From nachos to coconut cream pie

Saturday evening...

Back in April I saw a recipe on Dorcas Walker's blog for "Heavenly Coconut Cream Pie." I have never been a coconut fan, but the recipe is very simple, and I am definitely a simple recipe fan! (The kitchen is not my favorite room in the house.)

I finally made the pie tonight. (I probably wouldn't have to make this confession since the photo will make this obvious, but I have made very few pies in my entire life, thus the ugly job on the crust. And tonight is the first time ever for toasting coconut.) So far we have only tasted the last half cup of the pudding mixture left in the bowl, but wow!! I have never tasted anything coconut that tasted so good. The pie almost didn't make it to the fridge!

P.S. Ooo-la-la! That pie is M-m-m-m good!

Friday evening...

For our anniversary celebration, we originally planned to go Chinese because after we left our reception (at which we had each eaten about 10 bites), we went to the Chopsticks House restaurant in Harrisburg. Our fave Chinese restaurant in the area, Mandarin House, however, disappointed us on our last visit, flunked a recent health dept inspection, and is in Knoxville instead of local (read gas $$). Three strikes determined it was out.

So we decided on Texas Roadhouse, but when we arrived, it was crawling with people, so we decided to head to our fave Mexican restaurant, El Jimador. We thought we would have time to browse our photo album of wedding snapshots (not the scrapbook album which has the formal photos) while waiting for our meal, but in no time at all, our usual fare was on the table, so we postponed that until after we finished eating.

We had requested to be seated where our #2 preferred waiter would be our waiter. When he checked to see if we needed anything else, he stopped to see our pics. Since it was near closing time, not many patrons were in the restaurant, so he talked quite at length with us. He pointed to a photo of Ken and said, "Young. You Young!" How he laughed when he understood that our last name is Young!

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We discovered that his wife also works there--and got to meet her, and that they were married just one month prior to us! That was pretty cool. One by one other waiters and waitresses wanted to see the photos. Before long most of the staff knew that it was our anniversary. Over and over they said, "Long time!"

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We had been a little disappointed to switch from Chinese and then again from Texas Roadhouse, but by the time we left El Jimador, we felt like we had celebrated after all.