Pico de Gallo

Our niece, Kim, made this yummy recipe this past weekend (more on the weekend later!). When we got home, I immediately got the ingredients and made it for Memorial Day. I'm still enjoying it! The only problem I had was that Wegman's didn't have jalapeno peppers (go figure!) for some reason. I decided to use a different hot pepper (Hungarian...said it's supposed to be moderately hot). I tasted a teeny piece while I was chopping it and found it be at least moderately hot, if not hotter!  But when I mixed it in with the other ingredients, it didn't really give the recipe any spiciness.  So last night, I sprinkled in some of my favorite seasoning (introduced to us by our other niece, Karlyn!). That made it just perfect!!

2 medium tomatoes, diced

1/2 cup diced Spanish onion

2 teaspoons chopped fresh jalapeno pepper, seeded and de-ribbed

2 teaspoons finely minced fresh cilantro

Pinch of salt

Combine all the ingredients in a small bowl.  Cover and chill. 

Thanks for sharing, Kim!!

Where's Waldo?!!?

Alyssa and I took a road trip to visit our friend, Erika, a few weeks ago.  We picked up her mom, Felicia, and headed south.  Well.  Technically, we were going to meet this little guy, Waldo :-)    Wally, as he's affectionately known, is Erika's new little kitty.  He's quite the active little guy!  I think he was pooped by the time we were done playing/visiting with him!

Since our drive was over an hour, clearly it didn't make sense to just meet Wally and head back home, so we made a day trip out of it and got to spend some time with Erika and her mom.  Felicia suggested Chickie's & Pete's for lunch, which was a terrific idea, since we hadn't ever been there.  What a fantastic idea!  The food was great!

This is the crab pizza that Alyssa and I shared.  It was delicious:

This is the shrimp pizza that Erika and Felicia shared:

Moms & daughters:

Hmmm...not even sure what they were thinking here!  LOL!

After lunch we went to a shopping center much like the Promenade Shoppes in Center Valley.  

Here is my big purchase of the day.  Alyssa had been bugging me for eons to replace my wallet . She convinced me this would be a good replacement for the one I had been using for ages.  (Plus it matches the color of my purse much better.  She hated the fact that my purse is purple and my old wallet was red.  LOL.)

And this was Alyssa's big purchase.  The day we went to the wineries she looked everywhere for a cork holder, but just couldn't find the perfect one.  Fortunately, she didn't settle for second best.  She's an owl freak and went nuts when I spotted this owl cork holder!

All in all, a great day!  Although, we're not gonna wait for another year and a half before we do this again!

Our Frodi :-)

It's been a rough couple weeks to be a cat in the Geiger house :-(  I had to take Frodo to the vet today; he's been losing weight, has been more lethargic, and last night I noticed his breathing seemed to be labored.  The vet heard fluid in his lungs when she listened to them; they did a chest xray which showed a pleural effusion (for you non-medical types, that just means fluid surrounding the lungs/heart).

My options at that point were to allow her to tap the fluid out to see what type of fluid it was, which would then help make decisions as to the next step...or well, you know...that other option.  He's 17 years old, has had a good life, was never sick....do we go all out and treat him.... do we say, there's no reason to make him suffer and say, it's time....or do we try and treat him conservatively for a few weeks and see how he does??

The vet felt confident that if she could examine the fluid, it would help her figure out why he had this effusion.  She said the main three reasons they develop are either just an accumulation of lymph fluid, a cardiac problem, or cancer.  The nurse in me decided having a better idea of why/how it got there would help me make the decision as to what the next step should be, so I allowed her to tap him.

While she was doing that, I made a few calls, spoke to the kids and we made the tough, but unanimous decision that if the news was not good, we'd have him euthanized.  Frodo holds a special place in all our hearts, especially mine, it was gonna be tough if that's what it came to; fortunately I got a bit of a reprieve today.

She tapped off 90 cc of fluid and by the looks of it, she felt fairly confident it's cardiac related, which should respond to a diuretic (water pill).  She can't promise it won't re-accumulate, but the Lasix should help keep it under control.  The interesting thing was that after she got rid of the fluid, his breathing was much less labored.  Even now, he looks much more comfortable.

They also drew blood and those results won't be back until tomorrow or Friday, so we could still be looking at more bad news, but at this point, we'll try the diuretic and hope for the best :-)  Our buddy's been a good friend to all of us, we're not quite ready for him to go live with Sassy, but we also don't want him to suffer.  Time will tell.

The good news was I wrapped the teeny tiny pill in a teeny tiny piece of hard salami tonight and he woofed it down!  Hopefully he's not up peeing all night...LOL!!

Happy Mother's Day!

