Well, I just suddenly realized that I hadn't added anything to the blog since May. Where did the time go? But a lot of things have happened in the meantime. Most importantly on Sunday, June 14th our third grandson, Micah Jacob Willis was born to Karen and Peter. He is an incredibly beautiful little boy, although my judgement may be a little, uh, biased.
We got to see Micah and his older brother, Sol, about two weeks later. Great fun, that. Before we left to go home, our friends John and Olga stopped by to see Micah and Sol. Well, we adults too I guess. John turned out to be surprisingly adept at discovering things in gift bags. As a creative distraction for no longer being the big little man in the house, I found a kid-resistant digital camera so Sol could learn something about photography.
To propceed in no particular chronological order, on July 18th Linda and I went with Bonnie and Terry T to Walla Walla's outdoor theater to see the musical Grease. Since we were seeing Grease, I figured we should eat grease, or rather Greece. So I mad a full blown Greek picnic dinner which we enjoyed in Yantis Park, Milton-Freewater, before the show. By popular request I am providing the menu and links to recipes.
Pita bread: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/pitabread
Black Bean hummus: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Black-Bean-Hummus
Dolma in grape leaves: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Stuffed-Grape-Leaves-Dolmades (I didn't have any ground lamb so I used beef instead.)
Baklava: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Baklava (This really wanted to stick to the bottom of the pan; next time I'll butter the dish a lot more and maybe use buttered parchment paper too. I'd also suggest 1 cup of honey instead of 1/2 cup.)
Cool summer punch: 1 large bottle of cranberry juice, one large can pineapple juice, about a pint of orange juice, simple syrup to sweeten to taste (plain sugar doesn't really dissolve), and 2-liter bottle of ginger ale.
Last but not least was the phone call I received Thursday morning. Vicki W called to ask if I would like to work in the Mailroom at a local institution as a temp hire. So Friday morning I started work! Talk about the answer to prayer. I really needed a job to make it possible for ends to even get within sight of each other, thanks to the tanking of the economy and my retirement funds. I've worked this gig before and I enjoy it very much.
Last byt not least, I'll try to get back to this blog more often and not spend all of my social site time on /facebook.
John
