soul food sundays

This was our fourth year of intentionally preparing soul food menus each weekend in the month of February. We had a few firsts this year.  It was the first year that fried chicken didn't make the menu all month!

It was the first year we've prepared a breakfast menu.

We had sausage gravy and biscuits, grits, and sweet potato pancakes.  The pancakes were a big hit!  

One week we had seafood gumbo, another first.  My brother and his son were visiting.  The adults loved it, the kids didn't.  

One week we had ribs, greens, corn bread, potato salad, and peach cobbler, which was nothing new, but we had some friends over we don't get to visit with often, so we had a good time.

The meal that we had planned for the longest was the beef tongue.  We had encountered many recipes for beef tongue in years past, so when we ordered our beef from our farmer back in June, I had requested the tongue.  I guess I hadn't really imagined it would be over 3 pounds, and considering we pay by the pound and not the cut, it turned out to be a pricey piece of undesirable meat!  

This really looks terrible, but it wasn't so bad once I got the image of a cow licking me out of my head.  Bryan boiled the meat with onions, garlic, etc for a few hours, then seared it and served it with a horseradish sauce.  We had some daring friends over and everyone ate it, even the 5 kids 5 and under.  But we didn't tell them what they were eating!

Bryan and I really look forward to this tradition every year.  We both enjoy cooking, so it is a fun way to celebrate our sons' roots.  So far the kids have not remembered it from year to year, but they were really getting into it this year.  It has been fun to include friends and family, too!  And, let's face it, it's a good way to break up the monotony of winter in Minnesota.

indoor campout

Winter is long.

Camp-outs are fun!  Hey, I have an idea!  Let's have a camp-out in our playroom!  Oh, and let's eat hot dogs and make popcorn on the stove and s'mores in the oven and play board games and flashlight tag!  No screens allowed.  Not even you, Daddy.

icecapades

coming out of the closet

I have a secret.

It's a secret that I've been keeping for a year now, and the only people who know about the secret are people who I have trusted enough to tour our home - our whole home including the master bedroom.  Behind the door of our master bedroom, tucked away in our walk-in closet, we found a solution to our bedtime problems.

At first, it was a temporary solution, contrived when I was all out of ideas- except for one which involved a yoga mat and a sleeping bag.  It worked.  Two weeks later, Daddy brought home a cot from Menards, but we still said, "This is temporary".  Months went by, and the cot was still in our closet.  He was still awake, making noise, doing acrobatics late into the the night. I came to a place of acceptance, and the bed was moved in.

It's true.  For one whole year of his life, Reggie called our walk-in closet his "bedroom".

But as the ball dropped and 2012 came to an end, I had but one New Year's Resolution.  I was taking back what was mine, and Reggie was coming out of the closet.

 So far, so good.

(And of coarse Reggie will forever be teased about the year he spent in the closet.)