Next category: Food

I am happy to report that I only gained 1.4 pounds while I was home this summer!! That is good for me, as eating good food is what we do when we go "home".  Let's face it, food is an integral part of our family life.  We have favorite dishes we like mom to make and we have favorite restaurants we like to eat at and favorite treats that we must get that are only available there.  This year was no exception.  This is a classic picture of Trey.  If you know him, you know he LOVES chocolate milk.  He was sad because the chocolate sauce was almost gone, so Grandma told him to just add milk to the container to get every last bit, which he did.  So it appears he is drinking chocolate sauce when in actuality, it is chocolate milk.

Now, we spent the first few weeks of our trip home at Krissy and Brian's house as dad was still recovering from open heart surgery and Krissy had just given birth.  So there were a lot of mouths to feed. Grandma being the ever adventurous person that she is decided to have themed food nights.  She wanted to make Chinese food and tamales.  We went on a search for a steamer for the tamales and went to a couple of DI's with no luck.  Finally we found one at Wal Mart for $25.00 and mom bought it. 

We made pork tamales with the help of Tanner and we added a salad, mexican rice and

a yummy yummy sweet corn cake from Krissy's secret recipes book from famous restaurants.  (it was the corn cake from Chevy's).  The tamales were a little dry, but we decided when we do them again, we will make a sauce for them and that will help.  Of course, mine was smothered in sour cream, so it wasn't too dry for me!   Our Chinese meal was epic! Mom made sweet and sour pork and chow mien, Tanner made homemade egg rolls and fried up some won tons., I made egg foo young and all were to die for delicious.  My favorite was the egg foo young and S and S pork.

 

Speaking of chinese food, we managed to eat at one of our favorite restaurants in LG;  Golden Harvest.  It was just me mom and Taz as we went a few day's early to LG.

During that time we did a trip to Pendleton and Taz got his bear claw at Up with Donuts.  We also ate lunch at Matzatlan and hit Hal's on the way out of town for a twist cone.

Taz and Tanner helped grandma cook a lot during the summer.  Taz made a meatloaf

And 2 batches of cookies, snickerdoodles and oatmeal raisin to snack on. 

Tanner made a lot of mixes.  This is a biscuit mix he made that grandma keeps in the fridge so we can have a biscuit when the need hits and here he is making a topping of biscuits for chicken pot pie.

We do a lot of picnics and they aren't your typical sandwiches.  This picnic was pork roast with mashed potatoes and grave and homemade rolls and tomato cucumber salad.  Now that's a picnic.  Some other food we had on picnics were homemade fried chicken and homemade macaroni and cheese and coleslaw.  We usually have a variety of cookies for dessert and a bag of chips to curb the snackers.  We love grandma's picnics!

When we were up at Tamarack, we had s'mores.  We had the epic giant marshmallows and some regular sized ones. 

You can't call it summer without s'mores!

Brian bought a smoker right before we arrived, so we smoked a lot of meat while we were there.  Her are mom and I preparing some whole chickens for dinner.  We also smoked prime rib, pork, and even pizza.  But the chickens were my favorite!

Dad bought two flats of strawberries from the guy on the side of the road and Ky and I made one of them into a batch of freezer jam.  It is so yummy and it was quick and fun to do it together.  Cynjyn even managed to get in on the cooking by putting together a triffle one night for dessert.  That was yummy as we used fresh raspberries from Krissy's garden and peaches and banana!

I managed to get my licorice ice cream three time this summer!  Oh how I love it!

Now mom's bread deserves a post of it's own as everyone LOVES it and request it as often as possible.  Brian though especially loves it.  So he made her teach his how to make her french bread.  It involves raising and punching down every 15 min. for an hour, but it's yummy and there are hardly any leftovers when we have that, but if there are, it makes the best french toast for breakfast the next day!

Summer just isn't summer with out food, glorious food!