Wilted Lettuce is a favorite or ours

Here's my recipe for the Veggie swap. Wilted lettuce is one of our favorites. We eat it all year round. We have a couple of customers that always supply us with fresh vegetables and so it's always a pleasure to have fresh lettuce. It's our tradition to have it with fried mushrooms every spring. Larry is an avid mushroom hunter and always finds more than we can eat. He has a few older people that he always gives some to. He never gets tired of them and even eats them reheated in the microwave. I like them but I get tired of them after the first couple of meals. He'll start talking about mushroom hunting as soon as we have a few warm days. It's typically in middle to late April when the most are found. I haven't hunted for awhile. After almost stepping on a rattlesnake a few years ago I now have a hard time going into the woods. I sure miss it though. It's good exercise and it feels like you hit a jackpot when you spot one or more mushrooms. I can never keep up with Larry though. He tries not to get too far ahead of me. He's the one that grabbed me and yelled at me to move when I almost stepped on the deadly snake. I HATE ANY OF THEM!!! I don't watch shows that have them in it. I don't even like saying the word. Now after writing this I will have a nightmare about them being all over my house. OK, I'll calm down now. I kind of got off subject. LOL So anyway this is my recipe and I hope the gals like it.

Crazy Easter

This has been an eventful week. Easter Sunday I woke to a phone call from my cousin saying that my uncle had passed away. He had been sick for awhile so it wasn't unexpected. Later I took the boys to church. Our family always eats Easter dinner out. It's too hectic trying to cook a large dinner and go to church. We went to Ryans which is a buffet. I always have a pep talk with myself about not over eating. I always over eat! We came home and I was relaxing and watching tv when my youngest daughter called. She was crying and had severe stomach pain. I thought maybe she had ate something bad at the restaurant. But, she gave me some shocking news. She said that she was pregnant! I was shocked. She hadn't told us yet because she knew we wouldn't be happy about it. A baby is a blessing no matter how it comes about. We thought she was having a miscarriage. I took her to the ER at 8:30 pm. Around 2:30am they decided it was appendicitis. They took her to surgery around 4:30am and she did just fine. The baby is doing good also. They did a sonogram to make sure. She had a few problems with her blood pressure and so they kept her overnight. I stayed until 4 pm on Monday then came home because I was exhausted. I brought her home Tuesday afternoon. She's still sore and has a headache today but we're very lucky they caught it before it burst and was much more serious. So I guess we'll have another grandchild around October 16th. Maybe it will be a girl this time. But, we are all used to boys at this point. LOL
I have Easter pictures to upload when I get a chance. More on the Easter egg hunt later.

ATC's for March Swap

Green is the March theme for our monthly ATC swap. I finally finished them today. Instead of sitting down and working on them in one sitting it took me days to get them done. I went to post my acomplishment and I panicked when I thought I did the wrong amount. So I worked on three more while Hunter was napping. Whew! I'm glad I caught my mistake before I mailed them to California.....that's an inside joke. I got my camera out for another picture with the three new cards and discovered that I had done the right amount after all. What the heck?? Can't I count today?? The good news is, I'm a little bit ahead for the Nature-themed swap. I'm attributing all today's confusion to SPRING FEVER. It's a beautiful day and I haven't even been outside. Poor sick baby is still sleeping even though he's coughing every other minute. Mom took him to the doctor yesterday. Hope the meds kick in tomorrow.

LADYBUGS!!

