Simple Pleasures

(Life can be hard sometimes.  Sometimes what we need is to slow down and realize the simple pleasures around us.)


Fresh homemade yogurt still warm from processing.

Moving the World

This is West literally moving the world.  We were at a friends house today and one of their boys created this project of all the different planets, you know the kind right.  The little boy they play with all the time over there has this great Thomas train set, there has to be about 50 cars in the set plus track (although they don't get the track out very often as it is just more fun to run the train around the circle that is their house) and they play with it almost every time we go over I think.  They got this bright idea the other day to haul these great looking circles of fun around on the train that is already great fun!  This is what they ended up with, they are literally moving the world!
I thought what a great metaphor for what a child can actually do, Move the World!

Who's gonna win!?

So who can guess what West and I are doing here?!  The first to guess might just win a tasty surprise!  I need specifics though!  Good luck!

A Tribute

I have spoken before of the local coffee shop here that we love and go to basically everyday.  The owner of Old Town Coffee has a rat ride.  In fact, my children have been in that particular ride and have pretended to drive it and pointed out that there were not seat belts in it yet and every time they saw it driving around town they would point and wave and generally we talked about it for weeks after they sat in it.  They think it is pretty cool!
Then imagine my surprise when we are driving down the street towards Diana's house and I happen to get a peek into one of the garages we are driving by.  I happened to notice this house before as they have two jeeps that sit parked out front and this particular hen house is big into jeeps.
Guess what was in that garage?!  You got it!

It was this super cool Rat Ride!  So we thought we would get a picture of it to show off to Jess and Nikki (owner and manager).

Quote of the Week

"This song is a wiggle bottom, and this one is a wiggle bottom too!"

Ruby

Simple Pleasures

(Life can be hard sometimes.  Sometimes what we need is to slow down and realize the simple pleasures around us.)

 Sitting down with an old friend to chat about nothing in particular over a good cup of coffee.

In the Kitchen

One of the things I love about visiting Diana is that she knows how to cook good food, I always know I will eat well when I am there.  Plus there is one advantage, she is German and so she always introduces me to new and exciting, and very often very delicious, food.  For example, she introduced me to Rouladen (pronounced roolawdan) which is a delicious dish of thinly cut beef steaks smeared with stone ground mustard and sprinkled with salt and pepper and wrapped around a pickle that was first wrapped with bacon.  I know, it sounds odd right?  But trust me when I tell you it is absolutely delicious. 
So I knew going in that we would be fed good food and most likely introduced to something fun and new (I am always on the hunt to find new and exciting foods to make in my kitchen to try and stray away from the same 5 things we all tend to make our weekly meals).  This time though she not only showed us one new food but three!  That's right, we tried three different German meals.  She didn't cook them herself this time but rather she took us to a little German deli she has found near Ft Campbell that has some delicious food.

We will start with West's meal:
What you see before him is wiener-schnitzel.  According to Diana this is a small piece of pork that has been tenderized, breaded, and then fried.  There are different kinds of wiener-schnitzel such as the kind Diana had that had a mushroom gravy over the top which was also very delicious. 

Then we have Ruby's plate of goodness:
This is spaetzle, this was basically small dumplings (that looks a lot like little noodles) that was covered in a brown gravy.  Also very delicious.  The ketchup is not normally part of the dish but if there is something to dip in to then Ruby will inevitably find it and start dipping (what can I say, she is a dipper).

Then we come to the dish I ordered:
Now I will admit this was not a typical German dish but it was on the menu and it looked mighty tasty and basically everything else had been ordered by others at the table so I thought I would go for it. 
I had Hungarian goulash.  I actually make goulash in my kitchen quite often but this was a different type of goulash but this goulash was might tasty all the same!

And yes, I did try a bite of everyone's food at the table!