Saturday Snaptshot

What I did today---part 1

I did a short 3 mile walk.  I am just getting back into walking, but I plan to be back in shape for the Columbia Gorge Half-Marathon in October.

I am linking up to Saturday Snapshot hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads.

Stop by her blog and check out all the other great links to Saturday Snapshot.

I began the walk with my DIL Jessica and my friends Robbie and Tami.

It was a fun morning!

I really do love to walk... I just haven't been doing it like I should.

You can't really see the balloons in the air, can you?

I'm not a fan of letting balloons go---because of the birds.  They are bad for the birds, but I have to admit, they look pretty.

IF you can see them.

The weather held for us and didn't rain while we were walking.  It was cool enough and warm enough.  Just right.

My good friend Nicole---talking to the crowd (with microphone) before the walk/run began.

Two great peeps,  Karen and Sally!

Getting ready to  runnnnnn........

My good friend Betty hugging Tami!

AND....THEY'RE OFF!!

My good friends Sally and Paul. (the blue shirt and the man/gray shirt)  They RAN the 5 mile and were passing me on the 3 mile walk.   (sigh) it's been a while for me.  I need to get in shape again.

My good friends Robbie and Tami---coming in from their 5 mile walk. 

(look at the lady in red....she's saying  I FOUND THEM...because I they are usually fast walkers and they were kind of lolly-gagging today.)

My son asked me the other day to tell him who my best friend was.

I told him that it's not like that when you are older.... at least for me, it isn't.

 I am  lucky to have such good friends.  And so many of them!

Outdoor Wednesday

I am linking up to Outdoor Wednesday

and  letting you know the correct  term for  a  soft drink (soda, coke, pepsi, etc.  it is a POP)

(at least in the west/northwest)

It says so in this window.

When we were coming back from our birding weekend,  we went thru this little town called French Glen.

It was in Oregon, right before you cross over into Nevada.

A lovely little place.

You could do some good bird watching here.

Or just relax and have a beer.

Or if need be, hop into the phone booth to change into your Superman or Underdog  attire....because right there in the middle of nowhere, there is a phone booth.

Cottage Cheese Dip and Sour Cream Onion Burgers

Originally, this post was about the hamburger  (Sour Cream Onion Burger--Yum!), but.... last week, my mother moved into an assisted living home, so in her honor this post is all about her cottage cheese dip.  (which I had made for the chips, but never intended to write about)

Yes, it's one of those things.  You know---those things you ate when you were young, that you are SURE no one in the world ate except your family.  Like my friend Barbara Brown ate pork and bean sandwiches when she was little.  

We all have those things!

One of  ours was cottage cheese dip.  We loved it when we were little.

Truth be told, if I needed comforting today, I would make this and grab a bag of chips and put on an old movie and sit and eat the whole thing!  

I still love it.

Hey!  Don't judge ---what is your WEIRD family food?

Cottage Cheese Dip

cottage cheese

mayonnaise or miracle whip

ketchup

Just put a couple of blobs of each and mix and add until you reach a consistency you like.

Grab a bag of Ruffles chips and eat till you have to unbuckle your pants!

Growing up, my parents used Miracle-Whip, but as an adult, I use Mayonnaise--Best Foods or Hellman's (depending on which side of the Rocky Mountains you live)

Which might seem as if it ISN'T the same dip I had when I was little--- but it is.

My parents were huge picnickers.  Most of my summer memories from when I was younger are of picnics on the Columbia and Snake Rivers in Washington State.  

My mom would always make:

fried chicken (which we would eat cold)

baked beans   (which we would eat cold )

potato salad

pickles

deviled eggs

chips and dip  -- cottage cheese dip

homemade chocolate cake in a 9x13 pan

She got Pepsi and we got supermarket brand soda.

My dad would have a Budweiser or two.

That is the only menu I can remember on our picnics.

All things she made the night before, so our picnics were just spent swimming,  playing Frisbee OR  Lawn Darts (which are outlawed now ), cribbage, and of course, getting a tan.

Sorry, I digress....I am reminiscing. 

Oh...and about those  Sour  Cream Onion  Burgers?

I got the recipe from my friend Brenda, who used to have a blog  (Brenda's Canadian Kitchen), but has given it up.  I miss her blog---so many great recipes.  (Lucky for me I have a lot bookmarked)

This is a great burger!!  Just tasty and easy.

