When they arrived home from the festival, my wife was excited to show me that she had purchased some hickory syrup from a vendor at the festival. Neither one of us had ever even heard of hickory syrup before, and she said that the booth caught her eye. Having lived in New England for much of our lives, she was familiar with maple syrup – but what was this hickory syrup stuff like? The vendor was giving out free sample tastes, and all three of them had a sample. They all agreed that it was quite tasty, and bought a small bottle of it to bring home to share with the rest of the family. They told me that there was live music, and a lot of vendors and free food samples. And lots of funnel cake booths! Back in New England we called them “Doughboys” and they are so tasty! I guess that the next time my wife extends invitations to go to a festival I should accept it and go along.

After the festival they stopped at a grocery store to pick up the fixings for lasagna for dinner, and when they arrived home they prepared a really nice lasagna and served it with garlic and cheese bread. We created our own dessert by combining lemon cookies and vanilla creme cookies – the combination of the two cookies was much tastier than either cookie by itself. We talked about putting some vanilla frosting in between the cookies to make them stick together, but decided against it for today. Maybe next time!

When I go to any other place that sells sweet tea, it is not nearly as sweet. In fact a lot of the times I order a sweet tea and I would have to say that the tea that I get had no sweetener in it at all. So I end up dumping three or four sweetener packets into the tea.

I wish that McDonald’s would sell a sweet tea that had a sugar substitute in it. I like the Truvia and the Splenda sweeteners, and if they would use those sweeteners in their sweet tea I would not be so worried about the calorie count in it. Now that I know how many spoonfuls of sugar there are in their sweet tea I might start ordering the tea unsweetened and just add my own Truvia or Splenda. I gotta watch my weight!

Going to the Lost Dog Cafe with Sue and Jarod today was interesting. I’ve heard about the Lost Dog Cafe before, and have wanted to go there for the past few months, so I was really glad when they suggested that we go there today. We split a large Polynesian pizza, which was really good. It has been several years since I’ve had a Polynesian pizza that had bacon on it; most of the pizza places just puts ham and pineapple on it. This one had ham, pineapple, bacon, and shrimp on it. I asked for ginger ale to drink and was given a brand of ginger ale I’d never had before – I think it was called Dominion ginger ale. It was sweetened with honey, or maybe raw cane sugar – I can’t remember which, but it was very good.

After the pizza, we drove Jarod back to his apartment, and he invited us to come in and check out his new digs. I’ve been there before a couple of times, but Sue never had been there before, so we went in for the nickle tour. While Jarod was showing Sue around, I asked if I could use the bathroom, and Jarod told me to go ahead and use the one that was in the hallway outside of his room.

I was rather surprised to see that there was a new vessel sink in the bathroom; it looked a little bit out of place in the house. Don’t get me wrong, I really like the look of vessel sinks! The house is an old brick cape cod style that was built probably in the 1940′s in an older neighborhood. Seeing the clear vessel sink and an oriental-inspired faucet that looked like a stick of bamboo just seemed a little bit out of place in that house. I know that I’m not an interior decorator, but I would have expected a more traditional pedestal sink in a house like that. I wondered what prompted the building owner to choose that style of sink.

This was the first use of the grill this year, and I have to say that these steaks were the most delicious steaks that I’ve tasted in a very long time! Usually I use some A-1 sauce on my steaks, but this time the steak did not need any seasoning at all. Chicken just can’t hold a candle to a perfectly cooked Porterhouse steak.

I have to say that I was expecting something a little bit bigger than what came out of the box. The photos on the box are about 50% bigger than the actual biscuit and chicken. In fact, if you are expecting a chicken sandwich like you buy at Wendy’s fast food restaurant, you will be very disappointed.

Anyway, I popped open the cellophane and put these two tiny biscuits on a paper plate and let them nuke for a minute. That heated them up nicely and anything longer would have turned those biscuits into hockey pucks. The piece of chicken is about the size of a McDonald’s chicken nugget. So I added a piece of sliced American cheese and a slap of mayonnaise and had a couple chicken sliders. Not bad for the price and the convenience, once you know what to expect.

I pile a bunch of bite sized nacho chips on my plate, sprinkle “fiesta” cheese on top and microwave it for about 20 seconds.  I have to watch it carefully to make sure the cheese doesn’t get too bubbly because then it gets hard.  As soon as the cheese is melted, I stop the microwave and pull out the plate.  I pour a little salsa on top, and maybe a little bit of sour cream if I have some, and there you go – a wonderful snack!  Quick and easy.  In fact, I’m going to make myself a plate of nachos right now!  I’ve made myself hungry!

Now that we’re all adults, we don’t color the eggs or buy the candy; we are all watching our weight and trying to lead healthier lives. But one thing that I DO like to do is to buy Easter Lilies to give to my mother, sisters, and my wife as Easter gifts. They are always very glad to see them, and are quite pleased that I would think to buy them a gift at Easter.

We got into the store and opened up our reusable shopping bag to get the list and coupons out – they weren’t there! Oh no! Checked her purse – not there either! Went back to the car – nope, not in the car! Called home, son answered the phone. Yup, we left the list and coupons on the counter! Man, I hate when that happens! Well, we bought the stuff we could remember from the list that we knew we did not have coupons for, and luckily for us we remembered the requirements for the mystery shop. We’ll just have to finish up the grocery shopping the next time we go into town – with the list and coupons next time (I hope!)