a sign that said something long the lines of "We clean up after ours, so please clean up after yours." Yes it will disintegrate eventually, but until then I have to look at it every time I go to my mailbox. And if you have a large dog, it might take a while!

This may be TMI, but I will not leave for a walk with less than 3 bags to clean up after my dogs, and usually end up using 2 of them (the third in my insurance policy). Do I look funny carrying used bags around the neighborhood?  Probably. But at least I know that my neighbors appreciate that I clean up after my dogs, even if I end up waving a bag at them as they drive by because my hands are full of bags and leashes!

Since we're on the subject of dogs.....I have been sweeping and vacuuming the floors like a mad woman the past couple of weeks trying to stay ahead of the dog hair.  It's awful right now.  I swept and mopped on Sunday, and by Monday night the floors were covered in dog hair.  I came the the conclusion that maybe I should brush the dogs out to see if that helps.  Can I just say I was completely shocked at how much extra hair they were carrying around?  I am pretty sure you could have made a fur coat for a small dog with the amount of hair that came off of Hawk, which yes was a pile larger than a beer bottle.  The pile was a good 3-4 inches high, too.

Is that a miniature Pomeranian?  Nope, just excess Hawk hair.

The moral of this story is please be a responsible pet owner and respectful neighbor.....it's not hard to do!
I do realize I just wrote an entire post about dog poop.
[end rant]