August 20th, 2011

Kirk and Sally are in St. Louis!  Kirk and Trent are putting in a storm door.  Kirk put in a new front door in May with his friend Curt.  I absolutely love it!  Our old door was, well, let’s just say I didn’t like it. At all.  We didn’t put in a storm door at the time and decided to live storm door free and see if we liked it.  I was fine storm door free, except the kids could very easily open the door whenever they wanted to go outside or random teenager trying to sell me $40 books that will be donated to poor people so the teenager could go to Italy someone would knock on the door.  I would go upstairs to take a shower and every time I would tell the girls that they were not to open the door if anyone knocked and not to go outside.  Also if someone knocked at the door, I had no idea who was on the other side of the door until I opened it and then boom, the person was right there soliciting their tree trimming service with their confederate flag covered truck circa de 1972 smelling of marijuana.  Kinda creeped me out a bit.  Trent ordered a pretty storm door with a lock and the plan was for Kirk and Trent to put it in.  Easy enough.  Only Murphy’s Law kicked in high gear and it turned into a frustrating high maintenance nothing went right project. 

There she is!  I love love love it!  Not only do I feel better security wise, I can now open the front door in the afternoon and let the sunlight in or have the door open for Lauren when she gets off the bus. 

I have a recipe binder that is the hub of all kinds of recipes.  Recipes I want to try, recipes I’ve tried and love, family recipes, friend’s recipes, and recipes of mine that I have in there just to remind myself it exists and I should make it again.  Well I had a recipe in there that was in the “want to try” category….for over a year.  It was time already to buck and up see if it was a keeper.  It was Rachel Ray's Chicken Tarragon with Green Bean Rice Pilaf that was in her magazine.  I also had a ton of tarragon in the garden and needed to rationalize why I planted it.

Some veggies from the garden I cut up for Kirk to munch on.

And some more veggies I picked to send home with Kirk and Sally.

The tarragon chicken…definitely saucy!

The rice made a nice bed for all the sauce.  Rachel Ray does this thing were she makes rice pilaf with broken spaghetti combined with rice (the recipe I hyperlinked shows the method).  I see no point in breaking spaghetti and use rice only.  To each their own.

Also served bread (which I didn’t make, heat and eat from the grocery store) and mixed green salad.  The recipe turned out good and made the cut to permanently take up residence in the recipe binder.