Getting saucy...

For the first time in a long time, I skipped last week’s post because there wasn’t much to write about.  There still isn’t a whole lot to talk about, but here goes the two week update:

Two weeks ago, the CFO and I had tentative plans to go to the UGA vs. Vandy in Nashville. Unfortunately, our ticket source didn’t work out for us, so we didn't go.  Perhaps it is our fault that UGA lost that game, since we didn't go?  Or it could be  our fault since that this was the first game all season that I haven't watched on TV.  Instead, we braved unusually cold weather and went tailgating and attended the ISU football game.  One of the CFO's co-worker's sons was playing on the visiting team, so we were cheering for ISU while also partially cheering for him.  

Supporting her son made the game kind of funny.  He is the long snapper for his team, so he is only on the field when they are kicking. Unfortunately for his team, they punted a lot during this game due to horrible offensive play.  Every time he snapped the ball and the punter caught it, a huge cheer would erupt from the 25-30 supporters that were there with his mom.  I'm sure all the people around us were wondering why everyone in the group was cheering at that point in the game, as it isn't a time when you would typically cheer. 

 The CFO tolerated the cold weather through half time, so that she could see the band (her favorite part of football games).  Since she was cold and ISU was up by over 40 points, we left shortly after halftime.

 

Early last week the weather reports showed that we were going to get our first heavy frost.  I went out to the garden and picked around 200 roma tomatoes off my plants, taking everyone that was fairly close to ripe.  This is, by far, the most tomatoes that we have ever gotten in one season.  The phrase "bumper crop" doesn't begin to describe it.  It is a good thing that I picked them when I did, as the plants were brown the following day.  At the time, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with all of those tomatoes, so I just spread them out on the counter so that they could ripen up a little more:

 

Last Saturday night, the CFO and I went to see Bill Cosby perform at ISU with some friends.  Yes, we just saw him last year in Peoria, but he was so entertaining that we wanted to see him again.  He isn’t getting any younger, so if he comes to your area, I encourage you to go see him.  He came out in an ISU sweat shirt and proceeded to spend 90+ minutes telling funny stories about growing up and having some interesting interactions with audience members.  I don't think that he repeated anything from the show last year.  He definitely has great "comedic sense," but his facial expressions are what takes his humor to the next level.  This photo doesn't do the view from our balcony seats justice, we could actually see him pretty well:

 

After church on Sunday, I spent a few hours peeling, seeding and cooking down all those tomatoes that had been laying on the counter all week.  By the time that I had finished the first hundred, I found a good system that worked and made relatively quick work of the pile... all while also flipping between the NASCAR race and an NFL game.  Having a TV within view of the kitchen is awesome.  And, yes, I understand that making home made spaghetti sauce and watching NASCAR are a bit of a strange combination. 

I ended up making two pots of spaghetti sauce, but after simmering for several hours, they both cooked down pretty far.  I would have thought that I would get a whole lot more sauce out of that many tomatoes!  Oh well.  We kept some sauce on the stove for dinner and put the remainder into bags and stuck them in the freezer.  They will be a nice treat to thaw out this winter.

After standing around in the kitchen all afternoon, I decided to head to the gym and take part in a “challenge ride” that they were offering.  It was basically a 90 minute spin class, double the length of a typical class.  My favorite instructor (the most challenging one) led the ride and I was joined by 6 other “usuals” from the early morning spin classes.  We had a great workout and the 90 minutes went by surprisingly fast.  After covering a computer estimated 39 miles and burning an estimated 1510 calories, I was hungry!  Good thing that I had a pot of homemade sauce simmering on the stove at home! 

I was some what disappointed when I arrived home after the workout to find out that the CFO didn’t have the pasta noodles cooked and ready to eat.  After all that work that I did on the sauce, I still had to cook the noodles too!  You just can’t find good help these days!  Although, I have to admit that she was working on grading student projects, so I guess I can cut her a little slack.  After all, someone has to bring home the bacon around here.

 

CFO's B-day

My stomach churned a bit this morning when I heard that Macy’s announced that they will be opening at 8pm on thanksgiving evening this year.  The black Friday creep is gaining momentum and the list of retailers that are going to be open sometime on Thursday is getting longer and longer.  What is happening to this country?  It is depressing to see that one of the few sacred days when most businesses were closed is slowly becoming just another day.  Christmas day is next, just wait for it… and then remember that I said that it was coming. 

The CFO celebrated her 34^th birthday last week and her parents came for a visit to celebrate with us.  Prior to their arrival, I spent several hours on Tuesday night making the CFO’s birthday dessert request, individual apple cakes with caramel and pecans on top.  While they turned out very well, I was quickly reminded why it had been 4+ years since I made them.  I enjoy working in the kitchen, but something that goes over 2 hours to prepare quickly falls to the bottom of the list.

I made 2 dozen of these, yes, they tasted pretty darn good.

 

Our visit with her parents was full of good eating and the ladies did a lot of shopping.  On Saturday, the CFO’s dad and I suffered through watching UGA fall to Missouri and then Virginia losing to Maryland.  After that mental beating, we all went out for pizza and watched ISU get run over during the first half of their game.  It was not a good day for our football teams!

Sunday afternoon, her dad and I went to see the movie “Rush.”  I have wanted to see it since it came out about a month ago and I didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to see it in the theatre.  Since it had a racing theme (1976 Formula1 championship) The CFO wasn’t interested in seeing it, even after a friend’s wife highly recommended it.  In my opinion, the movie did not disappoint, it was very entertaining and I highly recommend it, whether you are a racing fan or not.

