Our House

Life has been rather busy lately. Work always keeps us busy, but lately it's been working on our new house! We closed on our house this past Friday.  So we have been rather busy getting things turned on and cleaned up, buying this and that, and, of course, painting. I do not have any pictures yet but will....eventually. Needless to say, my WEEK off for Thanksgiving will be filled with more painting and MOVING!

Two-Thirds Homemade and Our House

Tonight's dinner was two-thirds of the way homemade. We had fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and macaroni and cheese (the non-homemade portion).

I wish I had an exact recipe for the fried chicken and potatoes, but I don't. They're both things you have to just keep trying until it's perfect (or, nearly perfect).  We know from experience--the first time we tried frying chicken, the pan was way too hot. The kitchen and living room were full of smoke. We had to open windows and doors. The first few times we (well, technically, me) made the potatoes, they were the consistency of glue (those are Bailey's words). Bailey is now responsible for making mashed potatoes--his turn out much better than mine.

Here are some guidelines/suggestions for making the fried chicken.

• You'll need: chicken (I don't do bone-in chicken--just make my own chicken tenders), flour, an egg, milk, and some oil to fry it in. And, any seasonings you'd like to add to the flour--I like to add some paprika and/or Tony Chachere's seasoning, but you could just do salt and pepper.
• Cut the chicken into tenders/strips.
• Mix the egg with some milk (enough to dip the chicken in before dipping in the flour mixture).
• Dip chicken in egg mix and then flour mix (repeat, if you'd like). Then I let the chicken sit for about 10 minutes so the breading sticks.
• Pour some oil in a pan (enough to coat the bottom plus some). Heat oil over medium heat (again, I remind you--don't let it get to hot).
• Once oil is hot, start frying chicken. (I usually test it out with one piece). Fry chicken on each side for a few minutes--until golden brown, or cooked through. Try not to touch/flip chicken too often--that causes the breading to fall off.

Yum!!

A few guidelines/suggestions for homemade mashed potatoes.

• 
  
  You'll need: several potatoes, milk, butter, salt and pepper to taste
  
  
  
• 
  
  Peel potatoes and cut into bite-size pieces. Put potatoes in pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and let boil until tender, about 15 minutes. (As I said, this is Bailey's job so he's the judge of when they're tender enough).
  
• Drain potatoes and return to pot. Then mash them up--we use our handmixer. It does a fabulous job. While mashing, or mixing, add a splash of milk and some butter (as much or as little as you'd like). Season with salt and pepper, if desired.
  

Recipe for macaroni: Kraft Macaroni and Cheese from a box. However, I'm planning on trying to find a homemade recipe for this too.

Moving on to something else....we found out earlier this week that we may be closing on our house within a week or two. Now, I've got to decide on paint colors and a few appliances. Hopefully, more on this subject later.

Our Trip to Auburn

Bailey's brother, Bedford, is a manager for the Ole Miss football team and gets two tickets to each game, home and away. So, a little while back, Bailey and I decided we would go to the Auburn game. Although the outcome of the game wasn't too pretty, we really enjoyed our trip. Here's a recap of the trip....

We left Friday morning amidst all the rain. We detoured to Oxford to pick up a few things and then got on the road again. We stopped in Tupelo to eat lunch at Abner's and then continued on. Luckily, we didn't really have any rain after leaving Oxford. However, we ran into A LOT of traffic in Birmingham. It took us AT LEAST an hour to get through Birmingham, probably longer. As we sat in stop-and-go traffic we tried to keep ourselves entertained. Here are a few pictures of the things we encountered while in this traffic.

This Alabama tag is dedicated to farmers (like a Choose Life, college , wildlife tag, etc.) If you can't see it very well, the top reads, "FARMING FEEDS" and this particular driver's name must be Bill. So, if you read it altogether it states, "Farming feeds Bill." We found it amusing.

Here's the Pink Package Store. We just thought it was picture-worthy. In the parking lot beside it was a Crown Royal race car.

This is a Sonic with a playground. The first one I'd ever seen. (We also saw a Sonic with a playground when we stopped in Fulton on the way home.)

This is a picture of Bailey's dream car--a Porsche.

We also saw a baby blue Escalade but I didn't have the camera ready. There were probably a few other things, but these were the most memorable.

We got to our hotel later that evening. We stayed outside of Auburn in the town community of Valley. It consisted of two hotels, a fireworks store, two gas stations, about three places to eat, and a football stadium. Needless to say, we didn't have many options on where to eat dinner, so we ate at Waffle House. It was good, just not exactly what we wanted.

When we checked in we found out that we were in the Eastern time zone. Well, approximately a mile into it. It was a bit confusing but we just kept ourselves on Central time since Auburn is.

Saturday we got up, ate breakfast, and headed to campus. We got there easily and found parking easily (for free, too--it was $30 across the street) and relatively close to the stadium. We walked around for a bit and then talked to Bedford for a few minutes before heading into the stadium.

A quick pic before going in to the game.

This is Jevan Sneed's dad (our quarterback) and a few of his friends. Got to love the rain-covers for the cowboy hats. The state troopers and other officers also had these lovely covers on.

I won't go into details about the game. It had it's ups and downs, but not a good ending. We did get to see a really cool Auburn ritual--where they release the eagle and he flies down to the field. I tried taking a few pictures of it but they didn't turn out well.

After the game we saw another ritual of Auburn's. After every win, they roll an area of campus called Toomer's Corner. Here's a not so great picture of it.

We headed to Chili's (our favorite) to eat and warm up and then headed back to the hotel to relax and watch more football. Sunday morning we made a quick stop at Starbucks and Target before heading home. The trip home was not as eventful as the trip there. All-in-all, a very enjoyable trip with my wonderful husband!