Sausage balls

My girlfriend, Lisa, brought over the most delicious sausage balls the other night and I begged her for the recipe because it was so good. She's awesome, so she gave it to me! Her secret was to add grated onion and jalapeno. Yum!

Ingredients:

16 oz spicy breakfast sausage
2 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese
1 onion, grated
1 jalapeno, grated
2 cups of bisquick

Preheat the oven to 375F.

Put all of the ingredients into a mixer with the dough hook and mix it until it's a well incorporated dough. (There should be no dry bisquick at the bottom of the bowl.)

Form into balls and place on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 25 minutes.

Swoon when you take your first bite.

Crepe Myrtles in the Fall

Every fall, several crepe myrtles drop their pretty pink flowers onto the top of an old covered deck behind our house. I've always loved the way the flower petals looked atop the roof. I did perch myself precariously on a rocking chair to take this picture and managed to emerge unscathed! Now that I'm freezing cold (Ok fine, it's getting down into the 40's at night), I love this picture and yearn for the warm fall evenings we spent on the porch.

And I'm really, really cold. One day it was pleasant and I had the air conditioning off and the next, I'm freezing my tail off and wearing sweat pants inside my house. I was not ready for this!!

Palmiers

These are delicious! I first saw a picture in a cookbook which had a recipe that contained things like flour and baking soda and the list just kept going on and on! I'm never going to do that! That's too much work. These however, are incredibly easy!

The ingredients:

1- package of puff pastry
1- 7 oz container of pesto
Sprinkle of salt

That's it. Really.

About an hour before you plan on cooking these delicacies, take the puff pastry out of the freezer and set it on the counter.

Turn the oven on to bake at 400F.





Open up the puff pastry completely, then spread half of the container of pesto (about 1/2 cup) evenly over the puff pastry. Sprinkle a light dusting of salt over the whole thing. This is the best time to use the salt, otherwise the salt won't properly meld with the pesto. You don't want to taste the salt, you just want a tiny bit of salt so that the flavors of the palmier pop.



Start rolling the puff pastry up at either end to meet in the middle.




Cut the rolls into slices and place on a cookie sheet that has been sprayed with cooking spray. Bake for 16-18 minutes.




Don't use parchment paper. It's just a pain in the butt. And you'll still have to clean the cookie sheets.

If you completely forget to salt the palmiers, pop an olive on top and enjoy the flavors dancing in your mouth! It would also be good with an olive tapenade instead of the basil. If you try the tapenade, skip the salt.

Enjoy!

Halloween!

Since I didn't get to take the munchkins trick-or-treating, I begged them to get into their costumes early. They didn't protest. They did however, tell me that they couldn't be in their costumes if they didn't have their light sabers. Trip was Darth Vader and apparently, Darth Vader can only use a red light saber. I received a lecture from both boys about Darth Vader ONLY using the redsight saber. Logan was Obi Wan Kenobi. Obi Wan's light saber color didn't receive the same attention as Darth Vader's.

They did not need to be told what to do with the light sabers. The sword fighting is intrinsic. I was just excited at this point because I didn't have to yell at them to watch out for the TV!!

World Series, Rangers v. Giants, Game 4

The crowd was amazing at Game 4 of the World Series! There were more than 50,000 people in attendance! The excitement of the crowd was palpable. The stadium hummed with the voices of so many people.


President George Bush Sr. and Pres. Bush Jr. threw out the first pitch.


We were ready to watch a great game. We didn't really see that. The Rangers barely showed up. Big Daddy Awesome and his Dad yelled until they were hoarse. It didn't help. The Rangers didn't take any of their advice.


I did get to see some of my favorite players though! Micheal Young, Josh Hamilton, Ian Kinsler, and Bengie Molina were all there. You've got to love a sport that can get a guy with a gut the size of Molina's to it's World Series!

Tailgating at the World Series game!

We went to game 4 of the World Series yesterday! We had an amazing time! We decided a little tailgating was in order before the game. Big Daddy Awesome and I took his parents to the game. We took our cooler and lawn chairs and found a nice and shady spot to relax in the most delicious Texas fall air for a couple of hours before the game started. And because it was the four of us, we laughed the whole time!



This is the handsome man I got to look at all night! Lucky me!





This was right behind my handsome husband. It's a portable potty. It's meant to be taken on a camping trip. It is NOT meant to be taken tailgating. This raises all kinds of questions for me. Do they just dig a hole underneath the chair inside the crapper tent? Or do they cart their crap around? Surely it's a hole. Why do they feel the need to have a port-a-crapper so near their tailgating site? I realize regular port-a-pottys are a bit on the disgusting side, but seriously, they can't hold it until they get in the game? Or is their behind too good to share a potty with the common man/woman? Is squatting really not an option? Why would they want their crap so near their food? Aren't they worried about cross contamination with their food? It's not like that port-a-crapper has room for a proper hand washing station!

We laughed quite a bit about the port-a-crapper, but if Big Daddy Awesome even thinks about taking me camping just so he can get a port-a-crapper, he is dead wrong! "Camping" for me includes a spa and five star service!

Some of these people were serious about their tailgating! We saw dozens of generators and DirecTV satellites and people watching other games and pregame shows from their cars. Pretty schnazzy!



Circling precariously overhead were at least six airplanes advertising beer, car insurance, and free admission to three different titty clubs. Because screaming and cheering for several hours in the elements is the perfect environment to enjoy before going to a strip club. I've never been to a strip club, but I'm thing Eau De Body Odor is probably not the best scent for attracting the strippers. And if your stench is bad enough, I'm willing to bet the strippers won't care how much money is in your pocket. A helicopter with no obvious purpose was in the mix for a while.

Just to make things more dangerous in the skies above the ballpark, in came the sideways flying blimp. The blimp looked like it was just a giant balloon being pushed along at the whim of the winds. (There were no blimp crashes in Arlington last night.)




We had a fantastic time tailgating! Beer is a beautiful thing and makes any sporting event infinitely more fun!

Halloween

The munchkins have, I think, finally reached an age where they will remember details about their childhood. With Halloween being tomorrow, I really think they'll remember trick-or-treating. They've had their costumes for almost a month. I decided this year that I would not spend the day before Halloween picking through the leftovers at Target trying to find a suitable costume. The costumes were not on sale, but my kids will be what they want to be for Halloween.

You might think with all that planning, I would be taking them trick-or-treating. I'm not. Big Daddy Awesome is not. Neither are any of their grandparents. (Wait a second. The Mom of the Year people are knocking on my door to give me an award.)

None of us planned on the Texas Rangers making it all the way to the World Series. Not even Big Daddy Awesome who is the biggest Ranger fan in the world. BDA is a 1/8 owner of some season tickets for the Rangers. Can you guess when our tickets are? Sunday. After all of my planning, I will not be home to take my kids trick-or-treating. BDA claims that the munchkins will one day understand why we left them on Halloween to watch the Texas Rangers play in the world series and I know they will one day. I just wonder if I'll still be alive when they do.