Super Bowl Snacks

Even though we stayed home, we still made some snacks for the game last night.

I tried making these mozzarella sticks that I saw Giada De Laurentis make on the Food Network a couple of years ago. They looked ok after the egg wash and breadcrumb covering.


It all went to heck after that. The recipe said to freeze them at least 2 hours and up to 2 days after they were coated. (so that when you fry them, the cheese doesn't melt too fast.) I probably froze them the minimal 2 hours, and when I fried them, most of them bursted out of their coating, then I had cheese popping out of the skillet. They were salvageable, but I couldn't bring myself to take a photo of the finished product, they were a mess. Corrie was nice and said it was a learning experience. I don't have any experience frying anything, so I suppose he's right. Next time we plan to freeze them overnight and see if that helps.

We also made this chili-garlic roasted broccoli recipe from Rachel Ray's show. I don't look too many of her recipes up, but this one was well worth it. Corrie and I will eat a huge batch of broccoli when we make it. I didn't use as much garlic as it called for-I only used 2 cloves. The picture looks a little gross, but trust me, it's tasty.


We rounded out the meal with a frozen stromboli I had made back at Christmas time.

Duck, duck, duck . . .

Corrie and I attended the Avoca annual Quack-off duck races yesterday. For those who aren't familiar with the race, this was the 29th annual running of the ducks, and every year you can bring a duck to race or rent a duck to race. The point to the race is simple-get your duck past the finish line first, and you can clap your hands, make noise, etc. etc. to encourage your duck's speediness, but you can't touch it.

Proceeds benefit the local fire department. I was glad that we decided not to participate this year but to just spectate, because it had to be a long day for the participants. Registration happened in the morning, then the heats of duck races (3-4 ducks per heat) began around 1:00. I have no idea how many first round heats there were-we left around 3:30 or so and they were on heat 60 something. The winner of each of those initial rounds goes on to participate in the next set of heats, so it must've lasted all day and into the night.

The warm weather probably drew a larger crowd this year. The other thing going on is a lot of drinking. I have no problem with that, although I'm getting to an age where people in their early 20s who aren't managing their liquor consumption very well get on my nerves. Overall it was a great time. It's not every day that you hear someone say over a loud speaker, "if you rented your duck and you did not win your heat, you need to return your duck to the trailer. Please return your ducks."

Here are some photos and video from the day:

This is the view of the start line. There were 4 lanes.


Here's the end of a heat-it looks like 2 different people think they won. I'm not sure what the official call was. It was very interesting to watch so many ducks stop short of that orange line.


Here's a winner being interviewed after their heat. Note the duck necklaces. Duck flair and costumes were everywhere.


Here's a picture of the crowd as we were leaving. A duck race draws a lot of people!

I took a few short videos. This is a typical heat-a winner sails through, then the other ducks get in a traffic jam.



I'm very glad we attended, and I bet we'll go again next year. I'm still not sure I want the pressure of racing a duck, however.

Yes We Can!

Maybe it's just me, but I think Corrie's smile at the Lincoln Obama rally last February made today possible. I'm so glad we can finally move on and try a new path and not have to hear about the internets any longer.