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.