French Bread Pizza would be easy and probably pretty cheap, too. Slice some french bread loaves in half lengthwise, spread with some bottled pizza or pasta sauce, top with grated cheeses, veggies, or some crumbled veggie sausage patties or Boca Burgers, bake until hot through and cheese is melted. Apple juice costs less than cider and can be kept hot in a crock pot - sweetened with brown sugar, add some cinnamon sticks and cloves tied up in cheesecloth. That will warm up those skaters very nicely! Apple slices dipped in a warm caramel sauce would be different. Taco Soup - you could use crumbled Boca Burgers instead of ground beef or add another can of beans or two. This makes a large quantity and freezes well 2 pounds ground round, or veggie burgers, crumbled 1 large onion, diced 1 packet taco seasoning 1 packet Hidden Valley Ranch original dry mix salad dressing 1 can kidney beans (with liquid) 1 can pinto beans with jalapeños (with liquid) 1 can yellow hominy, optional 1 can diced tomatoes and green chilies (Rotel) 2 cans stewed tomatoes (I use Mexican stewed tomatoes) 1 8 oz. can tomato sauce 1 cup of water Cook beef and onion until beef is browned, drain excess grease. Add the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer for 30 to 45 minutes. Penzy's Spicy Cheese Bread 1 cup grated mozzarella, Jack or Swiss cheese 1 cup grated colby or cheddar cheese l loaf french bread sliced in half lengthwise 2 TB butt, soft 1/2 small yellow or red onion minced 1 1/2 t. Italian herbs 1 t. garlic salt 1/2 t. crushed red pepper or sprinkled on cayenne pepper Heat oven to broil. Cover baking sheet with foil. Toss cheeses in a bowl. Butter cut surface of bread and place on sheet. Sprinkle onion on both halves of bread. Sprinkle half of herbs and garlic. Mound cheese on top of bread. Top with rest of herbs and garlic and the red pepper flakes or cayenne pepper, if desired. Boil 5-7 min. until the cheese melts and the bread is crusty. Slice in 3" slices.

This year I saw some contributions to the groaning table from my kids for the first time. Younger son visiting from the other coast pitched in with setting the table, reaching for the too high storage, and washing the wine glasses that had not been used since last year and other odd jobs. Local son and girlfriend brought lovely homemade yeast rolls and a homemade apple pie. Sister and her husband brought wine, vegetable, and salad. Son-in-law brought wine, DD and busy, darling grandsons. I roasted the stuffed bird, made the gravy, pumpkin bread, corn pudding, candied sweet potatoes, twice baked potatoes, minced meat peaches, coffee, and cranberry relish. I don't know how I would do it without our old and trusty double ovens. Everyone kept commenting that this was the best Thanksgiving dinner ever, but I don't know why. We have a basic holiday meal we like to make and only vary the dessert, salad and vegetables. However, it was too much but yummy.

