Omelet's in a Bag

Last week at my Weight Watchers Meeting someone mentioned how to make easy omelets... in a ziploc bag! This was a new one for me! But how easy could that be!!!

SO we figured that we would give it a try today.

The directions are simple...

1. "scramble" your eggs in a bowl well, just as if you do when making an omelet.

2. Pour eggs into ziploc bag.

3. add your choice of "fillings".

4. Seal bag and place in pot of boiling water.

5. Boil for 13 minutes

Your omelet will steam itself right in the bag and slide out easily! No butter or oil needed

This morning I used spinach, portabello mushrooms, tomato and leftover hash brown potatoes. Once my omelet was cooked, I topped it with some cheese. It was perfect!

This would be the perfect way to make omelets wen you are camping. Have a bunch of omelets to make when you have company? Set up a omelet bar, everyone gets to put their own toppings in the bag with their eggs and all the bags get thrown in the same pot! What could be easier!!

It will probably take you longer to make all the toast for your guests that it does to make the omelets!Breakfast is served!

Strawberry Fields Forver

Ok, maybe not forever, but it is strawberry time again! Blasers opened for picking this morning and we were there! It was not well known that they were open yet as they did not really know when they were opening for sure until this morning! We had actually decided to head out to the zoo this morning and when we saw that they were open, we decided to stop and pick a few. The zoo could wait.

It was a great morning for picking too - warm, but not too hot and there was a nice breeze. There were probably only about a dozen people out in the fields so we had our pick of rows.

The berries looked great this year! Plenty of them ripe, but even more still waiting to ripen for picking later. It did not take long for us to pick 2 full flats of berries. in all... 25 pounds of berries picked in less than an hour!

Sicne we still wanted to stop at the zoo really quick, the berries were going ot have a short wait in the car - at least it was not too warm out yet!

The zucchini is growing strong! Two shoots have popped up in the last few days and are looking strong!

We also have also added another 12 Pole Beans in the last few days. I was doing some browsing on Craigslist and found a posting from a lady here in Green Bay that had planted too many beans and was giving them away to anyone that wanted them! I sent her an email on Wednesday and she told me that I could stop and pick them up after work. When I got to her house, I found a ziploc baggie taped to her front door with several small bean plants! It's always great to find stuff for free, and this way we also saved her from just wasting these great little plants! There was 13 plants in the bag and we planted 12 of them (the last one looked pretty small and it probably was not going to make it) These are now taking up the 3 boxes in the back corner of the garden so that we can utilize the fencing to help give them something to climb as the grow.

The broccoli that we planted is really starting to grow and look great. We have realized that next year, we need to plant the broccoli in the outside boxes, closest to the fence as it is going to get a lot taller than Darrin's pepper plants! Lesson learned...

We have Beans!

Overnight, the beans have popped up! So far there are only 2 of the 8, but I am figuring that the other 6 are not far behind!

Garden Update, week 1

One week after planting...

We have green! A few of the plants have started shoots already! WooHoo! The Cucumbers have popped up, as well as the zucchini, lettuce and beans.

The plants that were added last week as quickly taking to their new homes and have appeared to get bigger already. We have had fun checking each day to see what new green is arriving in the boxes. So far so good!

We have about half of the garden planted so far and next weekend we will add more carrots, lettuce, cucumbers and zucchini. No point in having it ALL ready at the same time! We have also realized that we forgot to get any peas for this year... guess those will have to wait until next year. We have enough going so far this year.

At present count, we have:
4 tomato plants (3 in the garden and on on the deck)
4 banana peppers
2 hungarian Sweet peppers
3 red peppers,
6 broccoli
9 carrots
1 bib lettuce
8 beans
1 cucumber
1 zucchini

I an sure that the counts will grow as we add more over the next few weeks.
Just not sure exactly what else we are going to plant in the remaining squares...

More Cat and Mouse

Tonight when we sitting here, chilling and watching come TV, we thought we heard the cast squeaking one of their toys. Listening a little closer, we realized that it was not a toy...

Fozzy came upstairs with a mouse in his mouth... Yay! NOT

He headed to the dining room and dropped the mouse near the food dish where he and Silver proceeded to bop it on the head, bat it around the floor and pounce on it from time to time.

