2nd Week of November

Whew! Last week was one busy week. At work, we put on our annual Prime Rib dinner. We fed about 300 people with a menu of Prime Rib, seafood salad, baked potatoes, green salad, green beans, rolls & pie. We have some wonderful people come in and cook the Prime Rib, we buy the pie from Cyrus O'Leary and the rolls from Warden Hutterian Brethern but everything else we do ourselves. Makes for a busy week - especially since it is so close to the first of the month and I was still working on month end. We also had a little excitement Thursday morning and had several visits from the Sheriff's department here at work! Seems that someone had cut the locks on the mini storage units that we own and stolen things from our renters. The best thing I can say about last week is that at least it is over!!!

We've had some bad news in our family. My brother-in-law John's father passed away yesterday. Harold had been having some health problems and had a heart attack yesterday afternoon. I have known him my entire life and he will be missed by his entire extended family and his many friends. I don't think that Harold ever met a stranger. He was loved and admired by everyone around him. Please keep his family in your thoughts and prayers. Even though we know that he is in a better place it is still hard. We also heard this past week that Melanie Mom's cancer has returned. She is upbeat and positive but she has another long road in front of her. Please keep Brenda in your thoughts and prayers.

It's been a long time since I posted a recipe so here is the recipe for the seafood salad that we serve at our dinner. We get rave reviews every year.

Here is the recipe as we prepare it:

Seafood Salad
10 large loves white bread
36 lbs crab/shrimp mix
2 bunches celery
2 bunches green onions
6 red peppers
1 #10 can sliced olives
3 qts mayonaise
3 bottles cocktail sauce
1/2 cup lemon juice
2 Tblsp dill weed

And here is the recipe scaled down to regular proportions:

Seafood Salad

1/3 of large loaf sandwich bread (approximately 7 slices)
1 lb. Imitation crab meat, shredded
1 lb. shrimp, cooked
2 large stalks celery, finely diced
1/3 of large red pepper, finely diced
3 green onions, finely sliced
1 small can sliced black olives
2/3 cup mayonnaise
1 tbsp. cocktail sauce
1 ½ tsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. dill weed

Remove crust from bread and break into small pieces. Place in bowl and mix the bread, seafood, and vegetables. In a small bowl mix the mayonnaise, cocktail sauce, lemon juice and dill weed. Pour this dressing over the first mixture and mix all together. Refrigerate a few hours before serving.

Ethan's Birthday

We celebrated Ethan's birthday last week. A few of his friends came over after school and we decorated pumpkins, snacked, played and smacked a pinata! Can't have much more fun than that! We did officially change Ethan's birthday to June 28 but the court date was after June 28 so if we didn't celebrate now, he wouldn't have had a birthday this year! Talk about terrible! We will probably continue to celebrate in October - its fun to have it during the school year and a Halloween theme is also fun. He will just be turning his age + 1/2 on his October birthday! That ought to confuse everyone!!