Scattered Thoughts . . .

W henever the grandkids are staying with us, we try to do a weekly weenie roast followed by S'mores over a fire in the backyard.  Of course, the weather must cooperate and, naturally, the weather has been rather lousy this past week for the kids' first week here with us.  Fortunately, we managed to have a weenie roast on a rather chilly, damp but dry evening under overcast skies.  The fire definitely helped keep us warm even though it was a bit chilly.  And, regardless of a little bit of dampness and chilliness, we had a nice meal and a really nice time! The hot dogs roasted over the fire were delicious and I made some New York Deli-style potato salad to go along with them.  I don't make that potato salad often enough!   Here are a few photos from the evening (photos shot mostly by Lukey and Kenzie this time) followed by a very short video...

I had previously written about Kenzie taking over photographer duties for me at a family bonfire event.  Later in the evening, I grabbed my camera and picked up where Kenzie left off. As the sun went down, it got colder and darker.  Kenzie was now having difficulty capturing people without motion blurring so badly that you can't identify the people in the shots so it was my turn to be the photographer.  She did an awesome job during the daylight hours though and that gave me a nice break!   As expected, Kenzie fluidly switched gears and focused more on S'mores and sparklers. We were in the yard out beyond the fairly new solar panels.  It was a good day for solar energy! We roasted hot dogs over the fire for dinner.  I brought along some bacon, shredded lettuce, chopped tomato and homemade maple honey mustard for some BLT Hot Dogs for anyone who wanted to try one.  Mmmm...  I could go for one now! It was definitely getting colder out at this poin

Lukey had a burning desire to learn how to start a fire so Liza arranged for a small gathering of people for some hot dogs and s'mores around a fire in Nan and Pop's backyard.  Pop and Lukey had already gathered a huge pile of kindling when Gee and I arrived. Actually, they've been collecting this kindling from the lawn for weeks. The fire pit was ready to go when everyone arrived. The most difficult part of starting this fire was for Lukey to effectively operate the little aim-n-flame lighter. It was obvious that the safety trigger was effective! Even Gee has difficulty with it! Next time, Lukey wants to try to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together.  We'll see how that goes when the time comes. It certainly was nice for Sheila and I to get out of the house for a short while after a rather miserable week. I didn't last long though as my energy level drained very quickly so we called it a night rather early. It was nice getting out of the house though and

I wrote a couple of days ago about making a couple of hot dogs for lunch. I had created a new recipe but felt it was missing a couple of things. Today, I decided to give it a shot again while it was fresh in my memory.... Hot dogs in oil in a pan until slightly browned and crispy... a slice of crispy smoked bacon on each bun... add the hot dog... squirt on some horseradish sauce...  add some shredded lettuce... add some sliced tomatoes... add some crisp dill pickles sliced crossways... and, finally, sprinkle with salt and pepper...   It was delicious so I'm sticking with this recipe!

Today I needed to search the house for things to eat for lunch... I'm not in much of a mood to wander out into our lousy weather today...  I knew we had some Hebrew National hot dogs in the fridge but I didn't want a plain old typical boring hot dog. I needed to come up with something more interesting. While searching the fridge, I started collecting ingredients that would work for a hot dog. I started with some bacon... I added some horseradish sauce to each of the buns then placed a crisp slice of bacon onto each bun... and I sliced up a couple of dill pickle spears to add on top of the hot dogs. After I fried some shoestring fries in oil, I added two of the hot dogs to the oil and fried them until crisp (the only way to truly cook a hot dog)... then finished topping these hot dogs with the dill pickle slices. After my first bite, I added more horseradish sauce to the top of each hot dog.  This improvised hot dog was very good but, in hindsight, if I had a tomato and so