"Hey nonny-nonny and a hot cha-cha"

My kids like to sing this song about Saturday: "It's Saturday, oh it's Saturday... hey nonny-nonny and a hot-cha-cha..." I think it came from a Little Rascals episode.

Last night A. and I prepared and served the Valentine's Banquet at church. Fire Department regulations now forbid the use of the church kitchen for anything but reheating pre-cooked food, so we had to do the cooking at home. That seemed like a headache to me at first, but it played out to be very convenient. The evening went very smoothly since I wasn't frantically preparing things in the kitchen, just serving what was reheated.

The menu:
Grilled chicken
or
Roast beef (done for us on the smoker at Green Valley Meats in Auburn, WA)

Garlic Mashed Potatoes (eeeeeeevil, must post the recipe so you can all faint- it's the recipe from the restaurant Buca di Beppo's)
OR
Rice Pilaf

Mediterranean veggies (which means green beans, artichoke hearts, yellow squash and a few other veggies tossed in together and steamed)

Spring mix salad with craisins, feta cheese, and slivered almonds, served with raspberry vinaigrette

And mustn't forget dessert!
Raspberry cheesecake
Chocolate Fudge cake with ice cream
Tiramisu (NOBODY chose this! GO FIGURE! more for me hehehe)

We did well... got finished cleaning up the church kitchen, dishes and all, by 9:30 pm.

Went home and crawled into bed, where I dreamed about how tired I was, all night long. D'you know how difficult it is to wake up in the morning when you've been dreaming about how tired you are!?

So, hot-cha-cha, today was Saturday! To celebrate, we had steak and eggs for breakfast (beef leftovers from last night's banquet) - then I decided to thoroughly clean the kitchen floors and countertops. EWWW. I moved the refrigerator. EEEEEEWWWWW! That was a gloriously sticky, dusty mess. At one point some 7UP had spilled and run underneath the fridge, making a glue-like substance to which was affixed a penny, a hairband, a button, a photograph, and a missionary prayer card.

Irrecoverable items went straight into the trash, and I spent a good 20 minutes with a scrub brush and a bucket of Murphy's Oil Soap to remove the residue. Ah, looked great! So I carried on with the rest of the kitchen floor and am now guarding it jealously against all debris.

This has reinforced my realization that I MUST get this kitchen painted, and soon. However, I still need to paint the crown moulding all around the living/dining areas, as well as change the color on the piano wall once again (remember the Nacho Cheese wall incident? - well, we're growing tired of looking at Buttered Rum now, too.)

Fortunately Monday is a holiday, so I plan to sleep in and perhaps get that piano wall taken care of. I pinched a bucket of Audra's leftover living room paint because it's close to the color I want to try - Carob brown. Looks rusty red, which will set off my shiny black piano nicely. :)

Photos if and when I paint, of course. Happy weekending, all! See you in church tomorrow.