Snack Attack

I don't know about you, but I am a big sucker for snacks. I love snacks! I love snacks so much that sometimes I snack too much and ruin my appetite for an actual meal, just like a little kid. Some people have a certain preference for a snack like something salty, sweet, chocolate, cold, etc. Not me, I go for anything. I can also make snacks out of some weird stuff like mixing peanut butter and honey together in a bowl and eating that. Right now I am absently minded popping M&M's that are beside the computer as I sit here and type while trying to find the just right song on iTunes inspire blogging creativity.

So when I have been snacking recently I have been taking pictures of my snacks just for fun. Then I realized that I should blog about my snacking habit and see what types of snacks others go for. So after you look at these pictures please comment and let us know what your favorite snack is.



One morning I decided to make muffins (from a box) and they resulted in good snacking opportunities for days to come. Just put a little butter on these bad boys and you are set.



I have a bad obsession with wheat thins. I also think that they taste much better when you get a few in your mouth and then chew them, and chew them, and chem them. After there is no crunch left they are at peak flavor. Maybe a little too much, but anyway.




Double Stuf Oreos with a ice cold glass of milk has to be one of the all time best snacks. I would guess that after reading this someone goes and get their Oreos out of the cabinet or heads to their local grocery store and gets some. Don't forget the milk!

Now it is your turn. Leave a comment below and tell the world (OK, we only have 28 followers, but let me have it) what your favorite snack is.

My Belly is FULL!

Catherine and I just got back from an amazing home cooked dinner with the Petrosky family. We had a Facebook message from Ramona (mom) Petrosky and it said that they had our wedding present (blog to come later about this great gift!) and would like for us to come over for dinner and they would give us our gift. Of course Catherine and I were ecstatic about this dinner invitation and quickly replied yes to the invite.

So Ramona cooked a HUGE pan of Chicken Spaghetti, Garlic Bread, and a nice salad to get some vegetables in there. I really out did myself on eating. This was some of the best chicken spaghetti I have ever had. Oh my was it good!

However, better than the food was the great night of conversation we had with the entire family. David (dad), Ramona (mom), Dollie (daughter), DJ (son), and Dillon (son), along with Catherine and I all sat around the table and told stories and had way too many laughs. It was really nice to sit down at a table with a family like the Petrosky's. They are such good people and extremely funny and they have things like the kids height measurements on the wall. The whole atmosphere was very “home-y” and relaxing.

One of my favorite stories of the night was about Pooh the pet raccoon of a mutual friend of ours. Ramona was saying that they had to babysit Pooh one day and before she knew it she turned around and Pooh had both hands shoved into her water glass and was fishing out the ice. Maybe this was one of those stories that you had to be there to fully appreciate it, because the hand gestures of Ramona imitating the raccoon in the water glass were priceless.

The picture is a little different than normal. Usually, we post the pictures individually, but this time I did things a little different. I made a collage using some snapshots from the evening. We had talked about trying to take some pictures of people but once I got to using both my hands to shovel in the Chicken Spaghetti I didn't want to get the camera dirty.

Caroline Anne McCain

Today Catherine and I got to have lunch with one of our favorite people, Caroline McCain, even though she brought her parents along with her we will had a great time. Caroline is the daughter of our close friends Caleb and Anne McCain. We met up at Larry's today to eat a wonderful lunch. You cannot tell it by the pictures but this morning Caroline had to have tubes put in her ears to help combat ear infections she has been having recently. When I heard that Caroline had to have this surgery, I got real nervous. But as you can see from the pictures below there was nothing to be worried about.

On another note, Caroline will be having her first birthday tomorrow. Not to sound all "grandpa-ish" but I can remember the day she was born. I had an exam the morning that Caroline was going to be born. My exam was first thing in the morning so I thought that I would have plenty of time to make the two hour trip back to Wharton from College Station. However, when I got done with my exam I ran into the hallway to call Catherine to get an update on Caroline's arrival and the report was that Caroline was ready to show her pretty face to us. I thought "Great, I am going to miss it!" So I ran to my truck and started towards the hospital. About every 15 minutes I would get an update from Catherine about the situation. I will say that I was not too worried about Anne but more nervous about Catherine who was at the hospital and seemed very confused, nervous, and excited all at the same time.

I was going as fast as I could to make it there but it looked like Caroline was determined to beat me. When I was only a few minutes away Catherine called me again. She reported that I needed to hurry up and get there because she (Catherine) was getting very nervous and was not sure what to do. She told me that there was a lot of yelling and running around of nurses and she was not sure 1) what was happening and 2) if she could handle any more. I quickly reassured her that everything would be fine, but in the back of my mind I was thinking that Catherine could freak out at any moment!

I finally got to the hospital just as they were weighing Caroline and getting her all bundled up so we could hold her. Catherine quickly found me and told me that she did not think that we could have kids, it was just too stressful! However in the year since her arrival Catherine has got much more used to kids and I think that she is over her fear of newborns.

