Labor Day Weekend

We had a fabulous Labor Day weekend. On Friday night we went to an Astros baseball game with some friends. We sat about 15 rows back, behind home plate! I have never sat so close in a baseball game that I could see every players' facial expression.

The view from our seats

Us at the game

After the Astros won the game, there were fire works. While they were taking the roof off of the ballpark to set-up for the firework display, there was an eating contest. This contest wasn't just for the normal, run-of-the-mill eater. This contest had some serious eating competitors. If you follow the famous Coney Island 4th of July Hotdog Eating Contest then you would know of many of the competitors there. The 2 time winner from Coney Island, Joey Chestnut, was there along with his arch rival, Pat Bertoletti. In this particular contest the contestants had to eat as many kolaches in 10 minutes as possible. This was not a pretty contest to watch, but Joey Chestnut ate 45 kolaches, beating Bertoletti by 3. I'm glad that the fireworks were so good to help me forget the kolache eating contest details.

Taking the roof off of the stadium

Kolache eating contest

Fireworks

On Saturday, Phil went brewing with a friend (it entertains me to think of Phil as a chef hehe) and his wife came over to our house. Us girls went to the pool, while our hubbies were cooking. Since they were in the kitchen all day (like 8 hours!!!), we decided to make them dinner. Central Market was having an amazing special: ribeye steaks that were normally $16.99 per pound were only $5.99 per pound! We picked up some steaks for the men and some fresh salmon for us. For our appetizers we made jalapeno poppers and a Jarlsberg cheese spread. Since we are both in the cookbook club we figured that we should choose some dishes to cook from the book. So with our main course we grilled fresh vegetables and made Parmesan Smashed Potatoes.

Some of the ingredients the guys were using to cook with....looks like Christmas ingredients, doesn't it?!

Grilled vegetables- page 166. (This is a fool-proof recipes that is open to the chef's personal taste. We used squash, zucini, portabello mushrooms, and asparagus. Yum-0!)

Parmesan Smashed Potatoes-page 158 (This recipe has a lot of fatty ingredients in it. We left out the butter and the half-and-half. In the future I don't think I will do that, but instead follow this recipe a bit more closely for taste.)

After church on Sunday we went and played tennis (it was so hot!). After all the running around in the heat we came home and moved to part 2 of the Rocky marathon. I have not seen the Rocky series, which appears to be a cardinal sin in our household, so I decided that I would start getting to know this Rocky character. Last week I watched Rocky 1 and this Sunday I watched Rocky 2...so I'm well on my way to being a Rocky expert. We ordered a pizza and called it a day. On Monday, Labor Day, we did a lot of chores. That's something that I love doing on federal holidays. I know we are supposed to use the time to rest and remember...but I never do that. For some reason I always think that those days off are better spent working because no one else is, in theory of course. I'm not sure why I think that, I just do. Anyhow so we got a lot of stuff done around the house, went to the gym, and did a lot of work for school. Right before we had dinner, we got in the pool for about an hour just to cool off and enjoy the day. For dinner, (Phil loves "left-overs," and I wont say that I don't, it's just that they get boring to me) I took the left-over grilled vegetables from our Saturday night cookout, sliced them smaller, added some lean beef, and wheat rice and wa-la, we had stir-fry.

In addition to the grilled vegetables (page 166) being tasty on their own, they are also yummy when used in a stir-fry.

All-in-all we had a great Labor Day weekend and are ready to start the new week!