Dinner and a Show!

Woody had an early appointment with the chiropractor. I got up and got started on making dinner for tonight. It ended up being an all-day process. I made "No Noodle Zucchini Lasagna." The first step was to make the meat sauce. About the time that that was finished, Nathan came over with his meat slicer and sliced the zucchini the width of a lasagna noodle. After lunch I grated the mozzarella cheese and mixed the ricotta cheese mixture. All of that went in the fridge while I rested for a while. Elijah and Esther kept coming over checking on the progress of the meal! After my rest I started layering three pans of lasagna (We ate the largest pan, left the middle sized pan with the neighbors, and we have the smaller pan for another meal for the two of us...so that long time cooking at least will last for more than one meal!) Then it was finally ready to pop in the oven. We headed next door with one large pan of lasagna and a gelatin salad that we call "Yellow Jello", though this time it was "Green Jello." It is a cucumber gelatin salad...pureed cucumber is substituted for the cold water when making the jello. It makes a very refreshing side dish on a hot summer day...plus the children love it! Both of these dishes were made with our homegrown veggies...a zucchini(the size of a baseball bat (almost)(This zucchini had hidden from Woody...the neighbors were the ones who spotted it while we were on our NIH trip...so it only seems fair that they got to share in eating it since they found it!)and the cucumbers. I wasn't sure how the children would take to all the veggies in the lasagna...but they cleaned their plates well enough to be able to have dessert (carrot cake) that the neighbors (Kathy and Nathan and children) kindly provided. While we were eating, Elijah announced that after we ate that we would have a show. He wanted to show us some of the tricks that he can do on his new taller stilts. And, some of the rest of the children joined in to show us new tricks that they had learned in the last few days (since our last show). Goosey (Woody) and four of the children headed back to our house so Graham and Goosey could finish their Monopoly game that they had started several days ago. The other three just tagged along to either watch the game or play with some of our toys. Abigail and Isaac stayed at their house. Abigail was crocheting and watching an episode of The Brady Bunch. The last act of the show was Isaac showing me that he can build the tower by himself now. When I came home, I came upstairs to blog. A few minutes ago I heard the four head home and it is pretty silent downstairs now except I do hear the drone of whatever Woody is watching on TV.