The kids decided to whisk me away on Saturday for a day of fun. I had no clue where we were going....well, until Adam was driving out in the country....and I saw the sign for Franklin Hills winery.  LOL!  We had so much fun!  We went to six different wineries...one of them in Bangor, the rest in the Breinigsville/New Tripoli area.  It turned out there were some special winery events going on at most of them, so it was busier than expected.  Fortunately, the busloads that pulled in, were doing their own thing, thus for the most part, we didn't have to wait to do any tastings.

This was our first stop:

Notice the wine is blue!  It's blueberry:

 And look how orange this wine is:

This was our stop at Woody's Sports Bar in Forks Township for lunch.  Our chauffeur was resting up for the remainder of the trip:

Stop 2:

They were hopping!  Most of the folks there were given a little foil cup with chocolates in them and they paired the wine based on the chocolate.  We didn't get the chocolates, as we were just there for the tasting:

Stop 3:

It was kinda busy here too:

The wine was starting to work :-)

Stop 4, our least favorite:

They had a $5/person tasting fee, but if you bought something they waived it.  Most of their wines were dry, which none of us are crazy about, but these were quite tasty.  It's powder, you add a bottle of wine, then some water and throw it in the freezer.  You can drink it almost any way...slushie, or just cold.

I think I was getting to my limit!  Unfortunately we still had two wineries to go yet...LOL!

Stop 5.  

We also had to come back to this one, when we got there the first time around, there was a bus that had just pulled in and was emptying out.  We couldn't even get in to the parking area!

I really like the inside of this winery:

Stop 5.  Blue Mountain Winery.

Our final stop.  We got there a bit after 5 pm, which was a bad thing.  They had a candlelight and wine event that started at 5 and the place was packed!

Our purchases!  Not too bad for six different wineries :-)

Welcome!!

Never thought I'd be so happy to see these three as I was last week when they showed up! This means that the property that was up for auction alongside us isn't gonna be two houses...it's gonna remain a pasture for these guys :-)

RIP Sassy. 5.11.13.

You had a good long life. We will always love and remember you.

S'prise!

The things you find sitting on your kitchen table :-) This was a nice surprise!

(Note it's over a year old, however...LOL!)

Flowers!

The staff in our office gave me flowers today for Nurse's Day/Week. Aren't they gorgeous??

I have someone trying to figure out, however, to get to them to eat them!

I might also add that I had a half day of vacation today.  Adam came to the office to meet me, everyone was pretty surprised at how tall he really is :)  We then had a wonderful time catching up at lunch at Chili's.  After that, we went shopping to get him a new shirt for when we do our church pictures in a few weeks.

Thanks Adam!!

Adam asked Kurt what he could do to help around the house/property this week. He did it all today :) Thanks! Love you and appreciate you!

He burned the pile (in the rain, I might add!):

He cut down a dead tree:

He tore down the tree house in the apple tree:

He fixed my washline:

And I did about 6 loads of his wash :-)

Buh-Bye!

Uh, I think I've had this clothespin bag since before kids.  It's seen it's better days (as you can see!)  Last year, I tried to find a similar one at a local craft shop, but to no avail.  I'm not sure what possessed me to think that Amazon would have one, but they did, it's actually kinda cute. It's got a neat embroidered clothespin on the front :-)

It Must Be Spring!

Pizza Casserole

Saw this recipe on Facebook yesterday, thought I'd pick up the ingredients today and try it.  We liked it pretty well, I'd make it again.  And the nice thing is that it made a 9x13, which means there's leftovers for a night that I work and don't get home until after when most people have already eaten and are settling in for the night :-(

Ingredients:

 Bottom Layer:

(cooked noodles, cooked ground sausage, spaghetti sauce)

Next layer:

(cottage cheese, mushroom, mozzarella cheese)

Top layer:

(pepperoni)

Finished product:

Yum!

16 oz box Rotini

1 lb. ground Italian sausage

24 oz. jar pasta sauce

16 oz. container cottage cheese

1- 2 1/4 ounce can sliced black olives, drained (optional)

4 oz. can mushrooms, drained (I used 8 oz can)

12 oz. shredded mozzarella cheese

6 oz. sliced pepperoni

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease 9x13 pan.

Cook pasta until al dente.

Cook sausage over medium heat until browned, drain.  Add pasta and sauce.  Pour into 9x13 pan.

In a bowl, mix the cottage cheese, olives, mushrooms and mozzarella cheese.

Spoon the cheese mixture over the sausage and pasta mixture.  Top with pepperoni slices.

Bake 25 minutes in the preheated oven.

(I covered the pan with aluminum foil, and at about 20 minutes, I took the foil off, and added a bit more cheese and some extra pepperoni.  I cooked it an additional 10 minutes to allow it to brown a bit.  I also did not add the black olives as Kurt is not crazy about them.)