Spectacular Breakfast Recipe

I feel bad I didn't take enough pictures of this, but it was delish.  It's a combination of about three different recipes, including my own for french toast.

I really didn't want to get up early and do this, so I made a couple of parts of this the night before which took about an hour.  This recipe is going to yield about 4-5 sandwiches.

First, I started with the syrup:

Ingredients: 
3 cups sliced strawberries
1 cup granulated sugar
few squirts of lemon juice

Directions: 
In a medium saucepan, combine all the ingredients.  Put on medium heat and stir.  Slowly bring to a boil. 

While it's heating, start on the filling:

Ingredients: 
1 c. diced strawberries
1 tsp. sugar
1 8 oz. package cream cheese (softened)
1/3 c. powdered sugar

Combine strawberries and sugar in a small bowl, set aside. In a large mixing bowl, whip cream cheese and powdered sugar until thoroughly combined. Fold in strawberry mixture, and continue to smash and make the strawberries smaller pieces.  Once it's the consistency of icing, it's ready.  If making the night before, put it in the fridge.

After the sauce has begun to boil, lower the heat and simmer until the strawberries are soft and the syrup is thickened and reduced by 1/3 to 1/2 in volume, 15 to 18 minutes.  Continue to stir throughout.

Remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature before serving or put in the fridge for the morning.

The rest, I did the morning of the breakfast.

French toast mix:

Ingredients: 
5 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
cinnamon
milk
8-10 slices of bread

Heat your griddle to 375, put your syrup on the stove on low heat if you made it the night before.

Break the eggs, combine the vanilla extract and a glug of milk.  After you've combined them, sprinkle a healthy amount of cinnamon.  Mix well, then pour into a pie plate.

Take a slice of thick bread, and spread the filling.  I did it too thin, so don't be afraid to put it on thick, you'll have enough.

Take a second slice and place on top of it.  Try and "pinch" the edges to seal the sides.  Dip it into the egg mixture on both sides.  Place it on the griddle and flip once the bottom has turned golden brown.

Serve with powdered sugar on top, and liberally spread the strawberry syrup.

Enjoy like Kingsley did!

P.S.  It will keep Tucker's attention when you're making this.  Tangy is just on the carpet because of the slick floor.

Our long weekend in Cleveland

Here at our daughter's house for a long weekend.

We came in Thursday night for dinner, then Connie had her chemo treatment on Friday.

Saturday our daughter's town of Fairview Park (a suburb west of Cleveland) had their SummerFest.  We've always known about it, but we've never been able to get together to get there.  Until this year.

If you're going to SummerFest,
you've got to have Tubby Tails

We got to the park around noon, and walked through all the vendors, then had a snow cone.  Baby K loved hers.

Connie and Kingsley both had their chariots
ready for Fairview Park's SummerFest

Then it was in to uncharted waters.  Amusement Rides.  

Our daughter is an only child.  She LOVES rides, and this was the start to get Kingsley "into" the ride game.  Hopefully, a ride companion for Bethany for life.

We started by scouting.  She's over 30", but under 36" so there were some rides were OK by herself, some were OK with a rider under 56' and some were OK with riders of any size.

We started with the Merry Go Round.  That went OK -- for about one time around.  Then, it was time for Mommy to hold K.

Not off to a good start.

Next was the big slide with the humps and the burlap bag.

That went OK, I mean if you didn't look at K's face filled with terror.  

Then it was time to go solo.  The Wobble Worm.

Things were good.  Mom put her in the chair.  The Carny strapped her in with a bungee cord.  Mom came outside the fence.  Then, the realization hit K that she was in this green thing.  By herself.  And it was about to move.  She suddenly wanted zero part of the Wobble Worm.

We ended the afternoon with another trip down the slide.  No one heeded my call that Kingsley should try and throw some darts at the balloons, and our afternoon was over.

If you're going to cook all day, you need a base

I've got a pretty big smoking project today, and two of the three recipes call for bacon.

Here's the link to the Smoked Meat Loaf.

Here's the link to the smoked tomato and onion salad dressing.

Here's the link to the smoked Mac N Cheese.

If you're going to cook bacon, you've got to eat bacon.

My Brinkmann grill has a little griddle that goes in place of one of the grates.  So I used it for the bacon we're going to have for breakfast, and that leaves room for the stainless steel pan where I'm going to cook the bacon we're going to cook with.

