My cutie little sister, Tara, left for Germany yesterday morning. She will be back in 2 weeks for a total of 36 hours and then leaves again for a week-long road trip to Montana with Papa and Grammi. I wanted a little time with her before she left so I went over Thursday night to help her clean up her room and do a little packing. We watched Tarzan and played with her new kitty, Chessie, and never actually got around to packing her suitcase but we did clean up her room and collect a large shopping bag full of things to be taken to Goodwill. I'd say overall it was pretty productive. 
We had dinner at La Corona with Mom and then made a strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert. Oh. My. Goodness. I've made this recipe once before but didn't really stick to it. I have a bad habit of overloading pies and crisps with fruit. For some reason I seem to think that you can never have enough fruit and it will turn out better if the apples or berries (or whatever) are piled high. Not always the case as I found when I actually followed each and every direction of this marvelous recipe. We baked it in a deep-dish pie stone, so it actually ended up being a very thin pie but the sugar and tapioca combined with the fruit juices to create a truly phenomenal sticky sweet pie filling. The edges of the pie crust where the filling had bubbled out taste like a fabulously gourmet pop tart. Not that I want to compare this masterpiece to a pop tart but with the crust and the sticky strawberry filling, I was momentarily reminded of that childhood breakfast favorite. I brought home a leftover slice for Steven and his response was equally enthusiastic. I am slowly but surely turning my husband into a dessert fanatic. I couldn't be more proud.
Friday was a particularly dreary day. Steven and I had planned to go camping at Mount Rainier but we were having a hard enough time convincing ourselves to leave the house for a five minute trip to the neighborhood grocery store in the 55 degree rainstorm, so there really wasn't any chance we'd be braving the weather to go pitch a tent. We spent the day all nice and cozy inside with tea and cookies. We made chicken noodle soup for lunch while sharing a rather large bottle of Redhook's No Equal amber lager and watching Moneyball (excellent film by the way - you should check it out) and after hours of listening to the rain I decided that we would be needing some serious comfort food for dinner. Meatballs and mashed potatoes. I know, right? You feel comforted already don't you? I was a little nervous because Steven practically cringes the mention of meatballs or meatloaf, but something I've learned over the last few years is that most foods that Steven doesn't like, he just think he doesn't like them until I make them for him. Like the dessert thing. He didn't think he was a dessert guy until he started eating dessert with my family. We are all about homemade everything and you would be hard pressed to find anything that compares to one of Uncle Scott's cakes or one of Grammi's pies. I grew up baking with Mom, Grammi, and even Uncle Scott, and find that Steven is more than happy to eat almost anything that we put in front of him. Anyhow, I got the meatball recipe out of the Pioneer Woman cookbook (thank you Hilde -- what a wonderful birthday present that has been!!) and made Grammi's mashed potatoes (sour cream and butter? yes please!) and served them with steamed green beans. Wow. Steven was pleasantly surprised and went back for both seconds and thirds. It was an incredibly satisfying meal.
We spent yesterday afternoon playing (and losing!) Castle Panic with Brad and Emily, which was a total blast, and took advantage of the brief sun break to walk over to Gorditos for dinner. I love eating, don't you? Food is just so much fun.
I haven't started my journal yet -- better make time for that this week...
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