Look at me with a Mishmash Friday like Shelley and Fran!  While I have been writing about my Spartan Race life has been going on behind the scenes.  I did want to show a few pics I took while in Milwaukee.  I had every intention Sunday morning to walk around the lake front, but the weather was iffy – it was lightly sprinkling the whole time I was walking in the morning which wasn’t bad, but then it started getting worse so I decided to cut my losses and head back to the hotel.  Much like bigger cities have pigs, or cows decorated all over their downtown areas, I love that Milwaukee has decorated bicycles with flowers!  The architecture downtown is amazing too – the Federal building as well as the Milwaukee Art Museum.

PicMonkey Collage - MKE

While it was a great weekend, it’s always nice to come home, isn’t it?  Word on the street is that Hannah’s dog Rummy missed me – so cute.

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Astute readers will know that my deep fryer died last week.  She’s been with us for about five years, and I washed it so many times that I scrubbed off the number so I was never really sure these past couple years where exactly 350 was on the dial control.  No worries!  I had a Bed Bath & Beyond gift card and with the 20% off discount coupon, I got a new one.  This one is digital, which I love, has three baskets if you are making separate things, and was only $30 out of pocket for me.

I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately.  Is this a mid-life crisis?  I find myself suddenly cooking with onions!  First with my 30 minute beef bolognese and then earlier this week I made onion rings to top our burgers.  Now, I do have to say, that I am picky about what type of onion I use for onion rings – I only use vadalia onions, because they are sweet.  I sliced an onion, added it to a ziptop bag with 1 cup of Silk unsweetened almond milk that was seasoned with one tablespoon of Frank’s hot sauce overnight.  When I got home, I made my flour mixture – 1 cup flour, 1 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. pepper and 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper.  Dredge the soaked onions into the flour mixture and fry for about 1-2 minutes at 350.  I made myself a burger salad topped with a few onion rings.  Not gonna lie, this was an amazeball dinner!

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Our weather has been all over the map lately – cool mornings, rain, then humid.  I ended up making a batch of Michael Symon’s Cincinnati chili on Tuesday night to have for lunches.  I always add Bush’s Beans to my chili – Tony used to love just meat only chili, which is why he gravitated toward Cincinnati chili.  I mentioned in my Instagram post that I used Bush’s beans, and of course, they thanked me – ya, know, just helping out National brand to get the word out about their product out  – ha!

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So while my friends Alison and Cameron came to my rescue to get my mower working, and did I great job I might add, we tried several times to get it going and well. . . no luck.  Battery is dead again – I already replaced it with a new one and well, while our yard is a decent size, there really isn’t a good reason why a push mower wouldn’t work, and with three adults living in the house, pretty sure we could do just that.  So I came home Wednesday night, tried to start the riding mower – nothing.  So Hannah was talking a nap because she worked a 10 hour shift, and I told Jacob “hey, going to get a push mower – there is chili in the downstairs fridge if you guys get hungry.”

See, that’s one thing about me.  I can be COMPLETELY compulsive about something and Wednesday night – that was buying something so that my lawn didn’t look like I lived in an abandoned house.  I went to Menard’s, and I am not going to lie, it’s the first time that I used the “widow” card.  I stood in front of the mowers, and an employee walked by and said “can I help you?” and without even batting an eye I said “my husband died and I don’t know how to work our riding mower so I need something simple.”  He could not have been nicer.  Even pulled down the mower showed me how to put it together when I got it home, where to put the oil and the gas.   All I knew was that I wanted big wheels and a self-propelled mower.  I actually don’t even know the brand I bought, other than it has a Briggs & Stratton mower and I was fine with it.  I am sure Tony would have been on consumer reports for weeks before making a decision.  Me?  I spent 20 minutes at Menard’s. Open-mouthed smile

While I was gone Hannah woke up and said “my Mom went where?  was she not hungry?  what about dinner?”   I was on a mission!  I was literally gone all of 40 minutes before I got it going.  I just wanted to do the front of the house and Jacob ended up finishing the back yesterday – along with RAKING the whole yard – he was probably working on the lawn for several hours yesterday since he was off of work.  I so appreciated it and it looks fantastic.

PicMonkey Collage - mow

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So guys.  I have got THE summer recipe for you, especially those of you who have gardens and wonder “what the fuck am I going to do with all these zucchinis?!”  I’ve got your answer – ZUCCHINI TOTS!

Now, I did not come up with this idea, but when I searched for recipes all the pictures looked like this – (no offense Gina – I am sure these are amazeballs too!)

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Those don’t look like tots to me.  So I came up with this recipe:

[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:125]

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That’s not salt, but the white corn meal that shines through that actually gives the tots a nice crunch.  THESE ARE SO GOOD!  You can thank me later.  The only thing I was bummed about was that Hannah was home – she was closing last night. I texted her just a picture of the tots and she said “OMG, what???!!!”  I’ll definitely be getting more zucchini this weekend.

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Traffic was a bitch yesterday.  It took me nearly an hour to get home – there must have been an accident or something, so it forced me to take the back roads home.  There is a road that I go down near the horse farms – you can’t drive more than 25 miles per hour and no one was behind me and instead of getting pissed that it was taking so long to get home, I turned on my favorite Sirius station (Coffee House – Channel 31) and stopped and took a picture.

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And I didn’t see it until I got home, but there is Tony’s orb, or what I like to think of as him.  In the millions of pictures I’ve taken for this blog over the nearly 7 years, I’ve only had that green orb show up in pictures after Tony passed away.  I know he’s still with me.  I just wish I could see his face again.

Have an amazing weekend – wish every week could be a short work week!   Come back on Monday – I am bringing back my 101 Days of Summer Challenge!  The first one was in 2010 – can’t believe five years ago already!  Check it out – curious to see who was part of that challenge that still follows me!

Make it a great day!