Sour Cream Onion Burger

INGREDIENTS:

2 pounds ground beef 1 cup sour cream 1 (1 ounce) envelope dry onion soup mix

1/2 cup dry bread crumbs 1/8 teaspoon pepper

DIRECTIONS:

1.	In a large bowl, mix together the ground beef, sour cream, onion soup mix, bread crumbs and pepper using your hands. Refrigerate while you heat up the grill so the flavors have a chance to blend.
2.	Preheat a grill for medium heat. Form the ground beef into 8 balls, and flatten into patties.
3.	Grill the patties for 6 to 8 minutes per side, or until well done.

Birding Weekend

Last year, while birding, we were discussing  collective nouns and how funny they are.  Especially when it comes to the animal kingdom/birds.

A Murder of Crows?

A Gaggle of Geese?

  A Hedge of Herons?

An Exaltation of Larks?

We got a kick out of them all.

So this year, our friend Jolina (fellow bird nerd extraordinaire!  and apparently an artist too)  made these shirts for us.  (T shirts with this drawing on them)

She drew the Quail.  

We see them in our backyards around here every day. 

We love them.

They are our backyard birds.  (even tho they are California Quail, we here in Northern Nevada claim them as our own)

And in this drawing she put collective nouns of some of our favorite birds.

Plus... a collective noun to describe us:

A Gamble of Nevadans. 

[oops!!  This just in from Jolina:]

Hey Debbie - our collective noun is "gambol of Nevadans" which I was worried that I'd misspelled it - but I had copied it from the book!!  But the definition of gambol is "to leap about playfully; frolic"

Yup, that's what we do. 

It is beautiful! 

We will treasure it always!

At one of the dinners on our birding weekend, a woman asked here she could buy our shirts.

Jolina won't sell them... but she could.

We LOVE our Quail bird nerd herd shirts!!!

And now, a few pictures from our birding weekend.

and then later, a recap on it . 

We saw  10,000 geese.

These are Ross's Geese.  

With a few Snow Geese mixed in.

On their way back to Canada.

The Sandhill Cranes are flying in.

This would be the "lesser' Sandhill Crane, because the 'greater' is not at the peak of their migration. 

????

Birding British Style!

Our tour guide, Duncan.

He served us tea (with milk) and toast with Marmite.  (he's a big fan...as I'm sure you can tell)

YES,  you can really find birds here.  Lots of them!!

And here too!

a familiar sight---every year on all my birding trips with these girls!

Very familiar.

I almost forgot the Pintail!!  Duck that is.

Isn't he beautiful?   Photo taken by our friend Gina's husband, Mark.  

He has a great scope and camera lens.

That's my story!

I am 54 years old.  My husband is out of town for 2 weeks for work.   I live in a small town.

All facts.

Last night I ran home from work at 5, and dyed my hair.  A nice  medium reddish brown.  I have been meaning to do this for quite sometime (a couple of weeks) but just couldn't find the time---well, it was getting quite obvious that I was NOT a natural medium reddish brown (or sometimes a nice maple ), and again I am leaving town, so it was last night or never!

Church began at  7pm.  It was our Holy Thursday service (Or Maundy Thursday)--a service of shadows.  It was so beautiful!!  


It seems that while dying my hair, reddish brown,  a bit of dye got on my neck.  I didn't notice until I got out of the shower and was drying my hair.  Of course, by this time, it's too late---it was on there good.  It looked like a hickey.

(sigh)

I am 54 years old.  My husband is out of town.  I live in a small town.

And now....my church friends think I have a hickey on my neck.

Great.

Really, tho, it's HAIR DYE!  

That's my story!  And I'm sticking to it!

And this afternoon, I'm on my way to visit the Handyman.  Hopefully, he'll believe me.  He can just look at my roots and compare the color.   ~grins~

*************************

Last night on my way to church, the clouds looked like this:
(I was in the same spot when I took these pics.  I just turned a bit to get the other mountain.  Weird how it can look so different)

After church, there was a glorious thunder and lightning storm, which I LOVE!!  We don't get them often.  It was 'heaven sent' 
I grabbed some Chinese take-out and went home and opened my back door, and just listened.   
So beautiful!

Friendship Tea-Russian Tea-Friday Friend Recipe #10 and #11

Ahhhhh....counting down!  Only 300 or so to go!

I think Beverages must be the slimmest category in the Friday Friend Cookbook. (click here to see what I'm up to with the FF recipes)   Not very many of my friends turned in a recipe for the Beverage chapter.  So, it's pretty funny that two of my best friends turned in the same one.  Kind of.
I say 'kind-of' because there is a slight difference in measurements and technique.
What are they you ask?

Well, let me tell you (I have to meander back a bit)--I actually made 3 different kinds of Russian Tea.  THREE!

See here...can you tell the difference?

