The Cowboy Grills

What Brig grilled & made for us for dinner one night all by himself. He's growing up!
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California Jared

This will be a double post for the Carter's (I apologize - you can stop reading now;) but I thought my family & friends might enjoy hearing about what I wrote up about Jared's latest 'vacay' to California. ;D
No, seriously Jared spent the whole month of June at Ft. Hunter Liget for Army Reserve Training. It was educational and he enjoyed the little break from his normal routine. These are the pics that I have from his trip. Enjoy!

Jared shaves his head for the occasion - Whoa!

He finds a super duper large pinecone - very cool! I love this pic of him too.

Of course, a picture of one of his meals he really liked - Chinese. He explained to me that it was special because it was the first real meal (cooked by an actual cook) that he had eaten after only MRE's and soldier chow type food in the field for the month. It looks good to me too!

I hope to add more pics from him later.

Hamburgers - an All-American tradition

Hopie shared this link with me from the Discovery Channel. I thought it was pretty interesting to watch so I thought I'd share it with you. Now, granted it is basically a commercial for Burger King but at the same time it is so unique because BK sent people to travel all around the world to find people who had never tasted a hamburger before. It's really fun, I liked the personalities of the people and my children have liked watching it. Homemade hamburgers will always remain my favorite to eat though!

You may have to copy and paste to get this link to work:

http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/from-our-sponsor-taste-test.html

Thanksgiving

Christmas is nearly here and so I better tell you a little of how our Happy Thanksgiving went. It was so great to have Nathan join us this year! We really had a great time.

Our food was wonderful and untraditional. No turkey here, instead we had meat that was made on the BBQ like steak and sausages. We also had homemade cranberry sauce, stuffed celery, green beans and Nathan made his wonderful butternut squash and potatoes.

We also spent a day at the beach in Corpus Christi. One day just isn't long enough. We'll need to spend more than just one day next time, for sure. It was my first time going to the Gulf Coast and I didn't know what to expect but we had a really nice time. Noah and Gracie did just fine also.

I hope you enjoy the photos!

Creme Brulee

Creme Brulee is a very rich, dainty custard type dessert that you'll want to have only for special occasions.
Jared had us wake up before 7 a.m. on Tues. Sept. 2 and make creme brulee with him before he had to go to work. Jared, I, and Gracie helped make it. I think it turned out well for our first time. I still like cheesecake, or my all time favorite - a great cookie, better, I think. We did different variations like plain, orange and nutmeg, raspberries and dark chocolate, orange and dark chocolate. My favorite was the orange peel with dark chocolate while Jared liked the orange and nutmeg better. Overall, it turned out well and it was fun for something quite different to eat. It is definately a once in a while type dish.
Here is the link to the recipe we used: Creme Brulee at allrecipes.com

Dessert for Breakfast?

"Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper."
~Adelle Davis

Yes, we actually had dessert for breakfast on Sunday. Jared and Hopie had been dying to make this dessert again. It's actually quite a simple recipe that I'll share with you here if you care to have it.
One milestone of this breakfast was that Noah had his first raspberry. He made the cutest face ever!

Here's a cool fact about raspberries:

"Red Raspberry. The species is indigenous to Asia Minor and North America, (see above) although the epithet denotes Mt. Ida, in the Caucasus mountains of Asia Minor. Fruits were gathered from the wild by the people of Troy and the foothills of Mt. Ida around the time of Christ. Records of domestication were found in 4th century writings of Palladius, a Roman agriculturist, and seeds have been discovered at Roman forts in Britain. Hence, the Romans probably spread cultivation throughout Europe. The British popularized and improved raspberries throughout the middle ages, and exported the plants to New York by 1771." ~quoted from Mark's fruit crops