Drum Roll Please.....

Introducing:

Baby Gerow: affectionately know as Cletus the Fetus.

Arriving sometime on or around May 9, 2010!

Bikes and Mini Golf and Pasta

teaser: we've got a super-duper post coming up, so be ready!

So Daniel and I took our "new" bikes out for the first time on Saturday. Let's just say that I'm now more worried about the bike portion of the triathlon than the swimming. We took on a monster hill and I thought my lungs would quit on me. It was tough! We didn't go very far, but then we also did some running and some swimming. That's the first time we've done all three in one day. Overall I think it went better than I expected though.

Saturday was such a beautiful fall day (it felt more June than October) that we decided to go minature golfing and we invited Jared and Khristen to come along. It was great fun. Here are some shots of the pro-putters (I thought I had taken more pictures -guess not).

And to finish off the night, a new recipe - and once again I forgot to take a picture until the meal had been devoured. We had Spinach Ziti for dinner tonight. I was a little worried because my last couple attempts at cooking something new kind of fell flat, but this one turned out to be a winner. It was very easy and pretty healthy. I got the recipe from allrecipes.com and tweaked it a little, of course. I used frozen spinach (from our garden) instead of fresh and doubled the cream cheese (used light) and we didn't have nutmeg so I just added some other herbs to the tomatoes (basil, oregano, garlic powder and fennel seed). It was quite tasty!

Harvest Time

Last week we went to the garden. It was kind of sad - it wasn't as lush and green as it was the last time we saw it. The corn was all chopped down, the plants and vines were all turning yellow and brown. Those darned cucumbers were still growing!!! But we were there to finish the harvest -almost. We picked about a dozen butternut squash and pie pumpkins. Then we turned over some of the sweet potato vines to see if they had produced anything. Sure enough there were potatoes down there. It was too late in the day to dig them out, but we at least had peace of mind knowing there was something there to actually dig out.

Today (Monday) I turned one of these beautiful gourds into Curried Squash Soup. It was -interesting. I forgot to take a picture, but just imagine what baby food looks like.

I used this recipe from Pillsbury.com. It was very easy to make (aside from cutting up the squash) and had relatively few ingredients that were easy to find.

But, it wasn't fantastic. It was one of those foods where during the first couple bites you're thinking 'hey, this is pretty good.' Then during the next several bites your enthusiasm wanes. Finally you can't bring yourself to even finish the last little bit that's in your bowl.

I followed the recipe exactly and it turned out really thick - like pumpkin pie filling. I would definitely recommend this as a first course or as an accompaniment to a main dish. It doesn't hold it's own as a main dish. Small portions are best.

Daniel suggested that maybe it would have been better had we not pureed it and left it chunky and more soupy. Oh well, I'm glad we tried it. Now for a new, better butternut squash recipe...if you have any tried and true please pass them on. We've definitely got more squash.

Relaxing Weekend

We have enjoyed a nice weekend of sleeping in and watching a great General Conference. There's nothing much else to note other than Daniel finally bought a bike yesterday. We have just over a month before the triathalon and I'm getting a little nervous. My training hasn't been going nearly as well as I had hoped, but it's still ok if I come in last place right?