The same goes for my friends---not much difference-- in Tomi Pingree and Debbie Engstrom.  Except---I live in the same town as Debbie.  Debbie and I have had coffee every Tuesday morning for years.  12 years to be exact.
I know that if Tomi and I lived in the same town now, we might be early morning friends too...as it was, we were afternoon friends when we lived in the same town.
See?   Just a few different measurements and techniques!

Let me meander back to the tea.
Debbie has ground cloves in her's.   (the one in the middle)
Tomi does not.  (the one on the left)

Then I came across one that added a package of black cherry Kool-aide, so I added that to the one on the right.   And that's what I ended up taking a photo of---the reason it is so dark orange.  It wants to be black cherry color. 
They are all good---just like they are.  You could choose any and be okay.
If you want to add the Black Cherry Kool-aide, add it to Debbie's recipe.  That's what I did. Or  Tomi's.  Either way, it's okay.

Friendship Tea
My friend Debbie E. via the Friday Friend Cookbook

2 cups Tang
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened instant tea
1 pkg lemonade Kool-aide
1/2 t. ground cloves
1 t. cinnamon

Stir all together. Store in a sealed container.
To brew:  add 1 heaping T to 1 cup boiling water.


Russian Tea
My friend Tomi via the Friday Friend Cookbook

2 cups Tang
1 pkg (3oz) unsweetened lemonade
1 to 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup instant tea
1 t cinnamon

Mix all together.  Put 2 T into a cup of hot water.

And now.... I give you not 1, but 2 of my favorite friends!

Tomi and I met about 33 years ago, when we both lived in Elko, Nevada.  Neither one of us does now.  We plan to meet there one day for lunch tho.  This summer or the next!   
We had many suppers with our families.  Our kids were babies and toddlers and there were a lot of them.  Well, 6 seemed like a lot at the time. 
We would talk about housecleaning (weird, I know, since we both hate it---but we wanted the most efficient way to do it with 3 little kids each),  exercise  (we would get together to do--Richard Simmons!),  cooking  (I loved it, she didn't but some of my most favorite recipes are  things she made--go figure), and BOOKS!!   She is a bibliophile like me.   To this day, we still talk books with each other--We both just read  "This Dark Road to Mercy" by Wiley Cash--and then discussed it via email.
Love her and miss her----and we WILL meet in the middle to have lunch one day soon!!

Tomi and her little grandson William.
(I stole it from Facebook.  I am going to have to look thru old 35mm photos of ones of her. We haven't lived close since the invention of digital.  )

Debbie and I became next door neighbors  25 years ago.
We used to do afternoon tea.  For 3 years.  Then I moved away for 5 years. When I moved back we didn't live next door to each other any more, and we didn't see each other as often, so we decided to do coffee at  6am. Every Tuesday morning.  I LOVE Tuesday mornings.
Our children  have grown, graduated, got married, had their own children, and sadly  we've lost parents.  But there has always been, and we both believe there will always be a Tuesday morning and a coffee cup to talk all those things out.

Debbie E and her grandson Dane.

*** Love the circle of  life***

We used to be young.

We used to be in pictures like this with our children.

Now we hold our grandchildren.

We are lucky.

My Friday Friends and I.

It's Monday

I have so much to say because I've been missing in action for a month, but for now I'm just going to do a  MONDAY post---then I'll catch up in another post. (to be honest it was hard to  know how to begin... It's like apologizing,  how to begin?)  BUT, for now,  what am I reading?

It's Monday,  What are you Reading is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.  A fun place to pop into every Monday to see what is on everyone's reading list.

I find my best books from these people who participate!

I just (this morning with my coffee, in fact) finished "The Reading Promise" by Alice Ozma.

It was amazing for me because, it's a memoir about growing up, coming of age, and most of all, reading aloud with a child! While I've always loved the idea of bedtime stories...and sharing books with my own kids and grandchildren, Alice Ozma renewed my passion for this! I loved her stories about her relationship with her father and I loved the books they shared. I want to do a reading streak of my own! Now...how to work that into a streak when my grandchildren all live away? There must be a way.

 Great Book!

When I got to work this morning, I had a package waiting for me and in it was:

The Read-Aloud Handbook, 7th edition

I am in heaven!  I loved reading to my kids---and I love reading to my grandchildren.  I love reading aloud, and this book just reinforces how important it is.

Of course, I was seduced into reading aloud to my kids when I read Trelease's 2nd edition and saw him in person some years ago. 

I have bought every edition since.

This edition only received 5 stars on Goodreads!!

I've been reading about reading!

Nerd alert!!