Checkmate!

Pretty sure I’ve mentioned lots of times that the Dog Walker is trying to earn all the Merit Badges offered by the Boy Scouts of America. This is a huge deal for him and we are on the brink of accomplishment!

We had it all planned out…last Sunday was the Court of Honor and badges were presented. The Dog Walker received 17. The plan was to have him earn all of the badges except one. Then we could schedule his final Court of Honor/Party and he would be extremely cool!

So things were rolling according to plan. We scheduled his party for September 11 and sent out the invitations last week. The blue cards were in and the badges were done. One of the things he has always wanted to do is give a gift to each counselor or person who really helped him achieve his goal. So last week we went over to Beck’s Leather and Craft. We had arranged with them to make 100 key chains (at an amazing price!). It took us a while to stamp them with an eagle, then cover each one with a satin sheen.

When we got home, I got online to print a list of badges so we could put a counselor’s name with each one. As I was scrolling through the list, formatting it to make things easy, my eyes read each name…American Business, American Labor…Basketry, Chess, Climbing…wait a second. I was stunned to see a badge that we had not earned! Chess was never on the list…what’s up with that?

I punched in the keys for Meritbadge.org. Sure enough, it was a new badge and its release date was scheduled for September 10, one day before we were planning to share with our friends and family the Dog Walker’s successful achievement of a goal that he had not quite completed because now there was a new badge. This was not good.

After several stressful moments, I discovered that the requirements would be released online on September 7. In the meantime, we are playing lots of Chess at our house. I’m the resident Chess Champion here, although maybe that’s not saying much. I keep telling the Dog Walker that I got pretty good because my older brother beat me for over 100 straight games. You can learn a lot by losing…

That doesn’t make him feel any better when the only person he has managed to beat has been Prima Donna. Sport is actually pretty good. He even beat my sweetie today (with just a tiny bit of help). So, as long as we can anticipate most of the requirements, we will be celebrating next Sunday after the Dog Walker passes off his last badge and then the newly released last badge. If not…checkmate!

My brain hurts!

Master Gardeners

 
First I want to show you this cute onesie that Baby Doll won from Rhonda @ wherever you go...there you are.. Doesn’t she look adorable? OK, so I’m a little biased.

Pretty sure I’ve mentioned that I’ve been watching my grandkids all summer. Near the end of July, the kids started going back to school, and now that it’s September, I only have my 4-year-old grandson, Burrito, my 3-year-old son, Curly, and almost one-year-old Baby Doll left at home. Scout is in kindergarten, so we have her for half the day except that she sleeps in until noon so it’s not like she’s really here anyway.

So with just these three little ones at home, I’m having a rather difficult time accomplishing anything during the day. My biggest babysitter for the boys is our humongous sand pile, and I send them out there often. The problem with that is that they like to turn on the water and then they get in trouble when Burrito’s dad gets here to pick them up. Now since they can’t use water as a diversion, they have found something new. Apparently, they are both planning to be Master Gardeners when they grow up, which is next week if you ask Curly.

First I discovered three random ears of corn laying on the patio table. No one seemed to know anything about them. Then, on Thursday, both boys came running in, “Grandma, Grandma,” Burrito shouted. “We found a watermelon!” Curly was close at his heels. Yup. They found a watermelon all right. They pulled it right out of the watermelon patch. It was about the size of a baseball. Patience already stretched thin by my inability to deal with my life this week, I came slightly unglued. “That watermelon is never going to grow any more,” I snapped. “You killed it.” Curly started to cry. Burrito looked at me stone-faced. “It was Curly’s idea,” he said. This made Curly cry harder. “No it wasn’t.” He looked like his heart was ready to break as I continued to rake them over the coals about playing in the garden.

Last week they stomped on all the cherry tomatoes and when I cussed them about it, Burrito’s response was, “But I don’t like cherry tomatoes.” I immediately sentenced them to unloading the dishwashers as a punishment job. They complained, but eventually they made their way to the kitchen and started tossing Tupperware bowls into the cupboard. I put Baby Doll in the high chair and opened a jar of baby food. Maybe I could keep them on task if I were sitting right there. I spooned the pulverized lasagna into her open mouth. I must have been really tired because I was totally oblivious until Burrito approached the table. In his hand he was carrying Princess’s bottle of body mist. The strong scent lingered. “I sprayed the soap on all the dishes,” he proclaimed. “That is not soap!” I screeched. I snatched the bottle from his hand, stomped across the room and checked the dishwasher. Yup, sure enough. He had sprayed all the clean dishes with the body mist. At least they smelled good…I hung my head in defeat. Then I proceeded to restart the dishwasher. I guess there is more than one way of getting out of doing a job. I sent them back to the sand pile.

Food for Thought - Stuffed Peppers

Look what we found in the garden today! At my house that can only mean one thing…stuffed peppers. I grew up living a rather dull life when it came to food. My mom cooked the same basic meals over and over, and we rarely tried anything new. (That changed after I was married and my brother spent some time out of the country.) Not that I minded much. Food was just not that important to me then (I wish I still felt that way…). I pretty much ate whatever was placed in front of me and then got on with the important things like homework and chasing boys.

