June Happenings and Wise Words To Live By and a Recipe

Wow can you believe that June is over and we already a week into July?  We had a busy June, Emily turned 19 on the 6/14, and Amber was 26 on the 6/26.  We had a family reunion in mid June with Dave's, mother's side of the family, and last Saturday we had a family/friends party at our house.
Indiana is in a drought, our part of the state is now classified as  "extreme drought".  We did get a little rain on June 30, but not in a way that we wanted, the storm blew in with 90 mile an hour winds and did a huge amount of damage throughout our county and left 118,000 customers without electricity.  Amber was over at our house visiting with our three grandsons, and Dave was at home. We sat in the family room and watched the storm clouds roll in, the sky got darker and darker and almost had a greenish color to it, and then an extremely strong wind hit the house, we all leaped up, grabbed a child and rushed to the basement, we were no sooner down the stairs when the power went out.  As our basement is a walkout we were able to watch the storm, the neighbors wooden swing set toppled, a bale of straw picked up and blew across their yard, branches ripped out of the tree by our barn, the rain came down horizontally and thunder and lightning were non-stop.  Once the weather calmed down a bit I went upstairs to look out out front of our property, I was saddened to see that one of our huge pine trees at the end of the driveway had snapped in half.  We were very thankful that our house was not damaged and we were all okay.
Once the storm rolled through the temperatures started to heat up, and for the past week we have had highs in the very upper nineties and low hundreds, it is extremely hot.  We were without power for about 78 hours,   we were hooked up early, there are still about 800 people without power and they are now in their eighth day.  Most people were without power for five days.  On Thursday evening another violent storm rolled through and knocked out power to almost 30,000 customers, the linemen have really had their work cut out for them.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we celebrated two birthdays this month. Emily turned 19, she wanted chocolate chip cheesecake for her birthday cake and hamburgers, asparagus, and hollandaise sauce for dinner.  Amber turned 26, she wanted strawberry cake and mexican food.  We had a fun time celebrating both birthdays.  On June 30 we had a big family/friends party at our house, our son Matt, and son-in-love Brad grilled chicken for everyone, they did an awesome job as everyone raved about the chicken.  I fixed 10lbs of potato salad, baked beans, veggies and dip, layer salad, coleslaw, creamy cucumber salad, a large pan of banana pudding, a yellow cake with chocolate frosting and monster cookies, we had plenty to eat and not a whole lot left over so we guesstimated about right.  We did not have power, thankfully I had baked the cake and cookies before the power went off.  I was able to prepare the rest of the food and am always glad for my gas stove when the power goes out.  Without power we have no running water, so we had to buy water for cooking and drinking, and haul large buckets of water from our son Matt's house. Thankfully we have a generator so we were able to keep our freezers and refrigerator running along with a couple of other things, everyone was understanding of the situation and enjoyed the party.
On July 4 the temperature was around 100, no one wanted to go outside. Dave slow cooked short ribs on the grill, they were mighty fine and took 3 hours to cook to perfection and about 10 minutes to consume :).  Because of the drought there is a burn ban in place and a firework ban, Fort Wayne had their annual display but most communities opted to not do a firework display this year.  Of course it would not be July 4th if someone didn't find the Nathans Hot Dog Eating Contest on TV, broadcast live from Coney Island.  I must say it is a most revolting event, in fact I was getting so grossed out I couldn't watch. The winner was Joey Chestnut who managed to consume and astounding 68 hotdogs in 10 minutes, YIKES!
Can you believe that our newest grandson Charlie will be six weeks old tomorrow. He has filled out so nicely and is such a well behaved, contented little fellow, he is starting to smile :)
Last week I was in a local Amish store picking up some sewing notions and I noticed a coloring book picture hanging on the wall behind the counter.  The picture was carefully colored and hung with pride and had an excellent message, "A Hard Job is Many Easy Jobs Left Undone", how true is that.  I think they are  words to live by, and as we know it usually does not pay to procrastinate.
Today I made bologna salad, something I make a few times a year, grandson Henry had fun turning the crank on the meat grinder and stuck with it to grind 2lbs of bologna.

Bologna Salad

2lbs of bologna (ground)

4 hard boiled eggs (chopped)

2 T pickle relish

Mayonnaise to combine

Directions:

Grind the bologna, stir in the chopped boiled eggs and pickle relish, then add mayonnaise and stir until everything is blended.  Makes very nice sandwiches, store in the refrigerator.

Emily with the chocolate chip cheesecake

Amber with the strawberry cake

Branches down by the barn

Our poor pine tree

The top half of the tree lying in the road.

One of gardens, notice everything is leaning eastward after  the wind

Henry the master of the meat grinder.