Best Fish Fry

Every year my little (well, younger) brother and his wife host a fish fry.  

Will loves to fish and doesn't mind cleaning the resulting fish and popping 

them in the freezer afterwards.  

The resulting freezer full of fish certainly qualifies as a mess of fish.

Easily.  

He has the big electric fry great granddaddy for the hushpuppies 

and a propane cooker with a big cast iron dutch oven for the fish.

Dad came over early to help Will get started with the prep.

Even though they never slowed down it took a couple of hours 

of dropping fish filets...

and spooning Will's secret hushpuppy batter into hot oil to get it all cooked.

This was the first batch of the fish into the dredge. 

There was at least one more bowl of fish filets this big. 

All of this cooking smelled really, really good.  

Tasted even better.  

My cutie-patootie nephew Chase brought his new puppy.  

Needless to say he didn't have to do too much with this little lady...

 because where there is a puppy there will be Allison

and lots of other folks who were attracted this sweet little ball of fur.

Will always cooks the hushpuppies so he can tweak the batter if needed.

And sneak a few along the way.

Those golden nuggets of crispy, oniony, corny hushpuppies are amazing.  

I really think I like them better than the fish, but the fish is pretty darn amazing too.

Thanks Wilma for a wonderful dinner.  

(He loves it when I call him Wilma.)

Wake Up Little Sushi

Bruce and I love sushi.  

For the longest time we would go to our favorite place for sushi on Sunday nights 

after dropping the kids off at church for their Sunday night youth program.  

Since Ben started driving we haven't gone quite as often because we haven't 

had to leave the house on Sunday nights.  

And let's face it - sushi is expensive! 

I have read about how to make sushi, downloaded recipes, watched youtube videos 

for years but I had never tried my hand at making my own at home.  

All that changed today. 

Bruce and I shopped for the necessary items - bamboo mat, wasabi, pickled ginger, nori sheets, srirachi sauce...

green onions, cucumber, avocado

shrimp (I had thoughts of making crunchy shrimp rolls with tempura shrimp.)

I mean look at these gorgeous royal red shrimp!

Bruce got a lesson in how to devein shrimp.

I diced some tuna and made my spicy tuna filling.

Gorgeous tuna, salmon, and spicy tuna filling - yum!  

The shrimp all skewered up and ready to go in the tempura batter.

Mise en place all ready to go.

Sushi rice was easy to make and really tasty.  

I know that a legitimate sushi chef would have found fault with it but I thought it was pretty good.

How someone can apprentice for years to get sushi rice correct is beyond me.  

It's rice, people.

I appreciate the art of sushi but my goal was to make a tasty dinner for Bruce, me and two friends.

I made a nine rolls using the tuna, salmon, and spicy tuna mixture.

I didn't make the crunchy shrimp rolls this time because suddenly I looked at the platter and realized we had enough for dinner without them.  We ate the shrimp tempura all by itself.  

Sushi attempt #1 - a tasty success!

I will be making sushi again very soon.  

It was that good.

I'm wishing there were some leftovers in the frig...

Pentecost Sunday - Brought To You By The Color Red

Today we had a pretty special service at church.

Matt and Sarah Rideout and their two little girls visited our church 

and got a moment to give a quick plug for the work they are doing in Haiti.  

Not only did most everyone come dressed in red but the red super hero shirts 

that dozens of folks chose to wear were Team John Randall shirts.  

John Randall is a darling little boy in our church battling pediatric melanoma.  

These shirts have become a symbol of solidarity and support from 

our church and community for this sweet family.  

We recognized the graduating seniors (including my son, Ben)

The seniors included not only our regular church members but also the seniors 

from the Presbyterian Home for Children who spent 

the weekend with our youth at Maranatha.  

Even our clergy got in on the act. 

(I was joking with Mark about the fact that he was wearing a suit jacket with his t-shirt.  

I told him I would give him $5 is he would wear his sleeves pushed up Miami Vice-style.  

He had some flimsy excuse about them not staying up.  

Let's just say that the $5 bill is safely tucked in my purse.  

One of the highlights of the service was the children's sermon.  

 30+ preschoolers and party noise-makers 

makes for a loud children's sermon.  

It was rather chaotic.

And hilarious.

Three of my favorite seniors.  

Especially that one on the left.

(Although the other two are pretty special folks in my book!)

I had honestly forgotten that this was the Sunday that we had 

signed up to sponsor the flower arrangement.  

I came in and sat down and my friend told me how pretty she thought our flowers were.

 They were amazing.

A beautiful, bright rememberance of our daughter Hannah 

on what would have been her 18th birthday

and 

a lovely floral representation of Pentacostal flames.  

Beautiful!

We have grown to love this sweet family.  

I know that we will be seeing them as often as possible in Haiti.

I hope that we see them as often as possible in Huntsville too.  

It has been a busy and joyful weekend.  

My heart is full.

Birthdays and Cemetery Visits - It Must Be May 16

Today is the 18th birthday of my twins.  

Eighteen years ago I gave birth to my son Benjamin and my first daughter Hannah.  

Ben was a big healthy boy.

Hannah was a little tiny baby.

She had a rare syndrome that took 3 years to diagnose and that took her from us at 4 1/2 years old.  

Something that has always bothered me about Hannah's gravesite is that her cremains are buried near the headstone but her grave marker is down at the foot.   

