Summer Weekends are the Best!

It's no secret that we live for the weekends around these parts, but specifically summertime weekends. There is nothing better in my book because there's never a shortage of things to do: pool, lake, river, cookout, dance party on the back porch, etc. There was a moment Saturday night when we were hanging out at the neighbors' house, surrounded by our friends that I thought: This is the good life. How did we get so lucky to be surrounded by such an amazing group of friends? If I could have bottled up that night I would have because it was just perfect. Since bottling up a moment isn't exactly possible, a picture is the next best thing, right?

We started out our weekend with a birthday celebration for our niece in the form of a pool party with Eric's sister, dad, grandmother, and of course the birthday girl!  I am pretty much convinced I want to go back to having birthdays like I did when I was a kid because they are the best!

Saturday was a doozy of a day.  It started with Eric playing golf and me puttering around the house.  When he got back we headed up to the lake for an afternoon with friends at Chimney Rock and ended with the above mentioned cookout with our friends.

This is another view I never get tired of. 

What's a trip to the Rock without jumping, right? Eric (in the maroon trunks) and one of our friends conquered Chicken Rock. Only adrenaline junkies tackle Chimney Rock (directly below the #1 in the first picture). It's about 3 times as high as Chicken Rock. No thank you.

As I said Saturday night was just a really fun night.  The best part of hanging out at the neighbors' house? The pups get to play, too!  These two decided they'd had enough by 10PM (their bedtime) and curled up by their back door. 

Sunday morning the boys played a scramble and we hit up the pool again in the afternoon. We finished up the evening with a cookout and the most amazing dinner cookout spread complete with several Cagle Garden Veggies!  I can't wait to eat the leftovers this week!  I think it's pretty safe to say that we summered the heck out of this weekend! I can't wait to do it all again this weekend!

Loaded Pico de Gallo

With the abundance of fresh fruits and veggies available right now, I've been trying to incorporate as many as I possible can into what I am cooking. We aren't quite at the point where I can get everything I need out of our garden, but the time is coming very soon!  To hold us over until then I pick up things at the grocery store or the local farmer's market stand (my new favorite place to buy fresh produce in town).  One of my favorite fresh dishes to make that ends up being super versatile is fresh Pico de Gallo.  It can be anything from chip dip, taco condiment, chicken topping, and it delicious on a pulled pork sandwich. I have made several variations over the years, but I recently stumbled on this recipe/technique and it's our new favorite for sure.

What You Need:

1 medium onion

juice from 1 lime

1- 8oz can whole kernel sweet corn

1- 8oz can black beans

2 large tomatoes

1 jalapeño pepper

1 cup cilantro

salt and pepper to taste

How to Make It:

In a small bowl, combine onion and lime juice. Stir to saturate onion with juice and set aside to marinate while you prepare the rest of the pico.

Rinse and drain corn and black beans in a colander, leave in colander to dry.

Dice tomatoes, removing the excess juice/seedy part of the tomatoes and place in a large bowl. Seed and dice the jalapeño pepper, place in bowl with the tomatoes. Chop cilantro and add to bowl.  Add corn, black beans, and onions along with lime juice to the bowl. Toss mixture with salt and pepper until combined.

You can serve it immediately with chips or refrigerate until you're ready to serve. We can never resist eating is as soon as it's ready, but the flavor is always so much richer the next day!

This dish was the first thing I have made that included a little something from the garden.  I used a jalapeño pepper that I harvested the day we got home from the beach.  Speaking of our first harvest...here it is! It might be small but I am so proud of it!

 Thankfully it rained while we were gone so the entire garden looked super healthy when we got back!

Everything's Bigger in Texas

I'm back again from yet another adventure.  This time I headed out west to Dallas, TX for a conference. It was this weekend that I realized I had been through Dallas (mainly the airport) several times, but I don't recall ever staying in Dallas at least not in downtown Dallas. Lucky for me, the rain that has been terrorizing the entire state of Texas for a few weeks subsided and we had three days of beautiful and dare I say cool summer weather.

I can honestly say this trip changed my perception of Dallas.  For some reason I did not realize what a large city it is. It's ENORMOUS! And I it was obvious that Dallasites (I'm not sure if that's correct but I am going with it) love a mirrored building.  They were everywhere, and mostly in the skyscraper variety, very impressive and nice to look at. Since our conference didn't start until 8:30 everyday I got to take a few early morning walks and check out the city at my own pace.

I had a nice view of the Fountain Building from my hotel room...it was gorgeous!

We had our meeting in Dallas's tallest building, the Bank of America Plaza...on the 69th floor (there are only 72 in the whole building!). The views from here were spectacular! 

 A gorgeous view of the Trinity River (which was a bit on the full side) and the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. 

And another of the Fountain Building (from above it!)

I was amazed by the number of [extremely large] sculptures there were around the city.  There were several in the mile or so radius I was in.  My favorite was a 30 foot eyeball called, you guessed it The Eye! And yes it is a 30 foot eyeball that looks scarily real.

And it just hangs out in its own park area in the middle of downtown. 

