Five For Friday

1.  Jay and Seth are going on a boy scout Klondike campout tonight.  With our -15 degree overnight low temps of late, it is a relief that the expected low is only supposed to be 7 degrees while they camp.  Jay is nervous as scoutmaster that the boys he doesn't have control over, in other words, everyone else besides Seth, will be underprepared for the conditions.  I don't envy him his task or his chilly environment.

Ready before school this morning.  Jay is going to pick him up and off they'll go!

One of the challenges of the camp, besides staying warm, is a sort of Iron Chef Cook Off.  They have 50 minutes to present a meal to the judges with three components.  The meal must include something pickled, and the ingredients lime and cilantro.  Exactly the kind of things you'd think boyscout aged boys would enjoy eating, right?  Crazy enough, we found a couple of recipes that just might be good, depending on how adventuresome your tastebuds are.  For the pickled food, we found a pickled pulled beef sandwich on Paula Dean's website.  Those southerners sure think of some odd ways to prepare food.  Simple enough, all Jay needed was a 2 pound chuck roast and a 24 oz jar of dill pickle spears.  Dump the pickles with juice onto the roast, crockpot on low for at least 12 hours, add some pepper, shred and....voila: pulled pickled beef.  His troop is going to top it with a cilantro and lime coleslaw and serve it on a hamburger bun.  Neat.

I hope it tastes better than it smells

Jay considered cooking it overnight up there with a dutch oven, but neither of us have ever used one and he is already taking a large camp stove we purchased for the pioneer Trek a few years back, so, for sake of ease and making sure the meat was actually cooked, he cooked it in the crockpot, here in the house, and plans to reheat it on the campstove.  All perfectly legal but I woke up nauseated by the pungent smell of cooked pickles on beef!  It's a good thing I am not pregnant because this is the kind of smell that would have sent me hurling.  The website warned us as much (look at the bottom of the recipe) so we set the crockpot in the sunroom, thinking that would be far enough away from where we usually are that the smell wouldn't be too bad.  As luck would have it, Jay can't smell a thing!  It's like his olfactory glands don't pick up this particular scent of nasty.  Unfair but it'll all be over soon enough.  If only it would have been the coleslaw that needed to be pre-prepared.  That looks tasty!

2.  It seems like a chocolate protein shake would be right up my alley for meal replacements.  Sometimes, if its cold enough and I'm feeling motivated to be skinny enough, it is.  But, I think I like to chew too much.  I miss chewing if too many smoothie type beverages are in the lineup.  Today, I was a little disturbed when I opened my pantry cupboard to pull down the Jay Robb Egg White Protein mix and see this man staring back at me.  I get that he's ripped and he's probably trying to associate his physique with his miraculous brand of powder, but, if you're going to be showing off a bare chest, you better be at the beach or post workout.  Just posing in an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt is sending me mixed messages.  Messages like, "I'm a creepy guy and you shouldn't buy my product!"

The cross...the shirt....the body oil...the goatee.  It's just not my thing. 

3.  I just got back from a soda run and noticed I am wearing my pants inside out.  That isn't good.

4.  For the past three months, our primary chorister has been very hit and miss.  At least twice a month, I have had to step in at the last minute and do an impromptu singing time.  If it was a sharing time, I'd have anxiety ulcers by now but I'm much more comfortable leading a singing activity on the spot.  Unfortunately for the kids in our primary, those off the cuff singing sessions don't come with any primary glamour, namely laminated visuals.  Truth be told, even with advanced warning, the likelihood of me bearing cricut produced good is very low.  If it can't be done on the chalkboard, it's probably above my artistic level.

Well, primary chorister has been released and new primary chorister has yet to be called so I am also officially the interim primary chorister until further notice.  The song of the month is "I Am A Child of God" and most of the kids know the first verse well enough but if I were a gambling woman, I'd bet against most of them knowing the other three verses.  So, here's my idea using a crazy combination of three oft-used primary games.  I am going to sit the children in a circle.  Following the format of the game Hot Potato, they will pass around an actual potato while singing (or listening to)  the various verses of I Am a Child of God.   Before the song begins,  one participant will roll a number die.  Whichever number faces up is the number of words in order the person holding the potato when the music stops will need to produce.  In a twist of the game "Hangman", I will bring a Mr. Potato Head and if whomever's turn it is to deliver the next few words can't successfully remember, parts of Mr. Potato Head will come off.  The last piece will be his mouth.  I'm calling the game, "Don't Let Mr. Potato Head Lose His Voice!"  We'll keep repeating a verse until he either loses his voice or I decide everyone knows it well enough to move on to another verse.  Too confusing?  Too many games going on?  I'm a believer in musical repetition being a great memory device and if you can trick kids into forgetting how often they are singing the exact same song, the words get into their head.  I write this all out because I've been burned before.  Sometimes, an idea I think is great or even just plausible, will go very badly.  If something doesn't make sense or you can imagine  this entire game going down in a ball of bored singers' flames, please speak (comment) up!  I've still got a day for adjustments or an entirely new idea.

His mouth would be the last to go.  He even looks like he's singing!

5.  I leave one week from today for Israel!!!!!

Let's hope there's none of this:

No missles!  No need to use the Iron Dome!

And lots of this:



Not promising an exact recreation of pose or outfit, but I'll try.