Thursday’s Food for Thought

Tbug and I were driving down the road one day. She’s constantly telling me this that and everything else. It’s a joke with my dad that it is payback for the years I spent talking his leg off about everything under the sun.

Anyway we drove past a corn field and she proceeded to tell me something that my Mother in law told her. Now I was not involved in the conversation where my mother in law is concerned, I just got the story relayed to me by Tbug. But supposedly my MIL said that a farmer plants the outside rows of corn for people to come by and take as they please.

I’m pretty sure I had to pick my jaw up off the ground. Then proceeded to tell Tbug that is not the case. Farmers aren’t out to give away free food. They are out to make food for consumers that is good quality to feed the masses. That farmer also makes a living off his crop, whether it be a crop of corn, soybeans (pictured above), dairy or cattle.

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This one time I won 3rd Place in a Chili Cookoff

Growing up my dad and I made chili all the time for dinner. Now one thing about my dad’s chili is sometimes it got so spicy that I couldn’t stand to take one bite. So I say that I don’t like Chili but I really think it is most people put beans in Chili and I only like green beans and I don’t care for chili so spicy you can’t eat it. You get rid of those 2 things and truthfully I do like chili. I don’t mind a little spice, but so spicy one bite sets your lips on fire, ugh!

This year we attended (and helped with) the 3rd annual Chili Cookoff to raise money for children who might not have a Christmas otherwise. It’s such a worthy cause! The first year Hubby and Tbug entered. Last year Tbug entered and won. This year she asked grandpa (my dad) if he’d help her with chili again. She had to defend her title. At the last minute I decided I wanted to try my chances at making Chili as well.

The day of the Chili cookoff came. Hubby and I went over to help with the last minute things.

One of the exciting things this year was a bounce house. Let’s just say, I had to take my turn at playing in the bounce house :). Hubs and Jared pulled in just as I was going down the slide. I’m pretty sure hubby was proud to call me his wife. ha!

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Chicken Parmesan Soup

The trees have started changing colors here in Southeast Kansas. Wait, what? Southeast Kansas, but don’t I live in Southwest Missouri. Why yes, yes I do! But I drive over to Kansas for school and that is where I happen to be sitting currently. Waiting to take a quiz as a matter of fact. 50 points. Wish me luck! Yesterday cooled off. I do believe Fall might be here. Abug and I went to my mom’s house so that I could study and mom could help by watching Abug (Thank you mom, you’re so awesome!). They were going to the store and I asked my mom if she knew what they were going to have for dinner. She said no and I showed her this recipe I found for Chicken Parmesan Soup. We thought that sounded good so she got the stuff and I made it before I left her house to go home. We split it up and that was enough for both of our families to have dinner. And boy was it good!

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Underwater Pumpkin Carving – It’s a Thang!

Wow, today got away from me.  I spent most of my day learning about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Quite an interesting story, not gonna lie! What’s even more interesting is people don’t want it taught in schools because of some of the language. It is considered racist… written by a guy who was pretty much anti-slavery. Interesting in deed!

Anyway last weekend was the annual Underwater Pumpkin Carving. Since getting certified in 2013, hubby has participated and Tbug has participated but I never had. Writing a scuba blog I figured it was about time that I try too, right? Only fair!

I was a bit nervous about the water temperature since the morning started out in the upper 40’s… but I thought, what the heck. I still think I want to do a New Year’s Day dive just once too. I couldn’t the first year we were certified because they don’t let you dive while pregnant and the second year I chickened out. Maybe this is the year, but enough on that… we’re talking about carving pumpkins underwater!

We beat Deb and Grady there. When we left the house I asked hubs why so early. He told me that this is one of those moments you say yes hunny and just go with it. I said whatever and went to sleep in the front seat of the car. :).

When Deb and Grady got there we started helping them unload the truck/trailer. That’s when they realized they forgot some things. I asked what they needed, got the list and Memaw, Abug and I headed back to Seligman to the new Walmart store. So nice that it is so close, but I’d have gone farther if needed.

When we got back, Grady and Dan were gearing up with their dive students to go out and certify some new divers.

Deb stayed on land to get food ready and get paperwork done for the underwater pumpkin carving. On the menu, Chili, Spaghetti Red, Hot dogs. Karen and I took care of stirring the chili, making the noodles, etc, anything that involved the food so that Deb was free for paperwork. We had 2 gals that were from out of state, Alaska and California. They’d never heard of Spaghetti Red and said it must be a Midwest thing. By the way if you haven’t heard of that… it’s chili on spaghetti noodles.

The water has gone down some since all the rains this summer (not complaining) but it is still rather on the high side. We didn’t get to go to the normal dive side, we went off by where the camping area is. Grady also told me that there wasn’t a thermocline in the top 30 feet which is a good thing. I know my dive computer said 68 degrees when we started diving. It really wasn’t that bad. I know, right?!?!

