Silver Dollar City Opens New Cooking /Craft School

Last Friday, my friend Vicky and I attended a cooking class at the new Culinary and Craft School at Silver Dollar City. The school is in a beautiful "turn-of-the-century Midwestern farmhouse". The kitchen has state-of-the-art appliances and includes flat-screened TV's for overhead viewing of the cooking/ craft demonstrations. (For information on more cooking/craft classes, go to http://www.sdcculinarycraftschool.com/ .) The instructor provided cooking tips and demonstrated how to make Pumpkin Bread and Apple Salad. We got to taste both recipes....yum! Here's the Pumpkin Bread recipe ...enjoy!

Pumpkin Bread

1 1/2 cups of vegetable oil
5 eggs
2 cups of pumpkin (one can)
2 cups of flour
2 cups of sugar
2 (3 oz.) packages of instant coconut pie filling
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Mix oil, eggs, and pumpkin. Combine all dry ingredients, add to pumpkin mixture. Mix well. Bake in 2 greased and floured glass loaf pans at 325 degrees for 1 hour, or until toothpick comes out clean.

recipe by Betty Dance Uhrig (SDC Culinary School instructor)

Grandkids are the Greatest!

We have three wonderful grandchildren...

Lauren just turned 12 and is in 7th grade. She plays volleyball on her 7th grade team. For her birthday, I made her a fleece fringe blanket to use at her volleyball tournaments.

Cecilia (aka Ceci) will be 5 in October. She was the youngest player on her Coach Pitch Softball team this summer. She keeps us laughing with her "Ceciliaisms". Here's an example...
After eating too much popcorn, she told her mom that she had "hurt bone". Megan asked her to repeat it and again she complained of "hurt bone". Megan told her we call it "heart burn"!

Finnegan (aka Finn) celebrated his first birthday on June 10th. He has grown and changed so much this past year! He's mastered walking and now he's working on table manners.

I Can't Believe I'm Doing This!

Thanks to my daughter, Megan, I'm going to give this blogging thing a try! I love reading her blogs and seeing photos and videos of our grandkids! Our life here at Table Rock Lake, aka Branson, MO, isn't as exciting as Megan's, but I will try to add photos now and then and let the world know "what's up in Branson"!

Over Labor Day weekend, we hosted a pot luck dinner with 20 of us sharing good food and laughs! On Sunday evening, we all gathered at the Branson Landing to see "Take It To The Limit", an Eagles tribute band. They were great! I hope they stay together and perform again at a theater here in Branson. On Monday evening, we joined our friends from Illinois for a sunset cruise on Table Rock Lake (T-Rock). It was beautiful and relaxing!

Last week, Hurricane Gustav finally caught up with us and dumped 7-9 inches of rain around this area. At least we didn't have to evacuate like the residents of New Orleans!