Now we did not want the mouse in the house and since the cats already caught it, it was time for us to make the mouse go away. John covered the mouse with a plastic bowl so that it would not get away and headed to find something to contain it with so he could get rid of it.

Granted our cats are nor necessarily the brightest crayons in the box all the time, but we knew they would figure out how to get the mouse from under the bowl.... so I had to stand there with my foot on the bowl. The entire time, the cats were watching the mouse run circles under the bowl, batting at the bowl trying to get their toy back.

John got rid of the mouse and all was well. The cats finally gave up on finding their mouse - I think they sniffed every inch of the dining room. So they were off running again.... straight to the basement.

Not even 5 minutes later, we hear that same squeaking again, coming up the basement steps. This time Silver appeared at the top of the steps, clutching the mouse in her jaws. Back to the dining room they go. By the time we got in there, Fozzy saw us coming and grabbed the mouse and dashed for the basement... John grabbed to plastic bowl and headed down after him.

Fozzy was not to be outsmarted this time. Each time John started walking towards Fozzy, he picked up the mouse and ran away. He was determined NOT to lose this toy! He made one mistake - heading UP the stairs again. I was standing at the top and he knew he was not getting by me with that mouse in his mouth. As he turned to head back down, he dropped the mouse on the stairs, where John caught mouse number two.

2 cats, 2 mice, five minutes.

Not my favorite entertainment late in the evening. Let's not do it again anytime soon.

Why do some kids like to do manual labor?

As we continue our landscaping project in our front yard, it was time to start getting the rock back where it belongs. This pile of rock that we previously pulled from the landscaping has been sitting in the driveway, in MY parking spot for a few weeks now, and we finally were getting back to it.

John build a "sifter" to separate the rocks from the dirt that we shoveled up with it. Apparently the kids in the neighborhood thought this was the coolest thing and we shortly had 2 of the neighbor kids come over and ask if they could help.

Kids, asking to help shovel rocks? Were they for real? So John said yeah, why not. He figured that they would help for 5 minutes and then run off to play. Boy was he wrong! Not only did they help us for the entire evening, more of the neighborhood kids came over to help! At one point, we actually had 4 of the neighbor's kids, in our driveway, shoveling rocks into John's homemade sifter. They were shoveling so fast that he could not keep up with them! They got to take many breaks as he sifted and put rocks into the wheelbarrow.

Before long, they had shoveled over half of the rocks and were still going strong... but John was out of gas. He was ready to call it a night and find a shower. The kids would have kept shoveling until the pile of rocks was gone, but he thanked them many times for all their help and told them he was done for the night.

Yeah, he was in need of a shower!!!



But the landscaping in the front of the house was starting to look much better!!!

DARE Graduation

As the end of the school year quickly approaches, it is time for the afternoon that many of the 5th grades have been eagerly waiting for... DARE graduation.

They have spent afternoon's each week with Officer Van learning about drug and alcohol abuse as well as many other topics that have a factor is these issues.

From what we have been hearing at home, not only have this been a very education experience, but extremely fun too. There was songs, dances, cheers and a lot more!

As part of the program, Officer Van brought a guest speaker with him. This was a young man that has spend a great deal of time with Officer Van talking about drug and alcohol abuse. During his presentation he spoke openly and everything that he said was was very eye opening for the adult.

As with any graduation ceremony there were certificates to be handed out. Each of the kids was very exited to receive their certification that they earned. During the ceremony the parents were entertained with several of the songs, cheers and dances that the kids learned over the last few weeks. Now we could understand why they were all so excited about the DARE program!

But there were two things that they kids were the most excited about. This first.... once they all received their certificates, Officer Van announced that they were official DARE graduates and could now UNTUCK their shirts! This of course got a huge laugh from all the parents.... we all were wondering how he got everyone to come out with their t-shirts tucked in! NOW we knew the real truth! LOL
The second thing these kids were all excited about? Office Van personally signed the back of each of their shirts to "seal the deal." As soon as the ceremony was over, the kids quickly lines up to get their hard earned signature!

Great job to all of the kids in this year's DARE graduating class!

Darrin and Officer Van chatting as we left the school