Nirvana in a bowl.

At a recent family/friend get-together, there was this dish.....a dish that I can only describe as incandescently delicious. If any of you are fans of fruit-type salads, y'know...a little jello, a little cool whip, etc, etc, then you MUST, MUST, ABSOLUTELY MUST! try this salad! It is so delicious to the taste!!!!

Let me go a little deeper and explain how I feel about fruit salad. About side dishes in general, really...I truly think that all that meat & main-dishy stuff is superfluous. It's all about the sides for me baby!!

Potato salad,

noodles,(these are yummy rice-stick noodles--all smokey & soy-saucy!)


macaroni salad,This happened to be "Amish"-style macaroni salad my friend Kellie made--a delicious first for me!

rolls, potatoes & gravy, STUFFING!,


big trays of fruit & cheese,
a well made green salad; Erin, you rock!(Nothin' like a tasty salad in a beautiful bowl! This one was even yummier than it looked--which is saying something!)


and of course, the fruit salad.

The sheer variety of what you can comPILE onto your plate is mind-numbing!

See what I mean....

This plate is pretty good...missing some noodles maybe....although I would still give it an "8" out of "10" because of the layering technique used.



Here's another....

Now this plate is near perfect! Notice the noodles nestled next to the macaroni salad. Very appropriate.....ditch the chicken for a nice, fat peanut butter finger, and you're there!

Anyway, back to the fruit salad! I have special feelings about fruit salads. I never met one I didn't like. And this one I LOVED!!!! Three times now I have made myself utterly sick eating this salad! (and I mean utterly sick in the best way possible.....)



I will be making it AGAIN this Fourth of July. I will double the batch because I could eat a whole batch myself. No lie. I suggest you do the same.

This recipe requires several hours to set up. It's best to make it the night before you want to serve it.

I call it:

Nirvana in a Bowl

1 small box COOK and SERVE vanilla Jello pudding mix
1 small box COOK and SERVE tapioca pudding mix (Jello brand)
1 small box whatever flavor fruit Jello you want
3 cups water
1-8 oz. Cool Whip-thawed
Fruit to match Jello flavor. Trust me, raspberry is BEST. Then orange.....

Empty the three boxes of Jello & pudding into a medium saucepan. Add three cups of water to the powder mixture. Stir and cook on medium high until the mixture begins to boil. Let boil about 1 minute. Remove from heat and place into large bowl to refrigerate. Let sit in fridge overnight. When you are ready to serve, take jello mixture and stir it to loosen it up. Stir it pretty good, but not TOO good. Then, fold in the 8 oz. Cool Whip and the fruit. How much fruit is a personal decision. I use 1 1/2-2 pints of raspberries to a double batch and it's perfect.

Seriously, people.....if you have any love at ALL for the fruitus saladus genus of food, you MUST make this ASAP. And then pass this recipe along. And don't forget who gave you the recipe that changed your life.

A belated congratulations

Remember this sweet photo?




Well, this little pickle cleaned up pretty well---






I know, I know!! He looks just like me........



Anyway.......it turns out that the winner of my little photo-caption contest was the son of a long-time (sounds better than saying old), friend of mine. I've known him since he was about six. Here's a pic of him as a kid.




WOAH!!!! Before I continue, I want to point out something I just noticed:

I'm looking at these two pics.......






















I'm seeing something interesting.........some similarities, if you will.......

like:

same scrunchy face,

wet, slimy hair......

a strange substance dripping from mouth....

dripping, wet body.....can you see it??


No WONDER he won!!!!!! Chris Clark totally identified with the photo!! I GET it now!! And just like Connor, Chris cleans up pretty well too.......Congratulations Chris!!


Here he is with his winning plate of cookies......




Here he is looking amazed at his winning plate of cookies......



Here he is drooling over his winning plate of cookies.....




Some things never change.

Year of the Yard update

Remember that newly-weeded flower bed from my last post? I have got to say that not many things make me as giddy as watching things grow, so imagine what the last three weeks have been like for me watching this:


BEFORE




Not bad......A few green things besides weeds have popped out of the ground.



AFTER




Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!!





See? See the pretties?? More bulbs, must have more bulbs!!!





Those orange tulips there make me want to do crazy things......




Can you blame me??

Year of the Yard part one

When we were lucky enough to buy the house we live in now, I had three thoughts:
1. This house has SIX (potential) bedrooms. Yahoo!! That means we can have more babies!!

