This week, I am simply thankful to have a kitchen to cook in, and food in the cupboards and money in the bank so I will be able to buy more. In our community, we have around 600 evacuees and our church had the opportunity to provide one of their meals on Monday. I've never felt so sad and blessed at the same time as I cooked in my nice clean kitchen that day.

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I"m back from my girl's trip to Gulf Shores, AL. We made it back just in time to avoid the hurricane. The trip back on Sunday should have been an 8 hour trip, instead it took 13 hours due to evacuation traffic.

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I went to eat at Texas Roadhouse with my SIL (sister-in-law) last night. Texas Roadhouse is a steakhouse (one of those types with the football games on the TV's and peanut shells on the floor).

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This week will not involve very much cooking. I"m going on a girl's trip to the beach this weekend and we have teacher's meetings so the cooking will be minimal. Last night I fixed tacos, which is a great family meal. I always cook two pounds of meat when I do tacos so we can have taco salad the following night. Just reheat the meat, chop up more lettuce, tomatoes and cheese. Also buy tortilla chips to crunch over the salad. Serve with salsa, ketchup (at least for my kids) and cheese sauce

This is my favorite way to fix corn. The sauteeing adds extra flavor to the corn and doesn't take very long to do.

Skillet Corn

4 cups whole kernel corn (either 2 cans or a small bag of frozen)
1 can cream style corn
2 Tb. butter
Salt and pepper

Melt the butter over medium high heat in a large saucepan. When the foaming subsides, add the whole kernel corn. Now, this is the hard part. Let the corn cook for several minutes before stirring to give the corn time to caramelize.

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"Everything you see, I owe to spaghetti." Sophia Loren

"I've endured many horrible things in my life, some of which actually happened." Mark Twain (I think)

This is my favorite macaroni & cheese recipe. It is much simpler than making it from scratch, but tastes very similar, with the same texture and everything. I even fooled several family members with it last Thanksgiving. It's also fast enough to do on a weeknight if you are also cooking some sort of meat that takes a little while to cook. I don't remember where I got the recipe, but it has become my favorite. Homestyle Macaroni & Cheese 8 oz. elbow macaroni 10 oz. jar of Alfredo sauce

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Romance over Chinese food Well, maybe not. but it is nice to go out for lunch with my husband. There is a local joint owned by a Chinese family that we like to go to called Chen Chen's. We like to go out for lunch cause it is cheaper than going at night and we can go without making arrangements for the kids. The food is pretty good although I pretty much eat vegetarian there. I love the fried rice, lo mein noodles and fried biscuits but some of the meat is questionable. I have a thing

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I enjoy crocheting off and on. I am going to start on a shawl for my daughter to wear this winter. I have some bright blue yarn I bought a couple of months ago that I thought would look pretty for the body and I will use lime green for the trim and fringe. She loves bright colors, so I hope she will like it. She broke her leg last week and is in a wheelchair for four weeks. The first day of school was today, so she was the queen of the campus with everyone wanting to help.

My daughter, Anna, and I cooked lasagna tonight.

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