It has always bothered my that the marker doesn't accurately mark where she is buried.  

Weird?  Maybe.  

But it does bother me.

Today Ben was home with me because he is all done with school.  

We started off the day going by to visit the grave, put out some fresh flowers, and finally moved the grave marker.  

Ben was very sweet about the whole thing.  

He worked hard

And never complained.  

Sometimes a son knows when to do a task for his momma without questioning.

This makes me happy.  

My handsome, smart, strong, momma-pleasing son 

and my daughter's grave marker where it rightly belongs.  

Happy 18th birthday in heaven, my sweet Hannah.  

We think of you everyday.

Happy birthday Ben.  

I can't wait to see what the future has in store for you!

Mother's Day

On Friday I decided to change my Facebook profile picture 

to my mom's picture in honor of her for Mother's Day.

I realized that I didn't have a nice picture of her since Easter 2012.

I was rainy and cold this Easter and everyone came over to mom's for lunch after church and immediately changed into something comfy and warm.

No pictures were taken.

We didn't look very photogenic that day.

So, today after church my folks came to our home for lunch.

While the guys were busy in the kitchen making lunch for us (wow!  I know!)

I managed to get a few picture of my folks and with my folks.  

And Allison (she's a future mom, so it counts.)

Allison snapped a few pics of my folks with me.

Dad snapped a couple of Mom and me.

And I caught this one of my folks.  

I love this one.

The kids call Dad Stonewall Jackson.

I wonder why.

Happy 55th Mother's Day, Mom.  

I love you!

Summer Dreaming

I came across these photos on my computer while looking for something else.  

Now I want tomato pie.

Badly.

Not just any tomato pie but tomato pie made with tomatoes from my dad's garden.

This pie was made with a couple (really, just 2 tomatoes!) of tomatoes last summer.  

This isn't the healthiest of recipes (i.e. seriously fattening) so I don't make it too often.

I mean, after starting out with a homemade baked pie shell and filling it with virtuous slices of tomatoes you heap on 6 or so sliced of crumbled up bacon. What's not to love about something made with bacon.  

Mmmmmm, bacon.  

Then a layer of basil leaves are torn and added...

Then comes the motherlode of mayo, mozzarella, parmesan, garlic, and onion.  

Hurt me now!  

Spread all that cheesy goodness over the top and pop it in the over and then...

Voila!  

I mean, come on, what's not to love about this glistening, tomatoey-cheesy-garlicy-basily pie?

I am not a lover of summer weather but if it has to be summer to have this pie then bring it on!  

Who's with me?  

Uganda, Part Deux

Where does the time go?  

I think about catching the blog up but seem to get bogged down in where to start.  

I really don't mean to let it get so far behind.  

Ah, the road to hell, good intentions, and all that.  

So, I guess the best place to (re)start is today.  

I am T minus 2 weeks until I leave with my church's mission team to head back to Uganda for another medical mission trip.  I am finally at a place where I can start to get excited about it.  For the last few months until TODAY I have been busy planning, ordering, organizing, making lists, having pill-packing parties, buying groceries, medications, supplies, and doing all I can do to get ready for this trip.  

I have to give huge shout out to my nurse partner Mary Romer who has been my sounding board, planning partner, and supplier of all things wine-related when we needed a little "reward" for completing tasks.  She is the joyful voice in my ear reminding me that God has this handled.  He has a plan for us, goes ahead of us.  She has made this whole process so much less maddening.  

This is what the Uganda file on my computer looks like.  There are so many details to planning an international mission trip.  Let me be clear - I am not planning the whole trip!  My pastor is handling the  finances and coordinating with the Medreach planners and will be creating the manifests of all of our trunks, another team member is handling the logistics of gathering team paperwork, passport copies, immunization records, etc., dealing with the travel agent, and many other little details that logistics folks handle.   My goal through the whole planning of this trip has been to document our method so that the planning of the next trip, whether or not I go, will be much easier.  I have a long history of being a list maker.  Lists make me happy.  More importantly, I like to cross things off my lists.  Bruce has commented to me before that small countries have gone to war with less planning than I have done to go to the beach for a week.  That's a compliment, right?  

(Notice the pictures stacked up and taking root on my desktop?  Those are some of the pictures from last year's trip waiting for me to finish uploading them to a book that I haven't finished editing before I can order copies.  One of the many loose ends out there waiting to be tied.)  

Today was a good day.  Before today the tasks have been determining what medications we needed to take (which took weeks of work!), getting medications ordered in USA and Uganda, getting all of the domestic meds ready for patient distribution (via pill packing parties), planning meals, and purchasing groceries and non-medical supplies. Mark, my pastor, and I met today to pack our travel trunks.  I must tell you that we witnessed a minor miracle today.  We packed all of our medications, supplies, groceries (even the gigantic bag of skittles for Mark), sneakers, eyeglasses, toothbrushes, toothpaste for the Africans, dozens of knitted hats from our church ladies, and bags and labels for pill-packing the Uganda-purchased meds we managed to come in underweight.  Woohoo!  In 90 minutes we managed to take all of the stuff that has been cluttering up Mark's office and my van for weeks and get it all packed into trunks with some weight and even a little space left.  Whew!  So glad to cross off that task.  There are still a few items to accomplish for the team planning but mostly what I have to do now is get myself ready.  

I have two weeks to gather and pack for myself.  
Piece of cake.