Trailing

ROUGH ROAD: We're still playing games semi regularly. (What else is there to do during a pandemic?)

Recently we have The Oregon Trail another go. It's rough. We've played it dozens of times and only won like three times. In our most recent session, Dot (Annabelle) died on her very first turn. Brutal.

SAUCED: We're starting to get a semi- significant amount of ripe tomatoes. 

Many of them have little slits or flaws, so the went in a big pot of spaghetti sauce Tuesday night. Yummy!

INSIDE THE LINES: For the past couple of weeks, Annabelle has participated in a Saturday evening craft and chat session for teens online, sponsored by the King County Library System. 

It sounded like she was having big fun, playing online trivia and a Pictionary type game, so I suggested CJ join last Saturday. He hesitated at first, because of the craft component. I suggested he print out a coloring page of a French bulldog. He found that acceptable, and did a great job coloring it!

Making It

MANY MEALS: It was a busy week last week. We had our normal work, and we had a Birthday Dreams cake that was due, and we had Teen Feed on Saturday, which is a meal team we help coordinate to provide 80 (!) dinners to homeless teens and young adults on the fourth Saturday every month. 

On this week's menu, we had Seattle Dogs. They were huge (quarter-pound) hot dogs on over-sized buns, with plenty of cream cheese, caramelized onions, and jalapenos, if people opted for some spice.

I spent hours on Friday and a couple more Saturday morning caramelizing about 28 pounds of onions. I used my pressure cooker to get them soft (plugged in on the back stoop to help keep the onion scent from becoming overwhelming), and then browned them on the stove top.  Believe you me, the whole house and my whole being still smelled like onions.

We also made what felt like a cubic yard of macaroni salad. We made 20+ cups of 'regular,' plus about 8 cups each of vegan and gluten free options. Kennedy also made mac salad. His, pictured below, was prettier than mine.

We did pack our mac salad with lots of fresh veggies, however. CJ peeled carrots and helped me chop celery. The photo below looks like a crime scene, ha ha, but it was just watermelon juice on a paper towel atop the celery tops. :)

Annabelle kept busy filling condiment cups with mustard and ketchup. At Christian's suggestion, she used a piping bag. It worked really well.

We also made two-dozen servings of rhubarb and strawberry cobbler. I didn't take any photos of that, but I do have this photo of a friend's peachy keen cobbler. So pretty!

But back to the onions. ...

We were heading northbound for Teen Feed north of the ship canal, in the University District,  from our very-south Seattle address when I realized about Mercer Street that I didn't recall the mega amounts of onions actually making it into our car. (Insert bad words and onion tears here.) So, Christian dropped me off at Teen Feed and then probably drove back home and back to the University District, no doubt at speeds that would make me Very Uncomfortable, to go fetch said onions. I appreciate his onion run and don't really want to see onions again any time soon.

HOME BOY: Kennedy's birthday is August 24. We bought him some peripherals to help make his teaching from home set up better.  Annabelle made him a unique work of art. 

Kennedy is one of the biggest fans of "The Simpsons" on the face of the Earth, I do believe. There is an iconic scene in that series where Homer, after harassing neighbor Ned Flanders, appears from and  disappears into a hedge separating their properties. 

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Annabelle recreated it using Perler beads and plastic boxwood.

Below, she fuses the beads together with a hot iron.

She cut a template the size and shape of Homer's body, and trimmed the hedge around it.

Here's a not great photo of the nearly-finished product. 

When she presented it to Ken, he actually started laughing and then choking he was so surprised. That's a high compliment, I think.