Since I'm just cooking and crumbling the cooking bacon, I'm stealing a tip from a friend at our old boat club (shout out Sally White!) who used to cut the bacon into pieces, then pan fry it.

After the first round of bacon (Connie's round) is done, I added the best fundraiser item I ever bought (Shout out, Maddie Porter!)  It's a little round mabobbie that holds the egg after you break it.  Smash the egg yolk, let it fry and boom you've got an egg McSims.

After that's all cooked (finished product is below), it's time to make my sammie.  

Cut my home made bread in a diagonal, add the egg:

Add the bacon:

Often I'll add cheese and an onion, too.  But, I've got WAY too much to do today!

Tangy's new found talent

The other day at our daughter's house, our dogs Tangy & Sloopy were completely enthralled with catching the bubbles that our grand daughter Kingsley was blowing.

Tonight, on our evening walk, Tangy was displaying a new talent:  catching fire flies and eating them whole.

I'm not really sure if they're bad for her (I KNOW there's other things she eats that are bad for her), but she does so many things poorly, I'd hate to take away one of the few things she does well.   😁

July 4th in the Flats

Spent our Independence Day in Cleveland on the East Flats.  When we first came to Cleveland in the mid 90's, the Flats was where it was happening.  New baseball park, boating was great, bars stacked on top of each other.  Boats would raft 6-7 wide into the Cuyahoga.  It was such a fun place to be.

Then, depending on who's story you hear, either the politicians, the mob, the bar owners, or somebody else got greedy and it became a ghost town.

Now, it's starting to come back again.  Today we went down to the soft 2nd day opening of Margaritaville in Cleveland.  They were already out of Landshark and we hadn't even been there.  The rooftop bar was great, and gave you a great view of the railroad bridge that I had forgotten how much I hated.

We actually worked it out where little Miss Firecracker, Baby K and her parents could meet us downtown.

After we split with these guys, we went down to the Collision Bend Brewery to meet our friends Don and April.  Had some good beers, solved a few of the world's problems, and watched the boats and ships (there's a difference) go by.

Why after all this time did I restart blogging?

I was getting ready to do my morning business, and I saw a wi-fi network  "Foodies-n-Motion".

Hmm.  That sounds like some full time RV'ers who have a blog.  Sure enough, I found it.  Take a look.  It's newbie full timers, just starting out.

Nothing really here nor there, it's just that sometimes, something clicks.  For some reason, it did with me.

Time to start blogging again.  Time to redesign the blogspot.  Time to update the Rig Page.

I walked around with Sloopy and Tangy and found Daren and Johnetta's rig.  They were just leaving for a day out to see the sites.  I thanked them before they knew why.

As is always the case, we had a great conversation with heretofore total strangers.  Love this lifestyle.

Where have we been?

We've been lazy, that's where.

Making a July 4th resolution to post more, so let me catch you up.

Connie's been undergoing her treatments every three weeks, and she's hanging in there.  She's not as mobile as she'd like to be, but we're hoping recent visits to the spine doctor, an epidural next week and PT to follow will be a help.

Pretty much a season and a half have come and gone since our last post.  We've relocated in Texas to Port Aransas (Pioneer RV Park) as a home base for the entire season, not just a couple of months in the fall.  Our Ohio base is still Timber Ridge Campground south of Vermilion.

Our grand daughter, Kingsley, is now two years old and cute as a button, just like her mother.

We lost Carmen in February of 2016 to cancer that got into her spine.  In June of 2016, we welcomed Tangy (Tan-jee, like "Olentangy") to our home.  She's ornery, very loving, and can be, well, batsh*t crazy at times, but she's a welcome addition.

I lost my Mom at age 91 this past January.  It was a pretty stressful time since I was in Texas and she was in Ohio.  She fell the day before Christmas Eve and I talked to her from the hospital.  She was upset that she fell, didn't really know how, and they were keeping her there because some enzymes weren't right on the tests.  She had actually suffered a heart attack, had another one shortly after I talked to her, and literally lost the will to live.  She passed away January 23rd, almost exactly a month later.  We had her ceremony on her birthday (May 24th) when we returned to Ohio.

That's pretty much the (real) short story.  I'm hoping to wean myself off posting everything on Facebook and putting things here where they belong.

Thanks for reading.