Catching Up n Stuff

Last time I did a substantive update, I had nearly completed the recap of my fortieth birthday trip. I had just had a truly glorious massage at the La Cantera spa. We immediately left the spa and headed to Bandera, home of the Medina River Company, where we had reserved two kayaks to take down the rushing, busy Medina. The original intent was to float the river with a cooler of beer and some tubes – but at this time, massive amounts of rain had made the river run fast, and tubing wasn’t safe. We needed to have paddles, the ability to control – so we each got a kayak, a life jacket, and some basic instructions, and were dropped off at the 6-mile put-in by a chirpy, friendly, dark haired young woman who worked for the company.

There some legit rapids on this river – I did not 100% feel prepared to not die, but in we went and we indeed did not die, though there were some sketchy moments. I carried my cell phone and car keys zipped into several ziplock bags and tucked into my lifejacket, and thank heavens I did because I got dumped several times. At one point, I got dumped in at a swiftly moving part of the river and had to hang onto the kayak and paddle and float along for about 5 minutes before I could stop and climb back in. I drew on my old experience as a canoe/kayak instructor, and knew to stick my feet out in front of me down river (so anything rough and ouchy sticking up from the riverbed will hit your shoes, and not your more delicate bits). I absolutely held onto my paddle for dear life, and lost a shoe. I was very stressed about the phone situation, but the ziplocks held and all was dry. There were some less fraught sections of river as well – peaceful, beautiful, floating along under cover of cypress trees.

Once we got to the pull-out, we called the river company and they came in their giant, filthy, kayak-hauling pickup and fetched us. We had no towels, and rode back to our car soaked and happy.

We ate some BBQ we purchased from a food truck run by a man who is a parody of a grizzled old Texan (zoom in on the bumper stickers on the window). (I lifted this photo from his public facebook page.) The food was excellent, and ample – I think we split a BBQ plate and still were overstuffed. (We might also have had this before our trip – I no longer recall – but I highly recommend!)

After this, we took a drive around, with the ultimate destination back at my sister’s house in San Antonio. The drive ended up taking MUCH longer than we thought, and we arrived pretty late. As I recall, she fed us a backup meal since her dog Linus had snarfed up the enchiladas she’d made first – it was risotto I think? And very good. We ate it up, then got a good night’s sleep before driving back home the next day. And thus my fortieth year began just perfectly – exactly as I wanted it to.

In brief and bullet point form:

In October, I headed to New York City for a week for work. I stayed in Times Square and took some depositions. I came home and quickly made some giant Goosebump book covers for our family themed Halloween costume – they were awesome.

Went back to NYC for yet another week, in November. More depositions. Billed 75 hours that week, and after several flight issues, made it to Atlanta airport at 1 am and drove 2.5 hours to my in-laws’ place, for Thanksgiving, and then COLLAPSED.

We spent a lovely Thanksgiving week at my in-laws’. We got to attend the football game on the first weekend, which started out not to chilly but got colder as the night went on. There was a game the next weekend as well, which we watched by the fire. In between there, the three big kids roamed around outside, free-ranging; Craig and his cousin Harper were inseparable; the kids played in a leaf pile, I went on a run, we smoked the turkey, went to playgrounds with friends, snuggled up and watched Christmas movies. I got to visit my friend’s new twin boys and snuggle their bellies.

Then we launched into the Christmas season – and I think that’ll have to be for next time, as I’m running out of steam.

As for meals, I’m making a whole slew of new stuff this week. I have not been making much ahead for the past few months, because I was generally working on the weekends. So we’ve been having hot dogs, pizza, turkey burgers, Kraft mac and cheese. I’ve been feeding us, and sometimes that has to be good enough, but now I’ve got the bandwidth to feed us the better kind of food we all like (I mean don’t get me wrong, the boys were all in on the frequent hot dogs). I just made most of the below dishes to reheat through the week, and tasted each one – DELISH. I have the feeling these will stay pinned on my recipe pinterest board (the only thing I use pinterest for).

Korean ground beef bowls. I’ve had some ground turkey defrosted in the fridge for a week, and I had to cook it up. I made this recipe, and it tasted great! We’ll heat it up this week and put over fresh hot steamed rice, and serve probably with some French green beans on the side. Nom.

Farro with mushrooms and baked “fried” catfish. I made the farro today as well – I bought this giant jar of dried mushrooms at Costco, and the process of reconstituting them leaves behind a ton of mushroom broth. I put those mushies in a chicken marsala about a week ago and the broth has been in my fridge for a while. I used that for this, plus some normal mushrooms (not exactly what they call for), and the bite I snuck before packing it away in the fridge was MMMMMM.

Broccoli cheese wild rice casserole. I just finished making this – also amazing. I used cheddar and some nice sharp Irish cheese, because that’s what I had on hand. It’s really nutty and filling – we’ll probably have this tonight.

Orzo with greens and sausage meatballs. This one I will make fresh some night. I’m skipping the sundried tomatoes though, they are not my fave.

We had this the other night – quinoa enchilada casserole. I’ve made this before, and it always surprises me how tasty it is.

Perfect pork chops and roasted new potatoes and baked broccoli. Always a good easy standby.