They are cute outside but I hate them in my house. I have spent the live-long day scraping them off windows and ceilings. I Googled them and found out they are almost impossible to kill unless you resort to squashing them. I didn't realize the smell they give off when you do that is actually their blood and it can stain. Yucky! This scent is a sign for others to follow. So now I am trying so hard NOT to squish them when I find one in a window. That's a learned skill!! I have resorted to spraying all my windows inside with Clorox All-Surface spray. I'm hoping they won't like the smell. It has slowed them down in the boys room. One lady posted that she was amazed that people wanted to get rid of them. They eat other insects and are good for the garden. Well, if they were in the garden I would think they were adorable. It's just in my house that I don't welcome them. I get all comfy in my chair each evening to watch my Reality TV shows (that's another story) then lo and behold one is crawling up my TV screen. Now I have a dilemma.....do I haul myself out of my lounger and grab a tissue and try to gently remove it, then take it to the bathroom and flush it then wash my hands -cause you know I'm gonna end up squishing it- or, do I watch it crawl away and deal with it tomorrow??? I usually feel guilty and decide to get up. Off I go to the TV with my attack plan in mind. And of course, while I was side tracked for that nano second, it has gotten away. So I park my behind back in my comfy chair only to discover that it has returned to mar the face of my favorite Idol or Survivor!!! Who says watching TV isn't good exercise???
Here's a another way to waste time with Ladybugs. Crazy Ladybugs!

Horton Hears A Who!!

We took all 4 grandsons to McDonald's on Sunday. They each had a Happy Meal and they all got a Pirate hat inside. They looked so cute in their hats! What fun to hear them all saying ARGGG and acting like they were pirates. Wish I would have gotten a picture. After lunch we took them to see Horton Hears A Who. Of course they wanted popcorn and pop (even though ten minutes earlier they were too full to finish their lunch). Grandpa went to get it while I kept them in their seats. The question of the day was "When is the show gonna start?" and I heard it until the popcorn and pop arrived. Finally the upcoming features started and they were laughing at the new shows coming out this summer. They all enjoyed the movie and of course Grandpa took a nap! It was a fun afternoon and one we will repeat when those new shows hit "A Theatre Near You!".

Slow Day

I am slowly working on ATCs and not getting much else done. Hunter is still sick so we're at home again today. We looked at some scrapbooks and I realized that he was sick on Easter last year. I hope he feels better by the weekend. The sun is shining now and I wish we could get out and enjoy it. I know spring is slowly emerging. We have snow predicted for Saturday night though. How depressing!! I want to be on a river bank fishing and soaking up the sunshine. It will happen so I'll be patient. Gotta go now and give my little patient some grandma sympathy. He needs a hug quite often when he's sick.

Batter Bread

Almost forgot to post my latest recipe swap page. Batter bread is one of our favorites. How delicious hot from the oven with honey butter spread on top! I have done so many recipe pages and they all seem to look alike. But it's the recipe that counts right? A little history behind this recipe.....This one originated from our school. They serve used to serve it for lunch and my youngest daughter loved. She always wanted me to make it but I didn't have a recipe for it. A couple of years later I worked as a para at school I helped out in Kindergarten and the teacher let the kids make this using zip loc bags. They put all the ingredients inside and smooshed it around until it was blended. Then we put it in mini tins and baked it. They got to take it home with them that night. I copied this recipe from Mrs. Woodruff and have used it a lot.

Success

Our Piece Maker group decided to try a pie auction. We asked for donations a couple of weeks ago and hoped we would have enough for a successful auction. We are a small congregation and our Piece Maker group is very small also. Larry and I set up a couple of tables Saturday afternoon to hold the pies. I made 2 cherry cobblers and 2 Heath Bar pies. We put a starting price of $5. We were so happy to see those two tables fill up with pastries. We had a total of 32 homemade pies to sell!! It was a silent auction and we gave everyone 15 minutes after Sunday school to have fun bidding against each other. A few of the pies brought $25 each. We sold out in the time allotted and everyone was excited about their homemade goodies that they purchased. We are so happy that our church family supports these kind of fundraisers. When we counted the money we were thrilled to see that we had made $484!!! Don't you just love fundraisers??? You ask people to donate food and then ask them to buy it back. That is a perfect example of Grace....which happens to be our study topic this month. We are asked to catch someone showing Grace and then put it on an index card on the bulletin board. I think my church family is a perfect example.
Lucky for us, JoAnn's has fleece on sale so I will be shopping next weekend!