Joe and Jamie's Blog

Tonight was the second potluck dinner, category was finger foods. I’de say this was another hit and now we’re definitely going to keep doing these. It’s always fun when everyone gets together.

For this dinner I decided to make some chicken wings with the same sauce I made for the ribs last time since everyone liked the sauce. These were a lot quicker and easier to do, just cook them for about 30 minutes then add sauce and cook for another 15 minutes.

Now to be annoying like I always strive to do, on Marie’s Evite I demanded a cake since my birthday is Monday. Well of course Eric and Marie made me a cake, but I wasn’t expecting one as cool as this one!!

Now I just think this is awesome, I mean they had to hand carve the penguin out and then dye the crap out of the icing to get it black. The effort alone was really nice in itself. Good icing job too, I suck at icing cakes.

Needless to say the cake was delicious, even if all the food coloring stained your tongue, mouth, fingers, etc for a few days! =P

Yesterday was Eric & Marie’s pot luck dinner. It was a great get together and all the food was delicious. I played video games all night, had some beer and ate all kinds of delicious food, couldn’t have gotten any better.

I spent two days thinking what to make for this dinner. I didn’t want to do chicken since I figured everyone else would, so I planned to go with beef or pork but I was stuck between stir fry or something else I didn’t think of yet. I surfed a few recipe sites for pot luck dinner ideas and came across one for some nice spareribs. I instantly printed out the recipe and headed to the supermarket.

The ribs are easy to cook and the sauce is fun to make. Everyone liked the ribs so this is a definite keeper in the recipe book and I will be making them again soon.

I enjoyed all the dishes at the dinner. There was sesame chicken, curry chicken, chicken pot pie (see what I meant about the chicken!), a bunch of stuff crammed in pizza dough (can’t remember name but they were good), some salads, fruit, and chocolate cake for dessert. Sorry if I forgot anything. I can’t wait until we do this again. Marie mentioned something about maybe every month we do this, could be fun.

In case you want it, here’s the recipe I followed:

Potluck Spareribs

Ingredients

• 6 pounds pork spareribs
• 1 1/2 cups ketchup
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup vinegar
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon ground mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper

Directions

1. Cut ribs into serving-size pieces; place with the meaty side up on racks in two greased 13-in. x 9-in. x 2-in. baking pans. Cover tightly with foil. Bake at 350 degrees F for 1-1/4 hours or until meat is tender.
2. Drain; remove racks and return ribs to pans. Combine remaining ingredients; pour over ribs. Return to the oven, uncovered, for 35 minutes or until sauce coats ribs, basting occasionally. Ribs can also be grilled over medium-hot heat for the last 35 minutes instead of baking.

Welcome to the world Jason Logan Roe! It’s been nine long months since that stormy, windy night when the power went out and Jamie and I weren’t around to occupy mommy and daddy and keep them from making you! We all love you very much!

Now what you all want to see, pictures of the cutie! (Casey is going to hate the pictures of her! lol)

Two weekends ago Jamie and I went camping with a bunch of friends. We headed up to the Taconic State Park area of Copake Falls, NY. This was the first time I went camping, Jamie has gone before a few times. We had a lot of fun on the trip. I enjoyed hanging around with no cell phone or emails to answer, it was nice to stay out of touch for a whole weekend.

We had to buy everything for this trip. A tent, sleeping bags, etc, etc. Our tent is the red one on the left in the second picture. Its a pretty good sized tent for two people, we had plenty of room to keep everything and more. We got everything discounted because my sister works at Dick’s Sporting Goods, man what a deal!

We all took a hike through the Bash Bish Falls trail which was really cool. Once you go down the large hill to the waterfall area you encounter the trail that takes you across the border into Massachusetts. We went pretty far down the trail but there was still more to go. Almost all the pictures below are of the trail. I couldn’t help myself, just love taking nature pictures.

If you wish to read up more on the campgrounds, here is the link to the NY State Parks website.