It was time for us to have another one of our Komac Dinner Party nights! What we like best about these nights are that we all cook, we try new recipes, and we have fun!

We decided that we would try the stew recipe from the Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook. For those who have read the series, it is Katniss’ favorite – a lamb stew with dried plums. I changed it to pork, since I had a small hunk of pork shoulder in the freezer.  The result was fairly sweet (lots of prunes and ginger ale in the broth). Next time, I would put much more pork and about half of the prunes. It had a chop suey taste to it.

To complement the meal, Kevin used the bread machine all by himself and made rolls from scratch!

Kayla made us some corn fritters.

Ashley made us an ice cream layer cake. She smashed up Mint Oreos….(like the action shot????)

She spread vanilla ice cream in a loaf pan, covered it with oreos, then spread chocolate ice cream on top of that. To get chocolate ice cream, we just took some of the vanilla and added cocoa powder and chocolate syrup. Beat with a hand mixer and…..we got something that tasted just like a Frosty! She froze her cake, then we topped it with chocolate ganache and fresh whipped cream.

Ashley had karate class yesterday, which was really fun to watch. Her Saturday class is focused more on drilling basic moves and stances, while the Wednesday class is focused on kata. This Saturday, they were sparring. It looked like a smaller kid version of the end tournament of Karate Kid! The sensai put 8 kids in a group, ranging from white (beginner) belts to orange (the order goes white-red-orange in terms of level). Ashley was first in line, so she stepped forward and faced the line. The next kid would come up and they would spar. First kid to make a legit contact was declared the victor and faced the next kid in line. Other kid would go to the back of the line. The sensai refereed the whole thing like a real tournament. On Ashley’s first try, she faced down 4 kids before being sent to the end. On her second try, she ran the entire line! She faced down all 7 kids and won. She has a fairly fast front punch and has been working on good stances, so she could retain her balance but sneak under the other kid’s arm and tag them with that punch. She was excited! She has another belt test coming up in a few months.

Kayla has an exciting day on Tuesday this week. She has her shadow day at Woodlands Academy. It is a Sacred Heart, all girls school near where I work. We have been concerned about the high school that our neighborhood feeds into. So we have been saving money for the last 4 years in the hopes of sending our girls to somewhere that will give them a really good education. Kayla will spend 3 hours at Woodlands this Tuesday, visiting classes and getting to see what it is all about. I am taking a half day so that she and I can spend the afternoon together. We also visit her doctor for a meds check on the ADHD in the later afternoon (no sense wasting the time off of work!). Kayla is really looking forward to this! Next up –  placement testing and the application.

Today was the first time in 17 years that I wrote a mortgage check to someone other than Grandma. It was weird and really kind of hard. We also had some weirdness with Kevin’s younger sister. She is one day younger than me, but went into the hospital on Friday due to a suspected stroke. Latest word is that she is having an MRI tomorrow and will be at Condell until at least tomorrow or Tuesday.