Stuck in the Gutter

Today, not much really happened to stupendous. I cooked some Chicken Masala for lunch to surprise Lynn when she came back from church. She posted a recipe last week, so I thought I would post this one also:

CHICKEN CURRY (MURGH MASALA)

8 pieces chicken, skinless
2 onions
4 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/2 c. yogurt
1 tsp. coriander powder
2 tbsp. curry powder
1 tsp. cumin powder
2 finely cut tomatoes
Salt and green pepper to taste
Parsley to garnish

Puree onions, garlic and ginger together. In a large skillet add 1 spoon oil and brown the pureed onion paste. Stir for 8 to 10 minutes on medium fire. Now add the chicken and cover it with tomatoes, yogurt, salt, pepper and the spices. Cover the skillet and let it simmer for 15 minutes. Stir the chicken for all the spices to blend in. Cover and let it simmer on low fire for further 10 minutes. Now serve hot and garnish with parsley (fresh). Serve with white rice and garden salad.

Serves 6-8.

It really didn't turn out so well, so I wouldn't try it if I was you. Sorry to waste the bandwidth. I like the Curry Beef recipe I cooked once and had found in a Taste of Home, but I have no idea where that recipe went. Guess wouldn't be too hard to Google it...

After lunch, Nate went down for the afternoon and I went over to the Y. Again, nothing too eventful.

Got home and Lynn was reading a book so I decided to putter around in the backyard. We have a big white ash tree that is growing all over the place, so I trimmed a couple of limbs and then cleaned out the gutter on the garage. Lynn came out at that time and we decided to tackle the house gutters.

I realize, we probably need new gutters. Not fun. Oh well. We got one quarter of the house done.

Lynn made a delicious Pork Roast dinner and Nate and I ate it right up. She had to leave because of a friend's family emergency (gal needs girl time), so Nate and I were left alone. We took a walk and passed by our friend the Urbans'. They had come back from a camping trip and they had caught a frog. Nate would have nothing to do with it.

I guess now is a time to comment again about the neighboring street. There is like 7 houses in a row that have yappy, barking dogs. I feel bad walking down there with Jackson cause all those dogs come to the windows/fences and just bark at us and you can hear all the owners yelling at the dogs. Also feel the daggers in my back from the stares. sheesh. Control you dog....

After we got back, Nate and I just relaxed. I caught the end of Extreme Home Makeover and just have to make a comment at the teen girl's reaction to the "new house". Is it really necessary to scream at the top of your lungs and fall down at every instance? Not really sure what was up with that, maybe a culture thing.

Agenda for the week? I have the next week off so I am hoping that we as a family or just Nate and I can get some of the following accomplished:

• Go to the Zoo, and ride the train.
  
• Nate and I will be going to the Museum of Transportation They have lots of Trains.
  
• On Thursday, I have the possibility of riding a semi with my Father in Law.
  
• Bike ride over in St. Charles along the Katy Trail OR drive out to Augusta area or Washington and see leaves/ride trail out there. Depends on how Nate reacts to riding in the trailer, it's been about 2 months since I got him in there last.
  
• Breakfast at IHOP
  
• Lynn and I need to get eye examinations/new glasses, possibly contacts for me.
  
• Get the coil spring and heating element recalls fixed on the Dodge.
  
• Clean up and organize the rest of the downstairs "rec room".
  
• Get some eBay auctions ready to go. I found a box of Star Wars figures that are still on the card which I need to get rid of. I got them all organized yesterday and will start posting them for $10 apiece. Think they may easily go for $20. maybe. I have some loose ones I need to organize and post also.
  
• One the above note, I need to take some of our abundance of books and post them on half.com. It's free to post, you just pay a final value fee. I posted 17 books last week, but only sold 6 today. Not too bad, they totaled over $15 in all in sales. Just thought I would be better to post them all on Half so they would all eventually get boughten up.
  
• Rake the yard on Tuesday for Wednesday pickup. Need to bundle the limbs also.
  
• Take Nate too see my sister's new Pot Bellied Pig. He's named Wilson, after my grandfather.
  
• Going to Schnucks for weekly grocery shopping tomorrow.
  
• Take whole family to Y and go swimming in the indoor pool. Nate is kind of afraid of the water, but in August, he seemed to warm up to it a little bit more, so I'm hoping that we can all go again and keep him exposed. Other option is I need to sign him up for lessons on Saturday morning and Give Lynn a break.
  
• Need a Pizza Out night, or even better, we need to check out that Great American Pizza place for lunch or something. But then again, Nate and I had Cici's on Thursday (cost me $2.99 for a buffet, he was free).
  
• Transformers: the movie comes out on Tuesday. Thought I would try to get it out of the RedBox at McDonald's and watch it for once. Haven't seen any really good "new" movies or Summer blockbusters this summer (except the Bourne movie and I really didn't appreciate it as much).
  

Well, I will stop boring you with my plans, but I will keep you all updated as the week progresses.....

Later,