Movies in the Park

It was a warm spring evening last week when my friend Victor came over with his movie set up. To be honest I had been bugging Victor to have another movie night in the park for awhile. A couple of summers ago Victor started to bring over his found films and playing them in the park. Yes actual films on a real projector. It's work for him since that is what he does for a job, but he has such fun and wonderful old films that I really wanted him to do a movie night again. 
I forget the movie titles but there was a cartoon about the original 13 colonies, several educational cartoons like the ones you may have watched in school from about 1950-1970 and a longer film about a military plane crash in the desert. The military plane crash was about how to survive in hostile environments. How to gather water, ration food and how to provide medical attention to those that need it. I had bought a bunch of red & black vines because you always need licorice at the movies, a neighbor made some popcorn & I also made a couple batches of rice crispy treats. The ones left over at the end of the night were the ones that had tabasco sauce in them.  Sounds strange right...but they are good, just the right amount of sweet and hot. Try it next time you make rice crispy treats, just a few good shakes of hot sauce makes for an interesting dessert. 

 
I made it through Thanksgiving. We cooked a 15 pound turkey thinking that we were going to serve 10 people, it turned out there was only 4 of us ! So we had a lot of turkey left over. I made some wonderful Cranberry Marmalade, I did not have any dried apricots so I used dried cherries and blueberries. It was delicious! I was afraid I made too much but we ate the sauce on all things turkey over the weekend. Yes we had turkey for four days...turkey sandwiches, turkey empanadas & turkey pot pie. We did end up freezing a couple pounds of turkey because we had had too much and were sick of turkey. Maybe later this month I will make the turkey empanadas again as they were a huge hit with the husband. Any type of food that you eat with your hand (like hand pies) is always a hit with the husband.  I made a apple pie and a pumpkin pie. I'm not a fan of pumpkin pie so I was not sure how the pumpkin pie would turn out. It received rave reviews from my mother & husband. I cut up and cooked a sugar pumpkin and a butternut squash for about an hour then scooped out the insides. An employee at New Seasons told me that if I was going to make pumpkin pie from scratch it was better to use another type of squash because the pumpkin alone will not give me enough for a pie and that the squash gives the pie another layer of taste. She was right and it turned out wonderful...I even had some and like it.  Though it has not snowed here yet it has been very cold and commuters have been faced with slick roads in the morning. This snow photo is from last year when we had 4 wonderful days of snow in February. I love seeing fresh snow on the trees and the sculptures in the park across the street from out house. I hope it snows this year before Christmas this year!