Once Grady and Dan were done certifying students, they came up and got dressed in regular street clothes. Don’t you just love their dive socks?

All morning I walked around and people asked if I was going to carve a pumpkin. I kept responding with Hubby says I am. LOL. Dan and Tiffany went and camped elsewhere (our normal site is closed for the year). They had their camper on behind the truck so I went and changed in their camper. I forgot to take my dive boots up with me so I was walking around in my regular boots. I got a lot of funny looks, laughs, and head turns :). Whatever, I’m a country girl, it’s all good.

Now I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried to get a pumpkin underwater, it’s not easy. They are extremely buoyant. Boomer thought he’d put his in a mesh bag with they said about 40lb of rocks. Didn’t work. His pumpkin came out of the bag and I hear it was a riot to watch from land.

I lucked out because they over weighted me so I could get my pumpkin down but it kept floating me to the surface so hubby had to take it down for me. I put it against my chest so that my over weight would take it down. No such luck. Hubby got it down for me though. Then he held it while I cut it open. Once the top came off we weighted it down with water and rocks. While I was carving I broke 2 knives. luckily we took 4 down with us. (You’ll know me underwater by my yellow sleeves although in the green murky water they don’t quite look yellow)

The joke back up on surface was that now that we’ve carved pumpkins we have to go get all the insides and get them out of the water. Yeah right, good luck with that!

Abug played soooooo hard up on surface. Memaw followed her around checking everything out and picking up acorns. She soooooooo wanted to get in the water and couldn’t understand why she wasn’t allowed to. Memaw couldn’t get her to sleep so finally Karen took her and walked away from the crowd and she went to sleep fairly quickly.

While Karen was putting her to sleep, I went and used their truck and a blanket to change back into my street clothes. Then we had to vote for whose pumpkin should win. This time I left my boots down with everyone else so I got to walk across the campsite area barefoot. Man I never had the right shoes at the right place.

So Mike won for Ugliest Pumpkin

Annie won for Best Effort

Tiffany was 3rd. And the blogger was fired for this out of focus picture.

Justin was 2nd.

And Dan was 1st.

Mine is pumpkin #2 (third on the top row)

and our 3rd, 2nd and 1st place winners. Dan and Tiffany are married so Justin wound up in a family sandwich :). haha.

Let me tell you, this wasn’t bad. Water was great, visibility was great. And it was a lot of fun! Back on land, my pumpkin lasted one day. There’s something about that lake water that ruins them. oh well… such is life I guess.

Pumpkin Patches: Annabelle’s Fun Farm

I’ve always said that my falls just go by in the blink of an eye. I guess there is so much going on, but add three holidays in there and wow! Last year I really wanted to take Abug to a pumpkin patch and wanted Tbug to be there. This year same thing, but knowing how my October was the rest of the month, and the fact that we’re over halfway through the month already, I knew that wasn’t going to happen. In fact, it was a quick last minute decision to go to the pumpkin patch this last weekend.

This year we decided to drive to Welch, Oklahoma and go to Annabelle’s Fun Farm. A friend of mine went last year, she has a little girl who is 7 months older than Abug and then a little boy who is a couple years older and it looked like they had fun there last year so that’s kind of one of the decisions in this choice.

There was a petting farm area with a pony (which Abug hated… she loves horses but wasn’t crazy about the pony), goats (didn’t care for), pigs (didn’t like), rabbits (scared of) and birds (chickens, peacocks, etc).

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Crying doesn’t help

I know I’ve mentioned before that I have the timehop app. Well a couple weeks ago a post that I posted like 4 years ago on facebook came across my screen. It was something to do with Some days the bear eats you and some days the bear shits on you. I giggled because I thought, wow I must have been having a bad day. Then yesterday hit and I felt that way all over again.

I’m a firm believer in not airing your dirty laundry on social media and so no I’m not going into details… I just needed to type because sometimes it does get it out of your system and make you feel better.

Now I know I’m being vague and sometimes I get annoyed, especially on facebook, when people say pray for me or them or us or we or whatever, you know what I’m saying and that’s all the details they give you. I just want to go, well am I praying that you get a new job, money, a car, your fingernails to grown an inch, what exactly am I praying for here people. At least give some details, right? And truthfully I could do that same thing with this, the thing is I don’t know what I want someone to pray for for me about anyway so I guess there’s that conundrum.

Let’s just put it this way, Baby girl is okay, Tbug is okay, hubby is okay, I am okay, my family is okay, it’s just something that happens and frustrates you and you want to go WHAT? but then life moves on.

My dad quoted my neighbor last night and said, “Deification occureth.” Didn’t make me feel any better but he’s right. I do have to wonder if I’m being punished for something. And there I go again making you think huh? But just know that “Deification occureth” and smile. Maybe your smile will rub off on me :).

