Berry Delicious

Besides weddings, church assignments, housecleaning and redecorating, what's going on around here? The raspberries are on! Mmmm....we could never grow good red raspberries in Ohio, but wow, we've had good luck here. They are just coming on now and last night I went out and picked this bowlful.

Some of these berries are huge. I tried to take a picture, but I apparently cannot hold and take a picture with one hand without it being blurry. But take my word on it that some of these berries are wider than my thumb and as long as my thumb from the tip to the first joint.

What do we do with our berry bounty? I've already made one batch of freezer jam, with many more to come so that we can share. I also can them and canned raspberries over vanilla ice cream are fantabulous. But with the berries from last night, I made this tasty raspberry trifle.

Too bad it's just Rene and I here today. I guess we'll have to sacrifice and eat it all ourselves!

How I cooked my goose...

Okay, it wasn't a goose, it was a turkey breast.

Yesterday, Ben, Shannon and Macey were coming over for dinner. I had a turkey breast that I've been wanting to cook up for several weeks and decided that's what we'd have for dinner. I took it out of the freezer on Saturday and yesterday after church, I put it in the oven.

Everyone was here by about 5:20 or so. The mashed potatoes, corn and fruit salad were all ready. I pulled the turkey out to check on it's doneness and to my dismay, it only registered 85 degrees on my handy, dandy instant read thermometer. I was puzzled, because it had been in the oven almost four hours, but stuck it back in and turned the temperature up 25 degrees.

Well, an hour later, after several tries with the thermometer, the turkey still hadn't gotten to over 100 degrees. YIKES! We were all starving. Was the oven not working? It seemed hot. We were thinking we would cut a chunk off and cook it in the microwave, just so we could eat. That's when Rene noticed...the digital thermometer was on Celsius, not Fahrenheit!!

I was worried that the turkey would be dry and yucky, but I had put it in the pan upside down and that seemed to keep the juices in. It was actually pretty good.

Ben thought it was hilarious and suggested that the tendency some people in our family have to do kind of harebrained things was inherited. Haha...very funny.

PS. This is not our turkey breast nor our thermometer.

This handsome fellow is our soon-to-be son-in-law Brian. (Okay, the picture was taken quite awhile ago.) We spent a fair amount of time with Brian when we went out to General Conference and like him very much. He is humble, thoughtful and considerate. He speaks a little Guarani and HE PLAYS THE PIANO! We are excited for Sarah and Brian. July 17th will be here before we know it.

Having both Joanna and Ben and Sarah and Brian getting married in July has really reminded me of the importance and power of temple marriage. We are so very thankful for the blessings that have come to our two daughters in the past year since they came home from their missions and look forward to many happy family times together.

We are looking forward to getting to know Brian better and to breaking him in to life east of the Mississippi!