I am blessed.

Jacob got a new job on Friday.  He was working at Home Depot, but it was a 30 minute drive from the house, and the hours were kind of crazy.  Now he’s working at Sherwin-Williams in the next town over, so I picked him up a steak to celebrate on Friday night.   Hannah and I had our signature ricotta cheese and spinach pizza, and we sat outside and ate.  I got a loot gift box from Sebastiani Wines for the pizza contest I came in second place in.  One of the things included was this plastic wine glass, I love it!

My friend Alison and her husband were going to come over sometime over the weekend to check out my mower to see what was wrong with it.  As we were sitting outside, she texted me and said “can we come over?”  Yep!  Second question:  did I have any beer.  That would be yes, I had some summer shandy, but it wasn’t chilled so they brought a six pack over.  It was quickly discovered that Cameron would have to take the mower back to their house to fix it.  So while Alison and I hung out with her two adorable girls, Cameron went back home and got his truck.  This isn’t a very good picture, but this is Hannah with her mini-me.  Their youngest daughter has a lot of the same mannerisms Hannah did when she was little – not a lot of hair, she sucks her thumb, and twirls her hair when she does it, just like Hannah did.

Cameron even brought me their push mower to borrow in case he wasn’t able to fix it – how nice was that?!  So Saturday morning I start mowing my grass with the push mower.  I probably got about 1/10 of the yard done before I had to empty the bag, but I forgot to ask them how to empty it, and as luck would have it, Alison texted me and said “Cameron got the mower going, we’ll be by in a bit!”  Sweet!  What I didn’t expect was for them to not only come over, but mow my lawn for me.  Once I got a text that they had it fixed, I quickly ran into the house and thought “what can I make them?!”  I had all the ingredients to make a beef bolognese, and guess what guys?  I PUT ONIONS IN IT!  And I have to admit a teeny tiny thing – it turned out really really good.  I plan on posting the recipe tomorrow, but I used ground sirloin, pepperoni, canned tomatoes and . . . tomato juice – sounds weird, but it was delicious.  I had a loaf of my homemade bread in the freezer and I had pasta so I sent them home with dinner.

All I had to do for the girls was to put the Disney Channel on.  And not only did they mow the lawn, but Cameron trimmed my tree in front – it looks so much better!  And later on that day I stocked up on their favorite beers for the next time they come over.  So later on I got two pictures from Alison – apparently their youngest loved my pasta sauce so much she got all her forks out to eat it – had them all lined up too – how cute is that?!  I am blessed to have such considerate friends, and I told them I will gladly pay them in food!

It threatened to rain over the weekend, but it only did Saturday morning early.  But I didn’t want to chance getting the Weber going and having it rain, so Saturday night I did a pork roast in the Dutch oven and we had BBQ pork sammies.  Even Hannah ate some!  I added buffalo sauce and pickles to my sammie.

Um, Rummy begs for food just a tiny bit!

So dramatic!  Red just waits for stuff to be given to him.

Yesterday morning I got out my Thug Kitchen cookbook and saw that they had a recipe for whole wheat biscuits.  Instead of butter, they used coconut oil to use as the fat. And thanks to Ally’s recent Aldi recap on her blog (check it out!) I discovered that they sell coconut oil for only $4.99!   They turned out really good – I’ll post the recipe later (running late this morning!) but I made them into 12 biscuits instead of the 8 stated in the recipe, so each one is only 142 calories and 21 carbs.  I ended up making a pepper and egg breakfast sandwich.  And yes, I put bacon on it.

Sunday night the storms went north of us, so we got to eat outside.  I love doing that, but every time I sit outside and feel the breeze and smell the grill going, it makes me sad because Tony isn’t here to enjoy it.  We loved hanging out outside.  My store had marinated chicken legs for $1.88 for a package of six!   I also got a package of 12 boneless skinless chicken thighs for $2.22, so I grilled those up to have later in the week for lunches for me and Jacob.

Hannah may have only been happy about grilling so that she could toast some marshmallows!  She ended up having cheddar brats.  Sometimes I feel like I cook for a 5 year old.

But all in all it was a great weekend.  But now I really have to get my shit together – I have 15 minutes before I have to leave!   It’s going to be a boring work week – two of my bosses are on vacation this week – I think I’ll continue writing my cookbook this week.  Guess what the title of my cookbook is?  “What Smells Like Ass?!” in honor of Tony.  I think he would get a kick out of it.

Make it a great day!