Here are a few snapshots of Caroline from lunch. I would have more, but people were looking at me weird with my camera so I put it away.







Caleb (Caroline's Dad) made a very funny quote about this picture. He said "That's all she does, eat all our money!"

Beef It's What's For Dinner!

Catherine and I have been on a mission to cook as many meals as we can at home. One of our favorite recipes is a slow cooked roast recipe that we found in a cookbook put out by one of our local churches. Everyone knows those church ladies know how to cook and this wonderful recipe shows just that. So tonight we tried to take pictures along the way so we could share this easy and delicious meal.

The ingredients you will need are:

• 1 Beef Roast (we have tried different cuts, but haven't found one we like more than others)
• 1 packet Onion Soup Mix
• 2 cans Cream of Mushroom Soup or Golden Mushroom Soup
• 1 soup can full of water

Here is what you need to do.

First brown your meat. We put some Season Salt, Pepper, and flour on the meat and then put it into a dutch oven with a little oil in the bottom. Once one side is brown (about 3-4 mins) turn it over and hopefully it will look like this.

Once the roast has browned remove it to a plate.

This step is optional, but we poured a little red wine into the pan to loosen up all of the wonderful brown bits stuck to the bottom.

After you get all those pesky bits off the bottom of the pan, add the mushroom soup, can of water, and onion soup mix. we also added a few sliced mushrooms to the mix.

Next put the roast back into the pan. Like this.

Then push the roast to the bottom of the pan and make sure that the roast is covered in what will soon be the most wonderful gravy you have ever had.

Put this in the oven at 300 and cook for as long as you can, at least three hours. You can also add some vegetables into the pan during the last hour of so of cooking. We added some sliced new potatoes to ours.

For many this would be all they would want for dinner but we also had some cornbread and Catherine's amazing dump cake. This is another great recipe that only has three ingredients. 1) one box yellow cake mix. 2) your favorite pie filling. 3) butter, and a lot of it. All you do it put the pie filling in a pan, the put the dry cake mix on top, and finally cover the top in little globs of butter. Then cook at 350 until the top is brown.

The cornbread as it is baking in the oven.

The dump cake with a big scoop of Blue Bell Vanilla right on top!

If any of you readers out there have any good recipes that you would like to share, please comment and leave us your favorites.

A lazy Saturday

Here it is 4:30 in the afternoon and I just got out of the shower. I am pretty sure that is about as lazy as you can get on a Saturday. Our morning consisted of catching up on our TiVo and then watching random reality shows. It is possible that I could still be sitting on the couch flipping back and forth between Food Network and some fishing show, but I have very exciting news to report. Last night Catherine's grandpa called and asked us if we would like to join them for dinner at...(drum roll please)...Swingin' Door BBQ in Richmond, Texas. What is so special about that? Well the Swingin' Door just happens to be the same place that we had our rehearsal dinner for the wedding.

A little bit of a back story on this place. Lesli (our wedding coordinator at the place we got married) recommended this place to us after we told her that we just wanted a casual, laid back dinner that had some Texas flair to it. Since I am from Indiana (and still lovingly referred to as a Yankee after almost 5 years of being out of the great North) I wanted to share some Texas food with my other Yankee guests and who doesn't like good BBQ. So my parents booked our dinner at the Swingin' Door and Catherine and I had every intention to go to the restaurant and try the food before we had our close friends and family there for our rehearsal dinner. Well as many of you know, the closer your wedding gets the less time you have to go out and try new restaurants - you are just struggling to get everything done before your guests start to arrive. With that being said, we never got the chance to go eat. So the night of the rehearsal came and I was a little nervous about the food.

No one in our group had ever ate at Swinging Door... but we were pleasantly surprised with how awesome the food and atmosphere was! My parents had reserved an entire private room for us and arranged for us to be served family style, where each table got their own dishes to share. It was great! We had a wonderful time. Of course, Catherine and I had a pretty big day the next day, so neither of us ate too much. The day of the wedding, we had a pretty fancy meal including prime beef tenderloin, mushroom risotto, crab cakes, empanadas, wedding cake, grooms cake truffles, southwestern egg rolls, chicken tenders (Cat's favorite), imported cheeses and fruits,... etc. We had a real spread! But all of us in the wedding party kept mentioning how great the barbecue was from the night before and how we couldn't wait to go back.

Well... now we'll get our chance! We're just about to make the thirty minute drive over to Richmond and have a fun night out with Catherine's grandparents and mom. Just another rockin' Saturday night in our life!

Hopefully we'll get some pictures to share from our meal tonight.

Here's some pictures I took this week on some of my adventures.

Just down the road from our Brahman showbarn there is a house that always has an assortment of animals, both large and small. I was driving to Wharton to meet Catherine and Larry's for lunch and when I drove by this place the goats and mini horse were close to the fence so I took a quick picture.

Right next to Larry's restaurant there is a little park and the Wharton Art Club has painted some really cool flowers on the side of a building. I have not noticed this place in all the time I have been in Texas, but the other day I drove by and saw this neat place.