Oh and I found one of the problems with me… I cry. I get happy I cry, sad I cry, mad I cry, irritated I cry. Yup… but I’ve never thought of myself as a crier… although I should really have that checked out.

Cheers

Want to Ride Along?

One phrase I can tell you about farm life… if anyone ever wants you to “ride along” with them… what that really means is, come be the gate b****.

haha. Okay so maybe that’s a bit harsh, but basically it means that you’re the passenger, you get to get the gate so the driver doesn’t have to get out.

And I’ve mentioned before I hate getting the gates when I am the driver... that’s why I used to always leave the gate open and drive my grandpa nuts. Now I drive my uncle nuts. But let me be clear, if the cows are up by the gate/road, I get out and close the gate, every time. It’s just if they aren’t up by the road or they’re in the bottom pasture, surely I won’t be there that long so I leave it open. Then I watch from the house. I too need to point out that there is a cattle guard that is supposed to keep them in. But to be on the safe side we don’t trust it. Sadly people are sue happy these days.

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Are you jealous? Be jealous!

As we’re approaching lunch time, isn’t it a good time to blog about food? I think so :). And it’s my blog after all so that’s what I’m going to do. I really think this weekend evolved or maybe that’s revolved around food. You be the judge :).

Friday night after hubby loaded the trailer with hay, we decided to run into town to go to dinner. I really wanted Italian and there’s a new Italian restaurant so we decided to check it out. It’s a good thing we did! Vito’s Italian Restaurant.

Since they are a new restaurant they are still ironing out the hitches… Our waiter forgot to bring us bread, but the hostess fixed that quickly. Our server had quite a few tables too so no big deal. The bread was good. I agree with hubby it would have been nice to have oil to dip it in, but the bread was very good. Oh and it was good dipped in the cream sauce from my entrée.

Speaking of my entrée, here’s what I had. I can’t remember what it was called but it was fantabulous. Yes I said fantabulous. It was ham and black olives sautéed with tortellini in a cream sauce with a touch of red sauce. Oh wow. And Abug even ate this up.

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Buzz’s BBQ – Nevada, MO (plus hotel & Chiefs game)

I ate BBQ two days in a row. That never happens! But Saturday night we were headed toward Kansas City for the Chiefs game the next day and decided to stop for dinner in Nevada at Buzz’s BBQ.

There were 9 of us so we had to wait a few minutes to get a table. I took the opportunity to take pictures of some of the decor… and you know, freak out the people I was with. ha! At one point they thought I was taking a picture out the window, instead I took the picture above. haha. What can I say….

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Farm Tour: Do Farmer’s have computers?

Growing up I’ve been presented with some extremely amazing opportunities.

  • I learned to drive a truck at 4 years old in a freak lightening storm in the middle of the night, in a hay field. And it should be noted that not one bale got wet and I only drove over like 2 or 3. Hey I couldn’t see over the steering wheel at first. I had to sit on my dad’s hard hat.
  • At 6 years old I could fly across the field in a Chevy S-10. I slid the seat all the way forward and could reach the break and gas. There’s good stories there too!
  • At 12 years old I was driving a Standard Transmission like you were supposed to hitting the clutch and shifting gears.
  • I learned to drive a tractor sometime around that same time frame.
  • I learned the value of hard work and persistence.
  • Animals get fed before you do.
  • I’ve traveled all around Southwest Missouri, Columbia, Sedalia, Kansas City, Louisville, KY, Washington D.C., All over South Dakota, up to North Dakota, all over Oklahoma, Southeast Kansas, Northwest Arkansas, Northern Texas and even out of the country to Costa Rica.

So what? People get to do things like traveling all the time. Well mine is all thanks to Agriculture. I’ve traveled where Agriculture wasn’t involved yes, but because of agriculture and farm life I’ve had more opportunities and experiences than I could imagine.

Last Friday I got provided with another opportunity because of Agriculture but also because of blogging. The Missouri Women’s Bloggers teamed up with the Missouri Farm Bureau to do a Southwest Missouri Fall Farm Tour.

Emileigh from Flashback Summer, Me, Pamela from Thrive Personal Fitness, Trent Drake (Production Agriculture Farmer), Alicia from The Sensible Family, Fawn from Instead of the Dishes.

This is the second fall tour that the Missouri Women Bloggers and the Missouri Farm Bureau have done. The first was up around the Kansas City area.

I met Laurie through other means of blogging last summer, early fall and instantly fell in love with her blog, because well it’s about Agriculture. I pointed her in the direction of the Missouri Women Bloggers and she was actually able to attend the Fall Farm Tour in the Kansas City area. While they were on their tour, they were eating lunch and a local the Chief of Police in the town of Garden City posed the question, why tour farms? (If you want to read about that, you definitely should!)

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