Recipe For Curried Artichoke Rice Salad

Since I haven't given out a recipe for a long time, I am including the Curried Artichoke Rice Salad that I served at Andy's birthday party. Scroll down to the picnic lunch post for a picture of it.

Curried Artichoke Rice Salad

1     Package of Chicken flavored Rice-A-Roni
3     Green onions, chopped
1/2  green pepper, chopped
Sliced green olives (as many as you like)
2     6 oz. jars of marinated artichokes (reserve the juice)
1     teaspoon curry powder
1/3  Cup mayonnaise

Cook Rice-A-Roni according to package directions and set aside.

Combine reserved artichoke juice with mayonnaise and add curry powder and pour over rice. Add green onions, peppers and olives. Fold gently. Chill for salad.

Note: You can make this a main dish by adding cooked chicken chunks and serving hot.

The Day After The Big Birthday Party

As I said in a previous post, there was a lot of food at Andy's birthday party. Guest's took food home but there was so much left over. On Sunday afternoon we packed a cooler and picnic basket with some of those leftovers and headed to the Mountains. The Blue Ridge Parkway is a lovely drive and only a little over an hour from our house.

We stopped at Lover's Leap and ate our lunch at a roadside picnic area.

The weather was cool and the leaves were just starting to turn orange and yellow.

How I love this time of the year.

This is the view from Lover's Leap (elevation 3,000 feet) on the way to the Blue Ridge Parkway.

This is one of six lovely "Rock Churches" along the Blue Ridge Parkway, built by Rev. Bob Childress (biography: "The Man Who Moved A Mountain.")

The Bluemont Presbyterian Church was built in 1919 and is designated a Virginia Historic Landmark and  placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.

Stopping at the many produce stands along the parkway is fun. We bought boiled peanuts, mountain cabbage and country ham.

Andy Turns The Big 7-0 !!!!

My husband, Andy, recently reached a milestone - his 70th birthday! The big 7-0!!! He has a twin sister and, naturally, she turned 70 also. His older brother's was a few days later. So, I gave them all a party.

Twenty adults and three children including: siblings, children, grandkids, one great-grandchild and a few friends, shared dinner, drinks, games, ice cream and, of course, birthday cake.

There was SO much food!!! Fried chicken, broccoli salad, jello salads, potato salad, fruit platter, coleslaw, vegie casserole, curried rice salad, chips and dips AND..... Andy's famous 70 inch submarine sandwich. As you can see from the picture, it was huge. He told the group that when he is 95 years old, there will be a 95 inch sub sandwich !!!! Yikes!!!

I say we will have to have a new kitchen with a 95 inch counter top.

The 70 Inch Sub Sandwich !

The cake was beautiful! It was a moist yellow cake, iced with chocolate buttercream icing. Beautifully decorated with fall colored flowers tumbling out of a chocolate cornucopia. The bakery I used was "The Rinsing Sun Bakery" in Martinsville, Va. They did an amazing job.

The Corn Hole Game

For entertainment at his birthday party, Andy built The Corn Hole game boards you can see beyond the scarecrow in the picture. I made the bean bags, but filled with dried corn (hence the name "Corn Hole.")

We found the instructions online for building the game boards and bean bags as well as directions on how to play the game and how to score. The materials cost around $60.00 and will provide hours of fun for kids as well as adults. We will take the Corn Hole game with us on camping trips too.

There was even a little picking and grinning when Andy and Bill played their guitars.

Remembering 9/11

Eleven years ago, I turned on the TV with a fresh cup of coffee in hand, patted the dog and flopped in my chair. I was off work that day and was making a list of groceries I needed to purchase and errands to run. It was a nice, nearly fall day. A day much like the one before it until the horrible news changed the world forever.

It was surreal. The image of a airplane flying into the tower over and over and over again. Sickening sights. Not to be believed. But it was true.

I called my husband at work to tell him but he, of course, already knew. The entire country knew and watched in real time as our country came to a standstill. He told me how he and his co-workers were glued to the TV. We spoke briefly, so much in shock, and with a catch in his voice and me in tears, we said "I love you" and hung up. What more was there to say?

Eleven years later we remember that fateful day with moments of silence, speeches and memorials. Our young president and his wife bowing their heads. Solemn. Prayerful. Sad.

We came together as a country after 9/11. It was required as a nation, uniting as one, resolved to make this tragedy somehow right again. Someday. Somehow. We showed the best of the USA. Resolute and united, strong under the worst of circumstances. We struggled and cried our way through, remembered the victims, holding loved ones in our hearts and then we rebuilt.... together as a nation.

Today, we are a divided country with our elections, conventions, TV ads and rhetoric. Sometimes it feels we will never pull together, work together and love one another again. We are still healing after the terror of that day eleven years ago in New York City but now politics has divided us. We need to respect one another and help one another regardless of our political leanings.

Can't we do that in memory of the victims of 9/11?