Wedding Weekend #3: Cook Family

This weekend we were in Bay City for a Cook family wedding. This was our 3rd wedding of the summer that we have attended and we still have two more to go -- the last two are O'Neill weddings in August. Anywhooooo, the whole Cook clan was in attendance which means it was outrageously loud wherever we went. There's just so many of them chatting at the same time that before you know it, everyone is shouting to hear what the other person is saying! This loudness was most evident this morning at breakfast when we filled the entire breakfast area of the hotel - the temperature in the room kept rising and voices got louder until I wanted to cover my ears for a moment to get a break from the noise! :) I looked over at my mother-in-law and we exchanged glances and she shook her head. The Cooks are famous for their volume level. The funny thing is that they don't notice it, only us implants into the family seem to notice and it's hilarious. Our Saturday was filled with family and catching up on life.

second cousin, Katie

Katie's spitfire of an older sister, Natalie

beautiful Roman Catholic church where the ceremony happened

wish we had one of these beauties in Big Rapids!

We clean up pretty good.

Dr. Tyler catching up with Grandma Cook

My Farmerboy talking farm with his Grandpa Cook, who is also a farmer. It runs in the family.

Friday night I made dinner for Zach & Tyler, which we didn't end up eating until almost 8:30PM because those boys were moving bales of hay around in the barn to make room for the wheat straw... I made herb encrusted pork loin chops with fresh green beans from the garden. The beans squeaked when I chewed them because they were so fresh!

herb encrusted pork loin chops - not nearly as hard as it sounds!

Dessert was raspberry & apple crisp with cool whip on top. The raspberries came from the garden and I didn't add enough sugar or gelatin, so they dessert was a bit soupy & tart. Oh well. Live and learn.

That, however, was not my worst blunder with Friday's dinner... the jalepeno poppers did me in.

You see, I'm fairly new at cooking things fresh out of the garden and we had some jalepenos ready to pick & use. (P.S. it's really annoying to me that I don't know how to make the little tilde sign over the "n" in the word "jalepeno." I'm sure it's bugging all you Spanish speakers out there too so just bear with me!) Since the rest of the ingredients needed to make salsa aren't ready yet, I decided to make jalepeno poppers. Zach loves jalepenos and I figured how hard could they be? Well, the jalepeno poppers turned out great! Except I didn't pay attention to which ones were from the "mild" bush and which ones came from the "hot" bush so it was kinda a guessing game for poor Tyler. He kept hoping he'd get a mild one and then picked a hot one every time!

jalepenos from the garden

jalepeno poppers!

I just cut these babies in half and filled them with a mixture of cream cheese, cheddar cheese, sour cream, and bacon bits then baked 'em for 15-20 mins.

Now for the biggest mistake: I didn't wear gloves while preparing the jalpenos. It turns out that the juice and oils from the jalepenos don't come off your skin very easily. Everything I touched with my hands BURNED! Things such as my upper lip when I wiped sweat off it while cooking. My eyes BURNED when I took out my contacts that night AND when I put them in the next morning! Lesson learned. Don't be like me. Always wear gloves when working with jalepeno peppers.

It's good to be back home. The laundry is going. The house is mostly clean. And my sisters left me these cute little guys on the kitchen table to use in my classroom when they stayed here this past weekend while we were away.



Love,
Sarah