Around The Campfire (week 34)

Dear Campers:

We are camping again this weekend, I'm loving Michigan summer this year - we've been camping a ton (alright, alright, technically it's 'glamping' for sure) and for the most part the weather has been fantastic by the lake, a couple rain days (which made it fun to hole up and read books all day), and not buggy (except those dang spiders, more on that in a sec). Hope you're also still having a nice time even tho summer winding down.

Here's a 'week in review' recap and some random chitchat about the happenings at 'camp' last week.

Posts you might have missed ~
8/19: around the campfire (week 33)
8/20: Marcia's green chili frittata
8/21: t-shirt rag quilt
8/22: buckeye brownie cookies
8/23: freezing tomatoes
8/24: eek - spiders
8/25: skinny margaritas

What's cooking ~

• Dave had grilled lamb chops and potato salad one night when I wasn't home for dinner. He just sprinkles them with seasoning salt and grills, I'm not a fan but he loves them.
• Grilled marinated pork tenderloin, roasted asparagus, orzo mixed with tomatoes, parmesan, coarse salt and pepper, and a little butter
• BLT's made with our fresh homegrown tomatoes - omg, so good.
• Gnocchi with roasted tomatoes, roasted green beans
• grilled strip steaks, iceberg wedge salad
• deli macaroni and cheese, steamed broccoli (I didn't feel like making dinner so Dave went to, get ready for it, Walmart and got just about the cheesiest, creamiest, most delish mac and cheese that I've had in a very long time - whodaknew?)

Miscellaneous stuff keeping me busy but not interesting enough for an entire post ~

• knock on wood but my homemade spider repellant actually seems to be working! We only had a couple yesterday which is about 50 less than we have had lately!
• tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes - really, my week has pretty much been all about tomatoes and what the heck to do with so many. My super nice neighbor brought over a couple to see if we needed any...uh, nope we do not. But thanks anyway Laura!
• roasted cherry tomatoes - one of my all time favorite ways to eat tomatoes is to roast them at 350' with a little olive oil and seasoning (coarse salt, pepper, sometimes italian blend). they are so good over pasta or gnocchi. 
• golfed with the ladies for their end-of-year banquet (I subbed once this year so was invited to their last night event). I didn't play well (that's what happens when you only play once or twice a year!) but it was fun. My sister's last golf counter pin that I made her is fraying already so I'm going to need to remake it. 
• The coconut rum cake I made for Dave's birthday turned out so good - super super moist and everyone loved it. I'll post the recipe this week. 
• I read 'Commonwealth' by Ann Patchett and loved it. It's a multi-generation story about 2 families, sibling relationships, and how the decisions made changed everyone's path and life. Really good. 

That's all for now - I hope you'll check in this week to see what's going on at 'day camp'; there will be rum cake for sure, and maybe if I can figure out how to arm knit you'll see the project I'm working on for my niece's birthday next weekend (I gotta get busy!). Bye!!

Sincerely,

Your camp counselor - Jill