Family feud, college football style

Last weekend was the “family feud” football game with my UGA Dawgs playing against the University of Tennessee.  My dad and most of his family are all UT fans, so there is always some trash talking amongst relatives leading up to the game. This year, UGA was ranked and UT was not, but they always seem to play us hard so, in my mind, rankings don’t matter.  I usually make a small wager with one of my uncles, but he wasn’t confident enough in his team to bet on the game (fair weather fan!). 

One of my uncles sent this photo of himself in his UT attire to all the bulldog fans in the family...  I blocked out his face to save him some pride...

 

While I was pretty confident in my boys going into the game, what I didn’t count on was injuries happening during the game.  Before this game, UGA had already lost their #1 wide receiver for the season and the #1 running back for a few games due to injuries.  By the time the UT game was over, we had lost our #2 running back and our #2 & #3 wide receivers.  Unfortunately, they will all probably be out for the season.

Sometime during the 3^rd quarter, when the game was starting to look questionable for a UGA win, I received a text from my uncle, “Nervous yet?”  To which I replied, “Typical UGA drama.”   Which it was… UGA can’t ever seem to dominate a game from start to finish.  No matter who the opponent is, ranked rival or junior college practice squad, they always find a way to make the game close and dramatic.  While I don't enjoy them playing this way, I fully understand that the game isn't over until the clock reads 00:00.

Following UGA football will probably take a few years off my life, or at least give me heart burn and ulcers… I sometimes wish that I didn’t get so involved in the game, but I just can’t help it.   During the key plays towards the end of the game, I was nervously rocking back and forth in my seat (which the CFO says is a sign that I have some sort of disability [life with a special ed professor!]).  Fortunately, the Dawgs made an awesome last minute drive down the field and tied the game up with only 5 seconds left in regulation.  My uncle sent the text again, “Nervous yet?”  I mumbled “yes” to myself, but didn’t bother to reply to his text.

UT had the ball first in OT and drove down the field for what looked like a diving touchdown… except on the reply you could see that the player lost control of the ball before crossing the end zone line.  I was up on my feet, yelling at the TV, “that was a fumble! That was a fumble!!  That was a fumble!!!”  Luckily, the replay official heard me yelling from central Illinois and they ended up reversing the touchdown call. 

It was now UGA’s ball and they had a chance to win the game.  UGA’s offense screwed around with the ball for 3 plays, which incited more yelling at the TV, “What are you doing (coach) Bobo?!”  For the record, I am not a fan of UGA's offensive coach (Coach Bobo), so I always blame him for anything bad that happens when UGA is on offensive.  On fourth down, our kicker trotted onto the field and kicked the game winning field goal.  The Dawgs dodged a bullet and my text message back to my uncle stated my feelings pretty well, “Phew.” 

Now UGA has to regroup and some of the freshman players are going to have to step up and fill in some holes in our line up.  The good news is that we have a veteran QB to lead them, the bad news is that an undefeated Missouri team travels to Athens this Saturday… Somebody needs to add Tums or Rolaids to the grocery list.

The rest of the weekend was way less exciting, with cool and rainy weather. The low temperatures at night have dropped down into the 40's, the leaves are starting to change and the farmers have started harvesting the corn.  Like it or not, winter is coming to central Illinois.

Art + Football, a good weekend combination

I know, I know, art and football is a strange pairing.  On Saturday morning, The CFO and I headed west to Peoria for the yearly “Fine Art Show” hosted by the local arts guild.  No trip to Peoria is complete without a stop at Chick-fil-a, so we went there for breakfast before the show.  After a tasty chicken biscuit and hash-rounds, we were ready to enjoy the show.

There were artists from all over the country, including a couple Georgia based artists who were surprised to see someone wearing a UGA shirt and hat. Yes, I must represent my Dawgs on all football Saturdays.  The booths were full of paintings, metal work, glass, pottery and photography.  We walked through the entire show and then stopped to assess if anything had caught either of our eyes.  I guessed correctly that the CFO wanted to go back and revisit a glass jewelry box and I wanted to circle back to a couple other booths. 

We ended up picking up a few things, some for us and some for gifts.  It is nice to support these artists who are doing what they love to do and probably aren’t making much money doing it.  We estimated that by the time they pay to be in the show, travel there with all their stuff, get a hotel room and food, it must cost them over a thousand dollars to show up, not including what they put into materials for their crafts.  You have to sell a lot of stuff to make up that difference and, unfortunately, we didn’t see a whole lot of purchases being made.

We hit the CFO’s favorite pizza joint for the Italian trio appetizer that she loves so much before rushing home for the UGA/LSU game.  We ended up missing the first half of the first quarter (I was not happy about missing part of the game!), but saw the rest of the game.  What an up and down, back and forth game… happily, my Dawgs pulled out the win in the end.  They were the only team of our 4 college teams that won that day, the other 3 lost.  1-3 for the weekend isn’t very good.

I planted a few pumpkin seeds during the summer and didn't do much with them, I just let them do their thing.  Here are the first two pumpkins that we have harvested, there are a few more on the vine that I haven't picked yet.  Unfortunately, the leaves of the plants were attacked by a powdery mildew, so they didn't get as big as they might have otherwise...