My Week in Reflection - Aug 10, 2014

As always, I'm excited for this week, but had such an amazing week last week that I wanted to reflect a bit. 

1. Dinner #1: A friend came over for dinner (take-out from our favorite delivery Thai, Chao Phra Ya) and washed her car here, because she lives downtown in DC where washing your own car is kind of a pain. 

2. Dinner #2: Two friends come over and we had "Sunday Gravy" which is the Italian American tradition...usually on Sundays (duh). I made a tomato sauce with italian sausage, meatballs, and some sort of meat with a bone (I used a marrow bone from the farmers market). Then I cooked it ALL DAY in a slow cooker. It was so delicious and had that umami flavor you can only get from cooking something like that with meat for so long. Plus, you throw everything in a pot (more or less) and you just let it cook. Not much work involved.

I served the pasta with the sauce (no meat) first for the Primi Piati (first course). Then the meat separately as a second course (or you are lazy like me and serve it like the picture illustrated below). The sauce freezes beautifully, but I bet if you freeze the meat it would completely fall apart because it's so tender. I vote eat the meat in the next couple days, and freeze the leftover sauce.

Here's a Cook's Illustrated page that explains more along with their picture:

http://recipes.cooksillustrated.com/stews-recipes/italian/pork/hearty-italian-meat-sauce-sunday-gravy-recipe/ 

3. Peach Picking: I went with a friend to Stribling Orchard to pick peaches and a few of their first available apples. So delicious! And my daughter seemed to enjoy it. The drive, not so much (but she's teething...can't really blame her!). 

4. Band Camp: It's that time of year again! I went in on Thursday to Stonewall to teach...not just the guard but the entire band! I taught the guard for about 1.5 hours and then taught the entire band how to jazz run! The whole thing was entertaining because I had my 7 month old daughter with me, and this is the first rehearsal she's been to now that she doesn't sleep 24/7 (I brought her when she was between 1 and 2 months old to teach Stonewall in the winter). I'll start working on a post about how to teach jazz runs to non-dancers!

5. Hershey Park: My dad retired in June and instead of a party, he took the family to Hershey for the weekend!! It was such great fun to stay at a lovely hotel, enjoy the amusement park, hang out at the hotel pool, and eat tons of food and, of course, chocolate. We actually enjoyed the park Friday night AND Saturday because you get to go in Friday night if you're staying at the hotel with a Saturday ticket AND you get to go in 1 hour early Saturday. We also ate delicious BBQ on our way in on Friday at Shakedown BBQ. If you're ever in town, we highly recommend it! And if you see a Reese's Funnel Cake, GET IT!