An October Sunday

 Good morning Friends,

    Yesterday we had invited over new friends and a couple friends from the woods house area-to celebrate Larry's birthday (which is today) and to also enjoy fishing on the dock. I really did not know who if any were going to come-ended up everyone came except for one and he called us that he had an emergency. (his granddaughter totaled her car by crashing into a deer-she is ok-thank goodness).

   I made this into a simple event-homemade bbq beans, lots of different dips, toppings for the brats, chips and dippin fritos. Larry and I both searched for artisan brats and smoked sausages, so I offered a large variety. 

   Grilling in the kitchen on two cast iron grill pans I was busy doing that and did not get much in photos to share.  I bought nicer buns too for the guys-but was surprised most did not eat the buns-but they did eat many brats and most of the bbq beans--this Larry told me after I mentioned we only had 3 brats left but all these buns-that was a surprise to me.  I also picked up from the deli a layered bean-guacamole, sour cream dip, and also a humus dip. One person brought a large pasta-veggie salad.

  Most of the food was gone so I would say they enjoyed everything-smiles-and everyone thanked me and gave big hugs on their way out. I only got a photo of the serving table I had set up before the perishable foods came out.

and the BBQ beans

  I had thought of baking up the pineapple upside down cupcakes for the gathering-but since I hadn't made those before decided to bake today.

  I used a quality gluten free cake mix and added pineapple extract to the batter. I only had one pan that was a bit larger in size (a vintage cupcake pan), so with batter left over I filled up just the batter into the smaller size pan.

  I just took them out of the oven to cool-the upside down ones are wet on the bottom outside-so I placed them into another cupcake liner.  Looking online for recipe ideas most just greased their pans with no cupcake liners-I thought that could be a real mess to get out of the pans. After they have cooled will let you know how they turned out.  Also reading the recipes they were all over the place on how much melted butter and brown sugar to use on the bottoms. So I just melted 1/4 cup of butter and stirred in keto brown sugar sweetener til mostly absorbed into the butter-placed that on the bottom of the liners and added the drained crushed pineapple. I only like to use drained crushed pineapple for the upside down cakes. I think the thick rings are more difficult to eat and we don't like those cherries-haha

In the back are my Yellowstone water bottles, my hot cocoa mixes, and a hand burned cutting board-she designed it to be similiar to our lake here

    Tomorrow will be a very long day, so instead of working outdoors today I am going to relax with watching football. 

    Since 1967 when I was in college the Green Bay Packers were my team to follow. As I moved around to different areas of the country through my lifetime, I would also follow the local football team.  I did stop watching most sports with their disgraceful kneeling to our great flag for a few years now. Go protest elsewhere not while you are being paid to play is my opinion still. I worked for the phone company and would have been fired for such behavior  Ok enough of that---My hometown team now since moving to Missouri is the Kansas City Chiefs-I love their coach and Mahomes is the next one to watch-he is a very exciting quarterback to watch play the game.  To avoid all those commercials-I record the games and then buzz over the commercials-more enjoyable to watch for me.

Enjoy your Sunday and new week 

"update"  the cupcakes turned out pretty good. The  need to be totally cool before taking off the papers though. I tried one warm and the bottom goodies stuck to the paper-once cool the were fine. Next time I would add more crushed pineapple on the bottom-but the edition of the pineapple extract into the batter was a nice touch.

Looking at the weather for this upcoming week-Tuesday and Wednesday we will be in the low 20's F for evenings, so that will be a hard freeze for sure. Our first freeze here