Bobby's Sunday Summary

Sorry this is a little late but this week was a little bit crazy. Like most weeks the middle of the week was not that bad. We had a number of things planned in the evenings, but nothing that was too terribly exciting.

We made and canned a bunch of chili this week. We bought a quarter of a cow recently and used a big roast from it. We also bought some chili peppers from the store and turned them into our own chili sauce to add in. The problem with canning chili is that if you want to get the beans right, not too mushy, then you need to can them just slightly boiled, and let the canner finish the job. This makes it rather difficult to get the spice mixture right. So, I made a bunch of rather spicy bean-less chili, and then dumped in a bunch of half cooked beans and Susan spent most of the day Friday canning it. Only one jar didn’t seal so we were quite happy about that. I was actually a little bit afraid that it would be too spicy when it was all done. But when we tasted the can that didn’t seal the beans turned out great, the heat from the chili peppers was just right, but the chili flavor itself was rather watered down. It tastes perfect if you add two to three tablespoons of chili powder to it before heating it up. I think the next time we do chili I am going to have to come up with a recipe and write it down. Over the years we have had one batch of nearly perfect chili, one batch of way too meaty chili, one batch of too fatty chili with mushy beans, and the watered down batch we just made. All of it is better then most anything you can buy in the store. But, if I had been writing things down from the beginning I’m sure we would have been even better.

On Friday we drove down to St. Louis. This was all in preparation for the big Saturday we had planned. We stayed the night in a hotel so we could be ready to go to the Temple bight and early the next day. Susan went to the first session of the morning while I watched Alice, and it turned out to be a Samoan session for a group from Kansas City. She had to wear earphones for the session. I worked in the Temple after that and we got home at a little after 4.

That night we had two things planned. One was an Elder’s Quorum potluck dinner. We were too exhausted when we got home to really want to go so we had a quiet dinner at home. Then around 7 our baby sitter showed up and we went out on a group date with several other couples in the ward. With our ward being over half students, it can get somewhat difficult for the people who are not planning on leaving any time soon to try and make permanent friends just to have the leave so soon. So, some of the non-students decided to have a regular get together. This was Susan’s turn to plan it and she decided that we should all go English Country dancing. From talking to several people from the group just about all of the men were dreading it, but 5 couples showed up. We all actually had a good time and went out for ice cream afterwards. You can tell we are actual adults now because only two out of the five couples could have non-sugar-free ice cream.