Of course you can't go to Dallas and not talk about JFK's assassination. Our hotel was about .5 miles from Dealey Plaza where he was shot and the conference hosts arranged for us to take a tour of the Sixth Floor Museum, formerly known as the Dallas School Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy from the corner window on the 6th floor (which has been left intact and looks just like it would have on November 22, 1963). It had some background on President Kennedy and his family and then it walked you through the events of the day and the aftermath.  It finished up with a section on the conspiracy theories that surrounded his death.  I found it fascinating.  If you're ever in downtown Dallas, it's worth the stop.  

The infamous window is the one that is second from the top and the seventh from the left.

Across the street from the Museum you can see the grassy knoll and the exact location the President was killed.  It's marked with a white X in the middle of the road. The unceremonious X is because the street he was killed on is still a major artery in downtown Dallas and people drive over it every day.

It was hard to get a picture of it since people were diving over it, but the X is between the black car and the light post in the center lane.

The JFK Memorial was just down the street and was quite impressive as well. 

So thank you, Dallas, for showing me a great time.  I would love to come back again sometime, maybe next time just for fun!?

I will end this post with a PSA for a lesson that I unfortunately learned the hard way on my trip home:

DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT wear a sparkly shirt to an airport that has body scanners. The scanners will assume the "metal" in your shirt is something other than the thread in your shirt, and in return you will receive a full body pat-down from the agent on duty. It was not my most comfortable moment.  However, there was a silver lining.  Yes, believe it or not.  I can now confirm (since she showed me what the scan looked like) that those scanners only show masses of metal and not "other things" like I have always wondered.  You're welcome.  And leave your sparkly shirts at home (or at least in your bag because it didn't cause any problems on the way there when it was packed away).

My Batteries Have Been Recharged

I am having a really hard time knowing that the view outside my window no longer looks like this.

We escaped the hustle and bustle of life this past week and headed down to the Gulf for a few days of R and R with both of our families.  First stop?  OBA (Orange Beach) of course! We headed South on Friday afternoon to spend a couple of days with Eric's brother, his wife, and our precious nephew.  The (grownup) boys spent Saturday out fishing while my SIL and I spent the day bike riding and doing a little retail therapy with my nephew. It was the perfect relaxing start to our vacation!

I mean seriously....how stinkin cute is this kid!?

Sunday we headed East to another beach....Panama City Beach to be exact to spend a few days with Mom and Dad. This was my first trip to PCB and Eric had not been since high school so this was a new beach experience for us and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! The place we stayed at was right on the water so we could sit on our balcony and watch the waves roll in. Our days were perfection....a long walk for Mom and I in the morning down while Dad and Eric golfed, followed by laying out on the beach all afternoon and fresh seafood for dinner.  It can't get much better than that!

The Pier and Pier Park were just about a mile from our condo so we took full advantage of the proximity and made it our shopping walking destination every morning.

Clockwise from top left: 1) My drink from dinner the first night....I think it was called WTH Punch...I just know it was full of rum and raspberry juice and it was delicious!  Runaway Island was our dinner destination the first night partially because it was recommended to us by the concierge and partially because it was a short walk down the beach from the hotel.  Dinner was fantastic and we introduced Mom and Dad to Ahi Tuna which they both enjoyed (or at least said they did). The atmosphere was perfect as it was right on the beach and they had a ton of outdoor seating.  2) The second night we stayed in and cooked our own fish that Eric and his brother caught.  Dad showed us his new watermelon cutting trick he learned online.  It involves making several cuts into the sides of a watermelon and dumping it out already cut up.  It was pretty amazing!  3) Dinner our last night at Saltwater Grill.  This was also recommended by the concierge and it did not disappoint!  I had the Grouper Macadamia. Yes, that's right. Macadamia nut-crusted fish along with the most delicious garlic mashed potatoes and green beans. I stuffed myself silly that night because I could not bear to let this dish go uneaten. 4) Because we ate so much the night before we were not even remotely hungry for breakfast when we left the next morning. We figured we'd get an hour or so down the road and grab a bite at a Hardee's or something.  What we did not account for was the route we took home had 0 fast food joints on it for the first 2.5 hours...and maybe 10 gas stations! We finally found a gas station/restaurant combo in Elba, AL and decided to see what Barb's Country Kitchen had to offer.  It ended up being a delicious, good old fashioned homemade county breakfast complete with hand cut potatoes and salt cured bacon.

I stared at this view at all hours of the day for 3 days and never once got sick of it.

Mom and I conned the boys into playing a round of Putt-Putt the last night we were there and they begrudgingly agreed. Check out the score card and you'll see why....they got their butts beat! And they'd been practicing every day at the golf course!  And those other three pictures?  Those would me Mom's and my Holes-In-One...as in multiple Hole-In-Ones (2 for me and one for Mom!)

There's that dog-gone gorgeous view again!

In addition to conning the boys into Putt-Putt, we also conned them into pictures on the beach after dinner one night which meant I finally got some good pictures of more than scenery and the dogs on my good camera!

 These two are the absolute best parent's a girl could ask for! And they're adorable, too, right?!

 And I just adore this guy!

The only thing missing from this amazingly wonderful trip was our Matt-Matt who had important work to do and could not join us....next time Matt-Matt, next time!