2. With this house we double our square footage, thereby giving us more space to put our stuff! We could NEVER fill up all this space! (turns out we filled it up immediately--all we had to do was find a place for all the things I had stored like a brainteaser puzzle in our previous house. We just spread them out a bit...)

3. This house sits on a HALF-ACRE!!! I can't wait to fill up that half-acre with plants rather like I had the closets of our old house filled up! Y'know--EVERY INCH!!

So I went to sleep at night with all my plans and good intentions swimming 'round my head. Well......turns out that a half-acre is a lot of land. Especially when you don't have a sprinkling system, and you get pregnant and have two babies in the space of 3 1/2 years. And you let the yard go the first summer only to realize that the lush, green yard you fell in love with will now take many summers to get back. SIGH!!! Turns out the way to do this is to tackle it like eating an elephant.....one bite at a time. You have no idea how much this pains me. Apparently I crave order more than I thought I did and to not be able to "whip my yard into shape" like I want drives me NUTS!! Oh well...might as well get started!



Last year we dug out and amended the front flower beds next to the sidewalks. I sent away for some bulbs and shade plants and got them in the ground while I could still bend over.....however; apparently tilling gave new life to all the grape hyacinth I thought I had killed with Round-up. For those of you who don't know, grape hyacinth is an innocuous-looking little purple flower that comes from a bulb. Being a purple-lover, you'd think that it would elate me to know that I had inherited such a BOUNTY of purpleness......

Not so. Let me illustrate.....



Observe how the grape hyacinth foliage blends seamlessly into the grass beyond.....That's because it is as THICK as the grass beyond!!!!!

Here is more of a close-up:



This is my son who sold his soul to me for the price of Guitar Hero. He gets to help me in the yard. Hehehehe!!



This is what grape hyacinth bulbs do when nobody's looking.....





Do you see that unholy large bulb in the middle? That is the culprit!!! One bulb like that let loose and it's all over!!!

These bulbs must be STOPPED!! We dug and dug and dug. We filled a two-gallon bucket four times with the little buggers!! And now......



An almost clean slate with which to create!! Now only 54/55ths of an acre to go!!

For those of you who have not seen JUNO...............

What the.....

Yummy looking cookies, no?




So I made these cookies. It's a simple recipe, really. Some butter, eggs, flour, etc. Oh, and some pecans. Cause they're yummy.
So I made these cookies. Mixed 'em up and baked all six dozen or so. Had them all stacked up on a plate ready to go and finally picked one up to eat. Took a couple of bites and bit into a small, very hard, crunchy something. I thought to myself "gee...I hope that wasn't an egg shell....." But I crack eggs the right way and never get egg shells and I was watching very closely, besides. I continued eating because very few things would stop me from finishing a fine chocolate chip cookie. Very few things stop me from partaking of a second fine chocolate chip cookie either, so I did. And CRUNCH again! Alright. Something was screwy here....similar problem in both samples of cookies. Could those expensive pecans I got from Costco have had NUT SHELLS in them?? Surely not! I trust Costco almost implicitly, and besides, I was paying attention.

Well I stopped after two cookies, mostly because I got busy.

Later that night, I asked my hubby if he had eaten a cookie. He answered in the affirmative. I then asked if perhaps he had encountered an unexpected crunch factor. He replied " egg shells" Well, we all know that I crack egg shells the right way, and was watching closely, besides....So I put it out of my mind and went to sleep.

I got up the next morning and chose a lovely specimen of chipiness for my pre-breakfast snack. Bit into it and CRUNCH! THAT WAS IT!!!! I had to get to the bottom of this culinary conundrum!! I mentally went through my list of ingredients. Then it hit me......I went to my tin of flour. I began to sift.....




Wait for it......





AH HA!!!!!













My flour supply had been contaminated by our resident terrorist pictured below:










Innocent-looking, I know. However, do not be fooled. This one person who represents only 12.5% of the content of our family contributes at least 63.2% of the mess and mental energy that I expend in a single day. Now you know why I make so many cookies..........

If Connor could talk.....

I was perusing my photos (as I do almost daily for entertainment) when I found this little gem. Every time I look at it, it renders me dumb with wonderment. Being the obviously biased mother that I am, the only words that come to mind are "What a beautiful child!" and "Have you honestly seen a more gorgeous baby in your whole life?" Well, it appears that I can only think in cliches, so I am putting it out to you dear bloggers to compose an appropriate caption. After a weeks time I will pick a winner and personally deliver a plate of cookies to their door. Unless the winner lives in a faraway place. Then I will reserve the right to adjust the prize as necessary. I suggest clicking on the photo to enlarge it so you can view it in all it's glory.