Well, hello there...

Hi! Thank you all for to nice comments. I wish I could give each of you a BIG HUG!

Weekend Update

Lori did manage to skip out of work a little early on Friday, which gave us a tad bit of a head start on the weekend and our marathon snuggling session Friday night before dinner. **cough** **1 1/2 hours** **cough** By the time we were done snuggling, it was late, so we both agreed to put off eating the dinner we had planned. It was going to take a while to prepare and sitting down to dinner at 10:00 at night just wasn't what we wanted to do. So instead we hopped down to Wendy's for burgers. (Actually I drove us there in the car, but you get the idea)

Saturday we ate breakfast at the diner and then we did a little shopping. On the way home, we stopped in town for the harvest festival. This was one of the worst festivals they've had in a very long time, e.g., very few vendors, lack of food.

For dinner Saturday night I prepared the dinner I had planned for Friday night. I cooked couple of marinated T-bone steaks with mushrooms and onions, orange cauliflower with real cheese sauce, (not that Campbell's canned stuff I usually use) and baked sweet potatoes. (I really nuked the sweet potatoes, but I guess I can still call them baked) And the steaks were on sale for $4.99 a pound instead of the usual $9.99 a pound. Cool, huh?

Sunday morning Lori asked me to make scrambled eggs for breakfast. I mixed in the leftover mushrooms and onions from the steak dinner and some graded cheddar cheese too. Lori set up the table on the deck and we ate breakfast out there.

By the time we finished breakfast it was 1:00 and time for the Giant’s game. (the Giant’s won BTW, and beat the Redskins) Lori isn’t much of a football fan and decided to clean up the dining room instead. That may not seem like much to you, but it was quite a chore and greatly appreciated by me. You may not know it, but I have this gift for overlooking my clutter, so cleaning up the dining room was a lot of work.

Sunday for dinner I made Baked Chicken and Spinach Stuffing. Saturday we watched the Pillsbury Bake-Off on the Food Network and that was the million dollar winner. It looked so good that Lori asked me to cook it for dinner on Sunday. It was easy to make and excellent.

They recommend bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts, but I used boneless and skinless. (BTW, they were on sale too for $2.99 a pound) You put the chicken in a baking dish and spread on a mixture of syrup, peach preserves and Worchester sauce. Put that in a 350F oven for 30 minutes while you prepare the stuffing.

Sauté some onion in butter and then mix in the seasonings and cut up frozen waffles. (I thought using waffles was weird too, but trust me, it’s good) Next pour in some chicken broth. (double what they call for or it will be too dry) Then mix in chopped spinach. Put the mixture in a loaf pan and sprinkle chopped pecans over the top.

When the chicken has baked for 30 minutes, put the stuffing in the oven next to the chicken. Bake for an additional 30 minutes. (the recipe calls for baking for 20 & 20 minutes, but that’s not enough time for the chicken to cook thoroughly)
While that is baking, mix yourself a cocktail of your choice and hang out until dinner is ready. (I prefer gin & tonic myself)

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Speaking of gin and tonic, Lori and I did a gin and tonic taste test over the weekend. Friday, I went to the liquor store to stock up for the weekend. I saw all these different brands of gin and decided to buy a bunch of different ones so we could decide which brand we liked best. I bought our usual, Burnett’s and a bottle of Bombay, Tanqueray and Beefeater’s. I bought Fleischmann‘s last week and we ruled that brand out when compared to the Burnett’s then. I also bought a few different brands of tonic, both diet and regular.

The winner on the Lori and Tony Taste test was Burnett’s London Dry Gin mixed with Seagram’s Diet Tonic Water! I really was surprised at the results since the Burnett’s is about half the price of the Bombay, Tanqueray and Beefeater’s. I guess price isn’t indicative of what is always the best, huh?