There were very few things that I absolutely would not eat. Here is the short list:
1. Cantaloupe.
2. Green beans in tomato sauce.
3. Mush.
4. Franco American Spaghetti.

My kids have way more things on their lists. I even liked liver and onions for crying out loud! In my defense, even the smell of cantaloupe made me ill as a child. I seem to remember eating it when I was very small, but one day my grandpa put something on it…salt, I think. I never could eat it after that. And my mom, seriously, cooked green beans and then poured a can of tomato sauce over them. Disgusting!

Anyway, this is not supposed to be a negative post. Needless to say, I had never heard of stuffed peppers. My sweetie swore by his mother’s recipe and the first time I had them I was hooked. OK, the first time I SMELLED them I was hooked. They remind me of fall and all the happy scents of canning and using the veggies from the garden. My sweetie calls them his comfort food.

I am not a huge green pepper fan, but I love the flavor cooked in. So after they are finished, I simply slip the pepper off and slide it over to my sweetie’s plate. Most of the kids love/tolerate it that way. Sport is our only nay-sayer. If I’m feeling particularly generous I leave a little white rice out for him. Don’t forget the crusty rolls to dunk in the extra sauce. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think!



Stuffed Peppers

Wash:
8 – 10 peppers, then remove lids and ribs

Cook peppers in:
1 cup boiling salted (1 ½ tsp salt) water for 5 min.
Drain and reserve liquid

Combine: 
2 lbs ground beef
1 ½ cups cooked rice
¼ tsp pepper

Fill drained green peppers with this mixture.

Melt: ¼ cup butter

Add: 1 cup sliced onion and sauté until brown.

Then add: 
18 oz ketchup
2 ½ cups tomatoes, cooked or canned
6 whole cloves
liquid from cooked pepper

Stand filled peppers upright in sauce.  Cover and simmer over low heat for 45 minutes.  If peppers are large, make sure hamburger mixture is cooked all the way through before serving.

 As you can see, I had more hamburger than would fit in my peppers, so I simply broke it into meatball-sized pieces and scattered it in the sauce. The kids love it that way and it cooks just fine. Make sure the pieces are smallish so they cook all the way through.

Strongest Man Alive

 A long time ago I promised you more stories about my amazing father-in-law. He passed away in 1989, but since my sweetie and I were married in 1983, I got to know him pretty well. For some strange reason he liked to talk to me. He was a wonderful man, kind and generous with his time and talents. He was a plumber by trade, but before that he was a Master Sergeant during World War II. He was strong and fit even in his later years when I knew him.

He often worked out of town as a contractor in Wendover, Nevada, helping to build some of the large hotels with casino money. This was a long drive for him since he lived in central Utah, so he usually stayed in Wendover all week and only came home on the weekends. One evening he was doing some work down in a manhole. His truck was parked nearby, loaded with supplies and tools. As he was working, he heard someone rustling through his things, so he climbed up out of the manhole and hollered, “Get away from there!” The thief sized him up, put down the tools he was about to pilfer, and picked up a hammer. He smacked my father-in-law with it, knocking him off the ladder and back into the manhole. Then he calmly proceeded to gather goodies from the truck. Imagine his surprise when a minute or so later my FIL poked his head out again and shouted, “I told you to get away from there!” The exact same scenario happened, and my FIL again ascended the ladder. The third time the thief was taking no chances. Instead of a hammer, he grabbed a 2” x 4” and slammed it right on my FIL’s head. It must have been incredibly difficult for him to drag himself back out of that hole, bruised and bleeding, but I think he knew that his livelihood depended on those tools and equipment. He had a family to think about. For a third time he crawled back up the ladder, broken but ready to fight for what was his. The thief eyed him incredulously. “You should be in the hospital!” he blurted. “You must be the strongest man alive. I’m leaving.” He dropped the tools and hustled off to find his next victim. And my FIL was…one of the strongest most stubborn men alive.

Sorry, crooked in the scrapbook.

When we were starving students, sometimes we would come down for the weekend and help with the garden in exchange for some vegetables. (Gas was cheap then.) Often my sweetie would help clean a few drains to give us enough to get by. Even when my FIL didn’t have extra work for my sweetie to do, he would insist on giving us a little. When I refused, he had a way of grabbing my wrist and putting me on my knees until I would agree. Yeah, it was a little humiliating…he could have just asked. I would have done anything for him.

My sweetie’s half-sister tells a story that was passed through her side of the family. During a training period while my FIL was in the war, someone said he could run faster than a deer. Others laughed at this speculation and it became a huge discussion point that couldn’t go unanswered. Hundreds of dollars were waged and a deer was brought in. My FIL was always willing to be a good sport. The distance was 50 yards, man against beast in a foot-race. The men crowded around, eager to watch this unlikely pair. The race was close and I guess it could be argued that fear was a factor, but my FIL crossed the finish line first. Not only the strongest man alive, but the fastest one too.