I make this alot! Delicious and quick! Five-Minute Fudge Wreaths: Chunky Chocolate Fudge Wreath with Walnuts and Currants Recipe courtesy of Rachael Ray From the show Oprah and Rachael Ray Throw a Holiday Party Makes 2 pounds This super-simple recipe will be a hit at your holiday party! Try all three varieties: the Chunky Chocolate Fudge Wreath with Walnuts and Currants, the White Chocolate Wreath with Pistachio and Cranberry or the Goober and Raisinette Wreath! INGREDIENTS 12 ounce package semisweet chocolate chips 1 cup butterscotch chips 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk (save the can) 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 8 ounce can walnuts, plus more for topping 1/2 cup raisins or dried currants (a couple of handfuls) candied red and green cherries to decorate top (like holly) softened butter to grease an 8 inch round cake pan Grease an 8-inch round cake pan with softened butter. Pour the chocolate and butterscotch chips, condensed milk and vanilla into a medium saucepan. Put the pan on the stove and turn the heat to low. Cover the empty condensed milk can with plastic wrap and put it in the center of the round cake pan. Stir the chips and milk until they melt together, about 3 minutes. Stir in nuts and raisins. Scoop the fudge into the cake pan all around the plastic-covered can in the center to form a wreath or ring shape. Let it be all bumpy on top. Keep pushing the can back to the center if the fudge moves it away from there. Cut the red cherries in half with scissors and the green cherries into quarters. Use the green pieces to make leaves and the red to make holly berries. Decorate the fudge with several groups of holly berry sprigs made from the cherries and garnish with walnuts between the sprigs. Put the fudge in the fridge and chill until firm. Remove the can from the center, then loosen the sides and bottom of the fudge with a spatula. Cut the fudge into thin slices to serve. To give the wreath as a gift-wrap in cellophane and secure with a bow or ornament. Variations: White Chocolate Wreath with Pistachio and Cranberry Substitute the chocolate chips with white chocolate chips, 1 1/2 ounce bag plus 1 cup. Substitute 1 to 1 1/2 cups of shelled natural pistachio nuts for walnuts. Substitute 1/2 cup dried sweetened cranberries for currants. Goober and Raisinette Wreath Swap butterscotch for peanut butter chips Swap large whole peanuts for walnuts used in original recipe (such as peeled Virginia Peanuts) Swap 1/2 cup large raisins for currants in original recipe

Larry, That is a beautiful and awesomely tall example of variegated reed grass! Maybe yours is going to get head high to the Jolly Green Giant? Jacob, If I didn't have the 8' tall deer fence all around both garden plots, the deer and I would not be friends. I think Bambi lost her mother, perhaps to a hunter. We have tons and tons of fawns this year---it seems that most does had at least twins this year and one that comes regularly has triplets. I love seeing them. If only the fawns could stay little, cute and adorable forever. People who hunt the property due west of us (it is the buffer that sits between us and the river, so they get a ton of wildlife) are getting pretty large bucks every year....say they sit on their property and wait for the bucks to come off our property. I rarely see the bucks because they feed at night, but I know they are there because every now and then late at night when we are out late, we spot them as we are arriving home. I tried for the first 8 or 10 years to have nice landscaping around the house/yard, which my husband stubbornly refuses to fence off with an 8' fence. The deer ate every single thing I planted, so I finally gave up. Now we just have trees, shrubs, trumpet creeper vines (because apparently the deer don't eat those), grass and some four o'clocks. Everything else? Hostas, hydrangeas, roses, perennial salvias, any annual flowers I planted for color, day lilies, etc......all deer chow. They even would eat the tough, prickly leaves of the hollies in drought periods, but finally the hollies are so big and old and tough that they don't bother those any more. If I ever convince Tim to surround our house and yard with a big ugly fence to keep the deer out, I will plant everything I've ever wanted around the house. I think his desire to not have a fence is much stronger than my longing for one. Where he grew up in Pennsylvania surrounded by woodland, nobody had fences so you could look out and feel like you owned hundreds of acres of forest as all the back yards and farms just sort of flowed together. So, he remains anti-fencing based on fond childhood memories from the 1960s and 1970s.....even though, if you go back there to his childhood neighborhood now, everybody has fencing and the farms and woodlands mostly are housing subdivisions with lots of fencing. I still think that someday I'll at least have a fenced back yard I can landscape. We'll see! Nancy, I am so sorry about your mom's passing. I know I don't "have to" comment, but I want to. Tim and I send you and your family our deepest and most sincere condolences. What an incredible, long life she lived, and you did everything you could to move her to the place that was best for her to live out her final stage of her life. You were a great daughter and I suspect it is because you were reared by an amazing mom. When y'all do travel to Buffalo in a few weeks, I wish you a safe journey. I do think Tiny Dude needs to travel with you so he can enchant and delight your friends and family who see his photos on Facebook and undoubtedly want to meet him in real life. Many cats travel well in a cat crate. Do they microchip cats like they do dogs? If they do, I'd get him microchipped in case he escapes from the vehicle, or at least get him a collar with a tag so you could put your cell phone number on the tag. Being close to the interstate where wrecks are frequent, we get lots of requests to watch for/search for pets that escape from a vehicle (not necessarily a wrecked vehicle---pets can bolt from a broken down vehicle when someone gets out to check and see why the engine is acting up or to change a tire or just when their owners stop at a gas station or fast food place). Sometimes you can find the pet, even weeks later, but it is hard by then to figure out which traveler passing through was searching for that pet if they aren't tagged. In my meager 20 years of living here, an early winter almost always equates to a bad winter. Or, for snow-starved southern OK, a really good winter. But, we don't get the ice storms that folks further north get in bad winters so what a lot of you might view as a bad winter, I might think of as a delightfully cold and snowy winter....if we get snow. If we don't get snow, then who cares? All winter without snow means is that we are cold and wet. I don't like being cold and wet, but I love snow. Not that I've had much snow to love. Our county does sometimes get the ice storms that bring down trees and power lines, but so far, that sort of weather never has come as far south as our house---it has made it down to maybe 3 or 4 miles north of us though. The bad thing is that if we get cold enough for ice and snow, then we get cold enough to lose Zone 8 plants that I planted here in order to see if they would survive here. They will survive here for a few years until we get an extra cold winter and snow. So, I sort of hope for snow, and sort of don't. I rarely plant Zone 8 plants here any more, although I planted a couple this past year.....which pretty much guarantees a cold winter is coming so it can wipe them out. I haven't seen a hummingbird since a week ago Thursday, but left the feeders up in case any were going to ride down on the big cold fronts. I haven't seen any, but will leave the feeders up until Monday or Tuesday, just in case, and then take them down. We ended up with the oldest granddaughter coming to stay with us for the weekend after her plans to spend the weekend with her dad fell through at the absolute last minute. We are always excited to have her come visit for a weekend, even if it wasn't planned. So, we ate dinner out with her, her mom and Chris last night, and then they headed home to get sleep before the busy work weekend with long shifts scheduled at work. We went to Wal-mart after dinner and bought everything we needed to stay home indoors and out of the rain today. We're going to carve pumpkins, which she has been dying to do....but I wanted to wait for cooler weather so the heat wouldn't ruin the Jack-o-lanterns. I think the heat isn't an issue any more. We're going to decorate Halloween Jack-o-lantern cookies (pre-baked and sold with a decorating kit). She has a long list of Halloween crafts she wants to make, including the Halloween version of a gingerbread house (we'll see about that one), so we'll work out way through that list as much as we can. I awakened at six and saw on the radar that the rain was almost here so rushed to get the dogs outdoors ahead of the rain's arrival. Whew! That was close but we made it. We're supposed to have rain all morning. How deeply into the afternoon the rain lasts is the unknown. I wish it would blow through faster, but it might be a long, rainy day here. We're ready for it and aren't planning on going out in it. I have some amaranth in the garden with huge flowering seed heads I'd hoped to have harvested and drying by now, but the relentless rain has kept me from cutting them. I keep hoping for a warm, sunny, windy day without rain so they can dry out some and then I'll cut them. I think if I cut them while they are so wet, they'll just mildew and look awful. I want the flower heads for autumn flower arrangements, but the rain may ruin that idea. When I planted the amaranth seeds in July, I wasn't expecting record rainfall in September and October. Have a lovely Saturday everyone. I hope those of you that the rain keeps missing will get some of this moisture plume left over from Sergio. The unfortunate thing is that it seems largely to be traveling over areas that already have had too much rain recently, so flash flooding and flooding likely will occur in those areas. The Red River is up and running fast and looked ugly last night, so this rain will just make that worse. I am thinking the winter wheat crop here likely is ruined. Too, too much rain even for seeds to sprout and grow, so it is more likely that if the seeds sprout, then the young plants rot. That's so unfortunate, but that is how life goes here on the southern plains. Dawn